National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded funding from the Library of Congress as part of the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) program.

NCSS is one of four organizations – along with the National Council of Teachers of English, National History Day, and the Right Question Institute – to receive funding to create digital instructional materials and professional development support for educators using the Library's primary source collections. NCSS will partner with the Library to create online resources for methods professors and pre-service teachers in college and university departments of education. NCSS's project, Inquiry and Teaching with Primary Sources to Prepare Students for College, Career, and Civic Life, will produce two online methods texts for use in teacher preparation programs to demonstrate the effectiveness of teaching with primary sources and the College, Career, and Civic Life ("C3") Framework's Inquiry Arc. One text will be designed for K-6 elementary methods courses and the other text for 6-12 secondary methods courses. The texts will be joint publications of NCSS and the Library of Congress. NCSS will also provide a summer institute each year in a different region of the country for methods professors to field-test each text and learn strategies for teaching with primary sources with pre-service teachers. Special sessions at future NCSS Annual Conferences and webinars for methods professors are also planned. The complete resource collection of online methods texts, professional development content, and teaching webinars will be free to the general public in the NCSS Digital Library at www.socialstudies.org.

NCSS President Dr. Tina L. Heafner said, "NCSS is pleased to collaborate with the Library of Congress to advance inquiry and informed action through the purposeful integration of primary sources in social studies classrooms nationwide, and to provide leadership and support to our next generation of social studies educators through this innovative project. We are delighted to partner with social studies methods professors and PK-12 mentor teachers in supporting pre-service teacher education. In addition, NCSS is honored to join the Teaching with Primary Sources Consortium and the ranks of many distinguished national, state, and regional organizations which are a strong network of support for educators and students. We envision that our ongoing development of instructional resources with professional development will foster an environment of continuous, shared learning for the advancement of social studies education and education more generally."

NCSS Executive Director Dr. Lawrence M. Paska said, "NCSS has been a long-time champion of the Teaching with Primary Sources program. Over the years, our Annual Conference has provided a venue for numerous poster sessions and presentations; our Social Education journal has featured a popular column by the Library's education specialists on teaching with primary sources in the secondary-level classroom; and, NCSS has hosted many successful Library webinars. We are honored to take our partnership to the next level and join the TPS Consortium as an active content developer and contributor to a vast network of educators who support inquiry and the social studies."

NCSS members with experience in teaching social studies methods courses and mentoring pre-service teachers in K-12 classrooms are invited to apply to serve as a writer for either the K-6 or 6-12 online methods texts through our Call For Expertise. The writing team will be announced in November 2019, to begin work in December 2019. Writing team participation will include some travel to Washington, DC.