There are a number of skills that can be developed within the social studies curriculum, and a number of ways to teach these skills.  All of these skills are modeled by the educator for the purposes of creating thoughtful global citizens, as well as individuals well versed in how the human experience of the past is connected to the events of the present.  The following paragraphs will introduce two of the most important skills used in social studies to guide students in gaining meaning from subject content.  Also, a discussion on how these skills can be applied in a classroom environment will follow.

The first important skill social studies students must acquire in gaining important concepts, ideas, and connections relates to analysis of documents.  Some of the most useful and important documents to social studies are historical in nature—both primary and secondary resources.  Alan J. Singer (2003) states in Social Studies for Secondary Schools:  Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach that these documents are used specifically for students to learn how actual historians learn—through understanding overarching ideas, discovering connections between ideas, and forming conclusions based on information within the documents.  While these skills are essential for historians, they are needed by anyone studying the human experience.  These resources, referred to by Singer, not only include historical texts, but can encompass photographs, cartoons, songs, articles, and graphs as well.

The author continues his discussion by noting that educators must be masters of subject content in order to teach the skill of analyzing documents within social studies.  In addition, teachers must be familiar with state, city, and/or district curriculum standards in order to meet the needs of students when using document-based learning, or any learning strategy for that matter (Singer, 2003, p. 183).

Further, not all students can obtain the needed information to utilize analysis, synthesis, or evaluative skills simply from reading a text or looking at a photograph.  Sufficient scaffolding of the document’s content is needed in order for this information to be accessible by all students in the classroom (Robb, 2003).

Another important social studies learning skill to be addressed is questioning.  It is through questioning that a great deal of subject knowledge can be obtained.  Stephen Brookfield (1999) identifies the importance of discussion—a major setting for social studies questioning—in gaining meaning and purpose.  He further explains that learning to question effectively requires practice and thoughtfulness—both for the teacher and the student—so must be approached with care (p. 87).

There are many types of questions that can aid students in achieving purpose and meaning from social studies content.  Some types mentioned by Brookfield include those that ask for evidence, those that ask for the cause-effect relationship of specific ideas or events, and those that ask for students to synthesize (or construct) meaning from content (Brookfield, 1999).

Questions such as, “What does the author say in support of your argument?” ask for evidence to back up an answer given in the classroom.  Questions such as, “How might having our class size halved affect our discussion?” require students to analyze the impact of an event on the people involved.  Finally, questions such as, “What remains unresolved…about this topic?” invite students to recall ideas and events, break them down into components they can relate to, and reconstruct their own ideas about the most important ideas, key relationships, or opinions on a person’s claim (Brookfield, 1999).

The varied levels of questioning mentioned above allow students to acquire relevance from social studies content.  In addition, they utilize the concepts behind Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956) in doing so.  Bloom believes that constructing knowledge takes place through student performance at increasingly challenging cognitive levels.  In taking the question examples from Brookfield, evidence questions use skill level 1, which requires students to recall information presented; cause-effect questions use skill level 4, which requires analyzing information; and synthesis questions use skill level 6, which requires creating new ideas from provided or previously provided information (Bloom, 1956, as referenced in Overbaugh & Schultz, 2009).

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All of the above skills and strategies are central to effective and impacting learning within social studies curriculum and instruction.  The following paragraphs will demonstrate how analysis of documents and posing of discussion questions can be directly applied to the social studies classroom.  I will narrow the focus of this discussion on my student teaching experience during the Spring 2009 semester, when I was at an urban high school in New York City and taught in a tenth grade global history classroom.  Examples provided are actual activities conducted during the course of the semester.

First, in imparting social studies content through document-based learning I used primary sources as my focus.  In a lesson near the beginning of a unit on “The Spread of Communism,” I facilitated a group activity involving excerpts from the Yalta and Postdam Conference transcripts.  The purposes for using these sources were students to simulate the research of historians, to build on student reading skills, and for them to synthesize their own meaning from texts and other materials.  This lesson was presented as a groupwork activity in which students analyzed statements, section by section with the help of graphic organizers, to find the main objectives of each conference.  To further guide students in acquiring historical meaning from these very challenging documents, I included questions on the organizers to scaffold their comprehension.

At the end of the readings, students possessed completed outlines of the key goals from the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences—by which they could then identify and argue the origins of the Cold War.  To close the lesson, selected representatives from the Yalta group and from the Potsdam group shared their knowledge with the class, so that all learners could share in the access to valuable social studies subject knowledge.

Second, social studies subject knowledge was also achieved by way of class discussion.  It was during discussions that students were able to demonstrate their prior knowledge, build new knowledge, and form important connections within a historical context.  One example of such a discussion took place during a lesson on communist China.  This particular lesson opened with a discussion on how Mao Zedong rose to power—based on a reading excerpt about the topic.  I opened with some lower-level questions so as to determine what the class gained from the previous day’s lesson.  They were a little slow to recall information at first, so I provided wait time and asked another recall question to trigger their memories.  In doing so, a few students began to participate and demonstrate their recall.  It was at this point that I could ask more challenging questions in hope that the class would demonstrate comprehension of that day’s reading on Mao.

Finally, when I saw demonstration of that skill I questioned so as to encourage students to connect the ideas from the reading to the bigger picture ideas behind communism as an economic entity.  For the most part, I think this method of discussion created learning opportunities for most of my students, and I think it also somewhat resembled my demonstration of concepts illustrated by Bloom.

Finally, in building social studies content knowledge in my students, I also applied Bloom’s higher-level skill ideas

by using them in a performance assessment activity.  Toward the end of the “Spread of Communism” unit, I invited my students to demonstrate synthesis of knowledge acquired during the unit.  Essentially, students were faced with a situation—based on events studied in the unit—and expected to respond in one of three ways.  The situation involved U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s announcement of sending American troops to Vietnam to combat communism in that country.  My students were expected to demonstrate their understanding of communist ideals, capitalist resistance to those ideals, and their own feelings on the matter.  Ways in which they could accomplish this task were by writing letters to the President stating their opinions with supporting evidence, by creating political cartoons that provided evidence-supported viewpoints, or subway advertisements that demonstrated these same skills.  In completing this assignment, students built upon their knowledge, improved their critical thinking skills, and expressed their feelings with chosen media—thus making the unit more meaningful to them.

In closing, the acquisition of social studies knowledge far transcends the mere memorization of names and dates.  It demonstrates more than ability to score well on standardized tests—though that is important.  It also exceeds the need to solely understand the human experience in past societies.  The possession of social studies subject knowledge allows a person to better understand the world around him, it instills in him the meaning of being a global citizen, and it reveals to him how he can find answers to challenging questions about the world around him.  However, in order to do any of these things, the individual needs a teacher who possesses mastery of the subject taught, so that the important skills needed to achieve these abilities are within his reach.  The purpose of this essay—and the essays that follow—is to show how this equipping of knowledge is done.

References:

Bloom (1956), as referenced in Overbaugh, R. C. & Schultz, L. (2009). Bloom’s taxonomy.  Retrieved June 1, 2009, from Old Dominion University Web site: http://www.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm

Brookfield, S. (1999). Discussion as a way of teaching (pp. 85-102). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Robb, L. (2003). Teaching reading in social studies, science, and math. New York: Scholastic Professional Books.

Singer, A .J. (2003). Social Studies for secondary schools: teaching to learn, learning to teach.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

“Life is ten percent of what happens to me and ninety percent of how I react to it.”

Soon it will be the beginning of another semester at college.  As with every semester since the beginning of time (or for as long as I can remember, which is close), students have rushed around in stress-filled clouds, making sure they have all that they need to begin the new term.  Of the many tasks on their to-do lists, perhaps the most dreaded is paying a visit to the university bookstore.

The lines, the crowds, and – worst of all – the cost.  Each class requires at least two textbooks and many require additional workbooks.  Upon hunting for these revered educational tools, that all too familiar epiphany enters the students’ minds like flashes of lightning – used textbooks are cheaper!  Touchdown – they have found a loophole to beat the system.  However, it is an early celebration, because Murphy’s Law finds its way into the situation.  All the used books are gone – the mighty Casey has struck out.  The final element of the usual bookstore visit is the mantra heard by every morose student, “There must be some other way.”  Perhaps, there is!

As I previously commented on the potential of electronic readers in the classroom, they provide greater learning opportunities for students with varied needs and impairments than traditional textbooks.  Some of the features that enhance learning include spoken text, backlighting, increased text size, and space to take notes.  What a great technological breakthrough, right?

Well, maybe not so much.  There are at least two obstacles that create roadblocks in the adoption of eReaders.  First, introducing digital textbooks into schools to either supplement or replace printed copies is quite a large change for which not every educator may be ready.  Traditionally, students embrace innovation quicker than their parents’ generation – the age group of most educators (Zehr, 2009).

The second obstacle that prevents eReaders as replacements for textbooks is the students themselves.  A blog post by

Atlantic Wire states that college students are not purchasing eReaders with the same fervor manufacturers of the products expected (Horn, 2009).  Why not?  First, many student feel that traditional paper books provide for easier reading.  Second, they prefer to scrawl notes in the margins rather than the idea of electronic notes.  Finally, college students are disappointed that eReaders, in the end, don’t actually differ much with respect to cost over their old school counterparts.

In August 2008, the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG) reported that 75% of students preferred printed books over digital.  This statistic changed in the course of a year, with 70% of students feeling comfortable using eReaders – but only if cost isn’t a factor.  However, as seen above, it does.  Although PIRG does share that 38% of students would entertain sidestepping the cost of eReaders if they could access digital texts on their iPhones or other smart phones.  However, apps for e-texts just are not as available as necessary to do so on a widespread basis (Weinman, 2009).

In closing, while much of the information included here reports on facts and opinions from the post-secondary realm, Weinman suggests economic parallels between college adoption (or lack thereof) of eReaders as textbooks and student interest in the devices at the secondary level.  While the cost element would be taken on by the school districts rather than the students themselves, the other nuances of using eReaders reflect that students just may not yet be motivated to use this form of innovation in place of the old school printed learning aids.  Does this mean that textbooks will never be accepted as a replacement – or at the very least – a supplement to bound books in the classroom and the school libraries?  I don’t believe so, but eReaders should be gradually introduced into the learning environment so that students become comfortable with the devices.  As this gradual acclimation occurs, the multi-facted advantages I mentioned above can certainly improve achievement and confidence.  We as educators should motivate and not overwhelm.

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.”

What is the purpose of education?

There may be many answers to this question.  One such answer could state that education’s purpose is to prepare young men and women for the next steps in their lives, whether that be college or the working world.  This preparation can be defined as providing students with the skills, learning strategies, and knowledge they will need to successfully participate in a post-secondary or professional environment.   In other words, school should give men and women the tools they need to survive in an ever-changing and challenging world.  So, this definition begs the next question:  Does the current education system truly propel our students to that level?

The question posed above is one being asked by many people in the education field.  We are living in a time in which two “schools” of conflicting thought on pedagogy are butting heads against one another.  These concepts can, for the use of this discussion, be named “status quo” and “reform”.  It is also important to note both concepts draw upon the important trend of using data driven instruction.

For the most part, the status quo school of pedagogy places the importance of data driven instruction on the spirit of the standardized testing methods, mandated by each state, as the way to evaluate the effectiveness of learning and the sufficient achievement of students.  This standardized testing is the culmination of subject content presented during the academic year, and serves as the benchmark for whether or not students should proceed to the next grade level.

Conversely, the reform school of pedagogy draws upon the important elements of data driven instruction, but sees the scope of evaluating academic achievement as a more interactive, application-based endeavor.  Project-based learning – that requires practice and acquisition of cumulative learning strategies, scaffolded questioning – rooted in critical expounding of content learned, and authentic assessments – based on real world situations all contribute to a multi-facet method of evaluating student learning and preparedness for the next level of their education.

There exists a rather strong debate in education circles regarding which of these two concepts is the most beneficial for students,

and which one best prepares students for college and the working world.  Supporters of the status quo ideology often tend to think that the state structured standardized tests administered at key points in public education help hold schools and districts accountable to high quality learning.  These tests are seen as a reflection of this high quality and effectiveness.  No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislature often composes the majority of the motivation behind this accountability and assessment system.  As such, status quo educators believe this system to be sound in determining students’ preparedness for the global community and professional world that awaits them.  It provides requirements for highly qualified teachers in both learning strategies and in content knowledge in the subject areas they teach.  This accountability does indeed provide the first step in ensuring quality meaningful learning can occur in the classroom.

Reformers, however, are not so sure that the status quo system is really effective in preparing students.  Some reformers note a high average dropout rate as evidence that the status quo system is not working.  One reform supporter states this rate is approximately 30% – an alarming and astounding figure (Brogan, 2009).  Further, he reports this statistic costs the US economy around $350 billion per year in lost revenue.  Therefore, this is arguably not an effective pedagogical structure in the eyes of reformers.  Another source takes this claim of ineffectiveness further by mentioning that some of the 70% of students who do graduate high school wind up not being prepared to handle the rigors of collegiate studies.  The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development informs us, on Forbes.com, that the US is only fifteenth in industrialized nations when it comes to college graduation rates, and links much of this disparity to inadequate academic preparation prior to embarking in post-secondary studies (Mitchem, 2009).  Mitchem further wants to debunk the myth that the majority of the college dropout rate is less student financial hardship, as apparently has been the usual assumption.

With these criticisms of the status quo system in mind, how do reformers suggest current classrooms become improved?  One solution is a focus on global competitiveness through industrial preparedness.  It is believed by some reformers that focusing curriculum on activities that prepares students for economically lucrative and globally competitive industries will not only create more motivating instruction, but will also better prepare these future professionals in an ever-changing world – as well as fill the industrial voids that stand in the way of the US remaining a nation able to compete in the global market.  For example, President Obama’s Educate to Innovate campaign provides one avenue in which to achieve these goals.  The campaign believes that increasing interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) at the elementary and secondary levels, in addition to creating partnerships with top companies, foundations, non-profit organizations, and science/engineering groups along these same lines – will created a renewed motivation in education and the more applicable, project-based instruction reformers advocate (Newmark, 2009).

A second solution reformers suggest as improvements to the status quo of educational structure is the utilization of “new media” materials.  New media refers to web 2.0 and other digital and online tools, which can be applied to classroom strategy and content knowledge.  Proponents of new media in the classroom see its use as more relevant to students – due to their fascination with technology, more project based – therefore more applicable to real world situations, and better tools with which to assess genuine student learning.  In sum, reformers who support instruction through new media believe this methodology better prepares students for college and beyond that standardized testing can alone.  If you are a returning visitor to my website, you probably know to which school of pedagogy I most adhere.  While I am relatively new to new media instruction, it find it very intriguing and the possibilities to be seemingly endless.  For an example of new media as real world application through instruction, feel free to visit the Student Media Project page of this site by clicking HERE.

To conclude this discussion regarding the fork in the road with which present-day education structure is faced, I have experienced a relatively subtle power struggle occurring between traditional education and education reform – both on paper and in the classroom.  Through some of my student teaching experiences, I have actually conflicted with a classroom teacher regarding this very conflict (me being the reformer, of course).  The world is changing, and the most effective teachers are those who can change with it.  Doing so keeps education relevant to our students interests, and more importantly, keeps education relevant to the working world we live in.  Finally, staying relevant to the working world is something our students must be able to grow up and achieve if we, as a nation, are to remain competitive in the global community.  It’s for these reasons, in part, that I write much about technology in the classroom.  Let’s keep the discussion going, as it’s through our communication that we can maintain this relevancy.

So, does our current education system prepare students?  What do you think?

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”

(I am currently under the weather, and so am not feeling up to posting anything new this week.  However, because I want to give you something encouraging to read in the interim, I may post a few “Intermissions” and “Coming Soons” to keep you at the edge of your seat.

That being said, upcoming will be articles on assessing how well the traditional educational system prepares students for college and beyond.  Also, a follow up to Will Textbooks, As We Know Them, Become Extinct – from students’ point of view!)