Chapter 37: Picturing Social Studies

The Picturing Social Studies assignment positions teacher candidates to explore complex meanings and multiple interpretations of common social studies concepts (e.g., rights, urbanization) in multimodal ways.

The Picturing Social Studies Project is grounded in two over-arching understandings. The first is that classrooms are visual places. Maps, paintings, textbooks, virtual exhibits, and instructional presentations are evidence of the visual experiences for candidates: “Visual imagery saturates their [candidates’] daily existence, and they are perhaps more likely to learn about history from televisions, film, video games, and photographs than from reading” (Desai, Hamlin, & Mattson, 2010, p. 5). Second is the notion that visuals provide points of access to information as well as outlets for candidates to communicate their understandings. National and state standards documents (e.g., The C3 Framework, Common Core State Standards, Oklahoma Standards for Social Studies) include language about visuals and graphic representations.