Research News & Notes
Department of Social Studies and Elementary Education
Presentations, Publications, and Awards
2010 – 2012

The social studies education faculty at the University of Georgia published The Georgia Social Science Journal from 1969 to 1993 as an official publication of the Georgia Council for the Social Studies.  Recently, Professor Cheryl Fields-Smith and doctoral students Brandon Butler and Alexander Cuenca reconstituted the journal in an online format, renamed The Georgia Social Studies Journal (www.coe.uga.edu/gssj). As a forum for discussing social studies education, the journal welcomes submissions from researchers, scholars, and practitioners animated by the ideas, perspectives, and methods that lead to quality social studies teaching and learning.

Schooling the Freed People: Teaching, Learning, and the Struggle for Black Freedom, 1861–1876. Ronald E. Butchart

The rich and complex history of the teachers of freedmen in the South

Conventional wisdom holds that freedmen’s education was largely the work of privileged, single white northern women motivated by evangelical beliefs and abolitionism. Schooling the Freed People shatters this notion entirely.

For the most comprehensive study of the origins of black education in freedom ever undertaken, Ronald Butchart combed the archives of all of the freedmen’s aid organizations as well as the archives of every southern state to compile a vast database of over 11,600 individuals who taught in southern black schools between 1861 and 1876. Based on this path-breaking research, he reaches some surprising conclusions: one-third of the teachers were African Americans; black teachers taught longer than white teachers; half of the teachers were southerners; and even the northern teachers were more diverse than previously imagined. His evidence demonstrates that evangelicalism contributed much less than previously believed to white teachers’ commitment to black students, that abolitionism was a relatively small factor in motivating the teachers, and that, on the whole, the teachers’ ideas and aspirations about their work often ran counter to the aspirations of the freed people for schooling.

The crowning achievement of a veteran scholar, this is the definitive book on freedmen’s teachers in the South as well as an outstanding contribution to social history and our understanding of African American education.

In Diversity and Equity in Science Education: Research, Policy, and Practice (Teachers College Press, 2010) Okhee Lee and Cory Buxton provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-field analysis of current trends in the research and practice of science education.  This book offers valuable insights into why gaps in science education achievement among racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic groups persist, and points toward practical means of narrowing or eliminating these gaps.  The authors examine instructional practices, science curriculum materials, assessment, teacher education, school organization, state and district policies, and home-school partnerships.  For each topic, they provide detailed descriptions of relevant research projects and the effective teaching and learning practices that have emerged from that work.  Special focus is placed on the unique learning needs of English language learners.

Research News & Notes
Department of Social Studies and Elementary Education

Presentations, Publications, and Awards

September 2008-September 2010