Curriculum Standards for Social Studies: I. Introduction

What Is Social Studies?

In 1992, the Board of Directors of National Council for the Social Studies, the primary membership organization for social studies educators, adopted the following definition:

Social studies is the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence. Within the school program, social studies provides coordinated, systematic study drawing upon such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology, as well as appropriate content from the humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences. The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.

Social studies is taught in kindergarten through grade 12 in schools across the nation. As a field of study, social studies may be more difficult to define than is a single discipline such as history or geography, precisely because it is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary and because it is sometimes taught in one class (perhaps called "social studies") and sometimes in separate discipline-based classes within a department of social studies.

Two main characteristics, however, distinguish social studies as a field of study: it is designed to promote civic competence; and it is integrative, incorporating many fields of endeavor. In specific and more detailed terms, these distinctions mean the following:

1. Social studies programs have as a major purpose the promotion of civic competence-which is the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required of students to be able to assume "the office of citizen" (as Thomas Jefferson called it) in our democratic republic. Although civic competence is not the only responsibility of social studies nor is it exclusive to the field, it is more central to social studies than any other subject area in the schools.

National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) has long supported civic competence as the goal of social studies. By doing so, NCSS has recognized the importance of educating students who are committed to the ideas and values of our democratic republic and who are able to use knowledge about their community, nation, and world, along with skills of data collection and analysis, collaboration, decision-making, and problem-solving. Students who have these commitments, knowledge, and skills will be the most capable of shaping our future and sustaining and improving our democracy.

2. K-12 social studies programs integrate knowledge, skills, and attitudes within and across disciplines. Integrated social studies programs across the nation take many forms, varying in the amount and form of disciplinary integration:

• At primary levels, children often learn social studies through learning opportunities that are highly integrated across several disciplines. These often take the form of units constructed around themes. For example, teachers using the theme "time, continuity, and change" would likely engage young learners in studies using history, science, and language arts.
• As students proceed to middle and higher levels, social studies programs may continue to be highly integrated and in some cases planned by interdisciplinary teams of teachers (for example, social studies, science, mathematics, humanities). Alternatively, programs may be planned as interdisciplinary courses or more exclusively linked to specific disciplines (for example, a history course that also draws from geography, economics, political science).

3. Social studies programs help students construct a knowledge base and attitudes drawn from academic disciplines as specialized ways of viewing reality. Each discipline begins from a specific perspective and applies unique "processes for knowing" to the study of reality. History, for instance, uses the perspective of time to explore causes and effects of events in the past. Political science, on the other hand, uses the perspective of political institutions to explore structures and processes of governing.

It is important for students in social studies programs to begin to understand, appreciate, and apply knowledge, processes, and attitudes from academic disciplines. But even such discipline-based learning draws simultaneously from several disciplines in clarifying specific concepts. A study of the concept of "the common good," for example, may draw upon some or all of the following:

• the discipline of history, to determine the concept's origin, study primary source documents that define and address the concept, and analyze the concept's development over time;
• the discipline of geography, to locate where the concept was first developed, map its movement from one continent or nation to another, and recognize the power of the diffusion of ideas as an example of global linkage;
• the discipline of political science, to determine the developing meaning of the concept as it is promoted or limited through existing political institutions, to study examples of actual practice related to the common good, and to acknowledge the need for citizen involvement in closing the distance between the ideal and reality;
• the discipline of sociology, to examine the role of individuals, groups, and institutions and their relationship and responsibility to the common good, and to develop an understanding of the complexities of those relationships resulting from the diversity of beliefs, values, and structures within and among them; and
• communication abilities from language arts/English and the fine arts to enable students to express their understanding of the concept in a personally meaningful way.

The example could be extended to other disciplines, but the point is that discipline-based knowledge, processes, and attitudes are fully utilized within social studies programs. Students in social studies programs must study the development of social phenomena and concepts over time; must have a sense of place and interrelationships among places across time and space; must understand institutions and processes that define our democratic republic; must draw from other disciplines appropriate to a more complete understanding of an idea or phenomenon; and must experience concepts reflectively and actively, through reading, thinking, discussing, and writing.

4. Social studies programs reflect the changing nature of knowledge, fostering entirely new and highly integrated approaches to resolving issues of significance to humanity. Over the last fifty years, the scholarly community has begun to rethink disciplinary boundaries and encourage more integration across disciplines. This process has been spurred by pressures such as the following:

• Social issues, such as poverty, crime, and public health, are increasingly understood to transcend the boundaries of disciplines, cultures, and nations. As these issues grow increasingly complex, the work to develop solutions demands an increasingly integrated view of scholarly domains and of the world itself.
• Many scholars now define themselves by the issues and problems they address and use several disciplines to inform their work. Entirely new departments and programs reflect this development. Academic programs in American Studies, African-American Studies, Biotechnology, and Medical Ethics, for example, draw on multiple disciplines and their processes to address the needs of humanity.
• Technology provides increasingly easy access to data bases that are cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary as well as to scholarship in many disciplines.
• Scholars increasingly consider themselves to be members of the international academic community and share findings regularly across intellectual and geographic boundaries.

The more accurately the K-12 social studies program addresses the contemporary conditions of real life and of academic scholarship, the more likely such a program is to help students develop a deeper understanding of how to know, how to apply what they know, and how to participate in building a future.

It is within this context that these social studies standards were created. They pay attention to the specific contributions of history, the social sciences, humanities, fine arts, the natural sciences, and other disciplines, while simultaneously providing an umbrella for the integrative potential of these several disciplines. This characteristic is the nature and strength of social studies: recognizing the importance of the disciplines and their specific perspectives in understanding topics, issues, and problems, but also recognizing that topics, issues, and problems transcend the boundaries of single disciplines and demand the power of integration within and across them.

How Do We Achieve Excellence in Social Studies?

To achieve the vision of social studies, we must ensure that students become intimately acquainted with scholarship, artisanship, leadership, and citizenship. Excellence in social studies will be achieved by programs in which students gain the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to understand, respect, and practice the ways of the scholar, the artisan, the leader, and the citizen in support of the common good.

Supporting the Common Good
As citizens of a democracy, we support one of our republic's most important ideals: the common good, i.e., the general welfare of all individuals and groups within the community.

The common good is supported when all citizens become aware that the meaning and purpose of education in a democratic republic is the intellectual and ethical development of "student-citizens," young people who will soon assume the role of citizen. Individuals must understand that their self-interest is dependent upon the well-being of others in the community. Attention to the common good means putting first things first. If educators address the ethical and intellectual habits of students, other priorities will be realized.

Our moral imperative as educators is to see all children as precious and recognize that they will inherit a world of baffling complexity. Our responsibility is to respect and support the dignity of the individual, the health of the community, and the common good of all. This responsibility demands that we teach our students to recognize and respect the diversity that exists within the community.

Adopting Common and Multiple Perspectives
Each person experiences life in an individual way, responding to the world from a very personal perspective. People also share common perspectives as members of groups, communities, societies, and nations-that is, as part of a dynamic world community. A well-designed social studies curriculum will help each learner construct a blend of personal, academic, pluralist, and global views of the human condition in the following ways:

• Students should be helped to construct a personal perspective that enables them to explore emerging events and persistent or recurring issues, considering implications for self, family, and the whole national and world community. Social studies students need to learn to make choices after weighing their personal expectations, along with the pros, cons, responsibilities, and consequences of those choices for themselves and others.
• Students should be helped to construct an academic perspective through study and application of social studies learning experiences. The social studies disciplines provide specific points of view. Discipline-based concepts such as "democratic republic," "citizen," "common good," and others help learners construct the meaning of ideals U.S. citizens hold in common. Discipline-based concepts such as "class," "race," "equal access," and others help learners ask how to live in communities characterized by both unity and diversity and how to close the gap between ideals and reality. The informed social studies learner applies knowledge and processes from academic disciplines and from interdisciplinary means to both personal and social experiences.
• Students should be helped to construct a pluralist perspective based on diversity. This perspective involves respect for differences of opinion and preference; of race, religion, and gender; of class and ethnicity; and of culture in general. This construction should be based on the realization that differences exist among individuals and the conviction that this diversity can be positive and socially enriching. Students need to learn that the existence of cultural and philosophical differences are not "problems" to be solved; rather, they are healthy and desirable qualities of democratic community life.
• Students should be helped to construct a global perspective that includes knowledge, skills, and commitments needed to live wisely in a world that possesses limited resources and that is characterized by cultural diversity. A global perspective involves viewing the world and its people with understanding and concern. This perspective develops a sense of responsibility for the needs of all people and a commitment to finding just and peaceful solutions to global problems.

Personal, academic, pluralist, and global perspectives all develop within the framework of civic responsibility that is the hallmark of the democratic national culture committed to individual liberty and the common good. These interrelated perspectives will be developed in a social studies curriculum designed to enable students to use knowledge in the following ways: to conceptualize contexts of issues or phenomena; to consider causality; to inquire about the validity of explanations; and to create new explanations and models for grappling with persistent and/or recurring issues across time, space, and cultures.

Applying Knowledge, Skills, and Values to Civic Action
It is important that students become able to connect knowledge, skills, and values to civic action as they engage in social inquiry.

Knowledge
Knowledge is constructed by learners as they attempt to fit new information, experiences, feelings, and relationships into their existing or emerging intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional constructs. Disciplinary or specialized knowledge is useful but not always sufficient for developing contextual understanding of the phenomena we seek to comprehend. In these instances, ideas, principles, concepts, and information from a number of fields may be relevant to the topic studied. In the social studies, therefore, educators draw widely from a number of disciplines to construct curricular experiences enabling students to actively relate new knowledge to existing understanding.

If we want our students to be better thinkers and better decision-makers, they must have contact with those accustomed to thinking with precision, refinement, and clarity. We must encourage them to be critical and copious readers of the best media, print, audio, and video content, writers of reflective essays, and critics of social phenomena. An awareness of the relationship among social studies content, skills, and learning context can help us establish criteria for developing reflective social inquiry. This disposition toward reflective thinking is essential if we wish to foster democratic thought and action.

Skills
The skills that should be promoted in an excellent social studies program include the following:

- acquiring information and manipulating data;
- developing and presenting policies, arguments, and stories;
- constructing new knowledge; and
- participating in groups.

These skill categories should not be seen as a fragmented list of things that students and teachers should do. Rather, they should be used as an interconnected framework in which each skill is dependent upon and enriched by all other skills. All together are necessary for a program of excellence:

Acquiring information and manipulating data. To develop this skill category, the social studies program should be designed to increase the student's ability to read, study, search for information, use social science technical vocabulary and methods, and use computers and other electronic media.

Developing and presenting policies, arguments, and stories. To develop this skill category, the social studies program should be designed to increase the student's ability to use the writing process and to classify, interpret, analyze, summarize, evaluate, and present information in well-reasoned ways that support better decision-making for both individuals and society.

Constructing new knowledge. To develop this skill category, the social studies program should be designed to increase the student's ability to conceptualize unfamiliar categories of information, establish cause/effect relationships, determine the validity of information and arguments, and develop a new story, model, narrative, picture, or chart that adds to the student's understanding of an event, idea, or persons while meeting criteria of valid social studies research.

Participating in groups. To develop this skill category, the social studies program should be designed to increase the student's ability to express and advocate reasoned personal convictions within groups, recognize mutual ethical responsibility in groups, participate in negotiating conflicts and differences or maintain an individual position because of its ethical basis, work individually and in groups, and accept and fulfill responsibilities associated with citizenship in a democratic republic. (See Appendix A. Essential Skills for Social Studies for additional details on necessary skills.)

Values
Some values are so central to our way of life and view of the common good that we need to develop student commitment to them through systematic social studies experiences. These include such fundamental rights as the right to life, liberty, individual dignity, equality of opportunity, justice, privacy, security, and ownership of private property. They include as well the basic freedoms of worship, thought, conscience, expression, inquiry, assembly, and participation in the political process. In some instances, the social studies curriculum will focus on how values are formed and how they influence human behavior rather than on building commitment to specific values. In other instances, the emphasis will be placed upon helping students weigh priorities in situations in which a conflict exists between or among desirable values (i.e., those that form our common beliefs about rights, freedoms, and responsibilities of human beings in a democratic society). (See Appendix B. Democratic Beliefs and Values for the complete list.)

Democratic societies are characterized by hard choices. Many choices involve personal behavior; for example, should I vacation in a state that has just passed a law of which I disapprove? In a democratic society, many choices involve whether to support people or groups who advocate certain public policies. Choices become dilemmas when they involve issues that pit our most cherished values against each other. For example, we value business competition and believe that consumers should decide what survives in the marketplace, but we also believe that the public should be protected from unsafe products. Because we value human life, we vote for legislators who support helmet and seat-belt laws, but we also believe that people should control their own lives. Social studies should not dictate to students what the solutions should be to such dilemmas, but it should teach them how to analyze and discuss those dilemmas within the context of the civil discourse required to maintain a democratic society.

Sometimes the choices confronting citizens are extremely difficult, and decisions may lead to actions that require personal sacrifice-even at the risk of personal well-being or life. We generally value law-abiding behavior, for example, but we also recognize that there are times when laws represent something so wrong that they must be broken. The civil rights movement in the 1960s involved just such a dilemma, as did the choice in the eighteenth century between obeying British laws or supporting the American Revolution.

Social studies can help students search for situations analogous to these issues in both contemporary and historical settings. By learning ways others have responded to such dilemmas, students can begin to understand that choices they or their society face have been confronted by others in different times and places. By helping students learn how to understand ideals such as patriotism and loyalty and to examine the meaning of justice, equality, and privacy in specific dilemma situations, educators can give them practice in discussing the arguments and evidence that surround such dilemmas. By guiding them to clarify the facts connected with value dilemmas and teaching them how to identify pros, cons, and consequences of various positions, educators can also give students tools that will inform their decision-making processes as they face difficult choices in life.

Although there is no finite list of persistent issues and dilemmas in social studies, the following are typical of those with which people have wrestled over time. They are often stated as one value versus another because that is the choice that often must be made. However, most issues, when framed from the perspective of two or more differing points of view, allow for a broader, more reasoned discussion rather than an immediate debate of one view versus an opposite view. If worker security is guaranteed by legislation, for example, it is often thought to be at the expense of the rights of employers, but it might also address what is best in the common interest. With that potential for complexity in mind, then, the following illustrative list of persistent issues and dilemmas is presented:

• individual beliefs/majority rule
• obeying the law/the right to dissent
• cultural variety/cultural assimilation/uniformity
• community progress/individual liberties
• individual rights/public safety
• national security/individual freedom
• national/state/local community control
• worker security/employer rights
• free enterprise/public planning
• global business competition/the national interest

Civic Action
Discussions and arguments about how to deal with these persistent issues and dilemmas go on in families, groups, and the community at large. Social studies should help public discourse to be more enlightened because students possess the knowledge, intellectual skills, and attitudes necessary to confront, discuss, and consider action on such issues. Social studies educators have an obligation to help students explore a variety of positions in a thorough, fair-minded manner. As each position is studied and discussed to determine the strongest points in favor of it, the strongest points in opposition to it, and the consequences that would follow from selecting it, students become better able to improve the ways in which they deal with persistent issues and dilemmas and participate with others in making decisions about them.

Students who possess knowledge, skills, and values are prepared to take appropriate civic action as individuals or as members of groups devoted to civic improvement. Individual and group action designed to support both individual dignity and the common good bring our nation's ideals and practices closer together. In this way, civic participation supports and extends civic ideals and practices in a democratic republic.

How Do We Meet the Social Studies Standards?

No single ingredient can guarantee student achievement of the social studies standards as set forth in this document. In general terms, public commitment, ideal learning conditions, and excellent instruction are equally important and must receive equal attention in educational settings.

Needed: Public Commitment, Time, and Resources
To provide a social studies program of excellence, the ingredient that is most often ignored, yet upon which all others depend, is public commitment. Public commitment requires that the public receive information that clearly demonstrates the importance of social studies programs for the education of all children. Public commitment also requires that the public recognize all that it takes to support excellence in social studies programs.

What does it take? Many things. But when asked to name their most critical need in implementing these standards, teachers, without exception, listed "time." Adequate facilities to foster active learning and house the multitude of materials required to maintain a high-interest laboratory setting are also frequently named by teachers, as are high-quality technology, resources, and opportunities for students to engage in meaningful learning. All of this requires more adequate funding for social studies programs.

Principles of Teaching and Learning
The curriculum standards presented in this document describe major themes and outcome expectations to assure excellence in social studies. The delivery of such a program at the level of classroom teaching is equally important and is discussed at length in the NCSS position statement, A Vision of Powerful Teaching and Learning in the Social Studies: Building Social Understanding and Civic Efficacy, Social Education 57, no. 5 (September 1993): 213-223, reprinted at the end of this volume.

That document identifies and describes those principles of teaching and learning that must undergird all social studies programs of excellence. Those principles are:

1. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are meaningful.

• Students learn connected networks of knowledge, skills, beliefs, and attitudes that they will find useful both in and outside of school.
• Instruction emphasizes depth of development of important ideas within appropriate breadth of topic coverage and focuses on teaching these important ideas for understanding, appreciation, and life application.
• The significance and meaningfulness of the content is emphasized both in how it is presented to students and how it is developed through activities.
• Classroom interaction focuses on sustained examination of a few important topics rather than superficial coverage of many.
• Meaningful learning activities and assessment strategies focus students' attention on the most important ideas embedded in what they are learning.
• The teacher is reflective in planning, implementing, and assessing instruction.

2. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are integrative.

• Social studies is integrative in its treatment of topics.
• It is integrative across time and space.
• Social studies teaching integrates knowledge, skills, beliefs, values, and attitudes to action.
• Social studies teaching and learning integrate effective use of technology.
• Social studies teaching and learning integrate across the curriculum.

3. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are value-based.

• Powerful social studies teaching considers the ethical dimensions of topics and addresses controversial issues, providing an arena for reflective development of concern for the common good and application of social values.
• Students are made aware of potential social policy implications and taught to think critically and make value-based decisions about related social issues.
• Rather than promulgating personal, sectarian, or political views, these teachers make sure that students: 1) become aware of the values, complexities, and dilemmas involved in an issue; 2) consider the costs and benefits to various groups that are embedded in potential courses of action; and 3) develop well-reasoned positions consistent with basic democratic social and political values.
• Powerful social studies teaching encourages recognition of opposing points of view, respect for well-supported positions, sensitivity to cultural similarities and differences, and a commitment to social responsibility.

4. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are challenging.

• Students are expected to strive to accomplish the instructional goals, both as individuals and as group members.
• Teachers model seriousness of purpose and a thoughtful approach to inquiry and use instructional strategies designed to elicit and support similar qualities from students.
• Teachers show interest in and respect for students' thinking, but demand well-reasoned arguments rather than opinions voiced without adequate thought or commitment.

5. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are active.

• Active social studies teaching requires reflective thinking and decision-making as events unfold during instruction.
• Students develop new understanding through a process of active construction of knowledge.
• Interactive discourse facilitates the construction of meaning required to develop important social understanding.
• Teachers gradually move from providing considerable guidance by modeling, explaining, or supplying information that builds student knowledge, to a less directive role that encourages students to become independent and self-regulated learners.
• Powerful social studies teaching emphasizes authentic activities that call for real-life applications using the skills and content of the field.

The teaching and learning document goes on to delineate additional requirements to support an excellent social studies program which lie beyond the control of the individual teacher. These include:

• continuous program assessment;
• preparation of pre-service teachers that is aligned with curriculum and teaching and learning standards;
• provision of in-service training to support teachers in understanding and implementing standards;
• community and governmental support to
  • recognize the subject's vital purpose for civic education
  • sustain teacher education and professional development
  • provide adequate funding and leadership (from school districts and state and federal government).

School as a Learning Place
Successful schools are unique places, not simply spaces. When students conceive of a school as space, they focus on "getting through it" as quickly as possible. Time and destination are foremost in their minds. Rather than having learning as the main focus, their objective is to move on, to get through. Society often reinforces this concept of school by using extrinsic motivational cliches like "finish school to earn more money." Extrinsic motivation with its emphasis on time and destination tends to corrupt true learning. Only rarely do we hear, "Stay in school and learn for your sake as a learner."

Our responsibility as educators is to imagine and create places of learning. Such places foster aesthetics, civility, ethics, openness, conversation, security, stewardship/ public responsibility, craftsmanship, and individual liberty. Although all educators must take responsibility for creating a learning place, social studies educators should be leaders in this effort.

Unless this concept of school is taken seriously, with all the necessary resource and time dimensions, curriculum and instruction will remain a symbolic adventure in rhetoric and retribution. Learning is a dependent variable, relying heavily upon a deep sense of place and community within that place. A focus on school as a learning place will help students stop simply moving "through" school and instead find the satisfaction that comes from creating and working within a place that values learning. This focus on school as a place for the community of learners will in the end be advantageous to individuals as well as to society as a whole.

The elements of curriculum; public commitment, time, and resources; powerful teaching and learning; and the concept of school as a learning place are all essential if students are to achieve the social studies standards we advocate.

What Is the Purpose of the Social Studies Standards?

Our world is changing rapidly. Students in our schools today, who will be the citizens of the twenty-first century, are living and learning in the midst of a knowledge explosion unlike any humankind has ever experienced. Because schools and teachers cannot teach everything and because students cannot learn all there is to know, this document focuses on three purposes for these standards. The social studies standards should:

1. serve as a framework for K-12 social studies program design through the use of ten thematic strands;
2. serve as a guide for curriculum decisions by providing performance expectations regarding knowledge, processes, and attitudes essential for all students; and
3. provide examples of classroom practice to guide teachers in designing instruction to help students meet performance expectations.

These social studies standards provide criteria for making decisions as curriculum planners and teachers address such issues as why teach social studies, what to include in the curriculum, how to teach it well to all students, and how to assess whether or not students are able to apply what they have learned. The ten thematic curriculum standards and accompanying sets of student performance expectations constitute an irreducible minimum of what is essential in social studies. Along with the examples of classroom practice, these standards and performance expectations help answer the following questions:

• How can the social studies curriculum help students construct an accurate and positive view of citizenship and become citizens able to address persistent issues, promote civic ideals and practices, and improve our democratic republic?
• What content themes are essential to the curriculum at every level (early, middle, and high school) because they address societal expectations and the needs of young future citizens and are drawn from disciplines and fields related to social studies and from other disciplines and fields that are natural allies of social studies?
• What are the student performance expectations at early, middle, and high school levels for knowledge, skills, attitudes, civic ideals, and practices that encompass social studies as an integrative field?
• How can learning opportunities be structured at each school level to help students meet social studies performance expectations?
• How might performance expectations be assessed to show that students have constructed an understanding that allows them to demonstrate and apply what they have learned?

How Are the Social Studies Standards Organized?

The social studies standards present, in the next chapters of this document, a set of ten thematically based curriculum standards, corresponding sets of performance expectations, and illustrations of exemplary teaching and learning to foster student achievement of the standards at each school level.

A curriculum standard is a statement of what should occur programmatically in the formal schooling process; it provides a guiding vision of content and purpose. The social studies curriculum standards, designated by roman numerals, are expressed in thematic statements that begin: "Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of. . . ." These curriculum experiences should enable students to exhibit the knowledge, skills, scholarly perspectives, and commitments to American democratic ideals identified in the performance expectations.

For each school level, two or three examples of classroom activities related to each theme appear in the "Standards into Practice" chapters (Chapters 4, 5, and 6). In each case, the performance expectations addressed by the example are identified.

Since these themes are interdisciplinary, there is often a close relationship among performance expectations across the curriculum standards. To show these connections, roman numerals representing related themes are cross-referenced in the "Standards into Practice" chapters (Chapters 4, 5, and 6).

The ten themes that serve as organizing strands for the social studies curriculum at every school level are:

Two features of these curriculum strands are especially important. First, they are interrelated. To understand culture, for example, students need to understand time, continuity, and change; the relationship among people, places, and environments; and civic ideals and practices. To understand power, authority, and governance, students need to understand the relationship among culture; people, places, and environments; and individuals, groups, and institutions.

Second, the thematic strands draw from all of the social science disciplines and other related disciplines and fields of scholarly study to build a framework for social studies curriculum design. The ten themes thus present a holistic framework for state and local curriculum standards. To further enhance the curriculum design, social studies educators are encouraged to seek detailed content from standards developed for history, geography, civics, economics, and other fields.

Who Can Use the Social Studies Standards and How?

The social studies curriculum standards offer educators, parents, and policymakers the essential conceptual components for curriculum development. Classroom teachers, scholars, and state, district, and school administrators should use this document as a starting point for the systematic development of a K-12 social studies curriculum of excellence.

State governments and departments of education can use the standards to:

• guide change to standards-based education;
• review and evaluate current state curriculum guidelines; and
• develop a state curriculum framework.

School districts and schools can use the standards to:

• provide a framework for curriculum development;
• review and evaluate current social studies programs; and
• provide ideas for instruction and assessment.

Individual teachers can use the standards to:

• provide outcome goals for units and courses;
• evaluate current practices; and
• glean ideas for instruction and assessment.

Parents and community members can use the standards to:

• understand how social studies learning contributes to meeting the broad educational goals of our society;
• assess the quality of social studies education in local school districts; and
• judge children's development as social studies learners.

Teacher educators can use the standards to:

• introduce pre-service and in-service teachers to standards-based planning and curriculum development;
• assess the instructional planning and teaching of pre-service and in-service teachers in their programs and courses; and
• guide the development of pre-service and in-service teacher education programs and courses.

What Is the Relationship of the Social Studies Standards to Other Standards in the Field?

The social studies standards will help teachers, program and curriculum designers, and administrators at the state, district, and school-site levels develop a systematic K-12 social studies program. Using the social studies standards as an umbrella can assist program development by:

• Ensuring integrated, cumulative social studies learning at each level (that is, learning that addresses powerful discipline-based and interdisciplinary themes at the early, middle, and high school levels).
• Encouraging program designers to use the inclusive social studies themes as the basis for a curriculum design that can also draw upon other standards projects (for example, history, geography, civics) for specific grade levels or courses within the K-12 program as appropriate. Most importantly, the several social science disciplines thus find a curriculum "home" in social studies since no one discipline is sufficient in and of itself to meet the vision of social studies as an integrative field.

A metaphor can help readers conceptualize the relationship of social studies and specific, individual disciplines as they promote learning in a K-12 social studies program. Consider a musical ensemble such as an orchestra (the social studies program) as it performs a specific musical composition (a grade level or specific course within the curriculum). At certain times, one instrument (a discipline such as history) takes the lead while others (such as geography and economics) play supporting roles. At other times, several instruments (history, geography, etc.) or the full ensemble play together to fully address the composer's thematic aims. The quality of the performance is the result of the composer's creation of the music (design of the social studies curriculum), the unique qualities of individual instruments (the contribution of individual disciplines), the acoustics of the setting (expertise of curriculum planners and teachers, school site facilities, and instructional resources), and the skills of musicians and the conductor (students, teachers, program planners, and implementers) to know when and how to express the meaning of the composition (curriculum).

There is a rational relationship between the social studies standards and the standards of the several social sciences. The social studies standards address the overall curriculum design and the comprehensive student performance expectations of a program of excellence, while the individual sets of discipline standards provide enhanced content detail to ensure quality instructional programs. Teachers and curriculum designers are encouraged first to establish their program frameworks using the social studies standards as a guide, then to use the individual sets of standards from history, geography, civics, economics, or other disciplines to guide the development of strands and courses within their programs. Using these standards in concert with one another can enable educators to give adequate attention to both integrated and single discipline configurations within the social studies curriculum.

The effective use of the social studies curriculum standards will depend not only on the quality of their design, but also on the skills of educators to know when and how to integrate content, to design quality learning environments, and to construct with these standards more complete K-12 social studies programs that reflect the newest research in learning, developmental abilities of students, and knowledge construction. Only such a thoughtfully designed curriculum will carry forth a vision of social studies for the next century.