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This study examined teaching practices of three elementa y teachers (Grades 1, 3 and 51 in terns of the Decision Making Model advanced by Shirly H. Engle and Anna S. Ochoa in their book, Education for a Democracy: Decision Making in the Social Studies. The study examined practices of exernpla y teachers for eIements of the two major curricular dimensions of this model: (13 controversial social issues as the content focus and (21 infellectual processes: critical thin king and decision making. Teachers did not have prior a w m e s s of the model. Secondly, we examined teaching practices reluted to democracy, diversify and gender. The study also allowed us to ident if5r teaching practices common to these three teachers, A major purpose of public schools i n the United States is to prepare the young for intelligent citizen participation in a democracy. The challenge embedded in this goal lies not only i n maintaining, but also in strengthening public practices in behalf of democracy's future. Social studies in public schooIs is considered the prime academic area devoted to fulfilling this goal. Importantly, research hdicates that attitudes start to develop early in life in a cumulative manner (Hess & Tomy, 1967). Personal attitudes develop from the theorizing resulting from early experiences (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). These years represent a critical period for educators who work with young children Spring 2001 261 Downloaded by [University of York] at 11:03 10 June 2016and who bear a special responsibility to prepare them to be the successor generation in behalf of democracy's future.Social studies has been evident in the elementary school's curriculum for approximately the last half century. Yet, even today, its presence is far from universal in elementary schools and it is given meager attention in many schools, However, a number of commercially published K-6 textbook series are available and many teacher education programs require a course in social studies methods. Concurrently the literature i n social studies has emphasized that across grades K-12, social studies is taught in a dismal fashion. Too often the blame is placed simplistically and mistakenly on classroom teachers. These disappointing claims may describe the practices of some teachers, but for this study we assumed that they do not accurateIy portray all teachers.More specifically this literature has emphasized that the textbook and the lecture mode are overused and that learning experiences emphasize memorization (EngIe & Ochoa, 1988;Goodlad, 1984) rather than higher-level fhinking and decision making. In this study, we wanted to document existing teaching practices in elementary social studies, particularly practices of teachers with strong reputations to see if these practices were consistent with the Decision-M a h g Model advanced by S. H. Engle and Anna S. Ochoa in their book, Education for Democratic Citizenship: Decision Making in the Social Studies. (See Appendix A for highlights of the Engle-Ochoa Model.)Engle and Ochoa proposed a curriculum,...