Educating for American Democracy

The Educating for American Democracy (EAD) Roadmap is the primary inspiration behind Civic Learning Threads. This nonpartisan inquiry framework published in 2021 is the crowning achievement of “a diverse collaboration among over 300 academics, historians, political scientists, K–12 educators, district and state administrators, civics providers, students, and others from across the country” (EAD). The project as a whole seeks to guide social studies history and civics standards, narratives, and instruction toward improved civic knowledge, skills and dispositions of students through their K-12 education. We can’t do it justice here, so please visit educatingforamericandemocracy.org.

The roadmap is an inquiry framework designed to harness the essential civic understandings that weave through K-12 U.S. history and civics courses. However, there are common threads of those same civic understandings, essential vocabulary and ‘big ideas’ that also weave through world history, economics, geography, ethnic studies, and many other social studies courses. At Civic Learning Threads, we zoom out and broaden the themes to include all commonly required secondary social studies courses. This provides the opportunity to reinforce essential civic knowledge and skills at every grade level, thereby maximizing prior learning and empowering teachers to progressively enrich civics instruction.

That’s why we have adapted the EAD Roadmap’s themes and essential questions to apply to the world history, geography, and economics courses.