This paper explores the background of Pre-Service elementary teacher knowledge of social studies and its effect on classroom content. It explains the process of development of a test of basic American History chronology for pre-service teachers, tying the questions to information covered by various content textbooks, and addressing the test results. In addition, it discusses overall performance, as well as analyzing for age and education, and suggests steps for strengthening social studies content knowledge. Included are appendices of the original test and contents analyzed by textbook, as well as statistical tables of results.
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