Permanent Call for Country Reports: State of the art in social studies education in European countries

2024-02-16

The Journal of Social Science Education is committed to keeping its readers informed about the current state of social studies in Europe. Hence, we like to invite submission of papers that provide a documentary and descriptive overview of the current situation of civic, citizenship, economic, political and social education in individual countries to the European readership. A report should refer to educational institutions and policies in these fields, the scholarly state of the art, and the education of educators. It may describe the developments, decisions, policies, and events that have shaped the current situation on social science education. A list of country reports that have been published in JSSE can be found here.

A country report should analyse the broad domain of social science education in schools. What are its main goals and rationales from the perspective of subject didactics, subject methodology and general didactics? What are the main challenges of the domain from a scholarly point of view? The paper should inform about curricular baselines, nationwide or regional schedules, key contents of syllabi or course schedules of relevant school subjects that apply to different school types. Tables, diagrams and photos are appreciated.

Styles of teaching and learning, methods in classroom practice, as found in classroom research or ethnography are also of interest. Further, a report may discuss obligatory and optional textbooks, teaching and learning materials and the main producers of such items.

An exemplary portrait of key institutions in the field of social science education in the broadest sense is appreciated, too. Further, the readers would like to be informed about specific scholarly and teacher associations, their policies and impact, congresses and publication organs.

The report may go beyond the school and education system and describe extra-school field of civic, citizenship, political, social and economic education of the youth, adults or specific target groups. Additionally, the paper may discuss studies dealing with the political, social and economic awareness, attitudes and practices of the youth, teacher trainees, teachers and teacher educators.

The JSSE readers would like to be informed about the scholarly knowledge about all these issues in surveys, case studies, ethnographic descriptions, textbook analyses, etc.

All kinds of visualisation are extremely welcome! The paper should be written in an informative, documentary style. Hyperlinks should offer the opportunity to go to national websites and read original documents.

Language issues can be tricky. Therefore, key terms should be given in active bilingualism in English and in the country’s own language. Problems of translation may be openly discussed in the paper.

The list of references includes, if possible, literature in English, French or German on educational policies, institutions, history etc. of the respective country. It must follow strictly the APA citation style.

Please refer to the Submission Preparation Checklist and make sure that your article fully fulfils the requirements of the Author Guidelines (see Submissions).

The paper should not exceed 9.000 words. As a rule, a country report is anonymously commented by two referees.

If you have any further questions, please contact the JSSE Country Report Editors team:

Tilman Grammes, Hamburg, Germany: Tilman.Grammes@uni-hamburg.de

Jan Löfström, Turku, Finland: jan.lofstrom@utu.fi

Isabel Menezes, Porto, Portugal: imenezes@fpce.up.pt