Spencer Clark

Kansas State University | KSU · Department of Curriculum and Instruction

The transformative potential of Virtual and Augmented Reality applications has sparked significant interest in educational contexts based on the exciting types of real-world learning experiences they can afford students to develop complex skills (Suryodiningrat et al., 2023). As an extension of Project LEAPES (a grant initiative aiming to promote S...

Despite evidenced challenges compared to non-rural areas, rural communities are in a unique position to help address recent national demands for renewed STEM emphasis in schools (Saw & Agger, 2021). This study utilizes interviews from five rural educators who participated in a three-week STEM learning camp to discuss: 1) how teachers perceive the e...

The purpose of this article is to address student absenteeism through the theoretical lens of ecological agency and to encourage the use of ecological agency in a school setting to address student absenteeism more holistically. We align absenteeism research within the ecological agency framework and suggest that absenteeism is a manifestation of ag...

The conclusion will briefly discuss and summarize the main arguments to contextualize them holistically with the data contained in the book. It will also consider the end to Donnan and Dunn’s careers, which both happened in the same school year. Lastly, a brief discussion of Donnan’s remembrance in the Indianapolis newspapers, following her death,...

This chapter will provide an introduction to Laura Donnan and her celebrated career at Shortridge High School. It will begin by describing her upbringing and the various influences on her early life. It will examine her education from the Normal School at Indianapolis, to the University of Michigan, to professional development at the University of...

This chapter will discuss the actual influence of Donnan on Dunn’s career, and why his rearticulation of her curriculum failed, due to his adherence to social efficiency. It will also use the example of Laura Donnan’s enacted epistemological practices to think about the underlying implications of Donnan’s work, and the concepts of epistemology and...

This chapter will provide an overview of civic education in the United States around 1900. It will draw upon existing literature to situate city schools and their subsequent interest in developing civic education for several distinct Progressive Era purposes, such as Americanizing new urban residents, social welfare, training citizens for self-gove...

This chapter will discuss several activities that were part of the extracurriculum at Shortridge or as they are known today: clubs, groups, sports, and academic teams. Donnan was sponsor for many of these extracurricular groups and was creator of the Shortridge Senate, which gained nationwide notoriety. These groups, especially the Senate, contribu...

This chapter will provide a full introduction to Arthur W. Dunn, who is well documented in the existing literature on civic education, the social studies, and community civics. However, the literature has focused very little on his time at Shortridge and has focused more on his role as Director of Civic Education at Indianapolis Public Schools, his...

This chapter will focus on Arthur W. Dunn’s rise to a nationally known civic educator after leaving Shortridge. This chapter will make connections among Dunn’s awareness of progressive trends, his arrival at Shortridge, and then his elevation to the national stage. These connections raise new questions about Dunn and the coincidence of his training...

This chapter will describe the changes and growth of Indianapolis and Shortridge High School around 1900. The introduction will also provide the arguments underlying this book. First, Laura Donnan’s pedagogy influenced the 1916 report, The Social Studies in Secondary Education, for which Arthur W. Dunn was the secretary. Second, Dunn’s time at Shor...

This chapter will focus on Donnan’s 1889 National Education Association (NEA) presentation, in which she outlined a framework for civic education in schools and developed a rationale for mandatory civics curriculum as a graduation requirement based on her own teaching and curriculum. In her presentation, she outlined progressive methods and skills...

This book examines the development of civic education in the United States through the lives of two teachers at Shortridge High School (SHS) in Indianapolis around 1900. After situating civic education at the turn-of-the-century, the book describes the career of Laura Donnan—her influences, teaching, extracurriculars, and civic life—through the len...

Action Research Methodology

Our approach engages ELL students’ positionality through a carefully sequenced critical geography activity. ELL students’ awareness of their positionality is vital because their knowledge is based on a worldview that crosses borders and is situated in structures of power. We ask students to create a map of their daily life, list significant places...

Using Foucault’s conceptualization of “care of the self,” this article considers the ways in which social studiesmethods courses can better address preservice teachers’ agency. The author considers the intentionality of twopreservice teachers and uses the notion of “care of the self” to explore the preservice teachers’ thinking aboutindividual agen...

To date, there is little or no research that specifically examines assessment literacy in social studies education, or the relationship between preservice teachers assessment literacy and their thinking about their own agency. This article focuses on three preservice social studies teachers who demonstrated a high degree of assessment literacy in t...

The concepts of reflection and reflective practice have become the core of many teacher education programmes, with critical reflection as the goal for many teacher educators. This study examined the use of a videoconference discussion in an instructional methodology course as a means to enrich the process of reflection and encourage critical reflec...

The use of six non-fiction graphic novels to teach historical agency in a social studies methods course was examined in a critical action research study. Pre-service social studies teachers were asked to read one graphic novel and to discuss it with classmates, first in literature circles, then as a whole class. Data revealed graphic novels engaged...

As the preceding chapters have demonstrated, the grassroots efforts of the activists featured in this book have made a noticeable contribution to the debate over corporate models of school reform in the United States. Here, we will evaluate the successes and limitations of these efforts with reference to past grassroots activism movements in the Un...

This article discusses a case study that explored the potential of nonfiction graphic novels to develop pre-service teachers' understanding of agency in a social studies methods course. White pre-service teachers were aske`d to read one graphic novel and then add frames, re-narrate frames, and reflect on their decisions. The positionalities of rese...

This article examined the value of using nonfiction graphic novels as historical narratives in the social studies curriculum. Preservice teachers evaluated several graphic novels and identified attributes of graphic novels that could contribute to students’ development of historical thinking and understanding of multiple perspectives. Despite the p...

In this article, the authors offer social studies educators a way to deepen students' understanding of civil disobedience as a democratic and nonviolent means of instigating social change. The authors explore the concept of civil disobedience from a historical perspective and examine the justifications and ramifications of each historical example....