Totten Edits New Volume about Teaching of Social Issues

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Genocide scholar Samuel Totten, University of Arkansas professor of curriculum and instruction, has co-edited a new textbook focusing on social issues.

Educating About Social Issues in the 20th and 21st Centuries: A Critical Annotated Bibliography (Volume One) is a volume in the series "Social Issues in Education" published by Information Age Publishing. It is the first of three volumes by Totten and his co-author, Jon Pedersen.

Last December, IAP established the new series and appointed Totten and Pedersen the series' editors. Pedersen is the dean of research in the College of Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was on the curriculum and instruction faculty at the University of Arkansas in the early to late-1990s.

Totten is the author of numerous books and articles about genocide and the Holocaust, and he has lectured around the world about his work, which includes interviewing victims of the genocides in Sudan and Rwanda. He also established a genocide-education master's program at the National University in Rwanda while on a Fulbright Fellowship there.

In addition to writing the introduction to Educating About Social Issues in the 20th and 21st Centuries with Pedersen, Totten also wrote or co-wrote six chapters of the 22 chapters in the book. They are "John Dewey and Teaching and Learning About Social Issues" (with Pedersen), “The History of Teaching and Learning About Social Issues" (with Thomas Fallace), "The Engle/Ochoa Decision-Making Model" (with Mark A. Previte), "Human Rights Education" (with Felisa Tibbitts), "Holocaust Education: Addressing Social Issues in the English Classroom," and "Genocide Education."

The book's purpose is to provide a resource for undergraduate and graduate students in the field of education, professors of education, and teachers as they engage in research and practice in relation to teaching about social issues. The authors address key theories, goals, objectives and the research base, often giving recommendations for adapting and strengthening a particular model, program or the study of a specific social issue.

More information is available on the Information Age website.