In this piece, the author examined the impact of ideology, experience, and privilege on pre-service Social Studies teacher disposition. Findings suggest that participants conceptually understood injustice and began to critique social antagonisms like whiteness and class. However, they continued reinforcing raced and classed ideologies in their interactions with those outside their group. When faced with the cognitive dissonance between stated ideology and their privileged position, the more liberal participants re-narrativize their political stances to adopt more critical ideological worldviews while maintaining (...) their privileged identities. More conservative participants disassociated themselves from more extreme aspects of U.S. conservative political ideology. Both groups maintained the ideologies that provided justification for social hierarchy. Upbringing/identity, understandings of power/hierarchy, emic cultural understandings, and a desire to live one’s ideology, or not, beyond the classroom, informed participant decition making. (shrink)

This paper presents the relationship between pedagogical content knowledge and political/ideological clarity as a framework for understanding the nuanced interpretations and applications of critical social studies pedagogy and practice. Using a qualitative case study research design, this study explores the decision-making process of two novice social studies teachers as they decide if and how to utilize critical historical inquiry within their classrooms. Findings indicate that teachers’ use of critical historical inquiry is informed by their subject area consciousness and political and (...) ideological clarity which is cultivated through personal, schooling, and communal experiences. However, we also find that a teacher's pedagogy is significantly strengthened when political and ideological clarity are coupled with pedagogical content knowledge to ensure a more developed enactment of critical historical inquiry is reached within the social studies classroom. (shrink)