Learn to read the Roadmap The Roadmap

The Roadmap’s history and civics content is organized into seven themes. While there is no hierarchy among the themes, and they might be variously sequenced in a scope and sequence, they do deliberately reflect a logical progression. They begin with the main task of public schooling: to prepare knowledgeable and motivated citizens to participate in American self-government. In general, the themes build from the human and natural elements of forming communities and a polity, then address the United States’ new mode of constitutional government, which perpetually forges a national political community, and more particular communities in the country’s complex ordering. The themes then move to the substantive achievements and challenges of American political development and self-government, framed through both historical and civic lenses; broaden out to the global context; and conclude with the ever-present need for citizens to commit to civil disagreement and an underlying civic friendship as we argue about how to live out, and live up to, our shared political principles. 

THEME 1: Civic Participation
THEME 2: Our Changing Landscapes
THEME 3: We the People
THEME 4: A New Government and Constitution
THEME 5: Institutional and Social Transformation—A Series of Refoundings?
THEME 6: A People in the World
THEME 7: A People with Contemporary Debates and Possibilities

Since the beginning of our collaboration, EAD initiative leaders have recognized that teaching a complete story of the United States is hard and full of contentions. Embracing those tensions as a feature, not a bug, of the Roadmap led us to develop five design challenges, which bring to the surface those questions of history and civics instruction that educators typically find the most difficult to navigate. These design challenges typically involve several valid, worthy, and well-articulated learning goals that exist in mutual tension.  Each of the seven content themes is connected to at least one design challenge. For a deeper explanation of each of the design challenges, see the Design Challenges overview.

Within each of the seven themes, content is broken down into history and civics driving questions that break down and scaffold the content to deepen students’ understanding of each theme as they get older. Then, within each set of history and civics driving questions, content is further broken down into sample guiding questions that provide a glimpse into the types of inquiries that teachers can plan when using the Roadmap.

For example, within Theme 2, “Our Changing Landscapes,” a K–2 history driving question is “How do communities name and talk about places?” This driving question is then broken down into sample guiding questions that help students explore their own story of place, as well as their communities and belonging. By 6–8th grade, a history driving question in the same theme is “How do borders change over time, and why?” This driving question is more complex and the sample guiding questions within it are more content-heavy, including questions that allow students to explore how the U.S. came to have its current borders, the history of territorial expansion, and the effects of that territorial expansion on various populations.

No, they are not. We hope that the sample guiding questions are illustrative of the vast instructional potential connecting the larger theme, the design challenge, and the driving question. However, we also acknowledge that this is not an exhaustive list of questions, and that there are many other great topics and questions that can be explored.

Unlike essential questions, which are about larger questions of civic life and history that do not have a predetermined right answer, driving questions in the Roadmap often do. An example of an essential question might be, “Does history really repeat itself?”, but with a driving question, students may focus on specific content, such as “How have Americans resisted or reacted to the expansion of rights and citizenship claims?”

There are some design features of the Roadmap which we hope will be helpful as educators consider using the driving and sample guiding questions. First, as a group, the Roadmap questions were developed to address the design challenges and are intentionally worded to surface tensions and even disagreements about a topic. Second, in addition to content itself, questions about students’ own identities, values, and their relationships to historical events and civic institutions are scaffolded across the grade bands. Those features were integrated because we center full preparation for active and informed participation in civic life as the central goal, which we believe is only possible when students have opportunities to deeply learn content while building agency and skills of civic actors.

No, and we recognize that there would be a lot of content to acquire in depth. First, the sample guiding questions are examples, not essential content, so we encourage educators to choose questions that are suitable to their classroom or even develop their own. Second, the initiative leaders are actively developing plans to best serve educators by curating existing resources from diverse groups of curriculum providers and teachers across the country to support you. Finally, we believe that students and teachers can engage in this inquiry-centered learning together, collaboratively working to uncover complex answers to thematic, driving, and guiding questions through discussions, debates, projects, research, and other instructional design tools mentioned in the Pedagogy Companion. We also recognize that some of the questions in the Roadmap do not have clear-cut answers, but rather are intended as a springboard for students and teachers to grapple with the tensions inherent in the narratives of American history and civics.

The Roadmap is an advisory document, intended to support a diversity of curricula, materials, lessons, and assessments and to work across a variety of state social studies standards. It will break new ground by presenting an integrated framework for what, why, and how to teach history and civics. As such, it is meant to inspire and inform the authors of state standards, curricula, textbooks, and other materials, as well as teachers themselves to rethink and reprioritize civics and American history education.

The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards was written originally as a general framework for authors of state standards. It identifies content to teach largely in the form of foundational concepts and disciplinary skills, not specific topics. For instance, the C3 Framework mentions analyzing the “multiple and complex causes and effects of events in the past” (D2.His.14.9-12), but does not specify which events. As the C3 Framework has gained broader use by states, curriculum writers, teachers, and others, the lack of specific topics has generated a desire for guidance about not only how, but what topics to teach in social studies.

The EAD Roadmap is meant to complement, not compete with, the C3 Framework, as it identifies specific topics for study. The C3 Framework emphasizes skills as an aspect of content; the EAD Roadmap adds more detail about topics through the use of concrete questions that should be taught. It identifies high-priority history and civics content essential to robust and authentic civic participation organized in seven content themes and five design challenges, all presented in the form of questions to be explored over the course of a K–12 education.

The EAD Roadmap and the C3 Framework share the philosophy that knowledge and understanding arise from the inquiry process: asking questions, conducting research, analyzing ideas, presenting conclusions, and applying acquired understanding by taking informed action. Inquiry serves to deepen conceptual understanding of content, moving beyond basic knowledge. The C3 Framework’s inquiry arc concludes with taking informed action, a practice that prepares students with the skills and dispositions to take an active role in their civic, community, and democratic institutions. In a constitutional democracy, we inquire in order to act well, which is why the C3 Framework inquiry arc concludes in taking action.

Read more about the EAD Roadmap and the C3 Framework. 

Absolutely! The Roadmap was designed as an advisory document that identifies high priority content areas for all K–12 students. Its seven major themes are centered around design challenges and thematic questions, which were intentionally created to be used within and amplify the efficacy of many different state standards. Our research team conducted an extensive review of every state’s social studies standards and found a strong alignment between the Roadmap themes and state standards, though states are diverse in terms of which themes are emphasized and when. What makes the Roadmap different from most state standards is its focus on inquiry, presenting content in the form of questions that should be explored over the course of a K–12 education. Read more about the EAD Roadmap and state standards.