Quick Take

• The Social Studies Network offers professional learning, resources, and tools for K-12 social studies teachers.
• To date, more than 500,000 students have benefited from Social Studies Network initiatives.
• Teachers are encouraged to see their local communities “as a textbook, a source of action."

Asif Wilson likes to think big.

In 2022, the Illinois State Board of Education and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign launched, under Wilson’s leadership, I3: Inclusive, Inquiry-Based Social Studies for Illinois.

The five-year project aims to create and implement professional learning for every K-12 social studies teacher in Illinois.

I3 has thrived under Wilson’s leadership.

“We’ve impacted over 500,000 students in 500 schools through a network of 5,000 teachers, 750 of whom have completed our intensive I3 professional learning series,” says Wilson, an assistant professor in the College of Education’s Curriculum & Instruction Department. “We’ve had 50,000 hits on our documents and resources in a matter of four months. So, we have a lot of traction.

“But we haven’t gotten everywhere.”

Don’t read dejection in that last statement. Read resilience and resourcefulness.

Asif Wilson is in this for the long haul. That’s why he is working on soliciting funding to extend his original five-year ISBE grant another five years.

And that’s why, at the very beginning, when I3 was first created, he founded an umbrella organization to house not only I3, but related initiatives that would complement I3 in its mission to support social studies teachers in the creation of inquiry-based, justice-centered learning for their students.

Creation of the Social Studies Network

I3 became the catalyst for the formation of the Social Studies Network—a vast, statewide virtual meeting place and learning space where research and resources are shared and professional learning experiences are accessed.

“I wanted to build a space for social science educators,” Wilson explains. “I wanted them to have a space to build community and to go for professional learning and access to research and resources.”

That idea, he says, has come to fruition. And in doing so, it is increasing the University of Illinois’ reach.

“The resources that we’re developing and the research that we’re creating and leading and being a part of and the professional learning we’re developing and leading will reach more and more teachers and students across the state of Illinois,” Wilson says.

“In three years, the Social Studies Network has done 10 to 20 years of work, and I’m really excited about all that’s coming in the future.”

The Social Studies Network currently is home to three initiatives:

• I3,
• Teaching Civics for Justice Illinois, and
• Communiversities.

I3: Inclusive, Inquiry-Based Social Studies for Illinois

I3 was born from legislation passed in 2021 that called for, among other things, the creation of an Inclusive American History Commission.

The commission was tasked with providing direction for K-12 public school social science learning standards that didn’t favor specific cultures, time periods, and experiences. It was also charged with identifying resources for school districts that reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of Illinois and the nation, and with developing guidance, tools, and support for professional learning for in-service educators.

ISBE, knowing of Wilson’s scholarship in justice-centered, inclusive, inquiry-based pedagogy, asked him to be principal investigator for I3 and to lead the development of professional learning that would turn the legislation into action in the classroom.

With an emphasis on action.

“The revisions in the standards have moved social science from a place of content and memorization of facts and names and places and dates to an inquiry-based setting where students lead their learning by generating questions, collecting and analyzing data, and by taking action on their queries,” Wilson says.

Giving Voice to the Previously Unheard

The inclusive aspect of I3 focuses on giving a voice to those traditionally not heard.

“We’re ensuring that those voices who have been historically and herstorically been excluded from social science classrooms now have a place in those classrooms, so that students like me and other diverse identities across the state of Illinois can be reflected in the sorts of experiences that they’re having in those social science classes,” Wilson says.

Professional Development Tools

The I3 team of educators, researchers, students, and community organizers crafted a five-month professional earning series that is part synchronous via Zoom and part self-paced and asynchronous.

“The series prepares teachers to understand inquiry and justice in concept and give them community-facilitated feedback from experts across the state of Illinois and opportunities to experiment and apply their learnings in classrooms of inquiry and justice,” Wilson says.

The Social Studies Network’s resources page has a number of tools that are available to the public, Wilson notes.

“We have documentary films, TikToks, podcasts, instructional toolkits and videos, and evaluation tools to better examine the curriculum you’re using,” he says. “This year and beyond, we’re going to start building out student-facing tools that teachers can use as well.”

Funds to Achieve Goals

Wilson hopes to obtain funding from ISBE or other state agencies to support I3’s continuing work. “We’re also looking for foundations and individual contributions that can continue the work of I3,” he says. “We’re operating on a pretty skeletal budget. The state is leading a lot of this work and has really got to think about the sorts of systems and structures that support the implementation of the aspirations they put into legislation.”

Teachers: "Prepared and Armed"

The response from teachers has been positive.

“Broadly, what we hear is thank you,” Wilson reports. “Teachers have reported to us overwhelmingly in the 90th percentile that they feel prepared to engage in inquiry-based and justice-centered practices in their classrooms—and that they also feel equipped with the sorts of pedagogies and curricular resources to do that work as well. They’re very appreciative and feel armed in ways that they didn’t before.”

Teachers from all areas of the state have benefited from participating in I3. Wilson notes that teachers in districts where there are just a few social science teachers are thrilled with the learning experiences and the community-building atmosphere of I3.

“We make sure we have a diverse range of identities and identity markers among our teachers, so they can learn from each other,” Wilson says. “We create diverse learning cohorts that can share their identities and hopefully transform other people’s ideas about those identities."

Teaching Civics for Justice Illinois

Teaching Civics for Justice Illinois, which is launching in October, offers a five-part asynchronous learning experience. The initial cohort will include 100 teachers, who will be paid for their participation.

The initiative is a partnership between the Social Studies Network and the Illinois Department of Human Services.

“They asked us to build and implement professional learning around civics, so that’s what we’re doing,” Wilson says.

Youth: Active and Engaged

He believes that today’s youth have a bad rap for not being civically engaged.

“We actually think this is far from the truth,” he says. “We’ve built a professional learning series and a framework for civics teaching and learning that starts from the point that young people are absolutely civically engaged.“They’re asking questions about their place in the world and in the community. They are collecting and sharing information and analyzing the world around them, and they’re taking action. Look at all the student-led movements taking place historically and even in the last few years.

“So, what might happen if civics and service-learning classes and opportunities, which are graduation requirements now in the state of Illinois, start from that place?”

The answer is one of Wilson’s favorite words: action.

“Teaching Civics for Justice Illinois is a professional learning experience that prepares teachers to see the local community as a textbook, as a source of questioning and a source of action,” he says.

Building Knowledge and Toolboxes

As with I3, Teaching Civics for Justice Illinois has resources and tools for teachers. Its five learning modules can be viewed here.

“We’re building teachers’ conceptual knowledge and also building their practical toolboxes,” Wilson says. “We don’t do that in prescriptive ways; we do that in communal and guided and critical ways. We have provided the context for teachers to be reflective and create the tools that they can use in the classrooms that can advance justice-centered civics education.”

The goal, he says, is to “create opportunities for young people, in collaboration with adults in their communities and local spaces, to think deeply about the conditions in the world and provide them with tools and the educational space to do something about it, hopefully making it better.”

Communiversities

The first Communiversity was launched in Chicago in the 1960s. It was a coalition of high school students, community activists, scholars, teachers, and professors through the Black Congress.

Wilson, Rachel McMillian (assistant professor in Curriculum & Instruction), and Aja Reynolds (assistant professor at Wayne State University) launched three new communiversities in the summer of 2023 in Chicago, Cincinnati, and Detroit. The projects were funded by the Mellon Foundations Humanities Without Walls initiative, based at the Humanities Research Institute at the U. of I.

“We’ve borrowed the model of the original communiversity, which was created as a place for Black families, Black teachers, and Black community members to educate themselves outside of the harmful structures of schools,” Wilson notes. “They got together in community spaces to dream about their futures and do things to actualize their dreams.”

That’s taking place right now in the three aforementioned cities.

“We just received a Chancellor’s Call to Action grant to build out the second iteration of our Chicago communiversity, which is going to entail participatory research with Black families and teachers on resistance to school closures in Chicago for the last 20 years,” Wilson says.

“In Cincinnati, Dr. McMillian has been working with exonerees, formerly incarcerated men who were wrongfully imprisoned, to build out K-12 curriculum about their experiences, about incarceration, about abolition.”

That work, he says, includes creating podcasts and videos to share the exonerees’ experiences with young people.

In Detroit, Reynolds facilitated a communiversity on abolition. The project spawned an Abolition Zine that explored abolitionist history.

A Bright Future

Wilson’s energy is primarily focused on dreaming, creating, building, moving forward. Making things better for tomorrow than they were yesterday.

But in the rare moments when he looks back, he is pleased with the progress he and his team of researchers and educators have made through the Social Studies Network.

Still Thinking Big

And he keeps dreaming and planning to expand the reach and impact of the work he’s involved in.

“Maybe in five more years, we can reach double or maybe even more teachers across the state of Illinois,” he says. “And we can start sharing what we’ve done in Illinois with other states that are also making strides in these areas. They can learn from the work we’re doing in terms of building teachers’ capacities to meet the aims of the social science standards. We can be leaders in creating those sorts of professional learning foundations.”

Education at Illinois Leading the Way

Wilson envisions a bright future for social science education in Illinois—a future that is being shaped by multiple educators from the U. of I., including McMillian and Jon Hale, professor in Education Policy, Organization and Leadership.

“We’re really excited to continue to do the work we’re doing with social science teachers and professional learning and resources and research,” he says. “We’re also thinking about how we can expand our lessons to other contexts, like Dr. McMillian’s work with currently and formerly incarcerated people. And like Dr. Hale’s Freedom School initiative that’s bringing an intergenerational partnership together to imagine and actualize freedom.

“That’s all part of the Social Studies Network portfolio as we see it. We want to create tangible opportunities to showcase all that we’re doing—not just in social studies, but in social studies and beyond.”