ABSTRACT
As a future social studies teacher you will face many challenges that will be similar to those faced by every teacher in your school. You will find that knowing your students is a key ingredient to being successful. Compounding this issue, your students are wrestling with their own identity and roles in the world, while trying to understand their growing and developing bodies as they leave childhood and become young adults. The purpose of this chapter is for you, the future teacher of adolescents, to consider many issues that surround student learning. By understanding how adolescents develop and how they perceive the world, you will be able to more effectively help them learn academic content, intellectual thinking skills, and interactive social skills. Throughout this book we will return to many of the ideas introduced in this chapter that pertain to the learner. Our intention is for this chapter to provide a foundation for thinking about your future students that will allow you to develop an increasingly complex understanding of how to effectively promote your students’ learning.
