This example of a project-based learning (PBL) curriculum’s culminating event illustrates how children can apply knowledge and skills from multiple disciplines within social studies and across content areas for an authentic audience and purpose. In this vignette, Maya and her classmates used foundational literacy skills (spelling), genre knowledge (using captions for artifacts), and disciplinary knowledge (chronology and sourcing) to engage in social justice-oriented activities that involve teaching and learning about the lives and experiences of people in their community. (See “Using the ReAD Approach to Foster Children’s Enactment of Justice” below.) Throughout their project, children participated as knowers and producers of family and local community history.

In this article, we (the authors) share how we use PBL with a social justice focus to develop interdisciplinary instruction across social studies disciplines—civics and government, economics, geography, and history—and other content areas and domains, including math, science, literacy, and social and emotional learning. Each of us has a background in teaching and studying social studies and/or literacy. We draw on our experiences as former early grades teachers, teacher educators, researchers, and our work as members of an interdisciplinary literacy and social studies kindergarten curriculum writing team for Great First Eight (GF8). GF8 (greatfirsteight.org) is an open educational resource curriculum for children from birth to age 8.

In the following sections, we provide a rationale for PBL with a social justice focus and explain six guidelines we use to develop early childhood social studies curricula. We then illustrate these guidelines in action using a kindergarten unit called Power in the People from the GF8 curriculum. Finally, we share examples and reflections from teachers and children who have experienced the curriculum in their settings, which may inspire others to consider applications to their own settings.

Project-Based Learning

Research on PBL has increased in recent years. However, it is not a new instructional approach (e.g., Dewey 1902; Kilpatrick 1918). PBL has particular significance in early social studies instruction, which is often limited in terms of instructional time during the elementary school day (VanFossen 2005). This marginalization is the case even though school is often children’s first opportunity to engage in diverse ways of being and knowing and to learn to live and work with others beyond their family units—key goals of social studies education (Parker 2003). PBL aims to respond to this progression in children’s development by honoring them as capable and active agents in authentic learning experiences (NASEM 2018).

Although PBL scholars vary in how they define and characterize the approach, it is widely accepted that it addresses real-world issues and authentic inquiries (HQPBL 2018). Given this grounding, PBL provides an interdisciplinary instructional approach that can artfully align learning standards within and across multiple domains and in an integrated manner to make effective use of time, value children’s agency, and honor the diverse ways children’s identities shape their civic engagement in the classroom and beyond (Swalwell & Payne 2019; Revelle et al. 2020; Duke et al. 2021). Further, interdisciplinary learning can allow children to simultaneously experience the core principles of each discipline and their interconnectedness, which has practical as well as academic and social and emotional learning benefits (Cervetti et al. 2012).

“Children learn in an integrated fashion that cuts across academic disciplines or subject areas. . . . [A]n interdisciplinary approach that considers multiple areas together is typically more meaningful than teaching content areas separately” (NAEYC 2020, 12). PBL provides opportunities for children to experience social issues in meaningful, integrated ways. It promotes children’s abilities to think critically and creatively about how individuals, families, and communities have lived and worked together across time and space. What is particularly powerful about this approach in the context of early social studies instruction is that children have opportunities to learn about the dynamic ways in which people create community and address problems that affect their local and global communities (Mindes 2015). This means that they can apply their learning beyond the classroom to practice informed and engaged citizenship in real life, often toward social justice (Humphries, Ward, & McCormick 2022).

PBL with young children has the potential to promote academic achievement as well as positive social and emotional development. For example, Duke and colleagues (2021) found that second graders who were taught an interdisciplinary social studies and literacy PBL curriculum exhibited greater growth in social studies and informational reading than students who received traditional social studies instruction. The children in this study created visitor brochures and historical postcards of their city, wrote a proposal to local government officials to advocate for improvements to community spaces, and developed a product to support a local cause.

Additionally, a case study of a third-grade teacher’s implementation of a PBL unit that integrated science, mathematics, and language arts to answer the driving question “How can we help the birds in our community survive and thrive?” revealed that children could use social and emotional skills and literacy learning to collaborate with peers (such as asking questions), use multimodal communications to demonstrate their knowledge, develop a sense of ownership in solving real problems, and reflect on their own learning to make improvements and connections across projects (Fitzgerald 2020). Together, these studies highlight the potential of interdisciplinary learning to foster deeper social studies education while simultaneously developing other skills and dispositions that promote engaged citizenship within and beyond the classroom.

As previously mentioned, an interdisciplinary approach can cover more standards than an approach in which disciplines are taught separately (Strachan & Block 2020). For example, in the opening vignette, Maya identified an artifact and created a caption for it for the community museum. She engaged in several standards within and across disciplines through this process, including the following:

• College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for State Social Studies history standard, “identify different kinds of historical sources” (NCSS 2013, 48)
• Common Core State Standards (CCSS) writing standard, “gather information from provided sources to answer questions” (NGA & CCSSO 2010, 54)
• Diversity Learning for Social Justice Standard, “I want to know about other people and how our lives and experiences are the same and different” (Learning for Justice 2022, 4)

These are just a few of the standards that the culminating event of this unit addresses. Later in the article, we present a fuller picture of the unit that further illustrates how our interdisciplinary approach helps teachers and children meet the demands of each domain’s standards in meaningful, practical, and robust ways.

Six Guidelines for “Powering Up” Project-Based Learning

We are deeply committed to children experiencing instruction that will promote engaged citizenship for social justice and academic achievement. We employ six key guidelines for “powering up” a PBL approach to social studies instruction to meet the demands of today’s standards, address persisting inequities, and promote more holistic and humanizing educational practices. Below, we name and briefly describe guidelines for how early elementary educators may choose, develop, and modify curriculum.

• Justice at the core: Children are supported in critically thinking about how people and the environment are and have been harmed, why that harm is unjust, and what has been or could be done to promote healing and justice (Lee et al. 2021). In the curriculum, justice is “when people and other living things are protected and are not hurt or harmed because of who they are” (GF8 2023).
• Engagement with the local community: Children and teachers see the community and its members as integral to the classroom learning environment. They invite family and community members into the classroom as sources of knowledge and as authentic audiences (Espinet et al. 2022). They explore their local communities through mapping and walks, and they take action to support local causes and efforts.
• Collaboration: Teachers foster opportunities for collaboration in whole-group (e.g., discussions) and small-group (e.g., centers) experiences to demonstrate civic qualities, such as active participation, listening, and compromise (NCSS 2013). These types of collaborative experiences facilitate children in drawing connections, learning from each other’s experiences, and problem solving together.
• Honoring children’s agency: Children’s agency is promoted by offering them voice and choice. Purposeful and authentic learning makes space for them to use their power to encourage and create change (Falkner & Payne 2020).
• Interdisciplinary standards alignment: Children engage in content and skills grounded in standards across domains in meaningful ways that make interdisciplinary teaching and learning seamless (Strachan & Block 2020) and mirror how we address tasks and problems in the real world beyond the classroom.
• Authentic project products: Children build knowledge and skills toward creating products for a purpose and an audience beyond the classroom. They apply interdisciplinary learning when developing and sharing a product that addresses the needs and issues within their various communities (HQPBL 2018).

Power in the People: An Example of a PBL Unit

Power in the People is a six-week interdisciplinary unit grounded in history, civics and government, economics, and geography with a social justice focus (GF8 2023). The unit also incorporates literacy, mathematics, social and emotional learning, and science. As children explore its driving question, “How can we lift up the lives and contributions of people and places in our community?”, they engage complex concepts, such as ableism, artifact, power, community, protest, and goods and services. All of the concepts focus on understanding the power of one’s community.

Children learn about the relationships among the unit’s concepts through “big understandings.” Two of these are: “One way to lift up the lives and contributions of people and places in our community is by learning about them and sharing that knowledge with others” and “People, including children, use power to make a difference in their community and fight injustices, in both the past and the present” (GF8 2023). Topics in the unit include studying history, the civil rights movement, goods and services in the local community, the geography of one’s community, and how to use power to effect change.

At its core, Power in the People aims to nurture active, engaged citizens toward social justice efforts. Two of the C3 Framework standards that are emphasized are

• “explain how all people, not just official leaders, play important roles in a community” (2013, 32)
• “apply civic virtues when participating in school settings” (2013, 33)

As argued by Swalwell and Payne (2019) in their framework for critical civic education, young children’s awareness and potential to think about and act on injustices to create a better society should be acknowledged. Citizenship is at the heart of the Power in the People unit: children learn skills to engage in civic and democratic processes, participate in civic engagement, explore ways to live and work together democratically, and develop an understanding of civic practices such as voting and taking informed action (NCSS 2013). (See “Children’s and Teachers’ Experiences with the Power in the People Unit” below.)

The History Museum Project

At the conclusion of the Power in the People unit, children complete a 30-day project—a museum exhibition displayed outside the classroom. It features artifacts (or photographs of artifacts) with captions describing essential information about each artifact as well as the oral histories collected by the children. While completing this project, children explore the beauty and power of their local community through a range of activities and lenses.

They begin by exploring the concept of power, how people can use power, and how children in the past used power to create change. They focus on the civil rights movement as an example, exploring how people, including children, have used power to expand access to schooling and voting. The discipline of history is central to this project as children learn that artifacts and interviews are primary sources that help us understand the ways in which members have worked to improve their communities. Children are introduced to museums as sites to showcase the history and contributions of communities, which inspires the unit project.

As the C3 Framework states, “Civics is not limited to the study of politics and society; it also encompasses participation in classrooms and schools, neighborhoods, groups, and organizations” (NCSS 2013, 31). In this project, children are encouraged to understand their place in the community and determine how they can be actively involved. The following are three examples of activities that support this understanding.

• Community walk: Given the centrality of community to this project, children explore their local area (on foot) and learn about it firsthand from an interview with a community member. During their walk, children take photographs of their neighborhood’s beauty and power (natural and human-made), make note of places that show care to the community, and explore the geography of their locale. They also look for places they might want to feature in their museum exhibition. It is necessary to plan for the walk by identifying and inviting chaperones, mapping a route ahead of time, informing administrators and families, and having a backup plan if a walking tour is not possible. (A backup plan could be creating a video of the route or using Google Maps to show the route.)
• Interviewing a community member: During an interview with a community member, children learn more about the history of their community and ways that people have used power to make a difference. The community member is encouraged to share family and community stories focused on joy (Wise et al. 2023) as well as injustice and resistance. To prepare for the interview, the teacher should choose someone with a deep and rich knowledge of the community well before starting the unit. In preparation, children learn about oral histories and how interviews can surface them. Through an interdisciplinary approach (literacy and history), children study an interview that asks for biographical information. The teacher shares background information about the guest speaker and supports children in drafting questions to learn more about the guest speaker’s life, contributions, and knowledge.
• Collecting and curating artifacts: Families also participate by sharing artifacts from their families and/or communities’ histories for children to use in the exhibition. At the start of the unit, a family letter is sent home requesting a community artifact or a photograph of the artifact. Before children gather these artifacts, the teacher describes what captions are and the importance of including information such as dates, origins, and descriptive information to engage the viewer and preserve history.

Fostering Collaborative Learning Through Interdisciplinary, Standards-Aligned Activities

While children are engaged in the history museum project, they spend the entire instructional day focused on the content and skills related to the project. Teachers implement much of this instruction through Co-Lab Quests, which emphasize social studies and social justice during social studies-led units. Co-Lab Quests are similar to centers or stations commonly used in early childhood classrooms; however, they differ in that Co-Lab Quests involve children working toward a project goal. While the teacher may support small groups in making progress on the project’s product, Co-Lab Quests are opportunities for children to collaborate with one another. Children engage in standards-aligned activities designed to help them co-construct their understanding of the unit’s concepts and apply science, social studies, literacy, and math content to practice.

Indeed, as children engage in individual, paired, or small-group activities, they are encouraged to listen to one another, take turns, collaborate, and demonstrate inclusivity and justice in their interactions. These activities allow teachers to support children individually or in small groups to develop social studies skills (such as using maps) and literacy skills (such as applying genre features to write genre-specific texts related to the project product).

An example of a Co-Lab Quest connected to the history museum project is learning to write captions for the artifacts and photographs children have chosen to display. During their quest, the teacher reminds children of previous lessons on what a caption is and the information it provides. The teacher then shows examples of captions. Using a template, the teacher supports children in writing the name or title of the artifact, its date of origin, and additional facts about the artifact. We suggest using a technique such as interactive writing, where the teacher may share the pencil to scaffold spelling, handwriting, and composition development (Craig 2003).

Conclusion

By learning about historical figures and movements in and beyond their communities and acting on injustices, children become aware of their and their community’s power. They equip themselves with the necessary skills for justice-oriented citizenship. As educators, we must seek and implement instructional practices that acknowledge and cultivate the place and power of young children’s voices and actions to create more equitable classrooms and communities.

Early childhood educators can consider the following questions to guide their work in creating a PBL curriculum with an emphasis on social justice:

• How can your current units of study connect to the outside world—the world that matters to your students?
• How can you incorporate the knowledge, wisdom, and experiences of your students’ families into your units of study?
• What community organizations or individuals could you connect with so that students can observe and learn about activism in their communities?
• What opportunities do you provide for students to work collaboratively to solve a problem or improve something?
• What ongoing practice do you have in your classroom to support students in naming and responding to unfair or unjust treatment?

Photograph: © Getty Images
Copyright © 2024 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See Permissions and Reprints online at NAEYC.org/resources/permissions.

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