Supporting Ongoing, Collective Learning about Teaching Social Studies Inquiry and Argumentation
Site-Embedded Professional Learning
Overview: Our Approach
Learning Labs for Social Studies (LLSS) is a site-embedded approach to professional learning based on Learning Labs developed by Elham Kazemi and colleagues at the University of Washington for elementary mathematics teachers (see their 2018 article, 2024 book, & https://tedd.org/learning-labs/).
In LLSS, secondary social studies teachers collaborate in their school contexts to develop their inquiry teaching and problem solve together with attention to student learning. Through the LLSS cycle of learning activities – including new learning, co-planning, co-teaching, and debriefing – teachers practice and develop their skills in the moment-to-moment classroom work of engaging diverse learners in discussion, critical and analytical thinking, and argument writing with complex texts.
The figure below shows how we combine our LLSS PD with the middle school social studies curriculum that we created – Read.Inquire.Write. The RIW curriculum provides a process and tools that structure the work of teaching text-based inquiry; LLSS offers a non-evaluative learning environment that enables teachers to consider common challenges and support all students’ learning in real time.
Why LLSS PD?
Teaching students to engage in inquiry is challenging work. Classroom talk and interaction are a key feature of the inquiry classroom. Supporting diverse learners to talk together about different perspectives and develop evidence-based arguments about complex social and historical issues calls for new ways of teaching. Consistent with the C3 Framework and Common Core standards, LLSS supports the shift in social studies instruction toward discussion about complex social and historical issues, active reading and argument writing, and historical and analytical thinking through inquiry.
In each phase of inquiry, teachers participating in LLSS have become more adept at facilitating student talk. They learn to notice and respond to students’ thinking and recognize the resources students bring from their communities and prior learning. LLSS also orients teachers toward seeing each other as resources. With support from colleagues working together in the same classrooms, teachers see and practice new ways of engaging diverse learners.
What is LLSS?
During LLSS PD days, teachers from different classrooms who are implementing RIW meet together in an available room to learn new content, co-plan a lesson that they will co-teach and meet to debrief after co-teaching. When co-teaching, teachers work with students in one colleague’s classroom during that teacher’s regularly scheduled class. Throughout the day, substitute teachers or building leaders cover the participants’ other regular classes. When possible, this cycle of new learning, co-planning, co-teaching, and debriefing can then be repeated.
Note: LLSS is different from “Lesson Study” professional development, where teachers co-plan lessons, but only one teacher teaches while the others observe. Instead, in LLSS PD, teachers actively work together to not only co-plan, but also co-teach a lesson, and thus take shared responsibility for students’ learning and problem solving in the moment-to-moment interactions with students.
What makes LLSS PD effective?
Collective, active work with
a shared focus
Iterative, inquiry-oriented
collaboration
Alignment with teachers’ daily
goals and expectations
Analysis of artifacts of
student thinking
Facilitator guides and works
alongside teachers
Teacher Time Outs pause instruction to consider student thinking and next moves
