Thinking and learning are based on powerful concepts – ideas that identify, but also provoke and challenge. This collection is designed to ignite discussions among educators and learners at all levels about social studies concepts that generate curiosity, passion, and a sense of who we are and could be in this world. Contributors to this book, drawn from across the educational field, have focused on five selected concepts: democracy, diversity, ecological/environmental justice, multiculturalism, and social justice, unpacking and repacking each concept in powerful ways to exemplify their generative possibilities. Each author contextualizes their understandings within the broader philosophical, theoretical, and educational discourse, and explores these concepts from their unique perspective and through their multiple lenses. This collection seeks not to provide answers, but to invite readers into an ongoing dialogue about ideas that help us create meaning in the world.