Education Commons^™

In Pursuit Of Democratic Practice: Self-Study As A Democratic Approach To Teaching Social Studies, Andrew L. Hostetler

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

Dewey (1916/2009) viewed democracy as a “path or journey”. This suggests that there is no mutually agreed upon end. Similarly, in teaching and teacher education, if viewed as a learning problem, the end is the process according to Ritter (2010) “[t]eaching others how to teach for democratic citizenship represents a process that righteously lacks a conclusion” (p. 90). Without a definitive conclusion there are many potentially valuable conceptions and enactments of democratic living and learning.

Discussing these strong connections between democracy in social studies and self-study, Powell (2010) argues “when social studies teachers engage in ‘reflectively pragmatic’ study of their …