Department of Learning, Teaching and Curriculum

Bellows, professor in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum, teaches social studies methods courses in elementary and middle grades teacher education programs. She has taught undergraduate courses in secondary social studies methods, classroom management, assessment, lesson design; graduate courses in assessment and elementary mathematics methods; and curriculum theory in the doctoral program. Bellows served as the Reich College of Education’s Faculty Fellow for Inclusive Excellence and promoted anti-oppressive and anti-racist curriculum and pedagogy reform and faculty development as a coordinator on the Inclusive Excellence Team at Appalachian State University from 2018-2022.

Before her arrival at App State in 2013, Bellows taught in Texas public schools for nine years and supervised preservice teachers for five years while earning a Ph.D. in social studies education from the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a M.S. in elementary education from Texas A&M University-Commerce, and a B.S. in elementary education from Stephen F. Austin State University.

Bellows currently serves on the Faculty Advisory Board for the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies at Appalachian State University, and is co-founder of the annual Elementary Social Studies Education National Summit, founded in 2019. She served as the chair for the North Carolina Professors of Social Studies Education, and in 2014, she was the Warren Faculty Fellow for the Holocaust Museum Houston.

She has published five book chapters and some of her articles have been published in Social Studies and the Young Learner, The Social Educator, Journal for Social Studies Research, American Educational History Journal, Journal of International Social Studies, Social Studies Research and Practice, and Social Education. Bellows co-edited a book titled Re(imagining) Elementary Social Studies Education: A Critical Reader. Her research broadly investigates intersections of critical social studies and teacher education, historical research as it relates to social studies education, and international inquiry about social studies education in Japan and Romania.

Bellows was recently selected as a Fulbright Scholar to conduct research in partnership with Babes-Bolyai University and the local schools in Cluj-Napoca, Romania in the 2023-2024 school year.

Connect with Dr. Bellows on LinkedIn.

Selected Publications

• Bodle, A., Bellows, E., Saylor, E., An, S., & Buchanan, L. B. (forthcoming, 2023). Religion, the First Amendment, and Public Schools: Stories from K-12 and Teacher Education Classrooms. Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, NC. 
• Bellows, E., & Buchanan, L. B. (2022). “Approaching the Teaching of War in the Elementary Classroom with Text Sets.” Social Studies and the Young Learner, 34(4). 
• Gallagher, J., Swalwell, K. & Bellows, E. (2020). “The QU Wedding: A Case of Problematic Social Studies Hidden in Plain Sight.” Social Studies Education Review, 9(1). 1-23. 
• Buchanan, L. B., Tschida, C., Bellows, E., & Shear, S. (2019). “Positioning Children's Literature to Confront the Persistent Avoidance of LGBTQ Topics among Elementary Preservice Teachers.” Journal for Social Studies Research. doi:10.1016/j.jssr.2019.01.006 
• Blanton, M., Cheek, A. E., & Bellows, E. (2019). “Real-Time Support: Using eCoaching to Increase Social Studies Preservice Teachers' Confidence to Teach.” Journal of Media Literacy Education, 11(2). 179-188. 
• Gallagher, J., Swalwell, K., & Bellows, E. (2019). “Pinning” with Pause: Supporting Teachers’ Critical Consumption on Sites of Curriculum Sharing.” Social Education, 83(4). 217-224. 
• Shear, S., Tschida, C., Bellows, E., Buchanan, L.B., & Saylor, E. (2018). (Re)Imagining Elementary Social Studies: A Controversial Issues Reader. Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, NC.

Dr. Bellows' curriculum vitae.