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Social studies education and research can and must play a central role in sustaining democratic societies. As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of this vital journal that aims to strengthen social studies education, democratic societies face numerous serious challenges. Although today's circumstances are unique, many of our current challenges have existed (and will continue to exist) in some form throughout the history of democracy. In this article, scholars from various sub-fields of social studies education explore how research, scholarship, and practice in the field can address seven of these persistent civic challenges: ecological sustainability, media literacy, equity and inclusion, civic engagement, political pluralism, civic competency, and sociohistorical change. Essays on each of these topics analyze relevant prior research and offer suggestions for how future research and scholarship can explore how educators can help to address these persistent civic challenges, with the goal of supporting robust participatory democracy.

Project-based learning (PBL) is well known for engaging students enthusiastically and for supporting strong experiential learning. Less well known is that rigorous PBL also excels at fostering rich civic engagement--of key importance now, at a time of heightened concern about civics education. In this article, the authors will illuminate how project-based learning can be both engaging and instructive by spotlighting the experiences of students in a rigorous PBL course and sharing lessons learned by a veteran PBL teacher. The authors also outline the need for more rigorous PBL in social studies classrooms.

Background: In recent years, the United States has seen a resurgence in calls for mandating civics coursework across the country. For decades, scholars have identified classroom practices that help make civics courses more impactful to students' civic engagement and knowledge. As more civics courses are required of young people, one begins to wonder if these courses include the kinds of curricular goals and pedagogical practices that can support students' understanding of politics and promote their engagement with the system. Purpose: With increasing calls for mandating middle school civics coursework across the country, it becomes necessary to better understand what happens in these courses. To gain insights into a mandated civics curriculum, the study presented in this article examined students' experiences in a mandated middle school civics course and how the course influenced students' civic knowledge and engagement outcomes. Research Design: We used a fully mixed concurrent triangulation design to develop a robust understanding of how a mandated middle school civics course was implemented. We collected and analyzed quantitative and qualitative data simultaneously to confirm, cross-validate, and corroborate findings. The qualitative portion of the study looked to understand quantitative trends by examining these relationships through in-depth interviews and classroom observations. Findings: Three takeaways were elucidated by analysis of data -- (1) Students' experience of a mandated civics course varied a great deal between the two cases explored in this study; (2) these differences were instigated by the academic pressures associated with an end-of-course exam; yet (3) certain kinds of civics instruction have the potential to promote some desired civic outcomes in middle school. These findings suggest that middle school civics has the potential to promote students' developing civic knowledge, interest, and engagement. However, these findings hint at a troubling civic inequality that exists as early as middle school. Conclusions: Our study found that middle school is a good time to introduce students to civics content because they seem to have fairly positive attitude toward civic-mindedness. At the same time, we found that the civic opportunity gap can manifest as early as the middle grades. Specifically, these inequalities are exacerbated by the existence of a high-stakes end-of-course exam, which negatively impacts students who are already considered low academic performers.

The notion of educational gaps often portrays students of color as lower performing (or with less resources) than their White counterparts. The most prevalent gap narratives in civic education are the civic opportunity gap, where students of color in low-income areas tend to receive less quality civic education than White, wealthier students; and the civic empowerment gap, where disenfranchised students (often students of color in low income neighborhoods) display less civic knowledge, attitude and behavior than White students. In this paper, I argue that both of these civic gaps are a manifestation of a larger civic debt that is partially rooted in the racial grammar of civic education.

This article reports on a study that asks how might an elections simulation influence students with strong polarizing political beliefs? The elections simulation asks students to take on roles as candidate teams, political party leaders, interest groups, and media outlets in a mock presidential election. Students not only learn about elections but also political socialization, public opinion, political ideology, and the two-party system. Findings show that the elections simulations provided students with the opportunity to try out and engage with political perspectives that were different from their own. Even though the students' political stances did not change drastically at the end of the simulation, they reported understanding the two-party system better and can respect other perspectives more because of the simulation. This means that election simulations may help young people become more moderate (or less polarized) in their political opinions without diminishing their proclivities for active participation.

The past 15 years have seen a wealth of civic education initiatives. States have passed supportive laws, a blue-ribbon commission has identified best practices, and new programs are blossoming. Some emphasize knowing, and others emphasize doing; some are geared to academic learning about government and politics, while others emphasize participation in civic action. Both are needed because they add up to a valued hybrid: knowledgeable action or "enlightened political engagement." The authors conducted course-development research to design one such hybrid. The aim is to invigorate the high school government course, which remains a mainstay of civic education in the United States. The objective is to deepen students' knowledge of U.S. government and politics while engaging them in it through lively simulations. The authors' work includes development of an authentic assessment of deep political learning, the "Complex Scenario Test (CST)." It is a classroom-based performance assessment that can be used as a summative test at the end of the course or used formatively along the way, or both. In this article, the authors share the assessment and invite readers to adapt it to their own uses.