ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issue of what knowledge about social studies subject matter a group of undergraduate preservice social studies teachers built through the fi rst three phases of an inquiry project and the ways they developed this knowledge. The setting for this investigation is a reading methods course and our account of what transpired during this course is guided by several questions: What background knowledge do the students access during the fi rst three phases of the inquiry process? What do they identify as knowledge they don’t know or need to know? What moves does the teacher make to guide students to access and build upon their background knowledge during these three phases? After a description of the context and goals for the course, we describe the ways Anne designed what she called a Web Inquiry Project1 and prepared students to work through its fi rst three phases. We then investigate what happened when Anne’s students worked in six different disciplinary groups within the social studies (History, Economics, Psychology, Sociology, Government, and Geography) to investigate the topic of capitalism and issues of global trade. We identify the ways her students progressively constructed knowledge during these initial three inquiry phases as well as the ways Anne guided her students to do this challenging work.
