Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom

The Journal of Social Studies Research ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎

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Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom$ Hyunhee Cho University of Washington, College of Education, 2012 Skagit Lane, Miller Hall, Seattle, WA 98195-3600, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

abstract

Article history: Accepted 11 July 2017

In the transformative era of globalization, traditional conceptions of citizenship are challenged by a new idea of citizenship education in which students are empowered to get involved in civic actions designed to promote social justice. This single case study extends scholarship on critical citizenship education by illuminating the experience of a South Korean elementary teacher who effectively implemented the teaching of critical consciousness and social action skills in the standards-based social studies classroom by responding creatively to the mandated standards. The findings highlight three instructional strategies that the teacher created to deal with dilemmas recognized in the practice of critical citizenship education. Practical implications are provided to help teachers, teacher educators, and school leaders craft better opportunities for children to be engaged in critical citizens. Copyright & 2017, The International Society for the Social Studies. Published by Elsevier, Inc.

Keywords: Critical citizenship education Teaching for social justice Elementary social studies Standards-based classroom Instructional strategies South Korea

Introduction In the transformative era of globalization, traditional conceptions of citizenship are challenged by a new idea of citizenship education in which students are empowered to get involved in civic actions designed to promote social justice. In 2015, the United States, South Korea (Korea, henceforth), and many other nation-states witnessed youth publicizing their concerns about human rights violation and their rights as citizens by engaging in peaceful civil disobedience (Ramirez, Salinas, & Epstein, 2016). The increasing vibrancy of democracy has great implications for educators with education practices that advocate students’ ability to critique and challenge social injustices, which should become a significant part of citizenship education (Niemi, 2012). Despite the efforts to transform citizenship education, in this era dominated by neoliberal education reform, much of what students are experiencing worldwide is still considered a curriculum of compliance, leaving little room for developing critical consciousness and social action skills (Leahey, 2014). In the United States, for example, market-driven education reforms have enhanced the alignment of state-level curriculum standards, standardized testing, and school accountability systems, perpetuating the myth that “what is good for the capitalist class is good for the rest of us” (Ross & Vinson, 2013, p.20). This centralized education system has conflicted with grassroots efforts aimed at providing students, teachers, parents, and local community members with great involvement in curriculum development and empowering them to become critical thinkers, decision-makers, and active social agents (Ross, 1996). The creation of Common Core Standards, which were crafted by Gates Foundation consultants, also reveals the intensification of corporate-driven education reforms in ☆

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. E-mail address: [email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jssr.2017.07.001 0885-985X/Copyright & 2017, The International Society for the Social Studies. Published by Elsevier, Inc.

Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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which students are encouraged to avoid critical thinking, critical consciousness, and pertinent actions and instead fit themselves into a one-size-fits-all national curriculum in order to become competitive (Ross & Vinson, 2013). In response to the detrimental aspects of capitalism, such as the gradual collapse of public health and education and the epidemic of economic exploitation and cultural marginalization, educators and scholars in the fields of social studies education, multicultural education, and teacher education have broadened the discussion of critical citizenship education with their conceptualization of moral obligation which transcends the corporate-driven aims of education (Grant, 2016). Social reconstructionists and critical pedagogues thrusted social studies in the front line of education innovations aimed to develop transformative citizens (Evans, 2010). Even before the start of World War II, a social reconstructionist movement— led by faculty members of Teachers College and gaining popularity in the 1920s—suggested “an activist role for teachers to facilitate social reform” (Lagemann, 2000, p.123). In the field of multicultural education, Sleeter and Grant (2008) suggested education that is multicultural social justice education, which centers on empowering students to become critical thinkers and social activists based on an increased consciousness about institutional/structural injustices. As emphasized by these scholars and educators, critical citizenship education serves as a vehicle to resist the privatization of public goods and services and create a socially and economically just society. Given the imperatives of critical citizenship education, why is it that its implementation has been scant in the reality of teaching and learning? In response to the reality of critical citizenship education, the vast majority of scholarship has focused on explaining the reason for its limited implementation (e.g., Chilcoat & Ligon, 2000; Queen, 2014; Wade, 2004), and suggested that teachers who are committed to teaching critical consciousness and social action skills often encounter the reality that a critical citizenship education approach often contradicts nation-state-level curriculum standards built upon mainstream norms and values, and that the approach is generally inattentive to practical questions of curriculum and instruction, having few models for teaching about diverse forms of oppression (Sibbett, 2016; Young, 2011). Compared to the secondary and college level, the absence of deep examination of what and how teachers teach critical citizenship in classrooms is far more apparent at the elementary level. Complementing this scholarship, I sought the experience of an elementary teacher who responds creatively to the mandated standards and more effectively engages in curricular reform for critical citizenship education within and around the constraints of a given school system and society. The research questions that prompted the study were: What are the obstacles that the teacher faces in the teaching of critical consciousness and social action skills? What are the specific strategies that the teacher creates to deal with the specific obstacles and teach critical consciousness and social action skills in the standards-based elementary classroom?

Review of literature and theoretical framework Critical citizenship education against neoliberal education reform In the increasingly competitive global market, the purpose of public schools in many nation-states has been closely linked with neoliberal education reform efforts designed to increase the economic productivity of the nations by creating within-nation competition. In the United States, since the development of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, reform efforts designed to effectively respond to global competition have created and solidified the curriculum standards, and initiated newer approaches such as Core Curriculum State Standard and Race to the Top. The curriculum standards movement has also compelled us to adopt the myth that it is “a seemingly fair way to distribute institutional rewards” (Leahey, 2014, p.59), diverting attention away from questions of whose curriculum it is and who it benefits. At the structural level, the development of social studies curriculum standards has also undermined democratic reform efforts to help students become critical thinkers and transformative citizens. The alignment of curriculum standards, the textbook industry, and high-stakes testing in the school accountability system has contributed to the narrowed social studies curriculum, whereby teachers feel pressure to teach to the test and students are expected to memorize facts such as antiseptic portraits of the government (Leahey, 2014). More inherently, curriculum centralization undervalues teachers’ and students’ rights to make decision about what is worth learning and experiencing and leads them to internalize intellectual and social compliance, leaving little room for developing critical thinking, critical consciousness, and social action. Critical citizenship education provides a pathway to interrupting the devastating effects of neoliberal education – such as denigrating humanistic approaches to teaching and learning, decontextualizing curricula and teaching, reducing education to the massive accumulation of test scores, and undermining a democratic principle that public schools should serve the public interest rather than those of corporates (Ross & Vinson, 2013)—and realizing the ideals of democratic society, where everyone comes to public spheres as rough equals and participates in decision-making that affects their lives. As a pedagogical approach, it seeks to develop students’ active engagement in the democratic ideals of justice equity. Guided by Freire’s concept of praxis, critical citizenship education emphasizes the development of critical consciousness combined with that of social action (DeJaeghere, 2009). Specifically, it aims to develop students’ ability to critically analyze larger social systems that maintain asymmetrical power relations and utilize individual acts of power to transform such social systems (Silva & Langhout, 2011). In recent years, the enthusiasm of education reformers for critical citizenship education has not waned. Critical citizenship education has been advocated by numerous educational innovations such as transformative citizenship education Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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(Banks, 2009), anti-racist citizenship education (Osler & Starkey, 2005), social justice education (e.g., Wade, 2007), justiceoriented citizenship education (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004), critical multicultural social studies education (Malott & Pruyn, 2006), revolutionary Marxist social studies education (Mallott & Ford, 2015), and dangerous citizenship education (Ross & Vinson, 2013). A range of education innovations that depart from a traditional citizenship education contribute to creating the wide spectrum of critical citizenship education which often raises controversies about its nature and process. Concerning the absence of consensus on a slippery term, critical, Burbules and Berk (1999) distinguished two literatures that have shaped education reform, critical thinking and critical pedagogy, and explained their different origins: critical thinking built upon the principles of pluralism, individual rationality, and tolerance; and critical pedagogy based on the principles of solidarity, social accountability, and recognition. More recently, Sibbett (2016) highlighted an ongoing criticism from each of the rivals that liberalists’ faith in critical thinking renders them inattentive to social accountability, whereas critical pedagogues’ faith in critical consciousness and social actions may result in political indoctrination in schools. More complicated controversies, however, do exist among critical pedagogues. The majority of scholarship on critical citizenship education suggests that education innovation should go beyond the development of critical thinking toward that of critical consciousness and social action skills, but their efforts do not always advocate for a complete departure to communism; rather, there are various conceptions of what it means to be a just and equitable society among critical pedagogues (Grant, 2012). By comparison, critical pedagogues who take a more classical approach to Marxist analysis, such as Peter McLaren, Curry Malott, and Paula Allman, attend to Marx’s concept of critical, and regard critical citizenship education as a rigorous pathway to completely destroying the capital relation and joining the struggle for communism. These scholars reject the mainstream liberal version of critical pedagogy—which has little concern with communism but attempts to merely minimize the dehumanizing aspects of capital society or make a capitalism more humane—even though they acknowledge that those attempts could be a good starting point. Their use of Marx to understand and reform contemporary education and society has made an important contribution, but McGrew (2016) pointed out that their dogmatic approach to critical pedagogy often renders them inattentive to the value of disagreement among critical pedagogues. While a detailed examination of how these groups of scholars define citizenship education in different ways is important, the question in this study is not whether to allow critical citizenship education that does not share the Marxist view of social reconstruction to be entitled its name. Rather, in this study I sought to understand what kinds of strategies individual teachers could create to provide students with rich and frequent opportunities to learn knowledge and skills shared by variants of critical citizenship education. Despite their various associations with critical citizenship education, there are shared struggles among critical pedagogues that individual emancipation (critical thinking) cannot be separated from social emancipation (critical pedagogy); and that students should be empowered to become active and critical citizens who are capable of recognizing the rules of a social system that benefits one group at the expense of the rights of others and subsequently building strategies to challenge them (Burbules & Berk, 1999; North, 2009). The pragmatic question and approach in this study is also consistent with Apple’s (2014) notion of “decentered unities,” which he defined as common spheres among diverse groups in which “joint struggles can be engaged in ways that do not subsume each group under the leadership of only one understanding” (p.13). Walking on the cross-platforms of critical citizenship education, Banks (2009) notion of “transformative citizenship” provides a good framework for this study. Transformative citizenship, he has explained, engages “civic actions designed to actualize values and moral principles and ideas beyond those of existing laws and conventions and take action to promote social justice even when their actions violate, challenges, or dismantle exiting laws, conventions, or structures” (p.316). He has developed a typology designed to differentiate four levels of citizenship—legal, minimal, active, and transformative—and suggested that although all levels of citizenship should be recognized, transformative educators’ aim is to empower students to become transformative citizens. According to Banks (2009), even though active citizens may engage in protest demonstrations, their actions are fundamentally different from those of transformative citizenship in that they do not challenge but maintain and even support existing social and political structures. His examples of transformative citizens are worth quoting on this point: Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a White man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. Her action was a pivotal event in the Montgomery bus boycott that ended segregation in transportation in the South and thrust Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. into national leadership. A group of African American college students sat down at a lunch counter reserved for Whites in a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960. The students initiated the sit-in movement that ended segregation in lunch counters throughout the South. Both Parks and the students violated existing segregation laws. They were engaging in transformative citizenship because they took action to actualize social justice, even though what they did was illegal and challenged existing laws, customs, and conventions. (p. 316) Banks (2009) explained that transformative citizenship education, despite its common ground with critical pedagogy, is attentive to critical thinking skills and is also inclusive of critical citizenship education. The working definition of critical citizenship education in this study coincides with Bank’s (2009) notion of transformative citizenship education, with its practical emphasis on building coalitions to develop student abilities to interrupt injustice in all forms. Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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The results of effective critical citizenship education include two combined abilities: critical consciousness and social action skills. Critical consciousness refers to the ability to analyze texts by using strategies for uncovering underlying messages (Freire, 1993). Wade (2007) specified this ability as raising questions about who benefits from particular knowledge claims, and critically identifying the political investments embedded in those claims. Social action skills include the ability to effectively participate in civic actions aimed at challenging injustices. Gay (2012) noted that if students are to become informed and skilled social change agents, they need to be involved in: thoroughly understanding the nature of the problems to be addressed; developing habits of mind and ways of behaving that concentrate on comprehensive structural analyses of complex problems instead of superficial, fragmented, and partial ones; acquiring skills in problem-solving on multiple levels; learning how to be persistent and resilient in problem-solving; building partnerships and coalitions to facilitate social transformation; and knowing how to scale or phase these skills to match the various aspects of the targeted problems. (p. 12). Critical citizenship education in standards-based classrooms The macro-level tensions between neoliberalists and critical pedagogues are reflected in individual teachers’ daily struggles with implementing critical citizenship education within their standards-based social studies classrooms. Although teachers are to take transitional initiatives in their classrooms, the reality of teaching and learning and their day-to-day interactions with students are largely dominated by “the architecture of school system” that is “carefully designed to impede reform initiatives from above and outside” (Westbury, 2008, p.3). As Parker (2017) noted, nationstates exist and take their sovereignty seriously, expecting schools and teachers to serve national purposes —and national standards, especially social studies standards, often serve as a powerful tool impacting the actual practices of teaching and learning. Another tension at the classroom level originates from individual teachers’ different or even conflicting conceptions of what it means to be a good citizen and a good society, which are also related to their context. Westheimer and Kahne (2004) explained three dominant conceptions of good citizens emerged from the school context: personally responsible, participatory, and justice-oriented citizens. In the classrooms of teachers whose understanding of good citizens mirrors personally responsible citizens, needs would be prioritized in the way that students are educated to live appropriately as autonomous and informed citizens or to care for others without challenging the status quo, whereas in the classrooms of teachers who favor justice-oriented citizenship students would be expected to question institutionalized power relations and build strategies to advocate equity and social justice (North, 2009). It is noteworthy that these macro and micro level tensions interact, and hinder an active implementation of critical citizenship education in many different ways. Particularly, teachers who feel obligated to teach critical consciousness and social action skills recognize the standards and textbooks that are usually constructed from the majority perspectives as great barriers (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). They also lament that it takes greater time and energy than a traditional textbookcentered approach, and requires that students come in with prerequisite skillsets (Chilcoat & Ligon, 2000; Wade, 2007). In these contexts, teachers who believe in critical citizenship nevertheless often end up making the excuse that it is impossible to teach critical consciousness and activism within standards-based classrooms (Hodges, 2015). Although centralized curriculum development dismantles a basis for a successful implementation of critical citizenship education, the question in this study is not whether to require teachers to depart from the social studies standards. Instead, this study’s emphasis is on individual teachers’ integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. I regard these strategies as a form of resistance (Ross & Vinson, 2013). The well-received scholarly work of Connie North (2009) provides a rationale for integrating critical citizenship education into a standards-based public school classrooms. In response to the questions of what students should know and be able to do to become agents for social justice, she contended that the teaching of national standards and critical literacy are not mutually exclusive, but should be more interactive in helping students to become agents for social justice. To achieve the goal of teaching for social justice, educators need to look at this reality more closely. Educating students to become just personally responsible and caring citizens without attending to critical consciousness keeps social injustice unchallenged, while focusing too heavily on students’ critical consciousness and social actions skills without a consideration of current school and public knowledge systems might fail to empower students to take powerful legal, socioeconomic, and ethical positions that enable them to effectively advocate for social justice. As North (2009) pointed out, it is critical literacy that helps students assess the existing states of unjust society, but they should be diligent in learning school/public knowledge which help them “take advantage” of the system so that they can more effectively challenge it (p.31). My belief about the integration of critical citizenship education with standards-based school system is based on this premise. From impossible to possible: A third space Although it is imperative to teach critical consciousness and social action skills along with mainstream knowledge and skills, it is not simple for teachers to integrate the teaching of critical citizenship into a standards-based classroom in reality (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). In this study, I used the concept of a third space as a framework to understand various kinds of Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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strategies that elementary teachers might be able to enlist in order to better deal with the aforementioned tension, and to more effectively empower students to become informed, critical, and active citizens. The notion of a third space originates from hybridity theory, and provides a lens for integrating “what are often seen as competing discourses in new ways—an either/or perspective is transformed into a both/also point of view" (Zeichner, 2010, p.61). Although the concept of third space was initially located in sociocultural approaches in psychology, more recently it has been applied to media arts studies. In the field of education, the concept of third space has provided a conceptual framework that helps educators and researchers move away from a divisive paradigm of education towards an integrative approach (e.g., Maniotes, 2005; Skerrett, 2010). For example, the idea of a third space applied to the field of teacher education has contributed to transforming the old paradigm of teacher education based on the traditional divide between university-based and field-based teacher education (Zeichner, 2010). My use of a third space in this study involves teachers’ creation of hybrid spaces in which they engage in boundary crossings to link their beliefs in critical citizenship education and the reality of social studies classrooms, in which curriculum standards are generated based upon mainstream norms and values. Creating a third space in the social studies classroom is also consistent with Leahay’s (2014) notion of authentic spaces in that it anticipates possibilities for teachers to create an emergent curriculum, whereby they engage in three tasks: “(1) building an understanding of the aims and objectives of democratic social studies education, (2) investigating and assessing the institutional obstacles that limit what can be achieved in the classroom, (3) articulating a plan to negotiate curricular content and create time and space for inquiry, deliberation, and purposeful action” (p.52). By employing the idea of a third space, I also sought to redefine what counts as effective practices for teaching critical consciousness and social action skills. South Korean Context In many nation-states, critical literature has managed to counter sociopolitical, economic, and cultural oppressions in dominant forms of curricula by sounding disruptive voices from the margins (McLaren, 1991). The otherness of critical scholarship has been more pervasive in Korea than in Western countries (Eun, 2015). Most of all, the nation’s dominant discourse built upon ethnic nationalism has consistently condemned a critical discourse as stirring up divisions and threatening national unity. Despite its mutations, ethnic nationalism as a ruling ideology has been continued in Korean history: during the Japanese Colonial Rule (1910–1945) it filled in the role of state; in the time of industrialization (1960s– 1980s) the government used it as a powerful means to engage people in the state-led economic development; and in the time of democratization (1980s) activists appealed to ethnic nationalism rather than set forth the ideal of democracy (Lee, 2012). Recently, the Left wing party was also criticized for using ethnic nationalism as their political legitimacy and for its attentiveness to ethnic minorities’ freedom and rights (Lee, 2012; Tudor, 2013). To make matters more complicated, the progressive wing of the party has never been free from a persistent discourse created by the conservative wing that the Progressive Party is equitable with pro-socialist, pro-communist, and pro-North Korean persons who dismantle South Korea’s national security. In terms of economics, the nation’s historical exploitation of laborers has undermined the growth of masses. Different from many Western countries, Korea had no well-established capital class at the beginning of late-industrialization (Kim, 1993), whereby the state as the most powerful leading player enacted industrial policies which provided an exclusive support for the growth of big businesses (chaebol) while repressing the laborers. Even though democratization contributed to increasing laborers’ wages and improving their overall welfare, the imbalanced structure of labor and management has lasted even after a series of economic reforms (1960s-1980s), preventing the laborers from actively participating in political activities (Ha & Lee, 2007). In other words, the lack of civic participants and the great separation between elites and masses have prevented the nation from democratic consolidation. These cultural, economic, and political contexts have collectively limited a critical discourse throughout the nation. In education, critical discourse has been at the margin of the nation’s curricula (Park, 2012): critical pedagogy has been in a form of null curriculum for decades; and critical literature including Freire’s Pedagogy of Oppression was banned in the nation in the 1900s. Nonetheless, Korea is recently experiencing the incremental growth of critical discourse in research and practice. Eun (2015), for example, suggested critical theory as a useful lens which may transform the existing framework of international relations in which Korea’s policy and practice are politically, economically, and culturally subordinated by those of the U.S. and China. In addition, there has been a growing interest in critical theory in Korea’s higher education despite its position at the margin. For example, university press in Korea began to translate the second edition of Critical Theory Today into the Korean language from 2006 for use by their students and faculties (Tyson, 2006). In the realm of citizenship education, Kim (2012) argued that although Korea has not yet advanced to the extent that critical and transformative citizenship is actively advocated, its focus has been greatly shifted from submissive to participatory citizenship. Grounded in the context of Korea, this study gleans wisdom of practices that emerged from one elementary school teacher’s experience of negotiating institutional and societal constraints on her professional and personal latitude in the practice of critical citizenship education; and it leads a potential paradigm shift that teachers from culturally and politically conservative societies can be effective in teaching critical citizenship by appropriating teacher agency. Based on this study’s findings, I also offer insights for research and practices in many other countries in that teachers across the world—though they face institutional and societal constraints which direct their teaching practice—do have latitude to some degree as curriculum decision makers (Barton, 2012). Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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Research method This study is a part of a larger project that employed grounded theory to examine Korean teachers’ beliefs and practices in curriculum reform for implementing multicultural social justice education in elementary social studies classrooms. For this study, I analyzed data from one exemplary participant who provided the most vivid descriptions and rich information about the teaching of critical consciousness and social action skills. In understanding meanings, I made efforts to construct knowledge with the teacher rather than find it because I assumed that reality, especially the teaching of critical citizenship, is socially, culturally, and politically constructed (Crotty, 1998; Merriam, 2009). This epistemological and ontological stance guided this study to use a qualitative methodological approach, which helps create a thorough description and interpretation of the data collected in the full context in which they operate. A case studies approach also is a good fit for this study in that I aimed to unravel the teacher’s practices within the context of standards-based elementary social studies classroom and provide context-specific implications for a better practice (Merriam, 1998). Selection of settings and participants I used a purposeful sampling strategy at two levels to select rich informants from which “the most can be learned” (Merriam, 1998, p. 61). First, the city of Seoul was chosen as a research area because the superintendent in this city is more progressive, and the education policies advocate school reforms, free meals, and equity pedagogy more than in other areas (Sung, 2015). I assumed that teachers in this city have more autonomy in curriculum implementation, and would therefore provide more opportunities to observe the dynamics of teaching and learning than those in other areas. Seoul is noted for its population density, as it was the most densely populated area among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) counties in 2012. As of 2015, the total number of people residing in Seoul was 10,103,233. The number of foreign residents in Seoul was 382,094 (3.8 %), consisting of Chinese citizens of Korean ancestry (68.7%), Chinese citizens whose ethnicity is not Korean (17.6%), and those from the U.S. (8.5%), Vietnam (3.5%), and the Republic of China/Taiwan (2.7%). The number of ethnic/cultural minority people who held Korean citizenship and were residing in Seoul was 45,922 (Ministry of Public Administration and Security, 2015). Second, Sue –who teaches 6th graders at Anyoung Elementary School, located in the center of Seoul –was finally identified by self-nomination and the eligibility interview. She was in her 10th year of teaching. During her college years, she majored in elementary education and secondary social studies, and decided to become an elementary teacher because she felt elementary education is more meaningful due to its goal of “educating good persons”, while secondary education concentrated more on “delivering subject matter”. In addition to teaching at her school, as a lecturer, Sue has taught historical thinking and multiple perspectives in a Humanities and Society Department at a Center for Gifted Education for five years. Students at Anyoung were usually from the middle class; the majority of parents were government officials or journalists; and there were six ethnic minority students. According to Sue, the students in her classroom were wellinformed and critical when discussing public issues. She also commented that teachers, students, parents, and principal in this school share a broad consensus on implementing democracy into the school community. For example, the students are encouraged to operate various clubs by themselves, and a student government has been well established. Data collection Multiple data sources are helpful in creating in-depth and holistic descriptions of cases (Merriam, 2009). In this study, I conducted interviews, classroom observations, and document reviews to elicit data. The semi-structured interview (preobservation interview) was conducted at the teacher’s worksite, and lasted approximately 70–90 min. The interview included a specific question regarding what the teacher believes about the teaching of critical consciousness and social action skills, and more general questions such as what the teacher believes about national standards and textbooks, elementary education, elementary students, teacher neutrality, teacher-student relationships, teaching for social justice, and multicultural education. A follow-up interview was also conducted to help the teacher provide more detailed descriptions for any unclear responses from prior interview. I also conducted classroom observations that included four times of instruction, transitions, class meetings, and lunch times. A checklist of observation protocols included physical classroom setting, participants, activities and interactions, conversations, and subtle factors such as connotative meanings of words, unplanned activities, and nonverbal communication (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984). My participation in the class was secondary to the role of knowledge and information gatherer so that I could minimize my influence on the dynamics of the teaching and learning occurring in the classroom (Adler & Adler, 1998). During the times of observation, various materials were collected at classroom, school, and nation levels, including copies of lesson plans and worksheets, photos of students’ artifacts and teachers’ bulletin boards, school curriculum documents, and the national curriculum standards and textbooks. After each classroom observation, stimulated recall interviews were conducted to elicit the teacher’s implicit beliefs and specific aims, goals, and objectives that drive her teaching practices (Calderhead, 1981). With detailed instructions for how to activate the recalls, the teacher was asked to review my field notes and to identify the beliefs underpinning her documented practices in class. First, she was asked to verbalize the reasons for the particular practices: “What did you want the students to learn or be able to do by engaging in ____activity?” Second, the teacher was asked to retrospectively report on Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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the conscious choices she made or any alternatives she considered before making a choice, for example: “Why did you decide to use this material rather than other materials?”. Analysis and writing The overall process of data analysis was guided by a constant comparison method (Strauss & Corbin, 1994). I read the transcribed data, and then assigned chunks of data to the groups of explicit/professed beliefs, implicit/inferred beliefs, practices, or contexts. Within each group, incidents were consistently compared with one another, and they were clustered into broader categories. The categories and their properties were then linked with one another to construct several assertions at different levels. During the analysis, I started writing assertions based on the insights derived from the case (Wolcott, 1990). An expert in the field reviewed these early findings, and provided useful comments for further data analysis and interpretation. Finally, several assertions with high saturation were transferred to propositions that illuminate the effective implementation of CCE. Several strategies were used in this study to establish its authenticity and credibility. These included making judgments explicit by explaining the analysis processes in detail; using member checks to enhance the quality and accuracy of findings, as well as meet ethical obligations; comparing the data collected from interviews, observations, and documents; and comparing the data collected at different times (Denzin, 1978). The data was recorded and analyzed in Korean to minimize translation errors and distortion of the original meanings within the transcripts and field notes. The actual quotations included in this study were translated into English during the early and final writing phases.

Recognized dilemmas Being in a dilemma refers to not feeling comfortable embracing either practice or point of view. In this study, resolving a dilemma did not mean eliminating the conflict entirely. Instead, it meant locating oneself in a hybrid space in which one actualizes one’s beliefs even within a discouraging condition. Sue, who had a strong willingness to implement critical citizenship education in the elementary social studies classroom, encountered dilemmas between her belief in teaching critical citizenship and the multilayered contexts interrupting its implementation: (a) the conservative nature of Korean society, (b) national textbooks and standards, and (c) students’ lesser capability of understanding structural injustices. Sue perceived that the conservative nature of Korea – where many people having been educated in a Confucian culture still consciously or unconsciously regard the president as an absolute being; dissent from the government is often regarded as the pro-North Korean discourse; and a hierarchical top-down administrative tradition is pervasive in school and society (Lee & Misco, 2014)— made her feel uncomfortable or challenged when attempting to teach critical consciousness. A writing project which Sue designed to engage the students in critically analyzing the institutional problems related to the Sewol event1 provides a good example. The students discussed the government’s culpability and their personal thoughts about it in their critical writing assignment. Although she was not totally constrained by the conservative nature of Korean society because her students and their parents were “uniquely progressive” about social and political issues, it did not necessarily mean that she did not encounter any dilemmas. Sue faced dilemmas especially when she attempted to teach the right to dissent from the government and how to do so. She was concerned that teaching dissent might lead students to become “cynical or negative citizens.” In many other instructions, she was careful about teaching critical consciousness because she thought it might unexpectedly make her students become “rebellious citizens (反骨, ban-gol)”. She also faced a similar type of dilemma when teaching the concept of equitable relationships because she felt uncomfortable about building an egalitarian relationship with her students. She explained further that It is theoretically important to build a horizontal relationship between teachers and students, but as a person who has grown up in the Asian culture where the vertical relationship between the younger and the older is appreciated as a virtue, it’s still difficult to build a genuine horizontal relationship. Nonetheless, Sue had a positive view on transforming asymmetrical power relations between students and teacher. Both her comments that she tried to “build a democratic relationship in which the students could communicate with her as equals” and the actual practice of a “weekly class meeting” in which the students are encouraged to openly discuss how to build a better classroom community offer strong evidence. Another dilemma was caused by a contradiction between her belief in critical citizenship education and the national curriculum standards. She perceived that it was hard to develop students’ critical consciousness about cultural diversity in the existing social studies standards because: 1 The sinking of the Sewol ferry occurred on April 16, 2014 in Korea. The ferry capsized while carrying 476 people, mostly high school students, and 304 passengers died in the disaster. This incident incited nation-wide social and political reactions. Many criticized the irresponsibility of the captain, the ferry operator, and the regulators. This criticism was then directed at the government for its attempts to downplay government culpability. On the first anniversary of the disaster, 4475 people participated in an “electronic candle rally” in an attempt to commemorate the victims and demand that the government look into the scandals related to the Sewol (Choe, 2014).

Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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Textbooks only represent a certain person’s or group of people’s perspective. They could be more dangerous than media. In our daily news, for example, we can see diverse opinions from diverse groups of people or diverse broadcasts, but students are given only one type of textbooks…. So I tell my students that you should have a habitual dissenting, thinking ‘it could be, but…’ But it’s still hard to reconstruct the existing standards and textbooks due to ‘the tests’, the biggest barrier. It is ideal to transform them to help students critically analyze what they are learning, but I also should help them have good scores in the tests and I only have a limited time for teaching. Sue acknowledged that the national standards were more likely to represent the interests of majority rather than those of minority groups, but at the same time she felt her responsibility for meeting those standards as a public school teacher. In addition, when Sue thought about discussing issues related to institutional/structural injustices, she considered those issues were too advanced for elementary students. In her class, a few students demonstrated the ability to understand how structural injustices are embedded in globalism, but the majority of students did not. Nevertheless, Sue, who felt obliged to improve students’ ability to challenge the status quo, considered this student factor as an obstacle she must overcome to teach critical consciousness and social action skills.

Crafting a third space to resolve dilemmas Although Sue faced dilemmas caused by the conflicts among the teaching of critical citizenship and the reality of conservative society, standards-based social studies classroom, and elementary students’ lesser capability of understanding complex issues, she regarded those dilemmas as a healthy struggle. She created a third space in which she can more effectively empower the students to become critical citizens within and around the constraints of contextual factors. In this hybrid space, Sue bridged her commitment to teaching critical literacy and contextual obstacles in more dialectical ways, and created opportunities to engage the students in making the world different. The use of the term “crafting” is concerned with not only the teacher’s creation of a third space but also the contribution of students’ voices that can be used by teachers as an unscripted but teachable moment. Before providing a description of various teaching strategies used by Sue, it is worth discussing how she perceived teacher neutrality because it provided her a basis for crafting those strategies. Although Sue taught in a school in which the students, parents, and principal were relatively liberal, she was teaching in Korean society, in which the lack of active citizenry and the great separation between elites and masses collectively prevent the nation from democratic consolidation; and teachers’ political activities are prohibited where they are required to be politically neutral (Ha & Lee, 2007). Sue tried to show her students a political impartiality, but she also acknowledged that teaching was always affected by a number of political choices. In the context of teaching and learning, she was careful not to provide politically partisan perspectives, but at the same time she was not bothered by including personal propensities or subjectivity in the class. In commenting on these practices she noted: I am very careful not to be partial. I intentionally bring diverse views, and tell them, ‘You should be skeptical about what I say, too.’… I know that I can’t be perfectly neutral because I’m not a robot following the manual. I know my thoughts often implicitly flow out to my kids… Children learn not only knowledge from the teachers but also her ways of thinking…naturally, unconsciously flowing out. A little bit of propensity and my struggle with it may implicitly flow out to my kids. If it is not too much, I believe it helps them. Sue built her own way of thinking to deal with the conflicting beliefs and ideologies, and rescued herself from an obsession about teacher neutrality to a third space where she actively engaged in helping students to develop the ability to critically analyze social injustices and actively participate in social action within an existing context. Three of these strategies illuminate how she taught in the borderland integrating her commitment to critical citizenship education into specific conditions including the national curriculum, the students, and the culture of Korean society, respectively. Questioning the authority of textbook and using it strategically As a public school teacher, Sue recognized that she was responsible for covering the national standards and textbooks to help students become competitive in a capitalist society, although it often conflicted with her belief in teaching critical consciousness. As a way to meet both commitments, she enlightened the students by pointing out that the “textbook is not a bible” and “there are always authors who write textbooks.” She used the standardized social studies textbook in a strategic way to demonstrate to the students that the textbook often presents one perspective as if it were the only perspective (Mallott & Pruyn, 2006), and during the times of instruction she commented frequently, “you should be always skeptical about the particular views embedded in the textbooks and what I inform to you as well,” and, “we can maybe research who the authors are and what kinds of social groups they are from.” Sue also prompted the students to question the authority of textbook by creating and implementing a year-long parallel curriculum which she called a “critical writing project.” For each project, she related the mandated curriculum standards and textbook content with the students’ own lived experiences so that they compare different narratives (Leahey, 2014). Furthermore, she used the official standards in a strategic way that challenges the authority of standards and textbook. For Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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example, she used the standard, “taking multiple perspectives about public issues,” in helping the students critically examine and deliberate the current controversial issue of the government-generated Korean history textbook. In this project, she designed and implemented a series of activities in which the students (1) were briefly informed about conflicting views on the government-published Korean history textbook; (2) deeply examined the ideologies embedded in the conflicting views; (3) wrote about their own views on the issue; (4) deliberated alternative actions; (5) expressed their views to the public at a Gwanghawamoon-street-protest; and (6) reflected upon their action by re-writing their own critical note. Each set of other critical writing projects also consisted of these six activities: being informed about a general context of particular issue, engaging in deep investigation, writing an individual note, deliberating, taking action, and re-writing an individual note. Sue did not trade students’ critical analyses of the textbook for the mastery of textbook content. Instead, she helped the students to access codes of power by explaining how textbook content would be referenced in a standardized exam and why they should know it. For example, at the end of instruction, she informed the students that they needed to “come back to the textbook and fill in the blanks” because it helps them to be successful in standardized exams. She made the reason more explicit in front of the students. This is not the only way to learn, but this can be a good way to look back on what we learned. Plus, as you guys know, we often need to take this way of learning due to the reality of Korea’s evaluation system that questions on the test come directly from the textbook. By using these strategies, Sue avoided situations in which she teaches critical consciousness at the expense of “good scores” in standardized tests and vice versa. This strategy distinguished Sue’s class from many critical social studies classrooms in that she did not completely depart from the mandated curriculum, but rather she helped the students to “cheat” it for their empowerment (Delpit, 1995, p.165). The students recognized the value that these mainstream school knowledge offers them, as a means to empower themselves to make the world different. Including relevant issues and capitalizing teachable moments created by students Another obstacle to elementary school teachers’ implementation of critical citizenship education is that they are likely to believe that elementary students have not fully developed their understanding of institutional or systemic injustices and their cognitive function may not be developed enough to judge social justice (Hodges, 2016). Sue had a strong belief that 6th graders are capable of understanding institutional/structural injustices, but she was also concerned that there might be some students who were intellectually not ready to grasp those complexities, or had little interest in public issues. In order to connect the goal of developing critical consciousness to the students’ developmental stages and interests, she invited the students to discuss issues that are closely related to their day-to-day lives. For example, at the beginning of a critical writing project designed to critically examine standardized testing, Sue handed the students copies of her (hypothetical) journal on which she recorded her concern about “formative testing” in their mathematics class. She wrote: …I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the results of my students in the math formative test because those results barely concur with their knowledge and skills that I have observed during the class. I’m not sure whether the test is “reliable”. Should we take another form of math testing? To examine her question, the students decided to take a new test which consists of different forms of questions that actually measure the same knowledge and skills as those in the previous test. The results between two tests were not identical, and the tests were called into question. The students went forward to the expanded discussion, “whether Korea’s standardized testing is authentic and reliable in determining students’ mathematics abilities,” and then the teacher linked it to a more fundamental and even ethical question, “whether evaluation is for growing students or screening them for the interest of capital.” Finally, the discussion was expanded with macro-level questions regarding the school accountability system, whereby the students critically analyzed who benefits from the current evaluation systems, and how it creates and fortifies the invisible “glass ceiling” prohibiting the social advancement of the oppressed. The seminar was followed by subsequent activities systemized in the critical writing project: engaging in a deliberation about how to realize the value of diversity in the current evaluation system and the formative testing in their class more specifically, transforming their decision into action by creating diverse forms of mathematics testing that are responsive to diverse students in their class, and re-writing their reflection on the overall process of inquiry, deliberation, and action. Using the issues that were closely related to the students’ day-to-day lives helped the students readily grasp how the institutional/structural injustice (i.e., the current evaluation system in which the mainstream norms are dominant) does shape injustices in various forms (i.e., a few students are privileged in the current standardized tests at the expense of many students). Sue’s use of the student-related issues such as “math formative testing” and “Korean evaluation system” for critical citizenship education demonstrates what Peter McLaren highlighted—the key to creating a critical space is not text or content but the critique (Malott & Pruyn, 2006)—and it implies that in the teaching of critical citizenship teachers can compensate for elementary students’ lesser capability of understanding institutional injustices by using content and issues that are relevant to the students’ daily experience as a starting point. Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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To help the students better understand the complexity of institutional injustices, Sue also asked the students to talk with their parents about the issues. Sue explained that she wanted to use their parents’ diverse perspectives as scaffolding toward more complex ideas and critical consciousness because “students could far more develop and elaborate their critical consciousness when their views are challenged by the different views of others.” Although it seemed that this teaching-learning episode included nothing about critical citizenship education, it had some strong features of critical literacy such as the ability to understand controversial public issues from diverse perspectives including the majority and minority groups. Another strategy that Sue utilized to scaffold the students’ understanding of structural problems was using a question about institutional conditions raised by the students. Sue was good at capitalizing on these teachable moments. For example, in one class instruction based on the mandated standard “understanding positive and negative aspects of globalism,” the students were organizing world-wide issues into broader categories such as environment, human rights, and poverty. They used newspapers, magazines, and photos which the teacher had previously placed at five locations in the classroom. On her own initiative, one student came to Sue and asked, “Can I draw lines to connect these categories?” Sue said, “Sure, go ahead. It’s a great idea.” After a few minutes, the student showed her a conceptual map on which she had described the complexity of climate changes, the interwoven issues of international laws, uneven distribution of resources, human rights, and inequality. Sue posted the student’s work on the black board, and she asked specific questions such as “which countries are mainly responsible for the worldwide climate change and which countries had damage from it?” and more general questions such as “which countries benefit from the current global market?” After the discussion, she more explicitly explained how diverse issues are interconnected as a way to serve the interest of wealthy countries and transnational corporations. This teaching-learning episode reveals a good example of emerged curriculum in which the studentgenerated material and their discourse were recognized by the teachers as good resources for creating a situated pedagogy that helped the students better learn the complexity of global issues and structural conditions behind those issues. Creating a hybrid space to make an ally and challenge authority Sue’s commitment to teaching actual skills for taking civic actions at individual and collective levels often conflicted with the conservative sociopolitical climate of Korea. In order to deal with this dilemma, she created opportunities for students to practice individual and collective social actions within the classroom. For example, she asked the students to create mock Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), and then design a flyer to advertise for new members. In the post-observation interview, she stated that she wanted the students to learn how to “raise the awareness of the public, gain support from the public, and make an ally” which would become very significant skills when they are about to make a change for social justice outside the school walls. In regards to individual-level actions, Sue was aware of the possible conflicts between teaching dissent and following mainstream values and behaviors. As a strategy for dealing with this conflict, she created imaginary situations in which students could challenge those in power. One day, for instance, she was teaching “practical strategies to combat other people’s prejudice.” She provided opportunities for students to challenge a school nutritionist who is biased against Mongolian foods, a student who is prejudiced against Indian table manners, and a Korean businessman who has little understanding of the Islamic culture (all hypothetical). What made her teaching remarkable was that she played these three roles, and asked the students to collectively refute her claims. She said “I am just one person, but you guys are a group. And now you will refute my biased claims.” In the post-observation interview, she commented on this practice: In order for my kids to be able to challenge the status quo, I believe, they should have the courage for dissenting, the courage for challenging authority, adults. But in this conservative Korean society it is very difficult for them to have opportunities to refute someone who has authority… That’s why I created the imaginary situation, defined myself as a person full of biases, and invited my kids in combatting my prejudices. Sue created this third space as the way to allow the students to talk down to the teacher so that they can practice challenging authority. In these hybrid spaces, an either/or view was transformed into a both/also view in a way that the students engaged in the learning-and-doing of critical consciousness and social action within the given context. A more sophisticated strategy Sue used was to disguise resistance as more conventional forms of action that have been pervasively approved within liberalist schools and societies. In one of the critical writing projects, the students decided to participate in street rallies against the government’s attempts to downplay their culpability related to the Sewol ferry issue. Their decision led Sue to encounter dilemmas between the required political neutrality and her commitment to critical citizenship education, but she did not give up her commitment. Instead, she looked for colleagues who would advocate for their decision. It was the principal who suggested “why don’t you go there with your students for an observation, like a field trip to see what civic actions look like. It’s not for a participation, isn’t it (smile)?” Sue and the principal created a hybrid space in which the students joined the rally as seeming “observers” or “spectators” but were actually “active participants” who were learning and engaging in resistance as transformative citizens. In fact, on that day, one of the students went on the stage and expressed her opinion about the Sewol to the public. This creation of third space resonates with anarchist ideas in that it used “DIY techniques of social action (p.31),” whereby the teacher avoided the contextual dilemmas and at the same time the students skillfully got involved in an “untapped” mode of critical resistance (Ross & Vinson, 2013, p.39). Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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Discussion Most importantly, this study’s findings revealed specific strategies that the teacher utilized to deal with specific dilemmas when implementing critical citizenship education in the elementary classroom. Despite many critical pedagogical volumes on curriculum (e.g., Apple, 2004; Au, 2012), there has been a paucity of research on day-to-day instructional practices that help elementary teachers teach critical citizenship in the standard-based social studies classroom. In this research context, this study contributes to demonstrating what third spaces in social studies classrooms can look like, and the results support much existing scholarship in the field that argues the possibilities of critical pedagogy outweigh its shortcomings (e.g., Leahey, 2014; Sibbett, 2014; Queen, 2014). This study also affirmed previous research findings that teachers encounter various dilemmas when implementing critical citizenship education (Chilcoat & Ligon, 2000; Wade, 2007), and illuminated the context-specific obstacles that might lead Korean elementary teachers to face dilemmas when teaching critical consciousness and social action skills. These contextual factors included the conservative nature of Korean society, the government-generated standards and textbooks, and the elementary students’ lesser capability of understanding structural injustice. At the center of the teacher’s struggle, there existed dilemmas caused by the contradiction between the liberal/pluralistic view and critical/emancipatory view embedded in the national curriculum and the teacher’s beliefs in critical citizenship education, respectively (Jenks, Lee, & Kanpol, 2001; Johnson, 2016). These contradictions would make teachers who are committed to implementing critical citizenship education feel difficulty in transforming it into practice. Westheimer and Kahne (2004) pointed out that although many school programs committed to democratic education may pursue critical analysis of social injustice (i.e., what causes poverty), it is so difficult to integrate it into the existing libertarian approach that it often requires a political choice. Their findings as well as those from this study indicate that in the actual teaching and learning of critical analysis teachers encounter the dilemmas between these two contradictory perspectives. Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) findings also indicate that critical analysis is not always followed by the pertinent actions, as many innovative education programs highlighting the teaching of critical analysis are null of the foundation for effective civic actions. This study also acknowledged that it is hard to integrate critical analysis and committed civic actions, but this study extended their results by suggesting alternative approaches that facilitate the integration of critical analysis and activism. For example, although Sue did not encourage her students to participate in actual rallies, campaigns, or civil complaints outside the classroom, she helped them practice important strategies for individual/public actions by creating a third space in the classroom (i.e., advertising for new members in the Mock-NGO practice, challenging the authority through talk-down role play) and outside the school wall (i.e. getting involved in the untapped mode of street rallies). More fundamentally, one might criticize the teaching of critical consciousness and social actions skills in public schools. As Johnson (2016) pointed out, liberalists may suggest that critical pedagogues’ concerns should remain secondary in the public schools. This study, however, considered the teaching of critical consciousness and social action skills as necessities rather than political choices. As argued by many critical pedagogues, this study suggests that education practices need to make issues of social justice and equity more central, and move beyond the teaching of critical thinking towards that of critical consciousness and pertinent actions. In spite of the significance of critical consciousness, it is still debatable whether elementary students are emotionally ready to deal with issues such as institutionalized racism. Previous empirical studies indicate that elementary teachers tend to avoid bringing these issues into the classroom, making the convenient excuse that it is too political to be discussed with young students and it might cause some students to feel guilty about being part of mainstream culture (e.g., Hodges, 2015; Tatum, 1997). However, as Sue argued “it is always better for teachers to open the door” and start these difficult conversations because “they [elementary students] will see that darkness in the very near future.” As she believes, it is better than “leaving them ill-prepared.” More fundamentally, educators would need to carefully examine the myth that education efforts to keep the status quo seem neutral but they are also a form of political action (Ross & Vinson, 2013). One might raise another question of whether elementary students are capable of understanding institutional/structural injustices. This study’s findings suggest that they are able to understand by teacher’s scaffolding (i.e., choosing issues relevant to students’ daily lives and using teachable moments created by students). Also, in the classrooms of Sue, there were indeed students who were interested in and/or understood some institutional/structural conditions that maintain the status quo. These students demonstrate that elementary students are able to deal with these issues as well as raise questions about who benefits and who is exploited; they can thus be better prepared from the learning of critical consciousness at an early age. Finally, the findings of this study indicate that a school context itself has a significant impact on teachers’ practice of critical citizenship education. Sue was confident in her commitment to teaching critical literacy because the students, teachers, parents, and principal had a positive view of civil society in which citizens are expected to critically analyze and actively engage in social problems. The significance of democratic school context that emerged from Sue’s case challenges in part the idea that the teaching of critical analysis and activism can be fruitful only in a democratic society (Westheimer & Kahne 2004), with strong evidence that the democratic school community greatly helps the effective implementation of critical citizenship education even when the macro culture (Korea) has not reached to democratic consolidation yet. In a larger context, it also suggests that teachers’ beliefs and practices are filtered largely thorough school environment (Wade, Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i

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2007), and therefore the practice of critical citizenship education should be understood not as a single act, but as a comprehensive school reform. Based on the wisdom of a skilled teacher’s teaching practices, this study provides integrative strategies for elementary teachers to teach critical consciousness and social action skills within and around the constraints of a standards-based classroom. These strategies include helping students question the authority of textbook and use it strategically; starting with issues relevant to students’ daily lives and then connecting it with the macro-level injustice that causes those issues; capitalizing teachable moment emerged from student discourses; creating imaginary situation in which students can practice challenging the authority and making an ally; and disguising resistance as a more approved form of actions. In a larger context, this study provides important insights for the practice of teacher education, social studies curriculum, and school reform. First, educators need to offer useful strategies that help teachers deal with context-specific obstacles that constrain the teaching of critical consciousness and social action skills. Second, current social studies standards need to include the development of critical citizenry so that teachers can implement critical citizenship education with greater confidence. Finally, school leaders need to nurture a democratic school community. This study’s findings indicate that teachers can better prepare students with critical consciousness and social action skills when the values of democracy and diversity are shared by the school community. If critical citizenship education is a school reform effort that requires the active participation of diverse stakeholders (policy-makers, administrators, teachers, school leaders, community members, etc.), they need to be actively involved in examining the fruits of critical citizenship education rather than merely expecting teachers to take on all of the responsibilities.

Concluding remarks In this study, I sought to understand how critical citizenship education could be integrated into a standards-based elementary social studies classroom. In many countries, there still exist various obstacles discouraging the teaching of critical consciousness and social action skills, but in this study the teacher’s creation of a hybrid space in which various conflicts are integrated redefined what counts as effective teaching practices for critical citizenship education. Effective practices, in this regard, existed in classrooms in which the teacher’s belief, the constraints of school and society, and students’ voices are made available to teaching critical consciousness and civic action, and thus become useful resources for mediating the learning of critical citizenship. In the midst of an ongoing tension between critical pedagogues and conservative critiques, this study envisioned the possibility that a teacher’s careful intervention creates an optimal environment in which students meet national standards and develop critical consciousness and social action skills as well. This study will contribute to continued conversations and scholarship regarding the practice of critical citizenship education.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. I would like to give special thanks to Dr. Geneva Gay and Dr. Walter Parker for their intellectual engagement and endless encouragement. In addition, I am grateful to Dr. Yong−Chool Ha, Dr. Kenneth Zeichner, Emily Bald, and Jonathan Bostwick for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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Please cite this article as: Cho, H. Crafting a third space: Integrative strategies for implementing critical citizenship education in a standards-based classroom. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jssr.2017.07.001i