We are pleased to present the first issue of 2025 with four new original articles and a country report from the Czech Republic. Less pleasing is the societal development where political, social and economic structures – and democracy itself – are being questioned by populist movements and leaders. Naturally, such upheavals in general society have consequences for Academia. In mid-March, the JSSE was informed by the US Department of Education that the current administration and the Musk-led “DOGE” are – in an attempt to reduce government spending – slashing funding for the database ERIC, where educational research from all over the world is being indexed and made available for researchers and teachers. In their budget cuts, ERIC will now stop indexing many journals, and the JSSE is among them. We are probably only at the beginning of the process where US research will become increasingly pressured to follow governmental guidelines that please the current administration.

As summer approaches, we can finally take a pause and momentarily step back from our duties at the universities. In this second issue of 2025, the Journal of Social Science Education is proud to present four original articles and a country report focusing on the historical development in the Czech Republic. We believe all of them bring new ideas and angles on social science teaching and learning. As the summer invites us to slow down and look anew at our own practices, we hope this issue can give inspiration and offer perspective on how our teaching can better support the development of knowledge, skills, abilities and attitudes that students need to navigate and shape our societies. In these times, it seems more important than ever.

I artikeln argumenterar forskningsnätverket FUTURES (vid Stockholms universitet) för betydelsen av ämnesdidaktisk forskning runt elevers framtidsföreställningar. Utifrån en narrativ ansats, och med hjälp av empiriska exempel från en pilotstudie, analyseras och beskrivs gymnasieelevers framtidsberättelser och en diskussion förs om implikationerna för samhällskunskapsundervisningen. Analysen visar att elevernas berättelser om framtiden ofta har en eurocentrisk utgångspunkt och en genomgående pessimistisk ton. Berättelserna tar avstamp i samtida skeenden som klimatkrisen och pågående internationella konflikter. De flesta eleverna utesluter eller distanserar sig i berättelsen från det egna potentiella aktörskapet i framtiden. Två huvudsakliga implikationer för undervisningen diskuteras. För det första vikten av att samhällsundervisningen skapar möjligheter för eleverna att fördjupa förståelse av de egna möjligheterna till politisk påverkan i frågor som rör samhällets utveckling. Vi lyfter fram potentialen i att ta avstamp i ytterligare ämnesperspektiv från bland annat historia, geografi och religionskunskap när framtidsfrågor diskuteras. För det andra vikten av att eleverna ges möjlighet att i berättelser om framtiden skriva in sig själva som aktiva, engagerade och kunniga medborgare.

In this autumn issue of the JSSE, we are pleased to present five original articles. These contributions deal with social science education in different contexts and from different educational settings, reminding the reader of the heterogeneity of our common research field. Two of the articles deal with teacher training, two with considerations and understandings of teachers and one focusing on young peoples’ understanding of social issues. However, the similarities in the research contributions are also evident. All of the articles focus on the importance of inclusive, critical and balanced social science education in different ways and with different outsets. In times when democracy and human rights are being contested, it is important to highlight the role of democratic and civic education and what it can contribute with. 

Democratic school systems are expected to equip students with the knowledge, abilities, and attitudes needed for life as citizens, particularly through social science education. Disciplinary knowledge, derived from the academic counterparts to school subjects, is essential in developing these skills. However, research has also emphasized the importance of life-world perspectives, where students’ experiences are included and taken seriously in teaching. This study suggests that the theory of (civic) narrative competence can function as a bridge between the disciplinary domain and the life-world domain in its focus on how students’ civic reasoning can be developed through teaching. The article uses narrative theory to explore how the students’ civic narratives changed and became more nuanced after a teaching segment focusing on social and political trust. In the article, we demonstrate how the students’ personal experiences colored their interpretations and orientations before the teaching segment and how their civic narratives were developed through the implemented teaching, which provided them with concepts, a theoretical model, and empirical examples. We found that the students did not discard previous perceptions after the teaching segment, but integrated them into their new knowledge and orientations, thus integrating the life-world and disciplinary domains.