In episode 208, Dan and Michael chat with Lauren Harris and Chris Martell about their article published in Theory & Research in Social Education, “‘I was in the room where it happens’: Educator agency and community within state social studies standards committees.”

Transcript 

Books, Articles and Other Amazing Resources

1. Harris, L. M., Martell, C. C., Chalmers, J., & Lee, J. S. (2024). “I was in the room where it happens”: Educator agency and community within state social studies standards committees. Theory & Research in Social Education, 52(2), 163-189. 
2. Dr. Harris and Martell’s prior episodes:
   1. Episode 77: Approaches to Teaching Race in the Social Studies Classroom with Chris Martell & Kaylene Stevens
   2. Episode 167: Teaching Genocides with Lauren Harris and Stephanie Reid
   3. Episode 169: Secondary History Teachers’ Content Choices with Brian Girard & Lauren Harris
3. Harris, L. M., & Girard, B. (2020). Evaluating the support of teacher choice in state history standards. The History Teacher, 53(4), 613-633.
4. Harris, L. M., & Girard, B. (2023). Seeing standards as educative: Guidance for the analysis and design of state world history standards. World History Connected, 20(1). 
5. Cuenca, A., & Hawkman, A. M. (2019). Reifying common sense: Writing the 6–12 Missouri social studies content standards. The Journal of Social Studies Research, 43(1), 57-68.

Biographies

Lauren Harris is an associate professor of history education at Arizona State University. Her work focuses on representations of history in curricular resources and investigates how teachers teach history in schools. She is a former 9th grade world history and geography teacher in Arlington, VA. Lauren is the editor of the books Teaching Difficult Histories in Difficult Times: Stories of Practice and The Wiley International Handbook of Teaching and Learning. She is an associate editor of the journal Education Policy Analysis Archives and on the editorial board of Theory & Research in Social Education.

Chris Martell is an associate professor of social studies education at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He was a high school social studies teacher for 11 years, with most of his teaching career in the Framingham Public Schools, an urban district west of Boston. Before joining UMass Boston, he was a professor at Boston University. Chris is the author of the book Teaching History for Justice: Centering Activism in Students’ Study of the Past and the editor of the book Social Studies Teacher Education: Critical Issues and Current Perspectives. His scholarly work has been featured in numerous peer-reviewed journals and books. He researches teacher education across the career-span, with a specific focus on social justice pedagogy and inquiry-based instruction in the history classroom.