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Sneha Reddy
Independent Researcher
Telangana, India
Abstract
Contemporary issues—ranging from climate change, digital surveillance, migration, gender justice, public health inequities, to the erosion of democratic norms—intrude daily into the lives of learners. Yet classrooms often remain insulated, guided by static textbooks and conventional assessments that do little to cultivate critical consciousness or civic agency. This manuscript interrogates how social studies texts (print, digital, and multimodal) can be leveraged to teach contemporary issues in meaningful, dialogic, and transformative ways. Synthesizing theoretical lenses such as critical pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, disciplinary literacy, and media/digital literacy, it proposes an integrative framework—the Issue-Text-Pedagogy (ITP) Model—to align issue selection, text curation, and inquiry-based pedagogy. A mixed-methods survey of 200 secondary-level teachers and students (Grades 8–12) from three Indian states reveals tensions between curricular mandates and authentic engagement: while 81% of teachers acknowledge the urgency of addressing current affairs, only 37% regularly embed them in formal lessons; 68% of students desire more discussion of real-world controversies, yet fear evaluative repercussions. Quantitative results (descriptive statistics, chi-square tests) and qualitative thematic analysis (NVivo coding) illuminate barriers (time, training, resource access) and catalysts (student voice, local relevance, collaborative tasks). Findings suggest that explicit scaffolds—issue-framing protocols, text complexity ladders, multimodal source banks, and dialogic assessment rubrics—enable teachers to integrate contemporary issues without sacrificing curricular goals. The study concludes with actionable recommendations for curriculum designers, teacher educators, and policymakers: (1) embed current-issue text sets with guiding questions into syllabi; (2) invest in teacher professional development on critical media literacy; (3) reconfigure assessment to value inquiry and deliberation; and (4) institutionalize continuous text updates through open educational resources. Limitations include sample size, regional concentration, and reliance on self-report. Future research should experiment with longitudinal designs and student-produced countertexts. Ultimately, teaching contemporary issues through social studies texts is not an add-on—it is the core of preparing citizens for participatory democracy.
Keywords
Contemporary issues; social studies texts; critical pedagogy; media literacy; inquiry-based learning; civic education; curriculum integration; India; secondary education; text sets
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