Social Studies and Diversity Education : What We Do and Why We Do It [1 ed.] 9780203871447, 9780415996716

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Social Studies and Diversity Education

The preparation of social studies teachers is crucial not only to the project of good education, but, even more broadly, to the cultivation of a healthy democracy and the growth of a nation’s citizens. This one-of-a-kind resource features ideas from over 100 of our field’s most thoughtful teacher educators reflecting on their best practices and offering specific strategies through which future teachers can learn to teach, thus illuminating the careful planning and deep thinking that go into the preparation of social studies teachers. While concentrating on daily teaching realities such as lesson planning and meeting national, state, or provincial standards, each contributor also wrestles with the most important current issues on educating teachers for today’s increasingly diverse, complex, and global society. Features of this unique teaching resource include: • Volume sections that are arranged by both disciplinary organization and approach or activity. • Thoughtful introductory section essays that conceptualize each theme, providing a conscientious theoretical overview and analysis of each individual section. • Rich and concrete examples of best practice from some of the field’s most diverse and highly regarded scholars and teacher educators. • An index that identifies the appropriate teaching level and teacher education context and links the strategies and ideas that are presented in the essay to the relevant INTASC and NCSS standards for quick reference in classroom planning as well as institutional development and implementation. A much-needed addition to the field, this comprehensive volume will be of value to any teacher interested in social studies or diversity education across age groups and educational contexts. Elizabeth E. Heilman is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Ramona Fruja Amthor is a doctoral candidate in the Departments of Teacher Education and Sociology at Michigan State University. Matthew T. Missias is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University.

Social Studies and Diversity Education What We Do and Why We Do It

Edited by

Elizabeth E. Heilman with Ramona Fruja Amthor and Matthew T. Missias

First published 2010 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Social studies and diversity education : what we do and why we do it / edited by Elizabeth E. Heilman ; with Ramona Fruja Amthor and Matthew T. Missias. p. cm. 1. Social sciences—Study and teaching—United States. 2. Multicultural education—United States. 3. Critical pedagogy— United States. 4. Teachers—Training of—United States. I. Heilman, Elizabeth E. II. Amthor, Ramona Fruja. LB1584.S6369 2009 300.71’073—dc22 2009010084 ISBN 0-203-87144-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0-415-99671-6 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0-415-99672-4 (pbk) ISBN 10: 0-203-87144-8 (ebk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-99671-6 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-99672-3 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-203-87144-7 (ebk)

Contents

Acknowledgments

xiii

Foreword: Contribution to Teacher Education

xiv

MARILYN COCHRANSMITH

Foreword: Contribution to Social Studies

xvii

STEPHANIE VAN HOVER AND KEITH C. BARTON

Foreword: A Contribution to Multicultural Pedagogy

xviii

ALEXANDRA C. ROLFSMEYER AND ADAM J. GRETEMAN

Introduction: How to Use This Book

1

ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

Section 1: Purposes, Beliefs, and Contexts for Social Education

11

INTRODUCTION BY ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

1

Developing a Pedagogic Creed through Critical Social Reflection

15

WILLIAM GAUDELLI

2

The Metaphors We Teach By

19

MARGARET SMITH CROCCO

3

Exploring Three Orientations to the Social Studies

23

THOMAS FALLACE

4

Pedagogic Creed as Foundation

26

RONALD W. EVANS

5

The Social Studies Topical Index

30

PAUL ROBINSON

6

Exploring Taylorism and Its Continued Influence on Work and Schooling

33

E. WAYNE ROSS

7

Purposes, Possibilities, and Complexities of Teaching Secondary Social Studies HILARY G. CONKLIN

v

38

vi • Contents

8

Four-Way Street: Fusing Curriculum, Pedagogy, Content, and Purpose to Advance the Common Good

43

DAVE POWELL AND TODD S. HAWLEY

Section 2: Democratic Values and Government

47

INTRODUCTION BY AARON BODLE AND ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

9

Those Pesky Little Words: How to Teach Abstract Civic Concepts

50

BARBARA SLATER STERN

10

Understanding and Teaching Core Democratic Concepts

53

ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

11

Studying Authority in a Secondary Teacher Education Class

57

JUDITH L. PACE

12

Using Children’s Books to Explore Power, Tyranny, and Justice

63

RICH GIBSON AND E. WAYNE ROSS

13

Learning to Teach the Cultures, Covenants, and Controversies of Universal Human Rights

66

JOHN MYERS

14

Feelings Exploration in Social Justice Education

71

JEFF PASSE

15

Teaching Procedural Democracy in the Classroom

74

DAVID H. VAWTER

16

Preparing Teachers and Educating Citizens: The Simulated Congressional Hearing

77

TERRENCE C. MASON AND JENNIFER M. PONDER

17

Service Learning Field Placements as Community Based Instruction/Action

81

BRIAN SEVIER

Section 3: Evidence, Sources, and Interpretation in History

87

INTRODUCTION BY BRENDA TROFANENKO AND MATTHEW T. MISSIAS

18

Generating Effective Teaching through Primary Sources

90

THERESA M. MCCORMICK

19

Incorporating Archives in Social Studies Methods

93

FRANS H. DOPPEN

20

Historical Perspective, Causality, and Significance: The Historical Scene Investigation Project KATHLEEN OWINGS SWAN, KATHI KERN, AND MARK HOFER

96

Contents • vii

21

Writing from Visual Prompts: Animating Imagination for Social Studies and Diversity Education

101

DONALD S. BLUMENFELDJONES

22

Using Content Resources to Analyze a Historical Decision

105

SCOTT ALAN METZGER

23

The First Day of Class: Developing an Awareness of Inference in History and Culture

109

DAVID HICKS AND MELISSA LISANTI

24

Gazing on the Past: Examining the Pedagogical Purposes of Public History

113

BRENDA TROFANENKO

Section 4: History in Social Contexts

117

INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW T. MISSIAS AND MORGAN OTT

25

The Nature of Evidence and Interpretation in History

120

SCOTT W. DEWITT

26

A Boston Massacre in Room 202: Understanding the Construction of Historical Narratives

123

TIMOTHY D. SLEKAR

27

Oral Histories in Social Education

126

EDRIC C. JOHNSON

28

Designing an Interactive Learning Center Museum in the School Context

129

HILARY LANDORF AND ETHAN LOWENSTEIN

29

Scaffolding Conceptual Reasoning about History

133

DAVID GERWIN

30

Teaching Historical Understanding with Christopher Columbus

137

BENJAMIN JUSTICE

31

Addressing Subjectivity in Historical Thinking: Who was Christopher Columbus?

141

JENNIFER HAUVER JAMES

Section 5: Perspective Consciousness about Identity, Power, and Culture

145

INTRODUCTION BY RAMONA FRUJA AMTHOR AND ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

32

Exploring Identity, Commonality, and Difference

149

TRACY ROCK

33

Who Are We? Exploring Our Class as a Cultural Demographic JOHN D. HOGE

152

viii • Contents

34

It’s All in Your Name: Seeing Ourselves in Historical and Cultural Context

155

ÖZLEM SENSOY

35

Seeing the Hidden Curricula of Social Spaces and Places

159

ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

36

Teaching from a Critical Global Perspective: Investigating Power and Marginalization

164

BINAYA SUBEDI

37

The Family History Project: Uncovering the Personal as Political

167

NANCYE E. MCCRARY

38

Who Has a “Good” Family? Exploring Beliefs and Prejudices About Family Structures

170

TAMMY A. TURNERVORBECK

39

Representation, Power, and Stereotyping: A Lesson on Indigenous People and Sports Mascots

176

GLENABAH MARTINEZ

40

Breaking Down Barriers, Constructing Connections: Strategies for Connecting “Us” To “Them”

179

HEATHER SADLIER

41

A Meeting On the Congo: Race, Voice, and Representation

182

MERRY M. MERRYFIELD

42

Implicating Race in Students’ Learning How to Teach History

185

AVNER SEGALL

Section 6: Local and Global Communities and Economies

189

INTRODUCTION BY RAMONA FRUJA AMTHOR AND ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

43

Social Studies Is Everywhere: Developing Social Scientist Sensitivities

192

JANET ALLEMAN

44

Understanding Personal Choice and Structured Inequality as Aspects of Family Finance

196

DIANE S. ILLIG

45

The Race to the Bottom: An Introduction to Textile Manufacturing and Working Conditions in the Global Economy PETER MORAN

199

Contents • ix

46

Examining Privilege in Globalization

202

SANDRA SCHMIDT

47

Teaching Global Education in Seemingly Regional and National Curriculum

207

ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

48

“Baltimore and the World” Project: The Intersection of Local and Global Issues

211

TODD W. KENREICH

49

Teaching Current Events from a Global Perspective

215

TONI FUSS KIRKWOODTUCKER

50

Environment Toxins Near and Far: Health and Civic Responsibility

219

DAVID HURSH, CAMILLE MARTINA, AND MICHAEL FANTAUZZO

Section 7: Current Events and Controversial Issues

223

INTRODUCTION BY ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN AND KATIE GJERPEN

51

Teaching Student Teachers to Examine How Their Political Views Inform Their Teaching

226

DIANA E. HESS

52

Preparing Future Teachers and Citizens to Address Controversial Issues: The Four Corner Debate

230

THOMAS H. LEVINE

53

Good Discussions Don’t Just Happen: Verbal Questioning Skills

235

KENNETH E. VOGLER

54

Getting Students to Actively Follow the News

239

DEBORAH BYRNES

55

Teaching about Disasters Reported in the News

243

BRIAN LANAHAN

56

Issues-Centered Social Studies Unit Sampler

246

KIM E. KOEPPEN

57

The “Daily Dilemma”: Sharing Power with a Purpose

249

BETH C. RUBIN

58

Encouraging Transformative Understanding of Controversial Issues

252

BRUNA IRENE GRIMBERG

59

Social Studies Methods, Purpose, and the “Execution Class” TODD DINKELMAN

255

x • Contents

Section 8: Using a Range of Resources

259

INTRODUCTION BY RAMONA FRUJA AMTHOR AND ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

60

Modeling with Matryoshkas: Connecting Curriculum, Community, and Culture in the Classroom

263

NANCY P. GALLAVAN AND ELLEN KOTTLER

61

Motivating for Inquiry and Civic Participation through Primary Sources about Historical Peers

267

EULA FRESCH

62

Incorporating Visual Learning in the Classroom

270

BROOKE S. ORR AND SIGNIA WARNER

63

Textbook Analysis: Using James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me in Teacher Education

273

L. MARA DODGE

64

Teaching with and about Maps

277

AVNER SEGALL

65

Reinventing the Field Trip: Preservice Teachers Explore Museums and Historic Sites

283

ALAN S. MARCUS

66

Socratic Seminar: A Model for Film Discussion in the Social Studies

288

JEREMY D. STODDARD

67

Not Playing Around: Teaching Role-Plays in Social Education

292

WAYNE AU

68

Using Multicultural Literature in Teaching for Social Justice

296

SUNG CHOON PARK AND CYNTHIA A. TYSON

69

Voices of Our Community: Making Connections through Digital Stories

301

ELIZABETH K. WILSON AND VIVIAN WRIGHT

70

Modeling Technology-Based Social Studies Instruction: A Simulated WebQuest

304

CHRISTY G. KEELER

Section 9: Instruction and Curriculum Design

309

INTRODUCTION BY ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN AND MARK KISSLING

71

Providing Elementary Teachers with Experience of Children’s Thinking in Social Studies KEITH C. BARTON

312

Contents • xi

72

What to Teach, When, and Why: The Thoughtful Construction of the Curriculum Unit

316

ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

73

The Modeling Approach to Social Studies Teacher Education

320

MICHAEL P. MARINO AND BENJAMIN M. JACOBS

74

Instructional Planning and Practice through Microteaching

324

ANNELISE HALVORSEN

75

Approaching Curriculum Units as Terrains and Systems to Explore

329

PAUL SKILTONSYLVESTER

76

Teaching Teachers to Teach for Understanding in Social Studies Methods Classes

333

JOHN GUNN

77

Teaching Students to Use the Inquiry Method

337

JAMES M. HARTWICK

78

Comparing Visions: Do Our State Standards Align with the National Standards?

344

BARBARA FOULKS BOYD

79

Reflections on Learners and Learning in Early Field Experiences for Secondary Social Studies

350

SUSAN B. SEROTA AND LINDA BENNETT

80

Creating Units to Create Meaning Out of Social Studies Content

354

AUDREY GREEN ROGERS

81

Using Narrative to Reflect on the Process of Curriculum Enactment

358

M. GAIL HICKEY

Conclusion: The Present and Future of Teaching Methods in Social Studies and Diversity Education: A Critical Review

363

WONPYO HONG AND SUSAN A. ADLER

Appendix 1: Planning Instruction with Learning Disabilities in Mind

377

ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

Appendix 2: Building a Repertoire of Basic Instructional Strategies

388

ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

Appendix 3: Reading Comprehension Teaching Methods ELIZABETH E. HEILMAN

392

xii • Contents

Contributors

394

Index

399

Acknowledgments

This publication would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of numerous individuals and institutions. The College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies (CUFA-NCSS) endorsed collaborative sessions on the conference program to bring together teacher educators to share ideas, and provided a very important vote of confidence as these meetings led into the idea for this book. We would also like to thank Michigan State University College of Education for providing the sort of collegial environment and smart students that made this book possible. Teachers for a New Era (TNE), a landmark initiative designed to strengthen K-12 teaching by developing state-of-the-art programs at schools of education, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Annenberg Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, provided much needed and very appreciated basic support for the communications, research and editing components of the project. The work we present here will improve not only teaching at Michigan State University but also at many other schools, colleges and universities. Our editor, Catherine Bernard, who shared our vision for this new type of book, and whose ideas helped make the project even better, deserves special thanks. We would like to express our appreciation for the talented cast of scholars who have contributed to this book. We are grateful for their wisdom and insight as they often worked through several drafts. Research assistants, Alexander R. Wang, Morgan Ott, Katie Gjerpen, Adam Greteman, Alexandra Rothsmeyer, Mark Kissling, and Aaron Bodle provided valuable editorial assistance and we thank them for their careful work. Finally, we would also like to thank not only our own students but also the students of the writers of these chapters because it is our students who have made us into teachers. We owe you all our sincerest thanks.

xiii

Foreword Contribution to Teacher Education Marilyn Cochran-Smith

It is not an exaggeration to say that this book is unique. The heart of the book is 81 relatively short essays that reflect the ideas, strategies, reflections, methods, and commitments of more than one hundred faculty members who teach social studies, social sciences methods courses, and multicultural education in teacher education programs across the United States and Canada. These are divided into nine sections that collectively address the most important current issues involved in educating teachers for today’s increasingly diverse, complex, and global society, including: the controversial purposes of education in a democratic society, the role of evidence and imagination in the construction of histories, shifting roles and identities among differently-positioned players and power brokers in a global society, and the selection of resources and perspectives in social studies curriculum and instruction. Each essay in this volume is a window into the thinking and rethinking of one social studies or diversity educator at one particular point in time, coupled with a handy index that identifies the appropriate teacher education context (either elementary or secondary) and links the strategies and ideas that are presented in the essay to the relevant INTASC and NCSS standards. I found nearly all of the individual essays insightful and engaging. They revealed what is really inside social studies methods courses and how social studies educators think deeply about and connect various purposes, readings and class activities. I found some of the essays genuinely eye-opening and compelling in their willingness to expose an individual professor’s honest rethinking of earlier and what he or she now terms inappropriate or impositional approaches to social studies education. I also truly appreciated the community aspects of social studies education that the essays reveal. Several of the essays directly attribute the ideas for activities or methods to colleagues or mentors; others go to great pains to state that the author is not the original creator of the particular activity or assignment that is described. Together, these suggest that social studies education is a jointly-constructed and evolving activity wherein purposes blend with resources and strategies over time and in various contexts. One of the most striking things about these essays, taken together, is the rich picture of university-level teaching they reveal and the extent of thoughtful planning and pondering that go into the preparation of the nation’s social studies and social sciences teachers. This rich picture is remarkably different from the image of teaching that is prevalent in many current critiques of teacher education. A recent report produced by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), for example, was titled What Education Schools Aren’t Teaching about Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren’t Learning (Walsh et al., 2006, emphasis in original). The report’s conclusion, that “most education schools are not teaching the science of reading” (p. 22), was based on a study of Internet-obtained syllabi for required reading courses for a stratified random sample of 72 U.S. xiv

Contribution to Teacher Education • xv

institutions with education schools. Each course/institution was rated by NCTQ on quality of required texts, course objectives and lecture time, and kinds of assignments required of students to determine “the degree to which the five components of good reading instruction were taught (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension)” (p. 17). The controversy that ensued following the release of this report clearly involved many issues too complex and numerous to discuss here, including what it means to learn to read, what strategies and materials promote this learning, the politics of knowledge for and about teaching, and legitimation of knowledge sources in the teacher education curriculum. In addition, this controversy is entangled with profoundly disputed ideas about who should control teachers’ work and whether (or how) the teacher education curriculum should function as a control mechanism. The point I want to make here, however, is that this report and some others similar to it, assume that teaching and learning in teacher education methods courses can be captured by crude quantitative appraisal of a syllabus in terms of its compliance with an external and static notion of scientific knowledge about reading. In contrast, the essays in this volume make it clear that what happens in a social studies education course depends in large part on the intentions and evolving knowledge of the professor, the prior experiences and responses of the teacher candidates taking the course, the sense they make together of the materials and activities (such as viewing a film or writing an individual statement about pedagogy) that are part of the course, and how all of this plays at a particular time and in a particular context. In this sense, the essays in this volume make it clear that the “content” of teacher education methods courses, whether in reading or social studies, is dynamic and fluid, responsive to the changing demands of an increasingly diverse and global society, and also responsive to the questions and issues that teacher candidates bring with them to the courses. Reading across the essays reveals that teaching in a teacher education program, like teaching in a K-12 classroom, is an intellectual activity in which teachers pose problems and dilemmas and then struggle to resolve these in their day to day work with students rather than an activity in which teachers transmit predetermined content to students who then give that content back for evaluation of its conformity with the original. Not one of the 81 essays in this book is about simple transmission of content (or ways to aid social studies teachers in more efficient transmission of knowledge). Rather, all of them are about helping teacher candidates analyze, interpret, critique, compare and connect various ideas and multiple perspectives to one another. There is no question in my mind that this book will be of great value in teacher education and particularly for those in teacher education who are interested in the idea of teacher education for social justice. By its very nature social studies education takes up directly many of the questions and issues involved in contemporary theories of social justice. Currently, the most important of these have to do with how to conceptualize the relationship between the notion of distributive justice that is central to modern liberal democracies, on one hand, and, on the other hand, contemporary struggles for the recognition of social groups based on culture, race, gender, religion, nationality, language, sexual orientation, and ability/disability—in short, in relation to the politics of identity and difference. In my view (Cochran-Smith, in press), teacher education for social justice must connect the key ideas of distributive justice, which locates equality and autonomy at the center of democratic societies (Howe, 1997, 1998), with current political struggles for recognition, which challenge the school and knowledge structures that reinforce disrespect and oppression of social groups (King, 2006). Applying these concepts to the day-to-day work of teaching and teacher education is difficult. In this work, there are ongoing and on-the-ground tensions between, for example, the

xvi • Marilyn Cochran-Smith

idea of a knowledge and skills base that all new teachers should know, on one hand, and acknowledgement that school knowledge and curricula historically have been constructed in ways that privilege some cultural and racial groups and dismiss the knowledge traditions of other groups; between a curriculum that promotes what some presume to be core civic democratic values, on one hand, and a curriculum that explores a range of cultural positions about participation itself, on the other; and between efforts to provide educational services and modes of instruction that support the learning of individuals and social/cultural/racial groups, on one hand, and efforts to avoid stereotyping and essentializing particular groups, on the other. The essays in this book take up many of these questions directly and thus make an invaluable contribution to teacher education, and more particularly to teacher education for social justice. References Cochran-Smith, M. (in press). Toward a theory of teacher education for social justice. In Fullan, M., Hargreaves, A., Hopkins, D., & Lieberman, A. (Eds.), The international handbook of educational change (2nd ed.), London: Springer. Howe, K. (1997). Understanding equal educational opportunity: Social justice, democracy, and schooling. New York: Teachers College Press. Howe, K. (1998). The interpretive turn and the new debate in education. Educational Researcher, 27(8), 13–20. King, J. (2008). Critical and qualitative researching teacher education: A blues epistemology, a reason for knowing for cultural well-being. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman Nemser, & J. McIntyre (Eds.), Handbook of research on teacher education: Enduring issues in changing contexts (pp. 1094–1135). Mahwaeh, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Foreword Contribution to Social Studies Stephanie van Hover and Keith C. Barton

We’re thrilled to see this collection of strategies for educating social studies teachers. For most of us who specialize in social studies, preparing teachers is at the heart of our work, and we usually devote the largest—and most rewarding—portion of our time to teaching methods courses and supervising field placements. These are the experiences that form the centerpiece of our teacher preparation programs, the times when we most fully explore the intersection of content and pedagogy. And we all know this is challenging work, as we set out to confront our students’ prior ideas, unsettle their assumptions, and extend their thinking—all while proving them with practical techniques, scaffolding their attempts to learn to teach, and reassuring them in the face of their own challenges. But how do we actually go about this? What are the ideas, strategies, and techniques that we use to prepare these future social studies teachers? Classroom teachers often purport to love teaching because they can “close their door and teach,” yet, at the same time, they complain of isolation and lack of collegiality in the teaching profession. Methods instructors face a similar problem: Most of us enjoy closing the door and working with preservice teachers, but we spend too little time talking to each other about how we do that. Sometimes, we’re the only methods instructors at our institutions (or the only ones at our grade levels), and even when we get together with peers at nearby universities, we tend to talk about state-level directives rather than classroom-level strategies. And at national meetings, there always seem to be more pressing issues—the theory, research, and policy that form the core of most sessions. It doesn’t have to be that way. Over the past few years, there have been increasing opportunities to discuss how we teach methods courses at the annual meetings of the College and University Faculty Association of the National Council for the Social Studies. We’ve scheduled collaborative sessions for informal discussions, and there have been a number of more formal sessions devoted to methods courses. These chapters are, in part, an outgrowth of those efforts, and Elizabeth Heilman deserves a great deal of credit for leading the discussions, initiating the idea of a book, and shepherding it through to completion—no small task considering how many people have contributed to it! This book is a much-needed addition to the field, and the ideas presented here provide a unique opportunity to foster conversation, to engage us in dialogue about what it is we do as methods professors. Like any teaching ideas, these are likely to take on lives of their own, becoming modified as others adapt them to their own students and their own teaching styles. The strategies and their modifications—and the student learning that results—will no doubt lead to rich discussion in our field for many years to come.

xvii

Foreword A Contribution to Multicultural Pedagogy Alexandra C. Rolfsmeyer and Adam J. Greteman

One of the most important and challenging tasks facing educators is to confront students’ underlying beliefs and assumptions at the same time as they convey necessary knowledge and techniques. This is equally true when educating K-12 students and preservice teachers. As teachers and as emerging scholars within teacher education, we value this book as a much needed “one-stop-shop” to a variety of issues that emerge within social studies and multicultural education. It engages these issues, neither through disconnected theoretical arguments nor a sole focus on practical lessons, but in a merging of the theoretical and practical in a way that simultaneously engages important theoretical debates and ways—methods—to challenge, provoke, and prepare teachers for the ever-globalizing world. The value of this book for multicultural education in particular is immense, providing the reader with chapters that address a whole host of concerns, both conceptual and practical, in the ever-evolving field. From chapters providing insight on how to address issues of difference so that students will begin to implicate themselves in various issues, to activities that open up conversation on cultural diversity and privilege, readers see new possibilities for multicultural education. These possibilities move multicultural education toward a discourse that engages the complexity of intersections and the variety of ways in which such issues can be engaged, whether that is within the K-12 classroom or the preservice teacher education classroom. This book, in a sense, is a book of public pedagogy where each contributor provides a glimpse into their classroom—the intimate relations between themselves and their students, their successes and failures—to open up dialogue and possibilities for all of us who work in the preparation of teachers to work with issues of social justice, and so that we may meaningfully employ multicultural education in our own classrooms. Yet, this contribution to public pedagogy is unique as it engages pedagogical strategies, methods, and issues particular to social studies and multicultural education. This volume then, is an important step toward growing a comprehensive body of knowledge regarding social studies and multicultural teacher education with express intent on fostering an environment focused on and dedicated to the multiple facets of social justice. It opens the door to discussion, the sharing and consideration of diverse ideas, and modification of current techniques, all of which are essential to the development of more effective, meaningful, and accessible strategies to be utilized by up-and-coming professionals, the existing teaching force, and anyone interested in global issues.

xviii

Introduction How to Use This Book Elizabeth E. Heilman

This book is full of ideas for teachers interested in social studies or diversity education across age groups and educational contexts. In each chapter, a teacher takes you through a wide range of learning, and reading each section takes you through the complete teaching process from first thinking about the purposes for your teaching to finally teaching a full-fledged curriculum unit. Also, with its indexes related to NCSS standards and INTASC accreditation, the book can aid program development and implementation. Although we originally thought the collection would be mainly for teacher educators, we discovered that in most of these chapters, instructors showcased ideas that were either intended for K-12 teaching or readily adaptable for it. We noticed that most lessons that worked well in a high school class would work just as well in a university setting because the ideas and strategies are equally useful across contexts because different age groups engage them in particular ways. As you look through the book you will thus notice that each chapter lists the contexts for which the ideas are relevant (K-6; 7–12; elementary or secondary teacher education; multicultural education; university). The authors go beyond merely providing lesson ideas; they also share their thinking about why they teach this way and challenges they have faced, and thus model reflective practice. This is important, since in work with preservice teachers, many instructors find that narratives about teaching are one of the most powerful resources for learning. Yet good quality reflective narratives about social studies and diversity education have been hard to find and have been isolated in different collections. In the present book, however, teachers can now learn from the voices of more than 100 top-notch teachers collected in one place. The preparation of teachers, especially as they get ready to teach social studies and be responsive multicultural educators in our schools and colleges, is crucial not only to the project of good education, but even more broadly, to the cultivation of healthy democracy and the growth of the nation’s citizens. Across the United States and Canada, many teacher educators and university instructional leaders have taken this truism to heart and have developed highly effective and thoughtful teaching, refined and chiseled through years of opportunities to review their goals and assumptions in light of teaching practices. Exemplary teachers often share ideas with colleagues at their own schools and earnestly discuss visions and values. It is also common for colleagues to share an assignment and offer an encouraging “Hey, this is a great lesson!” with colleagues in other classrooms, schools, or universities. Yet the context for such sharing is usually informal and its scope has been quite limited before this book came to be. While everyone is not equally thoughtful, nor does everything well—nor does the same things well—collectively we have immense wisdom, which is showcased in this book. The broad theme of this volume is social studies and diversity. Across this broad spectrum, the essays collected in this volume inquire into the full richness and challenges of the endeavor.

1

2 • Elizabeth E. Heilman

They take up high-minded questions such as “What does it mean to teach and learn?” or “What social, cultural, and economic visions are produced and reproduced through curriculum and teaching?” and make them tangible through their concretization in real-life classrooms and successful teaching. These ideas and the reflections that surround them allow teachers to hone disciplinary understanding as well as develop pedagogical content knowledge; they offer muchneeded solid instructional strategies and the opportunity to develop and evaluate lessons and units; they prompt teachers to understand students and communities; they demonstrate the need to teach about aspects of our past and current society in its multiple relationships to meaning, identity, culture, and power, and to do so through a variety of theoretical lenses. The essays in this volume thus illuminate the many ways teachers engage daily in sophisticated acts—they wrestle with high-minded questions pertaining to the sociocultural, philosophical, and historical aspects of education while also enacting the seemingly “pedestrian skills” such as how to use a film, conduct a simulation, plan a lesson, and use state standards. The collection is comprised of nine sections 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Purposes, Beliefs, and Contexts for Social Education Democratic Values and Government Evidence, Sources, and Interpretation in History History in Social Contexts Perspective Consciousness about Identity, Power, and Culture Local and Global Communities and Economies Current Events and Controversial Issues Using a Range of Resources Instruction and Curriculum Design

The richness and diversity of the educational enterprise and thus of the contributions in this book is reflected in its organization and presentation. The nine major sections showcase the multiple epistemological frames for social studies and diversity education reflective of the field. For example, social studies and diversity teacher education can be organized by disciplines such as history and economics; it can be organized by activities, such as creating a course framework, teaching lessons, using resources, developing criticality, and so on; it can be organized according to issues such as imagination and positionality; it can even be organized in a constructivist, expanding horizons paradigm moving from self to local community then out to the nation and the globe. All of these ways of thinking are reflected in the book in general, and the sections in particular. Specifically, some sections are based primarily on a disciplinary organization, such as section 3, “Evidence, Sources, and Interpretation in History,” others by activity, such as section 9,“Instruction and Curriculum Design”; still others combine approaches, as in section 6, “Local and Global Communities and Economies,” and explore disciplinary topics through a constructivist lens. Each section is both rich and coherent and is introduced with a scholarly essay that provides a theoretical overview and explication of this aspect of teacher education as it scaffolds and introduces for the reader the essays to come. The short introductions to each section conceptualize each theme and explain how we weave together the individual contributions, and so chapters are ordered deliberately and conceptually within the sections. For example, section 2 on “Democratic Values and Government” moves from theory to practice and begins with chapters on democratic concepts and ends with a lesson about taking social action. In turn, section 9, “Instruction and Curriculum Design” begins with

Introduction • 3

a chapter on children’s thinking and prior knowledge and ends with a chapter describing the full enactment of a curriculum unit. Using this Book for Social Studies Teacher Education Each instructor will use this book in his or her own way and according to the specific demands of different courses and teaching contexts. The readings and assignments can be readily integrated into any existing social studies methods or multicultural education class, enriching the syllabi that are already in use. At the same time, however, this book has also been designed to be used as a core textbook to provide the guiding framework for a university class. To use the book in this way, first select one of the opening week assignments (chapters 2, 23, 33, 38) for when students come to class without having done any prior reading. For your second class, select an assignment from section 1 and ask students to read all or most of the chapters in this section. Next, spend 2 weeks on each of sections 2 through 9. Do the activities in class and select chapters that are most consistent with your goals as an instructor. Sometimes you can use more than one idea per class session if your class is more than one hour long. Use the chapters in section 9 intermittently throughout the semester depending on the nature of your requirements for field placements or practicum experiences, and whether or not you will be doing microteaching or developing lessons and curriculum units. Readings and Assignments Many of the class lessons and assignments require additional readings. Once you have made choices about your course lessons and assignments, locate these articles and book chapters and create a course packet or make the supplementary readings available through a Web site or an online course utility. Many of the resources are available through Web sites that have been provided and through databases. If you have trouble locating a resource, you can e-mail the authors. There are many options for course assignments in each section and you can choose or allow students to choose when to do the written product associated with a chapter. You also can provide additional choices for students from a short list of some of these assignments or readings that you do not address during class time. A note to students: Even if your instructor does not ask you to read all of these chapters, this book is highly valuable. Do not sell it at the end of the semester—it’s a hefty resource full of ideas for your classroom teaching! Using this Book for Diversity/Multicultural Education To use this book as a textbook in multicultural education, again, first select one of the opening week assignments (chapters 2, 33, 38, and the multicultural adaptation for chapter 23) for when students come to class without having done any prior reading. Next, spend 3 weeks on each of sections 5 through 8 and select several chapters from sections 3 and 4. Again, do the activities in class and select chapters that are most consistent with your goals as an instructor. A growing body of research shows that preservice teachers are more likely to view differences of race, culture, social class, and ability as a problem rather than a resource, and, further, that preservice teachers have trouble understanding both privilege and disadvantage and instead tend to explain performance through motivation and talent. Even more worrisome, many teachers

4 • Elizabeth E. Heilman

do not believe that students of all races, social classes, and ethnic backgrounds can learn at high levels. We recommend therefore, that you supplement this textbook with an additional central reading on this issue such as Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (2000) by Geneva Gay; The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children by Gloria Ladson-Billings; or We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know: White Teachers, Multiracial Schools (1999) by Gary R. Howard and Sonia Nieto. Each of these books is outstanding. The chapters that can be used in multicultural education are: 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 18, 21, 25, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 58, 60, 63, 67, 68, 69. Using this Book to Foster Reflective Teaching and Self-Study This book is also a valuable resource for promoting reflective practice and for courses that focus on teacher reflection, practitioner research, and self-study. The transparency, diversity, and richness of the reflections are what make this book distinctive. This is an intimate book that gives you the feeling of gaining personal advice as well as being brought into the process of posing and resolving problems of practice, and learning how to be oriented toward teaching not as a set of mastered skills but as an ongoing process of self-scrutiny and growth. Teacher educators and educational researchers (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Ball, 2000; Francis, 1995; Schon, 1987) have increasingly emphasized the fundamental importance of developing reflective teachers who engage in self-study. What is Self-Study? What Is Reflective Practice? Dinkelman (2003) describes self-study as “intentional and systematic inquiry into one’s own practice” (p. 8). How do you start? Loughran suggests that teachers begin with a “dilemma of practice,” an occasion during which they experience “dissonance between beliefs and practice” (2003, p. 143), More broadly, Zeichner and Liston (1996) describe reflection, as “that which involves active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or practice in light of the reasons that support it and the further consequences to which it leads” and they stress that reflection is not an activity or a procedure but much more deeply, it is a foundational orientation to teaching with open-mindedness, responsibility, and wholeheartedness (pp. 9–10). Yet, at the same time research also shows that although new teachers believe reflective practice is very worthwhile they often don’t engage in it. We have all seen “old timer” teachers who seem to use the same lessons, books, words, and even body movements and gestures year after year. Such a teacher, the joke goes, doesn’t have 30 years of experience, she just has the same year of experience over and over. Because reflective practice is not easy to foster, many argue that is crucial for teacher educators to model reflective practice (Britzman 1986, Hoban, 1997; Loughran, 2003; Segall, 2002). As Dinkelman argues, “If indeed students learn from the methods and manner of their teachers, and reflective thinking is an aim of instruction, then teachers should consider the ways in which their own work models reflective thinking. Simply put, students learn from watching their teachers reflect” (p. 11). Three Dimensions of Reflection I recommend that you use three dimensions of reflection. First, the chapters provide inspirational reflection from the authors themselves. The teaching intentions are revealed to students before

Introduction • 5

they engage in the lesson and so they will see the rationale and planning modeled before they experience the teaching. This makes the teaching somewhat naked and the intentions transparent but that this precisely the aim. With this book the Wizard of Oz comes out from behind his curtain and we see the levers that create the magic. Next, I suggest that as the teacher you engage the class in enacted reflection by asking them how the teaching or assignment went for them compared with what was described in the text. Finally, ask students for a projected reflection. Ask them to consider how they imagine having this problem or using this idea in their future work. • The Inspirational Reflection: Before the Teaching • The Enacted Reflected: About the Teaching • The Projected Reflection: For Future Teaching Eight Themes of Reflection The chapters in this book are diverse and they feature a range of different themes and foci that occur during teaching inspiration, enactment, and future projection. Though few chapters feature all of these kinds of reflections, most showcase several. Collectively the book provides a rich portrait of possible ways to think about teaching. You can use this typology of reflection both to analyze the chapters, and to generate discussion about your own teaching. This typology can also help students consider what to address when writing their own reflections. Personal reflections: the writers reveal what they felt about what they were doing and how the experience fit into or conflicted with their particular teacher values and identity. Exploratory reflections: the writers reveal the range of ways in which the nature of their teaching problem can be understood. Contextual reflections: the writers consider the influence that particular teaching places, spaces, contexts, and students can have. Theoretical reflections: the writers explore or reveal the theories behind their own intentions and also explore the theories they are attempting to teach. Ethical reflections: the writers wrestle with issues of right and wrong, fairness and justice, professionalism and standards, and related moral issues as they try to do the right thing. Critical reflections: the writers explore the role of explicit and implicit power relations in their teaching and the implications for democratic ideals. Technical reflections: the writers provide explicit details about the classroom practices and materials they find effective. Recursive reflections: writers point out their still ongoing questions about their teaching. Using This Book to Generate Future Theory and Research This book illustrates the patterns of contemporary teaching with regard to social studies and diversity education, revealing dominant and emerging strategies and discourses that shape citizenship education in schools. It is also a text that showcases narrative and personal approaches to improve teaching. We propose further research that addresses social studies and multicultural teacher education in both narrative and dialogic terms. Research, such as Deborah Britzman’s (1991) Practice Makes Practice, or Erica McWilliams’s (1994) In Broken Images: Feminist Tales for a Different Teacher Education can provide starting points for rethinking what it means to learn

6 • Elizabeth E. Heilman

to teach since both make arguments for dialogical ways of conceptualizing teacher thinking; yet, they do not present as texts on social studies or multicultural education. Studies that attend to learning to teach in an emotional and psychoanalytic frame are also rarely used in social studies or multicultural teacher education. We propose further research that will make use of this paradigm and provide illustrative depictions of emotional and personal struggles in teaching that are inspired by this book. One of the pressing challenges for social studies and diversity teacher educators is to identify the ideas, thinkers, concepts, issues, strategies, and practices that actually serve as the bases of professional knowledge. Our practice is often not the same as our theories. Further, the richness of ideas in this book suggests that our textbooks and our theories are pallid and somewhat narrow compared to our teacher education practice. This book can serve as starting point for theoreticians interested in exploring practice in order to summarize our best practices and in order to reveal theory. Given what we do, what do we believe? Of course, in seeking commonalties in professional knowledge we would face a substantial challenge. The topics in this book are all of interest to teacher educators and teachers alike. There are, nevertheless, topics of particular interest to teacher educators, and there are also many topics and stances that are deeply contested within and across these communities. The chapters in this book serve as a form of “data” and as a kind of snapshot of the field. Researchers can explore these chapters with an analytical lens in order to consider questions like these: • What is the state of the field? • What are common and contested ways of teaching about social studies and diversity in teacher education? • In what sorts of ways can these teaching ideas be classified? What heuristics are suggested? • What are the key influences on the writers? • What chapters feature ideas that should be replicated and studied? • What are the possible future directions for social studies and diversity teacher education? • What unanswered questions do these chapters inspire? • What if any methods for evaluating students and courses might be suggested by the ideas in this book? • Which issues should be studied through larger-scale and replication studies? • What topics would be best explored through longitudinal studies? • How can studies be more attentive to describing multiple outcomes? • How similar are the effective methods across content areas? • To what extent are successful methods transferable across K-6 and 7-12 and higher education? • How do teacher solve problems of practice in social studies and diversity education? This book is valuable not for its capacity to provide definitive answers to these question, but as a resource in helping us begin to ask them. Using this Book for K-12 Classroom Teaching We have created all of the indexing and topic terms to make this easy for classroom teachers to use. You can explore the chapters for areas of interest according to levels and topics. The chapters that can be used in K-6 are: 9, 12, 14, 18, 21, 24, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 37, 38, 40, 45, 47, 60, 61, 62, 64, 70, 71, 75, 76.

Introduction • 7

Those that can be used in 7–12 are: 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 75, 76. 77. Using This Book to Improve Practice According to NCSS and ITASC Standards Below we list the book chapters according to the 10 themes that form the framework of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) standards: Culture The study of culture prepares students to answer questions such as these: What are the common characteristics of different cultures? How do belief systems, such as religion or political ideals influence other parts of the culture? How does the culture change to accommodate different ideas and beliefs? What does language tell us about the culture? In schools, this theme typically appears in units and courses dealing with geography, history, sociology, and anthropology, as well as multicultural topics across the curriculum. Chapters 14, 19, 23, 24, 27, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 41, 47, 49, 60, 65, 68, 76, 78, 80 Time, Continuity, and Change Human beings seek to understand their historical roots and to locate themselves in time. Knowing how to read and reconstruct the past allows one to develop a historical perspective and to answer questions such as these: Who am I? What happened in the past? How am I connected to those in the past? How has the world changed and how might it change in the future? Why does our personal sense of relatedness to the past change? This theme typically appears in history courses and others that draw upon historical knowledge and habits. Chapters 5, 6, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 35, 37, 41, 42, 48, 49, 50, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 71, 74, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81 People, Places, and Environments The study of people, places, and human–environment interactions assists students as they create their spatial views and geographic perspectives of the world beyond their personal locations. Students need the knowledge, skills, and understanding to answer questions such as these: Where are things located? Why are they located where they are? What do we mean by “region”? How do landforms change? What implications do these changes have for people? In schools, this theme typically appears in units and courses dealing with area studies and geography. Chapters 28, 36, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 58, 60, 64, 65, 67, 69, 74, 76, 78, 80 Individual Development and Identity Personal identity is shaped by one’s culture, by groups, and by institutional influences. Students should consider such questions as these: How do people learn? Why do people behave as they do? What influences how people learn, perceive, and grow? How do people meet their basic needs in a variety of contexts? How do individuals develop from youth to adulthood? In schools, this theme typically appears in units and courses dealing with psychology and anthropology.

8 • Elizabeth E. Heilman

Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 14, 18, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 47, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 66, 68, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80 Individuals, Groups, and Institutions Institutions such as schools, churches, families, government agencies, and the courts play an integral role in people’s lives. It is important that students learn how institutions are formed, what controls and influences them, how they influence individuals and culture, and how they are maintained or changed. Students may address questions such as these: What is the role of institutions in this and other societies? How am I influenced by institutions? How do institutions change? What is my role in institutional change? In schools this theme typically appears in units and courses dealing with sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, and history. Chapters 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 28, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 44, 46, 50, 55, 56, 66, 67, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80 Power, Authority, and Governance Understanding the historical development of structures of power, authority, and governance and their evolving functions in contemporary U.S. society and other parts of the world is essential for developing civic competence. In exploring this theme, students confront questions such as: What is power? What forms does it take? Who holds it? How is it gained, used, and justified? What is legitimate authority? How are governments created, structured, maintained, and changed? How can individual rights be protected within the context of majority rule? In schools, this theme typically appears in units and courses dealing with government, politics, political science, history, law, and other social sciences. Chapters 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 24, 30, 35, 37, 39, 40, 46, 47, 51, 57, 58, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 74, 76, 78, 80 Production, Distribution, and Consumption Because people have wants that often exceed the resources available to them, a variety of ways have evolved to answer such questions as: What is to be produced? How is production to be organized? How are goods and services to be distributed? What is the most effective allocation of the factors of production (land, labor, capital, and management)? In schools, this theme typically appears in units and courses dealing with economic concepts and issues. Chapters 6, 12, 40, 44, 46, 47, 74, 76, 78, 80 Science, Technology, and Society Modern life as we know it would be impossible without technology and the science that supports it. But technology brings with it many questions: Is new technology always better than old? What can we learn from the past about how new technologies result in broader social change, some of which is unanticipated? How can we cope with the ever-increasing pace of change? How can we manage technology so that the greatest number of people benefit from it? How can we preserve our fundamental values and beliefs in the midst of technological change? This theme draws upon the natural and physical sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, and appears in a variety of social studies courses, including history, geography, economics, civics, and government. Chapters 6, 50, 62, 69, 70, 76, 78, 80

Introduction • 9

Global Connections The realities of global interdependence require understanding the increasingly important and diverse global connections among world societies and the frequent tension between national interests and global priorities. Students will need to be able to address such international issues as health care, the environment, human rights, economic competition and interdependence, ageold ethnic enmities, and political and military alliances. This theme typically appears in units or courses dealing with geography, culture, and economics, but may also draw upon the natural and physical sciences and the humanities. Chapters 13, 36, 41, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 55, 76, 78, 80 Civic Ideals and Practices An understanding of civic ideals and practices of citizenship is critical to full participation in society and is a central purpose of the social studies. Students confront such questions as: What is civic participation and how can I be involved? How has the meaning of citizenship evolved? What is the balance between rights and responsibilities? What is the role of the citizen in the community and the nation, and as a member of the world community? How can I make a positive difference? In schools, this theme typically appears in units or courses dealing with history, political science, cultural anthropology, and fields such as global studies, law-related education, and the humanities. Chapters 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 33, 35, 37, 38, 40, 45, 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 57, 61, 62, 68, 73, 76, 78, 79, 80 INTASC For the last two decades, paralleling the movement toward developing curriculum standards for students, professional standards for teachers have also developed for the purpose of teacher education program accreditation. The objective of these standards is to strengthen the teacher education programs and raise the standards of the profession. Below we list the book chapters according to the 10 standards of the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC): 1. Subject Matter Expertise: The teacher understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches and can create learning experiences that make these aspects of subject matter meaningful for students. Chapters 5, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 71, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80 2. Learning and Development: The teacher understands how children learn and develop, and can provide learning opportunities that support their intellectual, social and personal development. Chapters 14, 18, 19, 23, 26, 27, 32, 44, 47, 72, 73, 79, 81 3. Diverse Learners: The teacher understands how students differ in their approaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners. Chapters 7, 9, 27, 38, 39, 43, 44, 49, 67, 68, 79, appendix 1 4. Instructional Strategies: The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills. Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, appendix 2, appendix 3

10 • Elizabeth E. Heilman

5. Motivation and Classroom Management: The teacher uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation. Chapters 6, 7, 11, 14, 19, 23, 24, 33, 41, 43, 51, 52, 55, 57, 58, 61, 73 6. Communication Skills: The teacher uses knowledge of effective verbal, nonverbal, and media communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom. Chapters 6, 23, 33, 36, 37, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 62, 66, 69 7. Instructional Planning: The teacher plans instruction based upon knowledge of subject matter. Chapters 3, 7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 28, 29, 33, 35, 38, 44, 47, 48, 49, 64, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 80, 81 8. Assessment: The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner. Chapters 33, 48, 50 9. Reflective Practice: The teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates the effects of his/her choices and actions on others (students, parents, and other professionals in the learning community) and who actively seeks out opportunities to grow professionally. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 59, 60, 63, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81 10. Collaboration: The teacher fosters relationships with school colleagues, parents, and agencies in the larger community to support students’ learning and well-being. Chapters 28, 50, 54 References Ball, D. (2000). Bridging practices: Intertwining content and pedagogy in teaching and learning to teach. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 241–247. Britzman, D. (1991). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. New York: SUNY Press . Dinkelman, T. D. (2003). Self-study in teacher education: A means and ends tool for promoting reflective teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 54(1), 6–18. Francis, D. (1995). The reflective journal: A window to pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge. Teaching & Teacher Education, 11(3), 229–241. Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Hoban, G. F. (1997). Learning to learn in the context of a science methods course. In J. J. Loughran & T. Russell (Eds.), Teaching about teaching: Purpose, passion and pedagogy in teacher education (pp. 133–149). London: Falmer Press. Howard, G. R. (1999). We can’t teach what we don’t know: White teachers, multiracial schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Loughran, J. (2003). Pursuing scholarship in teacher education. In D. Fraser & R. Openshaw (Eds.), Informing our practice: Selections from the 2002 TEFANZ conference (pp. 141–155). Palmerston North, New Zealand: Kanuka Grove Press. McWilliam, E. (1994). In Broken Images: Feminist Tales for a Different Teacher Education. New York: Teacher College Press. Schon, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Segall, A. (2002). Disturbing practice: Reading teacher education as text. New York: Peter Lang. Zeichner, K. M., & Liston, D. P. (1996). Reflective teaching: An introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

SECTION

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Purposes, Beliefs, and Contexts for Social Education Introduction Elizabeth E. Heilman

In this opening section of the book, teacher educators write about how they imagine the nature of social studies teacher education to be and how they engage future teachers in thinking about their deepest beliefs and the contexts in which they will be enacted. This includes reflecting on the experiences they have had so far in their lives, what they have come to believe, how they interact with others, their intended effects as teachers, as well as thinking about power and knowledge and how social studies contributes to citizenship, democracy, and justice. Britzman (1991) explains “…learning to teach constitutes a time of biographical crisis as it simultaneously invokes one’s autobiography” (p. 8). Research on teachers tells us that teaching involves both professional and personal experiences, and makes reference to the past as we reflect on present challenges and keep in mind our future hopes and expectations (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995; Heilman, 2001; Holt-Reynolds, 1992; Knowles, 1992; Knowles & Holt-Reynolds, 1991; Miller Marsh, 2002; Van Manen, 1991; Vinz, 1996). In Bruner’s (1960) view, one still held by many educators’, disciplinary expertise is most important in teaching. As Bruner asserted, “The experience of the past several years has taught at least one important lesson about the design of a curriculum that is true to the underlying structure of its subject matter. It is that the best minds in any particular discipline must be put to work on the task” (p. 6). Donald Schon (1983, 1987) challenged the idea of an expert truth about curriculum and believed that through the intellectual and professional practice of thinking about teaching, teachers could create important teacher knowledge. For Schon, teacher knowledge was generated through a reflective problem-posing and problem-solving process. Schon believed that teacher knowledge could be very diverse depending on classroom situations, school conditions, and the reflective skills of the teacher. Lee Shulman (1986) extended the debate about teacher knowledge in a different way, arguing that not only should the curriculum reflect the disciplines, teachers needed both content knowledge and also pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Many selections throughout this book describe the interaction between teachers’ content knowledge and their pedagogical content knowledge that Shulman described. And yet many contemporary educators believe that while this knowledge is necessary, even more is required. As Barton and Levisk explain (2004), based on a review of many studies (e.g., Ross, 1987; McDiarmid, 1994; Thornton, 1991, Vansledright, 1996): Teachers’ goals appear to have more impact on practice than their pedagogical content knowledge. Unless they have a clear sense of purpose, teachers’ primary actions continue

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to be coverage of the curriculum and control of students, no matter how much they know about history, teaching, or the intersection of the two.… (p. 156) Without a sense of purpose that is clearly thought out and articulated, teachers may fall prey to each new fad or harebrained instructional program, or they may find themselves adopting the practices of their peers by default. But on this score, the research evidence is encouraging. Teachers who have a clear sense of purpose can resist the temptation of conformity, and they can implement practices consistent with their aims. (p.164) The writers in this section believe that sophisticated disciplinary understanding, rich conceptions of pedagogy, and a portfolio of instructional skills certainly are important in teachers’ practice, but that this is not enough. Effective social studies teachers also need to work from a base of well thought out purposes for social studies education that are rooted in their identity and practiced with reference to well-developed personal, pedagogical, and social values. Deeply held beliefs and particular purposes for their teaching are what motivate teachers and inspire their practice, especially when faced with difficult settings and choices. There are a range of purposes that can motivate good teaching, yet teachers are apt to construct purposes for social studies teaching by default or at the behest of their methods instructor without fully claiming their own vision. With this in mind, in chapter 1, William Gaudelli explains why he focuses on future teachers’ beliefs and describes how an assignment in which future teachers articulate their pedagogical creed in increasingly sophisticated ways, unfolds over a semester. Research suggests that preservice teachers are strongly influenced by their own K-16 experiences (Lortie, 1975) as well as by metaphors, images, and experiences derived from families and popular culture about the nature of work in general, about what teachers are and what they do, and about what curriculum is and should be. In chapter 2, Margaret Crocco describes metaphors as conceptual constructs that drive the way we think, and she explains how she asks future teachers to surface and explore the implications of their metaphors for teaching. This collective experience and cultural knowledge, what Lortie calls “the apprenticeship of experience” often suggests that the purpose of social studies education is to teach facts and disciplinary concepts about history, geography, economics, and government. A traditional approach also called the “citizenship transmission tradition” refers to authoritative, foundational knowledge, while in the social science tradition, social studies as a subject is concerned with procedural knowledge and techniques of gathering, analyzing, and applying information. But these are not the only ways that social studies can be taught. The reflective inquiry tradition (also called progressive and constructivist) emphasizes personal knowledge and students’ abilities to make reasoned and contextualized decisions based on critical reflection, while the critical tradition explores the ways in which cultural and economic forces and schools in particular, can oppress people and create, recreate, and legitimate an unequal, unjust, undemocratic society. Critical pedagogy makes use of these conceptual critiques as the motivating understanding for emancipatory knowledge, a hopeful pedagogy that aims to foster a more just society. Finally, a pragmatic and poststructural way of thinking allows for the exploration and interplay among these diverse ideas about knowledge and society. Throughout this book these various approaches are featured. Some social studies methods instructors explicitly situate their teaching in one of these traditions, while many others expose students to multiple purposes. Thomas Fallace, in chapter 3, explains his choice to engage students in exploring three different belief systems or orientations

Purposes, Beliefs, and Contexts for Social Education • 13

to the social studies: the traditional, disciplinary, and progressive strands. He says, “If I want my students to be critical thinkers and reflective practitioners, I must allow them the opportunity to construct their own pedagogical position. I believe that such an approach will also provide my students with the skills to be critical consumers of educational theory and research in the future.” And yet he worries, “I am ambivalent about my students who choose the traditional strand.” In chapter 4, Ronald Evans describes a similar dilemma leading him to explore four approaches. Both Evans and Fallace experience a contradiction between their own authority as teachers and their interest in giving students authority as constructivists. Robinson describes yet another method for helping students critically conceptualize the social studies field. He requires that students collect an array of resources (books, activities, videos, etc) but his deeper intention is for them to conceptually organize the materials. He asks them to consider frameworks other than a subject based approach and to explain the reasoning behind heuristics. Power is also the topic of E. Wayne Ross’s reflection as he describes in chapter 6 how he uses the film Clockwork to help future teachers “consider how the principles of scientific management shape learning and teaching in schools as well as conceptions of curriculum, knowledge, and social relations in school, a critical pedagogy.” The formal social studies curriculum has power as its subject, and yet it is taught within contexts that are themselves laden with power. Coming to terms with teacher authority and the power and authority inherent in institutional contexts are basic struggles all social studies teachers face. In chapter 7 Conklin offers insight into the full enactment of her class in which she weaves her reflective teaching about the different purposes for which social studies may be taught with a consideration of instructional practices, contexts, and the sorts of complex realities described by Ross. Similarly, Powell and Hawley in chapter 8 describe how they “present their own teaching as a learning process.” This chapter provides a rich articulation of the vision behind their use of various texts and experiences with the aim of developing future teachers’ professional and intellectual autonomy. These teacher educators worry about how to balance support and challenge, and how best to fulfill their commitment to intellectual freedom and honest discovery. All teachers have a teacher identity and all social studies teaching has a purpose. The important question this section has explored is not does one have purpose, but rather how does one come to have a purpose and what might this be? The educators writing here help teachers consider whether their purposes are reflexive and merely inherited (even from the professor) without true judgment, or are purposes that reflect their best selves and best thinking. References Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Britzman, D. (1991). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Bruner, J. S. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clandinin, J. D., & Connelly, M. F. (1995). Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. New York: Teachers College Press. Heilman, E. (2001). Teacher’s perspectives on real world challenges for Social Studies education. Theory and Research in Social Education, 29(1), 696–733. Holt-Reynolds, D. (1992). Personal history-based beliefs as relevant prior knowledge in course work. American Educational Research Journal, 29(2), 325–349. Kagan, D. M. (1992). Implications of research on teacher belief. Educational Psychologist, 27(1), 65–90. Knowles, J. G. (1992). Models for understanding preservice and beginning teachers’ biographies: Illustrations from case studies. In I. Goodson (Ed.), Studying teachers’ lives (pp. 99–153). New York: Teachers College Press. Knowles, J. G., & Holt-Reynolds, D. (1991). Shaping pedagogies through personal histories in preservice teacher education. Teachers College Record, 93(1), 87–113.

14 • Elizabeth E. Heilman Lortie D. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McDiarmid, G. W. (1994). Understanding history for teaching: A study of the historical understanding of prospective teachers. In F. James Voss & M. Carretero (Eds.), Cognitive and instructional processes in history and the social sciences (pp. 159–186), Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Miller Marsh, M. (2002). Examining the discourses that shape our teacher identities. Curriculum Inquiry, 32(4), 453–469. Ross E. W. (1987). Teacher perspective development: A study of preservice social studies teachers. Theory and Research in Social Education, 15(4) 225–243. Schon, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Schon, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Thornton, S. (1991). Teacher as curriculum-instructional gatekeeper in social studies. J. P. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 237–249). New York: Macmillan. Thornton, S. (1998, Summer). Curriculum consonance in United States history classrooms. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 3, 308–320. Van Manen, M. (1991). The tact of teaching: the meaning of pedagogical thoughtfulness. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. VanSledright, B. A. (1996). Closing the gap between school and disciplinary history? Advances in Research on Teaching, 6, 257–289. Vinz, R. (1996). Composing a teaching life. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

1 Developing a Pedagogic Creed through Critical Social Reflection William Gaudelli

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategy), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: teacher beliefs, critical thinking, teacher reflection, pedagogic creed, cultural context, collaboration, student-centered, students’ lives and experiences, teaching philosophy As a teacher educator, I focus on students’ beliefs about teaching and learning. We begin, follow, and end with this focus because it frames most of the curricular and instructional choosing that they will make as teachers. My aim in teacher education courses, then, is to bring into full light students’ beliefs, and through the course of our discussions, activities, and field experiences, cast new light on those beliefs. When students complete the course I hope that they have refined their beliefs such that they are warranted based on the social milieu of our class and the context of schools. The emphasis on teacher thinking and beliefs is exposed early and often, as students are asked to write a brief articulation of their teaching beliefs, or pedagogic creed, after our first meeting. Students read John Dewey’s (1897) Pedagogic Creed and use this is as an example of format, rather than content, to help articulate their views. As they attempt to capture their beliefs succinctly in sentences that begin with “I believe…” many quickly realize how difficult such an assignment can be. Some choose to write exclusively about classroom instruction, focusing on methods and approaches, while others fixate on the larger, curricular issues implied in the work, offering statements about why teaching social studies is important. Relatively few students examine the larger social contexts in which teaching and schools are entwined, due in part to their implicit belief that teaching is fundamentally about what happens in the classroom and schoolhouse, rather than the wider society. My focus on teachers’ beliefs draws from a rich and fairly recent body of teacher education scholarship. Connelly, Clandinin, and Ming (1997) have referred to this shift from processproduct type preparation as revolutionary for the field. The discourse has shifted, in short, from what teachers know and their performance in classrooms toward how they know and the manner in which knowing can be affected by transformations in teacher education (see Connelly et al., 1997). Connelly et al. contend that the reorientation regarding beliefs represents a fundamental shift in how learning to teach is conceptualized: Traditionally, researchers assumed that teacher characteristics (e.g. warmth, firmness, punctuality) and teaching/learning methods and processes (e.g. lecture, laboratory, seatwork,

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drill) were the main teaching areas of importance to student learning. In contrast to the concern for teacher characteristics and teaching/learning methods, the assumption in [current] teacher knowledge research is that the most important area is what teachers know and how that knowledge is expressed in teaching. (p. 666) While the importance of developing teachers’ warranted beliefs cannot be overstated, I also try to avoid narrow, self-centered reflective thinking about beliefs that is an end unto itself (see Segall & Gaudelli, 2007). Zeichner (1996) suggests that such inward reflection about one’s pedagogy positions teachers to “see their problems as their own [and as their own failures], unrelated to those of other teachers” (p. 204). Further, it diminishes the possibility of examining the social conditions of schooling and how that context shapes teachers’ thinking about their work. To address the tendency for thinking about beliefs to deteriorate into a myopic aim, I encourage students to test their beliefs in a public forum to address the tendency for relief-talk to devolve into a self-oriented, myopic conversation. They are asked to both self-scrutinize as well as to entertain discursive challenges about their thinking from other students. This creates a rich conversation about the nature of their beliefs, their implications, and the extent to which their beliefs are warranted. The pedagogic creed assignment is rather simply explained in the course syllabi: You will encounter many new ideas in this course and have the opportunity to revisit some existing thoughts, texts, and experiences. The Pedagogic Creed activity will develop over time and will demonstrate how your thinking about social studies pedagogy emerges during this course. First Draft Begin with the writing prompt “I believe…” and create 3–5 statements that illustrate what you currently think about social studies curriculum, social studies pedagogy, and the social context of schools. Use Dewey’s (1897) My Pedagogic Creed as a guide for format and style. For each statement, include a paragraph illustrating your thinking and experiences about this statement. Second Draft At the midpoint, you will revisit the pedagogic creed and write a second text. You will need to develop a way that easily distinguishes what was written in the first and second drafts, such as [bracketing what has changed], changing the font of new ideas, lining out what you are now omitting from your creed. Use your judgment as to formatting but recall that the two most important elements are that you retain the original text in some fashion and make it easy to read. Final Draft At the conclusion of the course, you will write a final, or third draft, of the pedagogic creed. In addition, the final draft will include a 2 or 3 page metareflection wherein you explore how your thinking changed and what particular experiences caused these changes. This should be written in a metacognitive style, or one that reveals your thinking about your thinking.

Developing a Pedagogic Creed through Critical Social Reflection • 17

In between the various drafts, students may meet in small groups to share their creeds and how they are developing. This provides an opportunity for critical discussion about their assertions regarding social studies pedagogy. I model the critical dimension of this activity in a large group setting when students choose one of their “I believe” statements, copy it onto a 3x5 card, collect and recirculate the cards, and have them read aloud. The class then chooses two or three ideas that they would like to examine more carefully and we interrogate the assertions put forward in this manner. I use the 3x5 activity toward the beginning of the class so that students may remain anonymous and the activity is thus less risky for them. As the class progresses, however, students make public assertions about their warranted beliefs and subject that thinking to social scrutiny of their peers. At the conclusion of the course, I ask students to write a brief metacognitive statement about their creed. My aim here is twofold, first to expose the process by which warranted beliefs change and second to demonstrate the tentative nature of apparently firm beliefs. Few would imagine the significant changes that occur in their thinking over the course of a semester, but with very few exceptions, students create final drafts that demonstrate substantially more depth about social studies, pedagogy, and its contexts than when they began. We have all experienced the painful joy of reading previous iterations of our thinking, preserved perhaps in older publications or mothballed graduate papers. By creating an artifact of student thinking, teachers in preparation are in a sense preserving their earlier selves to inform how and why they have changed. This dimension of the activity is especially important for teachers who will spend most of their professional lives witnessing the slow, nearly imperceptible changes that occur in their students and themselves. In order to be attuned to these gradual processes, I contend, they need some experience seeing it in themselves. The final aspect of this activity occurs many years removed from the course. I ask students to bring to the final class an empty envelope with an address that they believe will be permanent for the next 3 years. I have them place a copy of their final pedagogic creed in the envelope and seal it. The letters are mailed 3 to 4 years after the class concludes. My intent in doing this is that students get an opportunity to see how they have progressed in their thinking about teaching, and perhaps in some cases, the ways in which they have fallen into teaching routines that they once railed against. Students, upon receiving this correspondence, frequently contact me to follow up, providing details about what they are now doing and the challenges they have confronted in teaching. It is difficult to generalize the experiences of students about this activity since I have not engaged in a self-study of the exercise. Students generally describe the pedagogic creed as a revealing experience as it provides some insights both into their teaching beliefs prior to and following sustained fieldwork. As I mentioned previously, most view it as an important activity in their development, and their finished work reveals substantial development in their thinking. Ellen, a master’s student, offered this final warranted belief about teaching world history: I believe that in teaching world history to young students, particular attention must be paid to the limitations of understanding the passage of time to students who have experienced so little of it in their brief lives. Wherever possible teachers should avoid a chronological approach and use a thematic or issues-centered approach. It is extremely difficult for young students to understand the meaning of the broad sweep of time, as they have experienced so little of it in their brief lives. To ask students to comprehend the difference between life

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in the third century and life in the fifteenth century is quite difficult. Effectively doing so requires great creativity on the part of the teacher and consistent effort to place historical study within the broader context of historical time. By utilizing a thematic approach that stresses commonalities (as well as differences) between different eras and different societies, teachers can help students gain greater insights into the workings of history than by focusing on a chronological approach they will likely find both tedious and difficult to comprehend. Of course, it is impossible to completely eliminate a chronological approach, particularly since so many textbooks and classroom materials are arranged in this manner, and it is not even desirable that this be done; understanding the sweep of time is a critically important process, no matter how difficult. However, the instructor should always be mindful of the limitations of a chronological approach and incorporate a thematic scheme whenever and wherever possible. This is a fairly typical example of how student thinking emerges in this activity as she edited some of her preconceptions about students’ capacity to know, makes an assertion about the necessity of a thematic approach to studying world history, and ends with a more nuanced view of chronology. Note that the modified text (bold, strike through, and underlined) is much more evident than the plain text, or her first draft. Again, not all students develop their warranted beliefs through the pedagogic creed to the extent that Ellen did, but this is illustrative of the type of student thinking that can occur through such exercises. Teacher discretion has been increasingly minimized through standardization in the contemporary age. Despite this trend, there is still a great deal of latitude for teachers to shape pedagogy through their curricular and instructional choices. The pedagogic creed, unlike the more typical educational philosophy papers that students write, is a living text that represents their developmental thinking about the complexity that is teaching. And in a small way, this activity helps to illustrate how a focus on teacher thinking about and refinement of their beliefs can manifest in a meaningful way in a social studies methods course. References Connelly, F. M., Clandinin, D. J., & Ming, H. (1997). Teachers’ personal practical knowledge on the professional knowledge landscape. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(7), 665–674. Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. Retrieved June 17, 2007, from http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/edewpc.htm Segall, A., & Gaudelli, W. (2007). Reflecting socially on social issues in a social studies methods course. Teaching Education, 18(1), 77–92. Zeichner, K. (1996). Teachers as reflective practitioners and the democratization of school reform. In K. Zeichner, S. Melnick, & M. L. Gomez (Eds.), Currents of reform in preservice teacher education (pp. 199–214). New York: Teachers College Press.

2 The Metaphors We Teach By Margaret Smith Crocco

Context: TE Elementary; TE Secondary NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: metaphors, teaching philosophy, teacher reflection, purposes/goals, language/meaning The linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson (1980) have long argued that metaphors, or “understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another,” are not just literary but conceptual constructs that drive the way we understand and approach reality (p. 5). Metaphors help make sense of our world and provide “scripts” for action. Lakoff and Johnson believe that “metaphors may create realities for us, especially social realities…. [S]uch actions will, in turn, reinforce the power of the metaphor to make experience coherent” (p. 146). Thus, Lakoff and Johnson conclude that “metaphors can be self-fulfilling prophecies” (p. 146). Here I share an exercise my students engaged in at the beginning of “The Teaching of Social Studies,” a methods class for preservice teachers enrolled in a one-year master’s program at Teachers College, Columbia University. I concur with Thornton (2004) that “aims talk” is an important dimension of teachers’ work. Too often, however, new teachers engage in aims talk superficially, allowing curriculum standards to substitute for thinking about what they want their students to know and be able to do as a result of their social studies experiences. The notion that teachers should be “reflective practitioners” needs continual reinforcement in this “age of accountability” as the forces conspiring to promote mindless teaching seem legion (Costigan & Crocco, 2005). Future teachers need multiple opportunities for reflecting on what they do and why they do it. I have no illusions that the following exercise accomplishes this goal. Likewise, I recognize that preservice students are typically preoccupied with classroom management and lesson planning. Nevertheless, it is important to set aside a few pages in a book devoted to the practical issues of teaching social studies to consider the metaphors beginning teachers use to conceptualize their work. Two ways of thinking about education stem from classical models: one is the Latin word educare (the etymological root for the English word education) and the other, the Greek word paideia. Both can be translated as “bringing up” the child. The Latin term can also be translated as “to draw out,” suggesting an approach to education more in keeping with the ideas of John Dewey (1956/1990). The paideia model, by contrast, emphasizes didactic instruction along with intense dialogic seminars. Each model assumes somewhat different relationships between student and teacher and the content to be learned. In her book, Education as Translation, Alison Cook-Sather (2006) offers an array of metaphors that have been used to describe teaching. Such metaphors provide both affordances and constraints regarding teaching practice. Calling these metaphors into consciousness through this 19

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exercise may help unearth the assumptions, preconceptions, and misconceptions students bring into teacher education programs. Constructivist theory suggests that engaging students’ preconceptions is an important first step in learning. Teacher educators want students to become aware of the assumptions that inform their practice. Depending on their own philosophy of education, teacher educators may also wish to dislodge metaphors they believe will be counterproductive to effective practice in teaching social studies. Early in the semester, I ask students to jot down a few compelling metaphors for teaching. I explain that, like stories, metaphors provide a familiar mode for organizing the often ineffable nature of experience. I ask them to think for a minute about Stuart Palonsky’s (1986) characterization of the daily demands of teaching as “900 Shows a Year.” Here is the prompt: Come up with your own metaphor of teaching and write it down on a sheet of paper to hand in at the end of class today. We will talk more about your ideas next week. I will return your papers with some comments and ask you to save them. At the end of the semester we will revisit this exercise to see if your vision of teaching has changed at all. Just before students leave class, they spend a few minutes brainstorming. I tell them there are no “right answers.” I emphasize that future teachers need a measure of self-awareness about how “the metaphors they teach by” can facilitate or interfere with their work, the satisfaction they gain from it, their relationships with students, and ultimately, their success—as measured by their ability to achieve the goals they set for their students and their own satisfaction with their career. Over the week between this writing exercise and the next class, I hope their metaphors generate reflection about teaching. Once students have finished this assignment, they read essays such as Eliot Eisner’s (1985) “The Art of Teaching;” Maxine Greene’s (1995) “Choosing a Past and Inventing a Future: The Becoming of a Teacher”; and excerpts from Nel Noddings (2003) book Caring. Each text offers ways of thinking about teaching that open up new considerations about the role. As Eisner (1985) points out, referencing Noddings’ work, teaching, like selling, is a “series of acts and not necessarily a series of achievements” (p. 180). The methods class takes place concurrently with the first semester of student teaching. As preservice teachers watch cooperating teachers, do they see teachers who are technicians or artists? Are their teachers classroom “managers” or “caring” partners in seeking knowledge? My students’ answers fall into patterns, some familiar, others surprising. One common thread is the notion of the teacher as coach, guide, facilitator, or enabler. Some female teachers liken the role to a midwife. A number use naturalistic metaphors. One described the teacher as a chameleon: “He has to change colors to fit the environment. At times, he has to take control of the classroom. He has to teach and control his students. But there are other times when he has to be a friend and a peer of the students. He wears brown to be authoritative; he wears green to be a friend and fellow human.” Perhaps this student is in what has been called the “survival stage” of becoming a teacher, reflecting common challenges of adaptation to new environments. A few mention the notion of teacher as gardener. One student likens the teacher to a “fruit farmer:” “Planting the seeds or ideas in the fertile mind that is the soil, and adding careful nurturing with water, fertilizer, and sunshine to give individual care and attention to each one.” More than one student relates teaching to fishing, associating information/knowledge with bait and highlighting the force of the water’s current on the fish (students). Another sees the teacher as sculptor, like Michelangelo (!), “liberating a work of art” from a block of marble. By contrast, a few individuals conceive of education as coercion. One sees the teacher as “elec-

The Metaphors We Teach By • 21

trical adapter” who fits 3-pronged plugs into 2-pronged outlets. Another compares a teacher to an extension cord: “You are surrounded by kids full of energy, often unutilized, often channeled in the wrong direction. The trick is to plug into the kids and channel their energy into the aspects of life and the world that you are trying to teach them about.” Many of these novices use language connecting their work to sparking an interest, creating light, heat, and new ways of seeing the world, or catalyzing a chemical reaction in students. Not much older than the high schoolers they would teach, one individual acknowledged that with adolescents things may not always be as they seem. This person described the teacher as truth teller, illuminating realities about the world in which students live: “I think of a teacher as light. What we see has one physical reality that can be revealed, distorted, or hidden by how the light hits it.” Sometimes, teacher is a “life guard,” sometimes, a salesperson “marketing your subject” to reluctant adolescents. Only a few see the teacher as authority figure but they take pains to distinguish teaching from parenting. By contrast with the common familial- and friendship-oriented metaphors, one student called the teacher a “judge,” that is, a “judge of history” who • Gives good and bad interpretations • Searches for “truth” • Is the center of attention—“holding court” It is tempting to read too much into this metaphor, but later this teacher candidate was notable for a rather different approach to teaching than what we might consider optimal. Since many students had been history majors before enrolling in this program, they saw teaching as a journey, a favorite metaphor of historians: “A teacher is a navigator on a long sea voyage, knowing the tools of the compass and maps but often relying on instinct and experience to bring the student/traveler to his/her destination of learning.” In this vein, others used outdoorsoriented metaphors for teaching, such as a guide on a long hike who would insure that the right preparation, resources, and equipment were available to students. One writer pointed out that successful journeys demand direction and flexibility—about where to go and how fast, when to start and stop: “It’s certainly not so much about the destination as it is about how you get there… ultimately, it’s all been there before you, and will be there after. You don’t create things as much as find them”—a statement worthy of the progressive education tradition of Teachers College. Consider the contrast with another student who saw the teacher as an architect: “building a structure of learning through careful, planning, modern design, and a strong support structure.” Another journey-inflected metaphor likened the teacher to a marathon runner: “sometimes the leader, sometimes following. Always enduring. Pacing oneself and the group. Strong. Tired at the end.” Another individual, perhaps an economics major in college, created a distinctive metaphor: “Teaching is the trade of ideas and knowledge in which there is a considerable trade deficit between the teacher who supplies great amounts of raw materials and students who take the raw material, process it, and create new ideas which often enlighten the teacher.” Other students also used the language of exchange in describing teaching—they emphasized that both teachers and students learned from the classroom experience. Sometimes students emphasized what they considered inappropriate metaphors for teaching: • A teacher cannot be an all-powerful “wizard of Oz,” that is, an imparter of knowledge where the teacher knows all and must instruct the students on all the information. Teaching is a two-way street where everyone in the classroom learns and gives. • I am having trouble thinking of a “good” metaphor for what being a teacher is like, but I can

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think of some that I would consider “bad” or inappropriate: The school is the factory; the students are workers; the teacher is a manager who uses the latest technologies to “teach” the students in order to get “outcomes.” Conclusion Cynthia Ozick (1986) asserts that “metaphor is one of the chief agents of our moral nature … the more serious we are in life, the less we can do without it” (p. 63). Some recent research (Hess, 2007) also suggests that teachers with well articulated conceptual frameworks for their teaching— whatever they may be—are more effective at helping students grapple with the controversial issues that lie at the heart of social studies. Metaphors and conceptual frameworks are not the same thing exactly, but they are related ways of expressing a philosophical standpoint about one’s work. In other words, thinking about what one does as a teacher in deep and meaningful ways is both a token of one’s serious engagement with the profession as well as a good indicator of one’s effectiveness in doing citizenship education. If in the poetic and sometimes poignant grip of metaphors, stories, and conceptual frameworks, we meet ourselves and others in relational and therefore moral terms, then we have additional justifications for considering the metaphors we bring to teaching. Metaphors orient or occlude certain kinds of responsibilities, relationships, and desired outcomes for students. Metaphors positioning teachers as technicians, curriculum deliverers, and assessment machines may interfere with teachers’ responsibilities for promoting certain kinds of knowledge and skills. More ambitious metaphors emphasizing education as transformation will frame teacher responsibilities in different ways. In each case, the metaphors influence practice—from lesson planning to classroom management to resource selection. In the methods class and in this essay, my goal is not to impose my own judgment about the “right” metaphor for teaching. My aim is to argue for the importance of having considered one’s metaphors for teaching, and thereby defined one’s purpose. This exercise is an effort to “draw out of ” my students their own views on teaching, and then to have them engage with others’ views, which sometimes differ markedly from their own, as a means of encouraging further reflection about how these metaphors shape practice. It would be interesting to know something about the paths these students’ careers have taken— whether they have clung to their original metaphors or adopted new metaphors to teach by. References Cook-Sather, A. (2006). Education is translation: A metaphor for change in learning and teaching. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Costigan, A., & Crocco, M. S. (2005). Learning to teach in the age of accountability. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Dewey, J. (1990). School and society/The child and the curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1956) Eisner, E. (1985). The art of teaching. In The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs (pp.175–191). New York: Macmillan. Greene, M. (1995). Choosing a past and inventing a future: The becoming of a teacher. In W. Ayers (Ed.), Making a difference in children’s lives. (pp. 65–77). New York: Teachers College Press. Hess, D. (2007, May). Controversial issues in high school courses: Preliminary findings. Presentation given at the R. Freeman Butts Institute, Indianapolis, IN. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Noddings, N. (2003). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. Ozick, C. (1986). The moral necessity of metaphor: Rooting history in a figure of speech. Harper’s Magazine. 272, 62–68. Palonsky, S. B. (1986). 900 shows a year: A look at teaching from the teacher’s side of the desk. New York: Random House. Thornton, S. J. (2004). Teaching social studies that matters. New York: Teachers College Press.

3 Exploring Three Orientations to the Social Studies Thomas Fallace

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning Instruction), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: critical thinking, purposes/goals, teaching philosophy, teacher reflection, multiple perspectives, student-centered, students’ lives and experiences, role play/simulation, teacher beliefs Like many other professors of education, I consider myself to be a constructivist. This means I believe that humans create their own knowledge through a dialectical process of interpreting external information through preexisting cognitive schemas and prior experience (Harlow, Cummings, & Aberasturi, 2006). I believe that the constructivist approach corresponds nicely with “authentic instruction,” wherein students use disciplined inquiry to produce products that have value outside of a school setting (Newmann, Marks, & Gamoran, 1996). Inside most schools and departments of education, this is not a very controversial position. In fact, the education department at the University of Mary Washington, where I teach, offers required courses at the secondary and elementary levels on “constructivist teaching.” My colleagues even advertised the position I now hold specifically to attract a constructivist professor. Despite my belief in constructivism, I have always been troubled by the paradox of the approach; it is an inherent contradiction to tell students to be constructivist. So how can I inspire my preservice teachers to arrive at a constructivist position without merely imposing that view upon them? To accomplish this, I believe, I must present my students with a range of social studies positions, including those with which I disagree. I then have to provide them with the information and means to explore the issues for themselves. Accordingly, I have to allow the possibility for their inquiry to arrive at a conclusion different from my own. If I want my students to be critical thinkers and reflective practitioners, I must allow them the opportunity to construct their own pedagogical position. I believe that such an approach will also provide my students with the skills to be critical consumers of educational theory and research in the future. I begin both my secondary and elementary social studies methods courses by introducing three orientations to the social studies: the traditional, disciplinary, and progressive strands. Throughout the semester I model lessons, assign readings, and have students design their own lessons in each of the three orientations. I do not use a textbook, because I find that most (if not all) available textbooks are written from a progressive, constructivist perspective and often explicitly attack the

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traditional view. Hence, these texts are victims of the paradox of constructivism. Instead I select my own readings for a course pack supporting the three different perspectives. The traditional strand centers on the transmission of cultural knowledge in the form of specific information. The objectives of this strand are to provide students with background knowledge, or “cultural literacy,” to inculcate the diverse student population with a collective memory, and to provide them inspirational examples of individual achievement. This is the approach, for better or worse, which aligns most directly with the state standards of learning. Elementary and secondary students in Virginia take high-stakes, multiple-choice social studies tests in grades 3 through 11. For this orientation I assign readings by Diane Ravitch (1987, 1998) and E. D. Hirsch (1983), and model effective methods of direct instruction. For example, we engage in a reenactment of the Hamilton–Burr duel. I try to demonstrate that direct instruction does not have to be boring by emphasizing the importance of using engaging material, historical images, and strong narratives. The disciplinary strand centers on developing the skills, understandings, and processes of disciplinary experts. The focus is not so much on the transmission of information as on the development of cognitive skills. I assign readings by Bruce VanSledright (2004) and Sam Wineburg (1991), and model numerous disciplinary activities. We look at conflicting documents related to the Hamilton–Burr duel, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Boston Massacre. For my secondary students, we explore historiography by placing pieces of evidence for Reconstruction beneath the headings of different historiographical schools. We then draw upon these schools to discuss the current reconstruction in Iraq. For my elementary students we place images of Jamestown in chronological order, and then write accompanying scripts from the perspectives of King James, colonial men, colonial women, and Native Americans. I emphasize the development of chronological thinking and historical empathy in the early grades, and the development of disciplined inquiry in the middle and high school years. Finally, the progressive strand centers on interdisciplinary explorations of themes and issues related directly to citizenship. For my elementary students I assign readings by Kathy Bickmore (1999) and Jere Brophy and Janet Alleman (2006). I model lessons based on the cultural universal of habitat by exploring numerous images of homes from different cultures and regions of the world. We discuss how homes contain geographic, historical, and economic clues to their origin, location, and function. For my secondary students I assign readings by Oliver and Shaver (1966) and Walter Parker and William Zumeta (1999). We discuss current public issues and engage in a structured deliberation on a public issue. My three-strand approach represents a simplification of the numerous orientations to the social studies; I am sure many would disagree with my distinctions, or that these distinctions even exist. In fact, teachers can and do employ aspects of all three orientations in their instruction, sometimes in the same lesson. However, as I explain to my students, effective citizens cannot simply agree with everyone; they must consider the evidence on a range of issues and ultimately reach a decision. Therefore, as a culminating activity, I have my students write a short essay defending the orientation with which they most agree. The assignment allows students to develop the important democratic skill of using evidence to support a position. In addition the exercise emphasizes that most educational thought is contested theory, not fact. For this assignment I usually get a fairly even distribution for each of the three orientations, although most tend to lean toward the disciplinary or progressive strands. I am sure my own subtle bias toward these orientations affects my students. However, the fact that at least some students in each class support the traditional strand assures me that I am not indoctrinating them with

Exploring Three Orientations to the Social Studies • 25

my views. At this point, I am ambivalent about my students who choose the traditional strand. I rarely find their essays convincing or particularly insightful. They tend to be students who entered my class with an a priori suspicion of educational theory, or students who are confident that the traditional methods they received in their elite private and suburban schools are appropriate for everyone. To be honest, I feel somewhat like a failure by not convincing them of a more progressive approach. However, I know that if I insisted these students would simply tell me what I wanted to hear. At least they are being honest. Like all teacher educators, I am faced with the difficult task of balancing two major roles in the preparation of our teacher candidates. The first role is to socialize our teachers to the existing educational system by providing them with the skills to succeed in the high-stakes testing environment of the schools. In this sense, I am a servant of the public; my academic freedom is somewhat limited by the political pressures of the community and local school administrators. After all, I do want my students to get jobs. Beyond this, however, the second role is to provide my teacher candidates with the tools to deliberately challenge the educational orthodoxy. In this sense, I consider myself an indirect educational reformer. Finding the right balance between these objectives has been a challenge. My three orientations to the social studies not only avoid the paradox of constructivism, but also help to serve both the socializing and educating goals of my course. Although my choice of readings will change, I believe I will continue this approach in the future. References Harlow, S., Cummings, R., & Aberasturi, S. M. (2006). Karl Popper and Jean Piaget: A rationale for constructivism. The Educational Forum, 71(1), 41–48. Newmann, F. M., Marks, H. M., & Gamoran, A. (1996). Authentic pedagogy and student performance. American Journal of Education, 104(4), 280–312.

Teaching Resources Bickmore, K. (1999). Elementary curriculum about conflict resolution: Can children handle global politics? Theory and Research in Social Education, 27(1), 45–69. Brophy, J., & Alleman, J. (2006). A reconceptualized rationale for elementary social studies. Theory and Research in Social Education, 34(4), 428–454. Hirsch, E. D. (1983). Cultural literacy. American Scholar, 52, 159–169. Oliver, D. W. (1966). The selection of content in the social studies. In D. W. Oliver & J. P. Shaver (Eds.), Teaching public issues in the high school (pp. 3–18). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Parker, W. C., & Zumeta, W. (1999). Toward an aristocracy of everyone: Policy study in the high school curriculum. Theory and Research in Social Education, 27(1), 9–44. Ravitch, D. (1987). Tot sociology, or what happened to history in the grade schools. American Scholar, 56, 343–353. Ravitch, D. (1998). Who prepares our history teachers? Who should prepare our history teachers? The History Teacher, 31(4), 495–503. VanSledright, B. (2004). What does it mean to think historically … and how do you teach it? Social Education, 68(3), 230–233. Wineburg, S. (1991). Reading historical texts: Notes on the breach between school and academy. American Educational Research Journal, 28(3), 495–519.

4 Pedagogic Creed as Foundation Ronald W. Evans

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: teaching philosophy, purposes/goals, issues-oriented approach, teacher reflection, multiple perspectives My teaching of a secondary social studies methods course has evolved over the years due to my own difficulties in confronting the resistance of student teachers who sometimes disagreed with my vision for the field. I have taught at San Diego State University, a large state teacher education institution, since arriving in San Diego in the summer of 1989. Ours is a “field-based” program, in which students get a strong dose of real world experience by student teaching part-time for two semesters. In earlier versions of my methods course, I imposed my own view of the field, an issues-centered/reflective approach. Each semester, in the second week of the course, we would spend one class session examining alternative philosophies and approaches. We read an excerpt from Barr, Barth, and Shermis’s (1977) Defining Social Studies and other relevant materials. Following some discussion of the alternatives, I would announce that the remainder of the course was aimed at helping students learn to apply the reflective, issues-centered model of teaching. So, beginning with the third week, we would delve into theories of reflective and issues-centered teaching, and begin working on applying those theories to classroom practice. Classes generally went well, with a mix of readings, demonstration lessons, microteaching, and theory-into-practice field experiences, and numerous question and answer sessions. As an assistant professor, my youthful enthusiasm for the issues-centered approach was such that my methods students seldom questioned it, or at least, bought into my argument that the approach would benefit all. By the end of the course, students would usually say, “You convinced us,” indicating that in their view the approach was not only possible, but doable, and that it was the best approach to the field. Students would return to class with both success stories of reflective discussions that energized both students and teachers, and horror stories of failed lessons. Usually, the success stories far outweighed the failures, and students began convincing one another that “Ron’s methods” were very helpful for teaching in the “real world.” Amid the general success, some level of student resistance would often continue. By the end of the semester, in many classes, I would have one or two students who continued to resist and would ask, “Aren’t there other ways to teach?” Despite positive course evaluations from students and my own career success, I was genuinely bothered by the complaints of the few resistant students. Following my promotion to full professor in the late 1990s, I decided I had nothing to lose by changing things. At that time I was gathering materials and writing an initial and partial draft of a lengthy book on the history of social studies, 26

Pedagogic Creed as Foundation • 27

eventually published in abbreviated form as The Social Studies Wars (Evans, 2004). Immersed in the ongoing battles of competing interest groups over what and how to teach, a new direction hit me. Why not ask students to wrestle with some of the materials I was digging up, the statements of the various interest groups, and ask each student teacher to develop her or his own “pedagogic creed.” Instead of taking a cursory look at alterative ways of seeing the field, and then imposing my approach, I would set up the first part of the methods courses as a problem for students to solve, asking them to study the four or five most significant creeds, and make a choice. So my methods course was transformed. We began with a set of simple, direct, and pertinent questions which set the task before students: 1. What is the teaching of social studies about? Why bother? What should our purposes be? 2. What general questions should we lead our students to ask about their world? About our society? About their lives? 3. What overarching pedagogical approaches should we choose? What are the main alternatives? Each teacher must ask: Which specific approaches are most consistent with my beliefs? Who am I? What are my commitments? What approach to social studies teaching should I choose? What might the consequences be of my choice? What if everyone chose this alternative? 4. What content should we include in the curriculum? The revised course is divided into three segments: foundational perspectives on social studies, teaching practices, and theory into practice. Prior to our study of the various theories, we read an excerpt from James Herndon’s The Way It Spozed to Be (1968) as a preface, because it poses the dilemma of a beginning teacher who is receiving conflicting advice, and one or two articles providing an overview of the field’s history. In the first segment of the course, we read, explore, experience exemplars, discuss, critique, and argue over each of four main approaches to social studies. These include: (1) traditional history (and social science); (2) social science inquiry; (3) a reflective, issues-centered approach; and, (4) critical pedagogy. For each interest group we read major statements written by advocates of each camp, and at least one critique. For traditional history, we read excerpts from The Study of History in Schools (American Historical Association, 1899), Diane Ravitch’s article, “The Decline and Fall of History Teaching” (1985), The California Department of Education’s Framework for History and Social Science (1987), and Gagnon’s Historical Literacy (1989). For social science inquiry, we read a book chapter describing the era of the new social studies (Evans, 2004), excerpts from Ted Fenton’s Teaching the New Social Studies (1966), Bruner’s The Process of Education (1960), and read and experience exemplary lessons from the Association of American Georgraphers/ American Sociological Association’s book, Experiences in Inquiry (1974) and other sources. For the reflective, issues-centered (meliorist/progressive) approach, we read Shirley Engle’s “Decision Making” (1960) article, Dewey’s “My Pedagogic Creed,” (1897/1964), and Evans, Newmann, and Saxe on “Defining Issues-Centered Education” from the Handbook on Teaching Social Issues (1996). For the critical/reconstructionist approach, we read a selection from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Bill Bigelow’s article, “Inside the Classroom: Social Vision and Critical Pedagogy” (1990), and excerpts from Ayers, Hunt, and Quint, Teaching for Social Justice (1998). Finally, we also consider the curricular influence of education for social efficiency, and examine eclectic and consensus models which combine two or more of the main interest groups, with the

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suggestion that students are free to support one camp or some rational combination, so long as they are prepared to defend their choices. As we study each main camp, I also conduct a brief demonstration of a lesson representing each approach. And when time allows, I show a video related to the approach in practice.1 For each camp I also recommend additional readings which are on reserve at the library, and I suggest strongly that to write an effective creed paper, and to really understand the approach(es), it will take more digging. Following consideration of each of these approaches, we form creed groups, and students are each asked to write their own pedagogic creed, which are then presented via a series of panel discussions held on week 6 of the course. That session takes the form of a symposium in which a group of student teachers wrestle over and critique the various possible creeds. It is usually quite lively. The remainder of the course involves readings on relevant methods, theory into practice workshops, and field related experiences designed to help each student teacher develop her or his own teaching expertise as an extension and refinement of the creed. Though I cannot suggest that this approach is a panacea, it does take the monkey off my back from my previous stance, which essentially imposed an issues-centered framework for the field. Instead, it asks students to consider the issues-centered approach as one of several that may prove helpful in their growth into teaching. At this point, mainly through anecdotal evidence, I am convinced that problematizing teachers’ pedagogical and curricular choices encourages freedom and experimentation. Freedom is very powerful. Student teachers get lots of advice, but are seldom presented with the freedom to develop their own authentic pedagogy and rationale, consonant with their deepest values, hopes, and beliefs. While many students describe the journey as daunting, most seem to appreciate being treated as intellectuals and being respected to make wise choices. I get an occasional student who says, “Why don’t you just tell us how to teach?” but that seems less frequent as I gain experience with this approach. As a result of this reconceptualization of my methods course, I believe that those who end up supporting an issues-centered approach do so by their own authentic choice, with at least some foundational knowledge of the many alternatives. And, I’m more comfortable with it. I believe that what I am doing now is closer to Dewey’s method of intelligence, closer to a model that treats each teacher respectfully, as an intellectual with the power to shape her or his own teaching practices, and as a curricular, instructional designer and decision maker, rather than as a gatekeeper or, worse, a mere technician. The ovation I get from students at the end of each semester suggests that the approach is working, at least for most. Note 1. For example, on social science inquiry I show Through These Eyes (Laird, 2003) which relates the story of the MACOS curriculum and controversy; for the critical/reconstructionist approach, I show Ellis and Mueller’s (2004) video, Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train (2004), which usually inspires a good deal of pro/con discussion.

Teaching Resources American Historical Association. (1899). The study of history in schools: Report by the Committee of Seven. New York: Macmillan. Association of American Geographers/American Sociological Association. (1971). Experiences in inquiry: HSGP and SRSS. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Ayers, W., Hunt, J. A., & Quint, T. Eds. (1998). Teaching for social justice: A democracy and education reader. New York: New Press/Teachers College Press. Barr, R., Barth, J., & Shermis, S. (1977). Defining the social studies. Arlington, VA: National Council for the Social Studies.

Pedagogic Creed as Foundation • 29 Bigelow, W. (1990). Inside the classroom: Social vision and critical pedagogy. Teachers College Record, 91(3), 437–447. Bruner, J. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. California State Department of Education. (1987). Framework for history/social science. Sacramento: Author. Dewey, J. (1964). My pedagogic creed. In R. E. Archambault (Ed.), John Dewey on education: Selected writings. (pp. 427–439). New York: Random House. (Original work published 1897) Ellis, D., & Mueller, D. (Directors). (2004). Howard Zinn: You can’t be neutral on a moving train [videorecording]. Brooklyn, NY: First Run/Icarus Films. Engle, S. H. (1960). Decision making: The heart of social studies instruction. Social Education, 24, 301–306. Evans, R. W. (2004). The social studies wars: What should we teach the children? New York:Teachers College Press. Evans, R. W., Newmann,F. M., & Saxe, D. (1996). Defining issues-centered education. In R. W. Evans & D. Saxe (Eds.), Handbook on Teaching Social Issues. (pp. 2–5). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Evans, R. W. (2004). The social studies wars: What should we teach the children? New York: Teachers College Press. Fenton, E. P. (1966). Teaching the new social studies in secondary schools: An inductive approach. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gagnon, P. (Ed.). (1989). Historical literacy: The case for history in American education. New York: Macmillan. Herndon, J. (1968). The way it spozed to be. New York: Simon & Schuster. Laird, C. (Director). (2003). Through these eyes [videorecording]. Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources. Ravitch, D. (1985, December 22). Decline and fall of history teaching. New York Times Magazine, pp. 50–53, 101, 117. Zinn, H. (1994). You can’t be neutral on a moving train: A personal history of our time. Boston: Beacon Press.

5 The Social Studies Topical Index Paul Robinson

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: history, geography, civics, economics, concept development, creating teaching materials, primary sources, goals/purposes, categorizing ideas, graphic organizers, film, pictures/ photographs, instructional strategies, teacher reflection Among a set of basic writing assignments I require in my secondary social studies methods course, the initial one is a conceptual exercise, which I am currently labeling the students’ Social Studies Topical Index. The actual assignment as written in the syllabus is rather brief and necessarily gets fleshed out in conversation during the second or third class session. It reads: Resources (10 points). Effective social studies teachers accumulate ideas and materials in an organized fashion to support instruction in their classrooms (i.e., beyond the textbook). Develop an initial SOCIAL STUDIES TOPICAL INDEX (TI), an organized scheme of collection categories, with an overview sheet explaining your reasoning. Due by September 12. Then turn in your TOPICAL INDEX (revised, as necessary, with an updated overview sheet—along with the original version) and two sample files drawn from it at the end of the semester. (Due by November 28) The value of the assignment, 10 points, makes it comparable to the other course assignments— journal article reviews, a comparison of an historical topic’s treatment in two textbooks, and an analysis of a public issue. In addition, a lesson and unit planning assignment is worth 20 points, as are the midterm and final exams, for a total of 100 points on a standard grading scale. The intent of the assignment is not so much to push these social studies, history, and political science majors to amass a wide array of resources—college lecture notes, political cartoons, videos and CDs, books, news stories, instructional activities, Web sites, posters, and content standards— as to encourage them to conceptualize the content categories of the broad teaching field they are entering and to organize and make readily retrievable the resources and materials which they may eventually acquire. Most frequently their conceptual schemes will revolve around the courses commonly taught in the middle and high schools: U.S. and world history and civics/government, but I encourage them to develop additional categories in other disciplines and personal areas of interest such as economics, geography, sociology, multicultural education, Mexican-American studies, or popular culture. A few students each year find the assignment relatively easy because they have already begun 30

The Social Studies Topical Index • 31

collecting resources and thinking in terms of an organizational framework for them. Many students, however, struggle with the assignment. They are leery of an assignment containing such risk and ambiguity, and seek further clarity and support. They claim that they can’t determine categories for items they have not yet begun to collect or for historical eras they have not had the occasion to study. (Little do they realize that all social studies teachers end up teaching topics they have not studied in university courses!) Further, they resist the notion that, although there is no one right way to develop the project, there are a number of approaches that aren’t terribly helpful for a novice teacher (e.g., by placing every topic or concept in one, very long, alphabetical sequence, or by conceiving of one’s chronology only in terms of wars, or by listing types of materials or resources unconnected to particular content). They plead for a model of how to complete the assignment correctly. I end up showing them several dramatically different ways in which previous students have responded to the task and I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each. Each year thoughtful students wrestle with how to incorporate current events into their frameworks as well as how to balance a chronological political history with a thematic social history. They also struggle to make their world history frameworks truly “world” and not a Western civilization outline with imperialism tacked on. They are concerned that the assignment is about collecting materials whereas my intent is to have them conceptualize the organizational scheme for the materials they may have already begun collecting or may anticipate obtaining once they have been hired and received their teaching assignments. I encourage the idea that the initial draft, due early in the semester, is meant to be a rough outline, the initiator of a conversation between me as an experienced teacher and them as novices, over what’s a reasonable, useful system to organize one’s accumulation of ideas, activities, materials, and Web sites in order to draw upon those resources when one is actually faced with the necessity of preparing topical lessons and units. It seems to be a major intellectual risk to expose one’s thinking on what categories constitute the basics of such a broad content area. The idea of the updated draft due at the end of the semester is that students will have had 3 months or so to reflect on their initial scheme, to talk with teachers at their practicum sites, and to encounter the content of the course itself (When a specific piece of material is used in the course, I tend to ask, “If you found this book/Web site/cartoon/strategy potentially useful, where would you locate it in your Topical Index so that you could retrieve it when needed for your own teaching?”) and to contemplate whether or not their original conceptualization can be improved. Each semester some of the students’ original drafts are so thorough and thoughtful that they require little, if any, modification; others take my written questions and suggestions to heart and make more or less extensive alterations to their first draft. Occasionally a student argues that his or her first draft is sufficient even if I raise major questions about its adequacy. Finally, the requirement to turn in two sample files at the end of the semester, drawn from anywhere in their index, is to ensure that the activity is more than a mental exercise, and that they demonstrate they have actually begun the process of accumulating materials in an organized fashion. The most common framework starts with the core courses students believe they may be assigned to teach and employs a chronological outline for the history courses. Such an approach clearly works better for U.S. history than for world history. For civics/government courses, a textbook’s unit outline is a not uncommon starting point. Increasingly state standards for the content areas have defined the initial framework. Common missteps include (1) making too many categories initially (essentially each date or name or fact becomes a category), rather than starting with a dozen or so broader conceptual categories or eras, as in the National History Standards; (2) making too few categories; for example, one student included under Geography the categories of

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“(a) Maps—world, continental, U.S.; (b) Population; and (c) Resources”; (3) adhering to a rigid chronological framework, such as decades or centuries or 4-year presidential administrations, without reference to defining concepts of particular eras; and (4) simply listing one’s favorite topics while omitting critical eras or concepts which undoubtedly will need to be taught (one student listed as his categories under U.S. History, “(1) Pre-European development; (2) Colonialism; (3) American Revolution; (4) American Industrial Revolution; (5) Great Depression; (6) Cold War; (7) Vietnam; and (8) The Modern Age”). Over the years I have remained convinced that this is a useful exercise for my prospective teachers, but have tweaked the assignment in various ways. I used to call it the “Supplemental Resources File Index,” and then the “Social Studies Files Table of Contents,” but found that such labels were clunky and not particularly helpful. So I settled on the “Social Studies Topical Index.” Several years ago I added the requirement of an overview sheet to the basic assignment, to encourage and more closely observe the students’ logic in constructing their categories. This explanation of their reasoning is an aspect of the assignment I should have incorporated from the start because it requires them to justify their decisions and move their content knowledge closer to pedagogical content knowledge. Although students frequently resist the assignment as too vague and anticipatory, they find that—in talking with experienced classroom teachers during the field practicum associated with the methods course—almost all of them have extensive collections of supplemental resources (which they willingly share with my students) and know-how to access them. By the end of the semester students generally affirm that the mental exercise of conceptualizing such a broad field of academic content has been a worthwhile endeavor, one which has given them confidence and has helped prepare them for the serious responsibilities of designing instructional units and lesson plans which engage students and move beyond the constraints and routine of textbook accounts. To understand the assignment from a student’s point of view, it would be helpful to conclude this description of the Topical Index assignment with excerpts from one of the more thoughtful overview sheets recently submitted as part of the assignment: I feel as though I must preface this assignment by saying that I am not what one might consider an organized person. Needless to say, the ideas of (painstakingly) creating a system to catalogue information forced me to think carefully and sort through the mountains of history-related materials I have collected from bookstores, garage sales, and various other sources. As luck would have it, I love history, so this task I begrudgingly started turned out to be rather enjoyable! I have amassed numerous resources, most of which will be very beneficial to my future students. [examples follow] I have created a very simple system, which will be revised periodically to incorporate new information as my collection evolves. Simplicity is key for me, if I tried to create an elaborate system just to fulfill an assignment, it would be of no use to me later…. She then outlines her world history section in six broad categories and her U.S. history section in 29 categories, ending with “current events.” She concludes her assignment as follows: These categories purposefully do not follow an exact historical timeline. I also realize that there is a lot of overlap between some of the files. I have mentioned only pieces of information that I have, or anticipate acquiring, in each folder. As my collection grows, the files will become more complete. My system has created a space for all of my resources, and made them readily accessible. If I need to revise the system or parts of the system in the future, I will do so. For now, my simple system is exactly the way I need it to be.

6 Exploring Taylorism and Its Continued Influence on Work and Schooling E. Wayne Ross

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), VII (Production, Distribution, and Consumption), VIII (Science, Technology, and Society) INTASC Standards: 5 (Learning Environment), 6 (Communication and Technology), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: film, ethical-politial valuation, critical thinking, historical content knowledge, history, capitalism, democratic education It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adaptation of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone (Taylor, 1911/1997, p. 83)1 Anyone who has worked in a fast food restaurant, factory, or for that matter has been a student or teacher in a public school understands something about Taylorism, a regime of work control that is characterized by standardization, routinization, and simplification of tasks; coercion rather than consent; speed ups; and lack of intellectual or skilled content. Taylorism was the most influential management theory of the 20th century. The principles of “scientific management” were widely adopted by educational administrators in the early 20th century and their impact remains evident in 21st century schools. Even though evidence of Taylorism has largely vanished in the contemporary workplace, superseded by new techniques of flexible specialization and lean production, walking into a school today is often like walking into a past where scientific management is still the order of the day, and, indeed, it is. Contemporary schools are still largely driven by conceptions of teaching and learning that have their roots in Taylorism or what is often described as the “factory model” of schooling. A study of Taylorism is an important element in understanding the history of industry and education in North America. And, an examination of the aims and application of the principles of scientific management is key to developing an appreciation for the experiences of workers in the 20th century as well as understanding why the schools we have exist. Clockwork (Breitbart, 1981): A Documentary Film on Taylor and Scientific Management Over 100 years ago factory owners and business managers saw poor productivity, rapid technological change, and heightened competition as obstacles to increased profits. Clockwork shows

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how Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) and his followers attempted to meet these challenges through “scientific management,” a radical program to organize every aspect of production under a regime of quantitative measures and systematic planning. Clockwork is the only documentary film that examines Taylor’s work and its continuing influence on the modern workplace. This film examines Taylor’s theories in historical perspective against later efforts of production efficiency, including automation. Clockwork, 25 minutes in length, includes original historical footage, which Taylor and his contemporaries, the Gilbreths— Lilian Gilbreth introduced psychology to management studies and Frank Gilbreth developed motion studies independent of Taylor using a motion picture camera that was calibrated in fractions of minutes to time the smallest of motions in workers—shot for the pioneering time– motion studies which paved the way for the modern automated assembly line and unskilled factory worker. The film presents a history of modern mass production and craftsmanship. As factories grew larger and the work force expanded, factory owners were confronted with inefficiencies in production and product management. A major barrier in overcoming these inefficiencies was the craft knowledge held by skilled workers, such as machinists, who, as a result of their knowledge and skill, essentially controlled the production process. Factory owners sought new technologies that improved the workflow, reduced labor costs and the division of labor (e.g., circumscribing tasks and roles to increase efficiency of output) was the key solution presented by Taylorism. Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work of this character. Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work. (Taylor, 1911/1997, p. 59) Thus scientific management matched the worker to the job (worker or manager) and in the process separated the conceptualization of work from its execution. The film illustrates Taylor’s efforts to improve production by 400% for a worker of particular skills and talent. Craftsmen resisted the introduction of scientific management was often resented by workers and provoked numerous strikes including the strike at Watertown Arsenal which led to a congressional investigation in 1912. Taylor’s system of scientific management, however, prevailed. Alongside this history, Clockwork presents insights into the life and thinking of Taylor—an aristocratic Quaker, tormented throughout his life by the recurring nightmare of being trapped inside a machine—who was doggedly determined to improve the productivity of workers through the use of his primary tool, a stop watch. Clockwork, which was produced in 1981 , shows how early computer-assisted design and manufacturing systems incorporated Taylor’s theories of production management. Today, organizational theorists often use Taylor’s legacy as a point of contrast with contemporary management theories, but lean manufacturing, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, and other management approaches (e.g., Japanese management culture or Toyota Production System), are new names for what is essentially scientific management.

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Using Clockwork in Social Studies Education I have used Clockwork in a variety of contexts including secondary social studies courses, social studies methods and curriculum courses, and in teaching about curriculum theory and the history of education. While the content of the film is relevant for teaching about the history of business, labor–management relations, and the everyday working conditions in factories of the late 19th and 20th centuries, I most often use the film as a springboard for students as well as preservice and in-service teachers to consider how principles of scientific management shape learning and teaching in schools as well as conceptions of curriculum, knowledge, and social relations in school. For example, metaphorically describing students as the “raw material” of schools; controlling the movement of teachers and students via bells; conceiving of the curriculum as a product; dividing students into grade levels or dividing curriculum content into units and individual lessons; describing the school facilities as a “plant” are a result of a “factory model” of schooling that has its roots in the adoption of scientific management principles by educational administrators. Typically I ask students (whether K-12 students or teachers studying at the university level) to view the film with three goals in mind: (1) identify the basic elements of scientific management; (2) describe how they are implemented in K-12 schools and critically analyze the principles of scientific management as applied in workplaces, particularly schools; and (3) discuss the impact of scientific management on the educational process and how deleterious effects might be counteracted. Clockwork is a short film and I often supplement its use with readings. Depending on the context and goals of the course students may read some portion of Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management (the full text of which is available online as well as in low cost reprint editions). In addition, I have used excerpts from Raymond E. Callahan’s (1962) classic study Education and the Cult of Efficiency; “Scientific Curriculum-Making and the Rise of Social Efficiency,” a chapter from Herbert M. Kliebard’s (2004) The Struggle for the American Curriculum; and “Scientific Method in Curriculum-Making,” by Franklin Bobbitt (1981/2004). Students typically respond quite positively to the film, despite its now somewhat dated treatment of “contemporary” applications of scientific management. The deadpan narration, rare footage of time–motion studies, selected quotes from Taylor’s writing, and somewhat bizarre biographical elements of Taylor’s life keep viewers engaged. While the level of detail varies depending on the supplementary readings used with the film, students can quite easily identify the basic elements of Taylorism after viewing Clockwork. After watching the film, our discussion begins with an effort to describe what Taylorism is (however, it should be noted that in the debriefing, description and critique are not rigidly separated). What follows is a representative list of characteristics that students typically identify: Aims of scientific management: • Reduce the worker to an appendage of the machine, minimizing the margin of error that might inhibit productivity. • Eliminate conflict between management and workers. The general approach of scientific management: • • • •

Standard method for performing each job. Select workers with appropriate abilities for each job. Training for standard task. Planning work and eliminating interruptions.

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• Wage incentive for increased output. • Value-free design. • Division of labor (e.g., separation of thinking and doing). Effect of scientific management on work/workers: • • • • • •

Work lacks intellectual or skill content. Work is fragmented. Work is mechanized or automated. Tasks are routinized, simplified. Coercion outweighs consent. Work speeds up.

Myriad examples are offered up to illustrate the application of Taylorism to K-12 schooling including: • • • • • • • •

Schools are often large and bureaucratized. Students change teachers each year. Teachers plan and teach alone. Elementary teachers often do not share students. Secondary students see many teachers in large groups (the “platoon” system). Curriculum is fragmented. Tracking students by ability levels. Deskilling of teachers though alignment of teaching with mandated curriculum and standardized tests. • Emphasis on monitoring/surveillance and bureaucratic activity—scripted curriculum and scripted lesson. • Decline in academic freedom for teachers to engage students in conversation, inquiry, open-ended activities.

Students usually give particular emphasis to Taylorism’s insistence on a rigid separation of thinking from doing. Taylor prohibited participation by production workers in the organization, planning, and direction of the manufacturing process, requiring workers to do exactly as they were told to do and no more. This authoritarian stance is carried over into schooling in at least two ways: (1) its exclusion of students from participation in the planning, organization, and direction of the education process; (2) deskilling of teachers as their work is conceptualized by others (via mandated curriculum) and enforced through bureaucratic outcomes-based accountability systems. Another key way in which Taylorism continues to influence teaching and learning is through the use of individual rewards for individual effort (e.g., the focus on student test scores). Taylor developed wage-incentive systems emphasizing piecework and historically assembly line foremen attempted to suppress any sort of worker interaction. Talking was forbidden in the early days. Sound familiar? Additional criticisms of scientific management offered by students typically include the disregard of the human side of work/learning, as Taylorism ignores individual differences. And, the fact that the economic interests of workers and management are not the same, so both the measurement processes and the retraining required by Taylor’s methods would frequently be resented and

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sometimes sabotaged by the workforce. Indeed resistance is a key theme in Clockwork. Cooperation was the most fundamental precondition for the implementation of scientific management. If the cooperation of workers and managers was not achieved, all the other principles and techniques were useless. Taylor believed that once the “natural laws” governing work and production were discovered, the proper time for doing a job and the proper amount of pay can be determined in an objective, scientific way. And if everyone adheres to the laws there is no place for bargaining or labor–management conflict (because you cannot bargain about scientific facts). Typically, discussions regarding the application of Taylorism in schools lead directly to critiques of scientific management. Questions then follow regarding how teachers, students, and other stakeholders can respond to the deleterious effects it has on teachers and learning. In the No Child Left Behind era there is no shortage of examples regarding acts of resistance (e.g., coordinated local, state, and national efforts to reform or dismantle NCLB; the work of groups such as FairTest.org, The Whole Schooling Consortium, The Rouge Forum, etc). Teachers struggle for control of their workplaces today, just as the machinists depicted in Clockwork did. Many teachers and their allies are currently battling the efforts to replace their minds in the classroom with the minds of test publishers and standards writers. The fight in schools today is not merely about the contemporary version of production quotas (e.g., test scores), but as illustrated in Clockwork (and the related readings) the heart of the struggle is about what people will know and how they will come to know it—and who makes those decisions. Obviously, students and teachers have much to learn from the history of Taylorism. Note 1. Pages 5–29 of the 1911 text are part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1911taylor.html

Teaching Resources Bobbitt, F. (2004). Scientific method in curriculum-making. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The Curriculum studies reader (2nd ed., pp. 9–16). New York: Routledge Falmer. (Original work published 1918) Breitbart, E. (Producer/Director). (1981). Clockwork [Motion Picture]. (Available from California Newsreel, P.O. Box 2284, South Burlington, VT 05407) Callahan, R. (1962). Education and the cult of efficiency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kliebard, H. M. (2004). The struggle for the American curriculum 1875–1946 (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge Falmer. Taylor, F. W. (1997). The principles of scientific management. Mineola, NY: Dover. (Original work published 1911)

7 Purposes, Possibilities, and Complexities of Teaching Secondary Social Studies Hilary G. Conklin

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), X (Civic Ideals and Identity) INTASC Standards: 3 (Diverse Learners), 5 (Learning Environment), 7 (Planning Instruction), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: critical thinking, teaching philosophy, ethical-political valuation, justice, inquiry, purposes/ goals, classroom community, role play/simulation, teacher reflection, cultural contexts The “Initial Field Experience in Social Studies Education” is the introductory course for the secondary social studies education program at the University of Georgia. Students complete a 60-hour field experience in a middle or high school and attend a 2-hour seminar once per week across the 15-week semester. Through the field experience and coursework, students examine the nature, purpose, and practices of social studies in schools. In this chapter, I describe my approach to this course. As part of this course, students develop and write an initial rationale for teaching social studies which serves as both the culminating assignment for the course and a component of students’ admission to the social studies education program. Following admission to the program, students continue in a professional sequence of courses which includes a social studies curriculum and methods course (see Powell & Hawley, chapter 8 this volume); a senior field experience; and a culminating student teaching experience paired with a student teaching seminar. This introductory Initial Field Experience lays the groundwork for the subsequent courses and experiences in our secondary social studies education program. Course Goals The rationale assignment asks students to address the following questions: 1. What are the most important goals of social studies in terms of what students should know, be able to do, and value as a result of taking social studies? 2. Why are these goals valuable for democratic society? 3. How do issues of cultural diversity, power and privilege, and multiculturalism inform your thinking about both the content and methods of social studies? 4. Give and explain an example of what you might teach under your vision of social studies, and how you might teach this. Make it clear how this example relates to your answers to the previous three questions.

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Thus, my central goal in the course is to help students develop informed, thoughtful answers to these questions. In order to accomplish this, I try to adhere to a number of guiding principles. Students in the course should: • Examine how social studies has been taught traditionally and develop an understanding of why the status quo persists. • Develop an understanding of the social injustices that persist in U.S. schooling. • Develop a critical inquiry stance toward observing social studies teaching and learning in classrooms, but also be tentative in their judgments. • Examine powerful possibilities for teaching and learning social studies and the purposes associated with those possibilities. • Experience powerful possibilities for teaching and learning social studies as students in our university classroom. • Develop the ability to articulate the experience of being students engaged in these methods. • Develop an appreciation for the complexity and challenges of implementing powerful social studies teaching and learning. • Develop the ability to articulate the pedagogical decisions that these methods involve for teachers. An underlying assumption of my teaching is that, through my efforts at helping students reach these goals, I will constantly model the dispositions of reflective teachers and the pedagogy of powerful social studies teaching. Course Sequence and Methods Following these principles, I see the course progressing along an arc with three central components. The course begins by establishing a context for social studies teaching and learning. We then move to our exploration of different purposes for which social studies might be taught, and the various practices which accompany those purposes. In the final third of the course, we turn to some of the complex realities of implementing powerful social studies teaching. Below, I elaborate briefly on each of the sections of the course, discussing some of the key assignments, readings, and class activities I include. Establishing a Context In my research I have found that secondary social studies preservice teachers tend to focus on their passion for the subject matter, but less on understanding the particular students they are teaching (Conklin, 2006). Thus, in the early weeks of the course, I seek to raise my students’ awareness of their own strengths, weaknesses, and experiences as learners, as well as those of their prospective students. I want them to consider the ways in which they have learned best, and compare and contrast their own learning experiences with those of current students. To help them focus on their prospective students, I have them read “Seeing the Student” (Ayers, 1993), a chapter which challenges deficit views of students and suggests ways in which we might use careful listening, observation, and other strategies to learn more about our students. This reading precedes a classroom observation assignment in which students examine their field placement classroom from a careful, critical perspective.1 In this assignment, students are asked to attend to the classroom’s decorations, curricular resources, desk arrangement, student and teacher activity,

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and questions such as: Can you tell which students in the class are successful students? What does success in learning mean in this classroom? This guided observation is also designed to scaffold students’ abilities to be thoughtful, critical observers of their field placement classrooms. Another important element of these early weeks of the course is helping the students get to know one another and build a community in which we can safely explore challenging topics together. They each teach a 5-minute minilesson on their name; they take part in “cocktail parties” to mingle and share memorable learning experiences; they conduct a scavenger hunt to “find a person who…”; and they select a “third thing” from a table of assorted objects to represent who they want to be as teachers. This work helps them develop comfort with each other and also models ways they can develop community in their future classrooms. A final aspect of this section of the course is students’ reading and examination of several texts that highlight the current context for teaching social studies. They read about the typical social studies classroom (Goodlad, 2004) and the current marginalization of social studies in the school curriculum (e.g., Dillon, 2006). They also read selections from Kozol’s (2005) Shame of the Nation to highlight the unjust educational opportunities available to many students, particularly students of color who live in poverty. My hope with these readings is that students will develop an increasingly complex understanding of the status quo in social studies as well as a level of outrage both for the erosion of social studies in schools and the socially unjust schooling system that persists in the United States. Presenting Possibilities, Purposes, and Practices With these elements of groundwork laid, we begin to examine different conceptions of social studies purposes, possibilities, and practices. Some of the texts in this segment of the course include Barr, Barth, and Shermis (1978), Beane and Apple (1995), Bigelow (1998), Evans (1996), Loewen (1995), Meier and Schwarz (1995), Michie (1999), Newmann and Wehlage (1993), Parker (2003), Ravitch (2002), and Westheimer & Kahne (2004). These readings elaborate on different forms of citizenship education, authentic instruction, democratic teaching, and critical approaches to teaching history. Early in this section of the course, I draw upon my (poor) acting skills to illustrate to the students why they need a rationale for teaching social studies. I begin class by feigning disinterest in the importance of social studies, noting that perhaps the marginalization of social studies is well-justified. Through this (rather transparent) act, I incite them to disagree with me and make a compelling case for why we should study social studies. To help them build upon their initial arguments, students write weekly journal entries that bring together their observations of their field experience, their reflections and reactions to our weekly readings, and their thinking about how the field experience and readings are contributing to their developing rationale. I encourage them to pose thoughtful questions, concerns, or challenges about what they are seeing and reading; defend their ideas with specific examples from the texts and their classrooms; and relate their responses to what they see as the most important goals of social studies. Class sessions are devoted to both helping students make sense of these readings and the distinctions among them and taking part in methods that are compatible with the kinds of social studies teaching suggested in these readings. In the early weeks of the course, we collaboratively develop the criteria for exemplary participation in class; this class discussion not only provides the substance for the course participation rubric, but also demonstrates the democratic teaching about which they later read. Similarly, students engage in Socratic seminars, structured academic controversies, role-plays, critical readings of textbooks, and other activities, which embody the theories espoused in the readings.

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At the end of each class session, we debrief the day’s activities both from the perspective of students and of teachers. I pose the questions: What was this method like as a learner? In what ways did this pedagogy help you learn? In what ways did it make it hard for you to learn? What choices did I make as a teacher? What did I need to do to prepare for and implement this pedagogy? Through our discussion of these questions, I hope to make explicit the experience of these methods from a student perspective and also help them identify the “reflective knowledge” (Parker, 2003) that is required to implement these methods. During this portion of the course, I also elicit feedback from the students to find out what is working well in the course and what I might do differently. After one of these rounds of feedback, I wrote a response to their feedback and implemented some changes for the remainder of the course in response to their suggestions. In my letter to them, I explained what I found valuable about their feedback, why I had made the pedagogical decisions I had, why I was willing to make certain changes, and why I wasn’t going to make other changes they proposed. Considering Complexities In the final weeks of the course, we turn to the complexities of implementing powerful social studies instruction. In this portion of the course, I hope to get students to reflect on why it is that traditional social studies practices persist and the ways in which social studies teaching can either contribute to or disrupt social inequities. They read excerpts from Teachers Have it Easy (Moulthrop, Calegari, and Eggers, 2005) and Lortie’s (1975) discussion of the apprenticeship of observation. I use these readings to make explicit the complexities of teaching and the reasons why the status quo often remains so entrenched. The final sets of readings seek to stimulate students’ thinking about what it means to be a reflective teacher (Zeichner & Liston, 1996) and the ways in which racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity should figure prominently in their reflection (i.e., Delpit, 1995; Fitzgerald & Graves, 2005; Howard, 1999, pp. 65–82; McIntosh, 1990; Tatum, 1999). One of the culminating activities for this portion of the course is a social studies rationale role-play in which students take on diverse perspectives about the purposes of social studies.2 This role-play serves to help students synthesize the perspectives examined throughout the course and provides a final reminder of the arguments they might include in their social studies rationale. Revisions and Reflections While I believe this course has been successful in many ways, there are several changes I plan to make in the future. First, I plan to include readings which represent a broader range of visions of social studies teaching and more diverse perspectives, including more female authors, authors of color, more global perspectives, and also the voices of secondary students themselves. Second, I would like to provide students with opportunities to take on the role of teacher, either in our class sessions or in their field placement. There are also a number of questions and tensions with which I wrestle. I constantly struggle with the tension between cultivating relationships with and among students and pushing them to think more deeply about inequity and injustice. I tend to err on the side of developing relationships, leading me to shortchange the need to challenge their thinking further. While I believe that cultivating relationships will facilitate my efforts at changing their thinking, I want to embed a critical approach more deeply into this course, throughout the course. At the same time, this dilemma illustrates an inherent tension in the course: am I preparing students to develop their own rationale for teaching social studies, or am I preparing them to develop a critical, equity-oriented rationale for teaching social studies that mirrors my own?

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I am also troubled with many of the students’ journal reflections in which they note that “all the readings say the same thing,” and they use phrases like “critical thinking” interchangeably with “critical perspective.” I wonder, are these responses a result of cursory reading of the class texts, or a lack of understanding of the readings? Are students at a place where they can grasp these distinctions? How do I decide what is reasonable to expect of these students at this early stage of our program? I need to continue to think about what I can be doing differently to help them develop more nuanced, deep understandings of the complex and varied purposes for teaching social studies and the ends that these purposes serve. Notes 1. This assignment was developed by Mary Louise Gomez and Dawnene Hassett for the elementary education program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 2. This role-play is an adaptation of a social studies rationale role-play developed by Diana Hess for the secondary social studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

References Conklin, H. G. (2006). Learning to teach social studies at the middle level: A case study of preservice teachers in the elementary and secondary pathways. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin—Madison. Parker, W. (2003). Teaching democracy: Unity and diversity in public life. New York: Teacher’s College Press.

Teaching Resources Ayers, W. (1993). Seeing the student. In W. Ayers (Ed.), To teach: The journey of a teacher (pp. 25–49). New York: Teachers College Press. Barr, R., Barth, J., & Shermis, S. (1978). The nature of social studies. Palm Springs, CA: ETC. 1–32. Beane, J. A., & Apple, M. W. (1995). The case for democratic schools. In M. W. Apple & J. A. Beane (Eds.), Democratic schools (pp. 1–25). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Bigelow, B. (1998). Discovering Columbus: Rereading the past. In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking Columbus: The next 500 years (pp. 17–30). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: New Press. Dillon, S. (2006, March 26). Schools cut back subjects to push reading and math. New York Times, p. A3. Evans, R. W. (1996). A critical approach to teaching United States history. In R. W. Evans & D. W. Saxe (Eds.), Handbook on teaching social issues (pp. 152–160). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Fitzgerald, J., & Graves, M. F. (2005). Reading supports for all. Educational Leadership, 62(4). 68–71. Goodlad, J. (2004). A place called school. New York: McGraw-Hill. Howard, G. (1999). We can’t teach what we don’t know: White teachers, multiracial schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York: Three Rivers Press, chapter 4, 65–82. Loewen, J. (1995). Handicapped by history. Lies my teacher told me. New York: Simon & Schuster, 18–36. Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 61–67. McIntosh, P. (1990). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Independent School, 31–36. Meier, D., & Schwarz, P. (1995). Central Park East Secondary School: The hard part is making it happen. In M. W. Apple & J. A. Beane (Eds.), Democratic schools (pp. 26–40). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Michie, G. (1999). Holler if you hear me: The education of a teacher and his students. New York: Teachers College Press, chapter 1, 1–12. Moulthrop, D., Calegari, N. C., & Eggers, D. (2005). Teachers have it easy: The big sacrifices and small salaries of America’s teachers. New York: New Press, 93–141. Newmann, F., & Wehlage, G. (1993). Five standards of authentic instruction. Educational Leadership, 8–12. Parker, W. (2003). Teaching democracy: Unity and diversity in public life. New York: Teacher’s College Press. Ravitch, D. (2002). September 11: Seven lessons. Educational Leadership, 60(2), 6–9. Tatum, B. D. (1999). Color blind or color conscious? The School Administrator, 1–4. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269. Zeichner, K., & Liston, D. (1996). Reflective teaching: An introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, chapter 1, pp. 1–7.

8 Four-Way Street Fusing Curriculum, Pedagogy, Content, and Purpose to Advance the Common Good Dave Powell and Todd S. Hawley

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education NCSS Standards: V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning Instruction), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: critical thinking, purposes/goals, teacher reflection, multiple perspectives, studentcentered, students’ lives and experience, teaching philosophy, teacher beliefs Of all the competing philosophies that shape teacher education in social studies, two seem to stand out: the desire of teacher educators to impart knowledge about the social implications of schooling in a democracy, and their students’ concurrent desire to receive “practical” wisdom about the nature of teaching that they can use to create day-to-day lesson plans. Many researchers have addressed the disconnection between the aims of teacher educators and the desires of their students, and we have been deeply affected by their attempts to synthesize these seemingly incompatible goals. The courses we teach in methods and curriculum are offered to undergraduate social studies education majors in the final year of their coursework at the University of Georgia. Each student in the program completes the sequence in methods and curriculum simultaneously with a schoolbased practicum designed to provide valuable classroom experience before formal student teaching begins the following semester. As we planned our respective courses we wanted to maintain the integrity of each course while connecting the two courses through the core themes of our program: rationale-based practice and reflective teaching. We also wanted to create courses that balanced the theoretical and the practical. To do this we searched for a common theme that would address these many goals, and after some deliberation we chose to focus on Cochran-Smith’s (2004) vision of “teaching against the grain.” As she puts it, “to teach against the grain, teachers have to understand and work both within and around the culture of teaching and the politics of schooling at their particular schools and within their larger school systems and communities” (emphasis in original, p. 28). She suggests that student teachers should find ways to channel their criticism of “the conventional labels and practices that sustain the status quo by raising unanswerable questions” that push against practices that undermine transformative teaching in public schools (p. 28). “Perhaps most importantly,” she adds, “teachers who work against the grain must wrestle with their own doubts, fend off the fatigue of reform, and depend on the strength of their

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individual collaborative convictions that their work ultimately makes a difference in the fabric of social responsibility” (p. 28). We believe that Cochran-Smith’s vision perfectly articulates our sense of responsibility to students as purveyors of both practical and theoretical knowledge. Thus armed with a sense of purpose, we designed courses that attempt to position students to learn to “teach against the grain.” In the curriculum course, this means helping students develop a sense of professional and intellectual autonomy as teachers and as interpreters of the official school curriculum. The course begins with explorations of questions about the nature of knowledge in social studies. Students watch a short film called Murder at Harvard (Banta & Stange, 2003), based on a book written by historian Simon Schama (1991) that troubles the nature of historical knowledge and knowledge in general. From there, students are exposed to a smorgasbord of readings that encourage their continued exploration of the intersections of knowledge, purpose, and content to help them develop pedagogical content knowledge for teaching. The nature of pedagogical content knowledge itself is troubled in the course as well, through selected readings by Gatto (2005), Rorty (1999), Segall (2004), Seixas (2000), Shulman (1986), and Thornton (2004). As students proceed through the course they receive increasingly “practical” knowledge in the form of readings by authors such as Bain (2000), Holt (1990), and Wineburg (1999), as well as in more unconventional places from Diamond (1997), Ehrenreich (2001), Horwitz (1998), and Lutz and Collins (1993). They also read and critique the state’s official curriculum document, the Georgia Performance Standards. Throughout, students are encouraged to embrace Thornton’s (2004) concept of teachers as “curriculum gatekeepers” in order to develop the ability to interpret and enact curriculum in effective and sophisticated ways. The intended result of all this work is for students to synthesize their developing awareness of pedagogical methods with sophisticated analyses of how teachers are positioned to both learn about and teach “content” in social studies classrooms. Segall’s (2004) work, for example, is used to encourage teachers to see how the texts that they use—whether books, films, articles, curriculum supplements, or other forms—predispose teachers to teach and learners to learn in certain ways. This, in turn, is connected to the concept of pedagogical content knowledge, and in particular to the problematic nature of “content” in social studies. Instead of presenting social studies content as a list of objective facts collected in official curriculum documents and reflected in official curriculum materials, content is instead conceptualized as fluid and context-dependent. In this way, the course encourages students to work both with and against the official curriculum by interpreting it to meet their needs as individual teachers in their own classrooms. Students are urged to teach the official curriculum by interpreting and interrogating it, not recapitulating it for students. Course assignments and projects (which include formal and informal response papers, midterm essays, ongoing participation in online and in-class discussions, and a culminating unit plan project) reinforce the many goals of the course by facilitating close examination and analysis of course materials. On the methods side, our shared commitment to helping student teachers learn to teach against the grain manifests itself in systematic attempts to match effective teaching techniques to the intellectual processes promoted in the curriculum course. As such, we have structured the methods course around several theoretical yet practical approaches to promoting powerful social studies teaching and learning. This includes readings that examine the larger purposes for teaching social studies; the use of discussion, deliberation, and decision making on persistent public issues; the power of culturally relevant pedagogy; the use of service learning to develop stronger connections between participatory citizenship and the common good; how classroom management can

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become part of developing democratic citizens; and, finally, a vision of promoting engagement with controversial issues as a natural part of a rationale-based, purposeful approach to teaching social studies. Key readings include works by Bolgatz (2005), Engle (1960), Gathercoal (1998), Hahn (2001), Hess (2005), Ladson-Billings (1997), Parker (2001), Stanley (2005), VanSickle (1983), and Westheimer & Kahne (2004). As the course developed, these approaches emerged as both the content and pedagogy of the course; through them, teacher candidates were encouraged to work both within and against traditional methods favored in social studies classrooms as they developed the ability to enable future students to become active, participatory, democratic citizens. In the methods course students are asked to complete four tasks designed to promote a vision of teaching against the grain. They are asked to: (1) write weekly reaction papers based on the assigned readings; (2) participate actively and constructively in an online discussion board; (3) continue the process of developing a rationale for teaching social studies driven by connections of purpose and practice; and (4) research and model a method for teaching content that gives special attention to what students might learn in class other than information contained in the Georgia Performance Standards. This attention to what we like to call the “pedagogy of the process” challenges teacher candidates to expand their views of what counts as content in social studies and pushes them to see how the process of teaching content can help students develop democratic habits and skills not included in the standards themselves. In general, class sessions are structured around the readings themselves; the readings are supported by the instructor’s modeling of specific examples of the use of content and pedagogy to actively engage students. After the first three course meetings, students are challenged to make presentations that focus on putting rationale-based practice into action. Reaction papers are concise (two to three pages) and written to address various aspects of the assigned readings. They are flexible documents that can be structured in many ways. Reaction papers foster a unique relationship—indeed, a conversation—between instructor and student. This conversation, engendered by the response papers themselves and feedback written in response to them, spans the semester and encourages an extended discourse that may or may not play out in larger seminar discussions. The process is designed to provide space for students to ask “unanswerable” questions, to think together, and to disrupt conceptions of traditional forms of assessment. Rationale development is a major component of our teacher education program and, as such, is expanded upon in the methods course. Here the rationale assignment is completed in three stages. First, students are asked to return to their initial rationales written as part of their ESOC 2450 course (see Conklin, chapter 7 this volume); they are instructed to read their initial drafts and make any changes they deem necessary based on their current thinking after the first few weeks of class. Second, each student is asked to respond to a new set of questions designed to move his or her thinking toward a more personalized vision of what to do in the classroom and how to think about doing it. The questions are: What specific skills and values will your students learn in your social studies course? How will you make decisions about what constitutes worthwhile knowledge? What kinds of content would you teach and why? How does your rationale promote a vision of the “good society” and the role students can play in developing their own visions? Finally, students respond to feedback from both the instructor and their peers, and complete the draft of their rationale that they will take into their student teaching semester. Our hope is that they will make their rationales available to both their cooperating teachers and their field instructors during student teaching as they work on putting the rationale statements into practice. Embedded within our larger goals is a vision of social studies as something more than “content”

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prescribed by the state, found in textbooks, and assessed on state-mandated high-stakes tests. In course assignments, we push our teacher candidates to constantly consider what they are learning besides how to be social studies teachers. In so doing, we hope to provide space for our students to interpret curriculum with confidence, to work together better, to listen to their peers and build upon the thinking of others, to deliberate, to make decision making a visible part of the experience of learning how to teach—and to do all of this as they work toward improving their own democratic citizenship skills. By modeling our own teaching as a learning process, we hope to bring ourselves and our students closer to the goal of understanding how to teach against the grain—a noble goal, we believe, for teacher education in any field, but especially in social studies. References Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity, and social justice in teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press. Schama, S. (1991). Dead certainties: Unwarranted speculations. New York: Knopf.

Teaching Resources Bain, R. B. (2000). Into the breach: Using research and theory to shape history instruction. In P. Seixas, P. Stearns, & S. Wineburg (Eds.), Teaching, learning and knowing history: National and international perspectives (pp. 331–353). New York: New York University Press. Banta, M. (Producer), & Stange, E. (Director). (2003). Murder at Harvard [DVD]. Produced for American Experience by WGBH, Boston. Bolgatz, J. (2005). Talking race in the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Diamond, J. M. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: Norton. Ehrenreich, B. (2001). Nickel and dimed: On (not) getting by in America. New York: Metropolitan Books. Engle, S. H. (1960). Decision making: The heart of social studies instruction. Social Education, 24(7), 301–304, 306. Gathercoal, F. (1998). Judicious discipline. In R. E. Butchart & B. McEwan, (Eds.), Classroom discipline in American schools: Problems and possibilities for democratic education (pp. 197–216). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Gatto, J. T. (2005). Dumbing us down: The hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society. Hahn, C. L. (2001). What can be done to encourage civic engagement in youth? Social Education, 25(2), 108–110. Hess, D. E. (2005). How do teachers’ political views influence teaching about controversial issues? Social Education, 69(1), 47–48. Holt, T. C. (1990). Thinking historically: Narrative, imagination, and understanding. New York: College Entrance Examination Board. Horwitz, T. (1998). Confederates in the attic: Dispatches from the unfinished civil war. New York: Pantheon Books. Ladson-Billings, G. (1997). Crafting a culturally relevant social studies approach. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (pp. 123–135). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Lutz, C. A., & Collins, J. L. (1993). Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Parker, W. C. (2001). Classroom discussion: Models for leading seminars and deliberations. Social Education, 65(2), 111–115. Rorty, R. (1999). Philosophy and social hope. New York: Penguin. Segall, A. (2004). Blurring the lines between content and pedagogy. Social Education, 68(7), 479–482. Seixas, P. (2000). Schweigen! die Kinder!; or, Does postmodern history have a place in the schools? In P. N. Stearns, P. Seixas, & S. Wineburg (Eds.), Knowing, teaching, and learning history: National and international perspectives (pp. 19–37). New York: New York University Press. Shulman, L.S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Stanley, B. (2005). Social studies and the social order: Transmission or transformation? Social Education, 69(5), 282– 285. Thornton, S. J. (2004). Teaching social studies that matters: Curriculum for active learning. New York: Teachers College Press. VanSickle, R. L. (1983). Practicing what we teach: Promoting democratic experiences in the classroom. In M. A. Hepburn (Ed.), Democratic education in schools and classrooms (pp. 49–66). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2002). Educating the “good” citizen: Political choices and pedagogical goals. In D. R. Walling (Ed), Public education, democracy, and the common good (pp. 29–47). Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappan Educational Foundation. Wineburg, S. (1999). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(7), 488–489.

SECTION

2

Democratic Values and Government Introduction Aaron Bodle and Elizabeth E. Heilman

A fundamental goal of education in a democracy is the preparation of citizens for informed civic participation (Banks, 2004; Labaree, 1997). Yet, civic literacy consistently remains a low priority in state education standards and all formal measures suggest that Americans are dangerously uninformed about the basics of democratic theory and practices. For example, the nonprofit Intercollegiate Studies Institute (2009) finds that Americans are “alarmingly uninformed” about American history, government and founding principles since the average score on their annual National Civic Literacy survey was just 49% and 71% failed. While 56% could name Paula Abdul as a judge on American Idol, fewer than half of could name the three branches of government and thirty percent did not know that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence—let alone what these concepts might mean. Further, as a result of an atmosphere of standards-based teaching, among other professional barriers, social studies education has historically been taught in way that emphasizes facts and information. To address this problem, many teacher education programs promote a progressive pedagogy that develops a conceptual understanding of civics and fosters personal connections and civic capability. As evidenced by the group of innovative, progressive, and critical lessons in section 2 of this volume, civic education is not without hope. The writers in this section underscore the importance of challenging future social studies educators to conceptualize and enact lessons related to core democratic values in their teacher education course work and in their future practice. Each contribution indicates the need to address content knowledge of democratic theory and the core values of democracy while concomitantly preparing future teachers to incorporate the same understanding and values in their future practice. These lessons emphasize the concepts, pedagogy, and action necessary for effectively preparing both K-12 students and preservice teachers to assume “the office of citizen” (Heilman chapter 10, Vawter chapter 15) and the responsibility of “social studies educators” to prepare future students for the same. While preservice teachers typically enter social studies methods courses with adequate knowledge of government systems, they have rarely devoted a lot of thought to what it means to be an active and critical participant in a democracy. Their students’ lack of content knowledge related to democratic values and participation requires teacher educators to address this knowledge gap while simultaneously modeling effective pedagogical techniques. Furthermore, the chapters in this section illustrate the multiple layers of citizenship from local, to national to global conceptualizations. Yet, each writer emphasizes and supports the development of core democratic characteristics. Barbara Slater Stern opens section 2 by illustrating the significance of teaching that the familiar

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vocabulary of democracy is deceptively simple. She explains that many of the future social studies teachers in her classrooms have preconceived and simplistic notions of concepts like freedom, justice, and democracy. In fact, these concepts are perhaps some of the most complex and highly contested in our society. She challenges her students to employ their critical lenses and personal experiences to deconstruct the contingent nature of any concept and certainly of the core democratic concepts. Her students soon learn that even seemingly simple concepts such as “cat” are difficult to define, thus illustrating for them the need to examine the often overlooked complexity of language in order to gain a more nuanced perspective of the core concepts of their field. In chapter 10, Elizabeth Heilman continues with this conceptual thread by addressing the unsettling reality that many future social studies teachers arrive in classrooms having thought very little about the core philosophical values and constructs of democracy; liberty, justice, power, truth, and citizenship. Required reading such as Mills and Rawls, accompanied by lively class discussions provides the basis for putting critical democracy into action. With fresh new philosophical perspectives on democracy, students are capable of identifying the inadequacy of textbook ramblings related to the concept. The lesson is designed to push practice centered future teachers to consider the implications of what they are teaching in order to better understand the core theoretical claims and tensions in concepts and practices critical to a healthy democracy. Classroom management and “teacher authority” rank high among the concerns of most future teachers. Students in teacher education programs are typically quite ready to think about classroom authority, but their concept of what this should be like is often clouded with misconceptions. “… Contrary to its use in common discourse, authority is not a possession or trait belonging to a teacher”; it is not a fixed or stable phenomenon (Pace, chapter 11). Pace defines it as a relationship that ideally depends on multiple factors including the teacher’s legitimacy, students’ consent, and common goals. In other words, power and authority are not one and the same. By introducing the separation of power and authority Pace’s students are able to develop nuanced approaches to handling the complex challenge of managing the tenuous nature of a pedagogically democratic classroom. In chapter 12 Gibson and Ross challenge us to look for complex political theory in simple packages. Through applying a Marxist lens to children’s literature they examine the social roots of oppression and freedom as they are theorized by Hegel and later taken up by Freire and others. With these concepts in mind, future teachers are capable of identifying the disciplinary effects of the media, society, their local and school communities, as well as their own tendencies to limit the freedom of their students. The first four chapters of this section grapple with some of the core theoretical underpinnings of democracy: critical citizenship, power, authority, and freedom. The remaining chapters are focused on putting theory into practice to create and maintain democratic ideals within the complex space of the classroom. While Ross and Gibson approach social studies using examples of tyranny and oppression, in chapter 13 Myers presents similar lessons using a human rights framework. International and global topics such as universal human rights are the least standardized of the social studies curricula. As a result, they are given little attention in most teacher education programs. This trend is perpetuated by the popular assumption that human rights violations are a “foreign” issue; that they do not occur in the United States. Therefore, it is necessary for their own knowledge as citizens and as future teachers that teacher education students develop the skills to critically examine issues of human rights at home and abroad. Using human rights as the foundation for global citizenship is likely to take an increasingly central place in citizenship and civics education as the world becomes increasingly interconnected through globalization.

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Teacher education in the social studies and in multicultural education is increasingly associated with social justice goals (Zeichner, 2004). Dispositions of future teachers are often compatible with these goals, but they often struggle to apply them in practice due to a lack of knowledge and an inability to affectively connect with the content. In chapter 14, Jeff Passe addresses these concerns by introducing his students to emotionism, a theory that argues that emotions are inextricably linked to morality (Prinz, 2007). As Passe argues, “the goals of affective lessons should promote students’ abilities to understand their own values and feelings, improve students’ abilities to understand others’ values and feelings, and promote depth of understanding.” Morality is essential to building a more just society. Therefore, effective citizenship education requires affective approaches to pedagogical decision making. The final three chapters in this section move away from theoretical and conceptual discussions of democratic values toward enacting them in classroom and community settings. They describe the challenges and rewards associated with modeling democratic processes inside and outside of the school context. In chapter 15 David Vawter describes his experience modeling the procedural aspects of democratic government in his social studies methods course at Winthrop University. Through cooperative learning and decision making through the democratic process, students learn to resolve conflict while developing a useful class product. Furthermore, they develop a rich understanding of the problems and the benefits associated with democratic decision making. Terrance Mason and Jennifer Ponder use chapter 16 to describe how modeling democratic processes can introduce democratic values and the importance of citizenship education to preservice teacher educators. In this era of standards based instruction it is difficult to inspire future educators to give significant attention to topics such as civic education that do not appear as state standards. Furthermore, the complex theoretical work involved in democratic deliberation is an amalgamation of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that require prolonged practice to master. Mason and Ponder describe how students experience and engage the democratic process as active participants in mock congressional hearings, academic controversies, and mock trials—lessons readily adaptable to the K-12 setting. An intended outcome of democratic citizenship education is the capacity not just for making judgments but further, the capacity for taking social action to advance the common good. In this section’s culminating chapter, Brian Sevier describes his use of service learning field placements to motivate elementary social studies methods students to take social action in the communities served by their schools. Social action expands the pedagogical value of service learning by involving students in the act of community organization in order to help people help themselves. The challenges his students encounter provide valuable examples of the contingent nature of the core values and processes of democracy. They also serve as a hopeful reminder of the possibilities when teachers are dedicated to the promotion of democratic values at all levels of education. References Banks, J. A. (2004). Introduction: Democratic citizenship education. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Multicultural societies in diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives (pp. 3–16). San Francisco; Jossey-Bass. Intercollegiate Studies Institute (2009). Americans fail the test of civic literacy. http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/ major findings_finding1.html Labaree, D. (1997). Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 39–81. Prinz, J. (2007). The emotional construction of morals. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Zeichner, K., (2004). The adequacies and inadequacies of three current strategies to recruit, prepare, and retain the best teachers for all students. Teachers College Record, 105(3), 490–519.

9 Those Pesky Little Words How to Teach Abstract Civic Concepts Barbara Slater Stern

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, K-6, 7-12 NCSS Standards: V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning Instruction) Topics: civics, government, democracy, Constitution, concept development, language/meaning, civic content knowledge, critical thinking We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (U.S. Constitution) This statement is on the screen or SmartBoard as students enter the classroom. There are immediate nods of familiarity. Many of the students have memorized this sentence as part of their schooling. And, they certainly expect that across their future careers they will be teaching the Constitution. In fact, it is now federal law that all schools that receive public funds must teach the Constitution on September 17 each year. Armed with this knowledge, I ask my middle and secondary preservice social studies teachers to tell me what purpose is served by the Preamble to the Constitution. I frequently get blank stares, but fairly quickly the class reaches the conclusion that the Preamble serves as a rationale, or statement of purpose, for the document to follow. Then, when I ask what it means, I get more blank stares. I ask: “Who are we the people?” Is that all of the people, a majority of the people, many of the people (plurality), some of the people? What is justice? Domestic tranquility? Common defense (internal, external)? What do we mean when we say “general welfare?” We need to define not only “welfare” but also “general.” What are the blessings of liberty? In fact, what is liberty? Now that my students are completely confused, the introduction for this lesson is complete. These preservice teachers, ready to student teach next semester and then graduate, thought they knew the Preamble, but now find out that they really don’t. We begin to enter the body of my lesson and work toward achieving the objectives for this class: • Students will be able to identify and define civic concepts that are regularly used in social studies classrooms. • Students will be able to use inductive instructional strategies such as concept attainment, concept development, or synectics to assist their future pupils in acquiring basic social studies understandings. 50

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• Students will be able to explain how divergent beliefs and attitudes about the meanings of abstract concepts both create and reflect political differences in our society. • Students will be able to explain the importance of insuring that all their pupils understand the meanings of the concepts being used in any lesson they might be teaching. Now, these are a lot of objectives for one 75-minute class and I do not really expect that I will fully achieve them all with this one lesson. On the other hand, it is very early in the course, and using not only Hilda Taba’s (1962, 1971) inductive methods for conceptual learning, but also her ideas relating to the spiral curriculum, I plan on revisiting these objectives repeatedly throughout the semester. Thus, this is just the beginning of our study of those “pesky little words,” generally nouns or adjectives, which teachers throw around in class without having their students engage in the struggle for philosophical and political meaning, which is critical to learning social studies content in a democratic society. We could begin by selecting one of the concepts from the Preamble to define. I frequently start with “more perfect.” I ask students to tell me specifically what “more perfect” means. Obviously, this question requires as a first step that we define the word perfect in the context of the U.S. government. Take out a piece of paper and try it right now. As a teacher in Florida, I was required to complete a sequence of steps to define a concept and until the entire sequence was complete, the administrator evaluating my lesson could not give me credit for having taught the concept. The steps to define any concept include: definition, examples, attributes, and nonexamples (the acronym DEAN). The definition may not use the original term in its explanation, and it needs to put the word into a larger context, including a list of attributes that distinguish it from the larger context. So, instead of starting with such a difficult concept as “more perfect,” let us back up and try an easy concept. A very simple way to start this process is to ask students to define “cat” in nonscientific terms. Now, even a preschool student can recognize a cat, but, when I ask my college students to define a “cat” they struggle. Enter the instructional strategy of concept attainment and, in this case, it is useful to start with pictures instead of words. I put two columns on the chalkboard labeled “example” and “nonexample,” and have students sort pictures I bring to class under the columns. Then, I ask the students what the column under “yes” suggests. They will all say “cat.” Now, I add a third column labeled “attributes” and we brainstorm words related to common attributes the pictures in the example column share. The larger contexts, “an animal” or “a mammal,” are pretty easy. So are attributes such as “tail,” “four feet,” “fur,” etc. But, I ask, how is this not a dog? In other words, what are essential attributes that make a cat actually a cat? I am not looking for genus or species here, just something simple. Put it in everyday language, I suggest. Not so easy. (Hint, a little research on the Internet will clue you in that the essential attribute of all cats, including lions and tigers, is that they purr!) So, a cat is a mammal that walks on four feet, has fur, and purrs! The preservice teachers now understand that if they cannot easily put “cat” into simple terms, then how will they teach “liberty,” “justice,” “democracy,” or “freedom”? Even concepts like “map,” “region,” “community,” “war,” and “culture” are actually highly complex. We go back to the Preamble and start working in groups to define the “pesky” little words, the actually complex concepts, which we will struggle with all semester. I suggest that students consult online encyclopedias for their initial definitions. Then, we share some of these definitions, examples, attributes, and nonattributes as a class. In my closure of the lesson, I stress Taba’s beliefs in teaching for meaning and understanding (1962, 1971). After students review the steps for concept development, they discuss the point of

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the lesson. They understand the importance of carefully planning their lessons by first analyzing the concepts central to the academic content of their lessons. If teachers do not understand what they are teaching and why they are teaching it, their pupils will not be able to master the content effectively. One of the interesting things about this lesson is the impact it seems to have on the students. Several of them have reported that they have used this same lesson in their field experience classrooms. Others include a similar lesson in their social studies portfolios, the major project for the course. Overall, this is a lesson that stays with students and has far more influence than the simple instructional strategy it seems to demonstrate. References Taba, H. (1962). Curriculum development: Theory and practice. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. Taba, H. (1971). A teacher’s handbook to elementary social studies: An inductive approach. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. U.S. Constitution. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

Teaching Resources Estes, T., Gunter, M., & Schwab, J. (2003a). The concept attainment model: Defining concepts inductively. In Instruction: A models approach (4th ed., pp. 81–96). Boston: Pearson Education. Estes, T., Gunter, M., & Schwab, J. (2003b). The concept development model: Analyzing the relationships between parts of a concept. In Instruction: A models approach (4th ed., pp. 97–116). Boston: Pearson Education. Estes, T., Gunter, M., & Schwab, J. (2003c). Synectics: Developing creative thinking and problem solving. In Instruction: A models approach (4th ed., pp. 135–156). Boston: Pearson Education. Joyce, B., & Weil, M. (2000a). Attaining concepts: Sharpening the basic thinking skills. In Models of teaching (6th ed., pp. 143–160). Needham Heights, MA: Pearson Education. Joyce, B., & Weil, M. (2000b). Synectices: Enhancing creative thought. In Models of teaching (6th ed., pp. 215–245). Needham Heights, MA: Pearson Education.

10 Understanding and Teaching Core Democratic Concepts Elizabeth E. Heilman

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7–12, University NCSS Standards: V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: civics, civic content knowledge, critical thinking, ethical–political valuation, government, democracy, Constitution, concept development, power/authority, inquiry, deliberation, equity, justice, textbook analysis While most teachers can readily name the branches and functions of government, few teachers understand democracy as a political philosophy, and thus they do not really understand the most central conceptual rationales behind the values, processes, structures, and institutions of democratic law and government: the core democratic values. Further, textbooks and curricula in this area do not typically help teachers because most of the materials having anything to do with political philosophy are, in my experience, inadequate. Teachers also are not academically prepared in this subject area. Social studies teacher preparation is dominated by history and supplemented by geography and economics. Political philosophy is not often required and is rarely studied. This worries me. How can we teach the core democratic values and prepare citizens if we are not sure what democracy means? The way that I teach about democratic political philosophy is solid but not highly innovative in terms of pedagogy. What is, sadly, most distinctive, is the fact that I teach this at all. Learning about Democratic Concepts In the first class session I pass out index cards and ask students to define the following five concepts in terms of what they mean in a democracy: liberty, justice, power, truth, and citizenship. For the next class, I ask students to read chapters 3 through 5 from David Miller’s Short Introduction to Political Philosophy (2003) along with chapter 2 from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859), which is readily available online as well as in most reference libraries. In preparation for this class, students bring their answers in writing to the following questions: • How is political deliberation different from other forms of thinking? • What kind of perspective does democratic theory offer on power? • Include three new quotes from famous people that make a point about power in democracies.

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• What are Mill’s three arguments about truth in a democracy and why we have freedom of speech and the press? • What are the many different kinds of liberty and rights that people have and how are they justified? • What is positive liberty and what is negative liberty and how do internal and external capacity matter? • What is the harm principle? • What is justice? • What are Rawls’ principles of justice? • Under what conditions should inequalities be allowed? What concept of the person or citizen does democracy rely on? • Explain the citizenship qualities that should be developed for democracy to function well. Class begins with a guided discussion. I look for students to explain that no citizen is naturally superior, the people themselves can safeguard their freedom and interests, and all men and women are able to think critically and deliberate cooperatively. David Miller does a good job explaining why in a democracy people should be free to make their own choices; they should have a lot of worthwhile choices and also the means and practical capacity (external capacity) as well as critical judgment (internal capacity) on what is a good choice. Government should offer positive freedom, things that help you get what you want, and negative freedom—it should only prevent you from doing things that harm others. The balance of rights between groups and individuals always provokes lively debate and students are invariably intrigued that John Stuart Mill seems to support things like the legalization of marijuana. I prepare my own set of quotes on power to supplement what students bring and we tend to focus on the ways in which democratic political philosophy is suspicious of power and provides for checks and balances, separation of powers, and formalized challenges to policy in the court systems. It is interesting to talk about how this affects both the individual and the system. As Alexander Hamilton pointed out, “A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired” while Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will.” I am always a bit dramatic when I teach Mill’s chapter “On Liberty of Thought and Discussion” in On Liberty. We discuss his first two points: First, that we need free debate because we might have a policy or be doing something wrong—like perpetrating slavery or segregation, or lacking environmental controls. Second, as Mill writes, even if “the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.” This resonates with students and we discuss examples. “I have a big announcement,” I then say with great drama. “On my way to class today God and several angels appeared before me and gave me the Truth. I brandish any nearby book and say, “It’s right here. We are going to spend the rest of the semester memorizing it. God knew I was teaching you guys and thought you deserved the Truth.” They smirk but I have their attention. “Now what problem would Mill have with us memorizing Truth?” We then discuss Mill’s final points such as, “Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth, unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little

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comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds .” I ask students if they have ever had an argument in which they didn’t change their opinion, but the process of arguing helped them to understand their own position better. Most have had this valuable experience. Mill tells us that if we memorize and do not debate even the Truth, “the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction from reason or personal experience .” Teaching John Rawls’ Theory of Justice is moderately complex and I recommend that you read a good resource on it first, like Jan Garret’s online guide (2009). The first principle of justice (“the principle of greatest equal liberty”) says that each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others. This does not mean people end up equal. Rather, it means that they have an equal chance to lead unequal lives. The second principle (“the difference principle”) is that “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that a) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity and b) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the leastadvantaged members of society, according to the difference principle (Rawls, 1971, p. 303). For example, we all need doctors and inventors and they should be paid enough or more, if that is needed, in order to motivate them. Analysis of How Democratic Concepts Are Used After our group discussion I ask students to work in five groups and (1) decide on democratic values or concepts that are most central to democracy and to provide short definitions of them, and (2) analyze and critique the definitions our class came up with prior to the readings and critique the ways in which these terms are used in textbooks and curriculum materials. I give each of the five groups one term to critique in particular and copies of all of our class index card definitions collected during the previous week. I provide them with copies of the “core democratic values” endorsed by NCSS and many states. Again, these are readily available online. I also provide each group with a different copy of a section of a major textbook which addresses one of these concepts. In this short chapter I cannot provide a thorough review of what we find, but, I will provide a few examples so that you can see what is typical. Later elementary and middle school versions from the Michigan Department of Education (2009), for example, define equality: “Everyone should get the same treatment regardless of where your parents or grandparents were born, race, religion or how much money you have. All people have political, social and economic equality.” This, of course bears no relationship to John Rawls’s sophisticated concept of distributive justice that we have been reviewing, and students find it to be startling, inappropriately simplistic, and wrong. In the same Michigan document, “Truth” is cited as a value and defined in this way, “They should expect and demand that the government not lie to them and the government should disclose information to the people. The government and its people should not lie.” Again, this bears little conceptual relationship to Mill’s sophisticated concept of truth through free thought and discussion and students find it to be patronizing and wrong, especially since they have learned that democratic theory tells us that the powerful will tend to lie and that is why we have a free press and mechanisms for dissent. We end with a discussion of citizenship qualities that should be developed for democracy to function well. I share a set of seven qualities I generated (Heilman, 2008):

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Curiosity: the emotional and intellectual openness to new cultures, ideas and experiences. Compassion: the sympathetic awareness of others’ situations together with a desire to realize universal human rights. Criticality: the intellectual capacity to judge the logic of policies, arguments, and concepts along with the ethical capacity to make judgments on democratic grounds. Collaboration: the ability to work with others in structured ways toward a common goal for the common good. Creativity: the ability to use our unique talents to synthesize ideas and values to make something new that serves the common good. Courage: the moral strength to persevere, and withstand danger or difficulty, in order to realize democratic principles and universal human rights. This is the capacity of both individuals and institutions to do the right thing in difficult circumstances. Commitment: the long-term disposition to monitor and influence any situation or the policies of any organization that affect human rights and the common good. Although we all feel uneasy about the comparative cultural illiteracy on issues of democratic political philosophy, ending in this way reminds each of us that it is our duty as citizens to wrestle with the theory and practice of core democratic concepts. Reference Rawls, J. (1971). Theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Teaching Resources Garret, J. (2009). Rawls’ mature theory of social justice: An introduction for students. http://www.wku.edu/~jan.garrett/ ethics/matrawls.htm Heilman, E. (2008). Including voices from the world through global citizenship education. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 20(4), 30–32. Michigan Department of Education. (2009). Our core democratic values. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/10-02_ Core_democtaric_Values_48832_7.pdf Mill. J. S. (1859). On liberty. Retrieved January 5, 2009, from ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645o/ Miller D., (2003). Political philosophy: A very short introduction. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

11 Studying Authority in a Secondary Teacher Education Class Judith L. Pace

Context: TE Secondary NCSS Standards: VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 5 (Learning Environment), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: ethical-political valuation, critical thinking, democratic education, citizenship, classroom community, power/authority, deliberation, film, role play/simulation, justice, teacher reflection Authority in classrooms has always been a problematic yet fundamental element of classroom life; its character has a huge impact on the quality of relationships, teaching, and learning. In theory, authority reflects and recreates the democratic purposes of schooling, for ideally it is based upon the teacher’s legitimacy, students’ consent, and the shared values, purposes, and norms of the school. However, we know that for many reasons, this is often not the case; according to classroom research and common knowledge classroom authority relations frequently are rife with overt or sub rosa conflict, abuse, or resistance. Classroom authority is a major preoccupation of teachers, especially preservice teachers. This is especially apparent to me every time I broach the topic in my Teaching Adolescents course, which occurs during the first semester of a secondary credential and master’s of teaching program. I consider it crucial to confront deeply held assumptions about what authority is. For example, my students learn about authority not as something possessed by the teacher, nor as the wielding of power, but as a social construction shaped by teachers, students, and contextual factors. My overall aim is to help them understand the factors that influence authority and encourage them to use their competencies as teachers, reflective judgment, and capacity for ongoing learning to proactively construct educationally responsible authority relations. What follows is an adaptable work in progress. In fact, this overview includes my own plan for linking the study of authority to citizenship education. I begin the unit with a free association exercise to reveal commonsense ideas and misconceptions about authority. I hand out a piece of paper to each student with the word Authority typed in the center, and students write down whatever comes to mind. Then they share their responses, and I write them on the board. We analyze the words and phrases that fill the board by looking for themes. Inevitably students note the evaluative nature of their associations, most of which are negative. They begin to identify various kinds of authority; for example, positional and relational. We talk a bit about the cultural ideas and experiences that shape our views. Students begin to question their assumptions about the meaning of authority. We talk about how it is integral to 57

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classroom life, and students reveal that as new teachers it is a major concern that for many causes anxiety. The next part of the lesson is an introduction to major concepts and theorists in preparation for the week’s reading. These concepts include legitimacy, consent, and moral order. With the help of diagrams, we begin to talk about authority as a particular role-based relationship between teachers and students, and about the contextual influences located both in and outside the classroom that shape this relationship. Students begin to realize that contrary to its use in common discourse, authority is not a possession or trait belonging to a teacher; it is not a fixed or stable phenomenon. Rather it is a relationship that ideally depends on the teacher’s legitimacy, students’ consent, and shared goals; these essential elements make it different from power. For some, the notion that authority can be positive is provocative; for others, the idea that questioning authority can be positive is equally novel. In the last part of the lesson we view short film clips that illustrate teachers and students enacting authority and other kinds of relations, including influence and coercion. Hollywood films I have used include Dangerous Minds (1995), Election (1999), Lean on Me (1989), and Dead Poets Society (1989). Our discussion of these films includes a critique of how Hollywood represents teachers, students, and schooling as well as racial, ethnic, and social class differences. Some documentary films I also use are High School II (2007) and Minds of Our Own (1997). The class analyzes teachers’ approaches; for example, what they do to demonstrate different kinds of legitimacy and gain students’ cooperation; and they also analyze students’ actions. When we discuss the clips, I ask the class to try to distinguish what they actually saw and heard from the inferences they make about what they observed. They see that classroom interactions can be interpreted in widely divergent ways, which mirrors the diverse perspectives classroom participants may have about authority. The assignment for the next week is to read the introductory chapter from Pace and Hemmings’ book, Classroom Authority: Theory, Research, and Practice (2006). For this and most readings, students write a 1- to 2-page reflection on the main ideas, how they can be applied to teaching, and questions they provoke. The second class meeting starts with a review of the main argument and key concepts. I talk about Christopher Hurn’s (1985) article, cited in the chapter, which explains the shift from traditional to professional authority in schools that occurred during the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of the era’s social and political transformations and the ideological debates that have surrounded school authority. Students talk about the kinds of authority they have experienced and enacted in their own classrooms. We review the work of Mary Haywood Metz (1978). I discuss my research on authority, and explain that the character of authority I found was different from what Metz uncovered 30 years earlier. Authority in the classes I studied was ambiguous as both teachers and students mostly avoided conflict, whereas in Metz’s study challenges to authority were overt and teachers’ approaches fell into discrete categories. The comparison helps them understand the role of historical and cultural contexts in shaping classroom relations as well as developmental differences between middle school and high school. Then I pass out a vignette from my article “Using Ambiguity and Entertainment” (Pace, 2003b) accompanied by pertinent quotes from interviews with the teacher and students in that case study. The class reads and analyzes what is happening with authority in this classroom scenario, first in small groups and then as a whole. We discuss the quality of negotiations that occur over the writing of an essay on the Ku Klux Klan. I ask students to relate their analyses to their own experiences in high school. And we talk about how the teacher in the vignette might have approached the class differently to engender more engagement with subject

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matter. Some students start to express a change in their thinking—that the most beneficial relations between teachers and students may rest more heavily on professional legitimacy than on charisma. Other students identify with the teacher in the case study and question my critique! The focus of the next class meeting is the relationship between tracking and authority relations. I talk about Metz’s finding that both teachers and students approached classroom relations differently, depending on the track level of the class. We debate the appropriateness of exerting more control in lower-track classes; this is a hot issue, because while it may seem politically or morally correct to treat all students the same, novice teachers often report that this does not work, and they have much greater success when they are more structured and stricter with lower-track classes. For this week they have read Janet Bixby’s chapter “Authority in Detracked High School Classrooms: Tensions among Individualism, Equity, and Legitimacy” in Pace and Hemmings Classroom Authority (2006). It investigates how bureaucratic authority relations and professional legitimacy defined solely as content knowledge maintain unequal educational experiences for students of color despite a detracking reform. We begin to make connections among authority, pedagogy, and classroom dynamics, and analyze how competitive values in schools privilege some and discriminate against others. We talk about the impact of these values and the professional identity of teachers who are content knowledge experts, but may not be pedagogical or multicultural experts, on student achievement. These themes return when we read the Pace chapter a couple of weeks later. The following week revolves around the pervasive problem of how teachers and students negotiate expectations for student work. Randi Rosenblum’s chapter, “Standards and Sob Stories: Negotiating Authority at an Urban Public College,” explores this issue in the context of higher education. We role-play scenarios situated in a high school context but resembling those Rosenblum describes, in which students approach teachers to get an extension on a paper, retake an exam, and so on. In groups of four, people take turns role-playing and observing. This gives students a terrific opportunity to think about and reveal the strategies they themselves have used as students to exert control and win flexibility from their teachers. And it shows them the different ways teachers may respond, and the tensions they may feel. It gives us a chance to laugh together at situations that can be tense and even exasperating for teachers, but also can be amusing. It can lead to deep consideration of ethical issues intrinsic to teaching, learning, and authority that confront teachers as they try to maintain standards for students’ academic efforts. The focus in the fourth meeting is on the relationship between authority and curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. The reading for this week is my chapter (Pace, 2006), “Saving (and Losing) Face, Race, and Authority: Strategies of Action in a 9th Grade English Class.” It starts with a classic situation: a teacher who expresses her frustration and surprise when she realizes that, contrary to what she thought, students are not doing their work and are therefore getting poor report card grades. It shows how emphasis on controlling students and knowledge can inadvertently hinder intellectual engagement and perpetuate underachievement of African-American students. The class approaches the chapter as a case study, identifying and analyzing problems in the class, and proposing ways to address the underlying factors that contribute to them. I introduce them to a tool I created called “Guidelines to Reflective and Responsible Authority” that helps us systematically analyze the case, brainstorm possible remedies, and decide on desirable courses of action. Then I divide the class into groups, and each group works on a particular section of the case study. Based on their explanations, they brainstorm options for what the teacher can do. The activity

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asks them to analyze their proposed solutions and to think through potential consequences. They also think about how they can enlist students in understanding and addressing the problem. To accomplish all this, students must apply what they have been learning about authority throughout the unit and in other courses. The activity emphasizes that while some factors are beyond teachers’ control, they have the tools and the agency to examine issues in their classes and design changes that may improve the moral and educational quality of authority relations and their teaching practice in general. I want my students to realize that what works in the short term is not necessarily educative in the long term, that classroom life is complex and it is vital to consider the underlying factors, including their own approaches to teaching and authority that help create it. So, rather than teaching best practices, I am encouraging a consciousness that supports wise teaching (Yeager & Davis, 2005). Ideally students will take away methods for thinking through classroom issues they may face in the future, or at least the inclination to analyze problems and make reasoned decisions about how to address them, instead of blaming their students or themselves and getting stuck in conflict. For the fifth class meeting, we read Annette Hemmings’s “Moral Order in High School Authority: Dis/Enabling Care and (Un)Scrupulous Achievement” and David Hansen’s “Epilogue: The Sources and Expressions of Classroom Authority.” The Hemmings chapter prompts a discussion of the tremendous variety of school cultures that exist, shaped by student demographics, location, and resources. We draw on earlier readings and discussions of race, class, and school contexts. We consider small schools in which school community members have deliberately created cultures based on personalization as well as high standards for teaching and learning. Students have already learned about the Coalition of Essential Schools; I use clips from the film High School II and we discuss the nature of relationships, values, purposes, and norms expressed. I share excerpts from Deborah Meier’s book, The Power of Their Ideas (2002). Students also reflect on the high schools they attended, and how the culture of the school shaped authority and their learning experience. We discuss the kinds of schools at which they might want to teach. In the last part of class, we build on David Hansen’s epilogue by reflecting on what we have learned about authority. I ask students to write about their hopes and fears concerning their own classroom, how their views have changed, and burning questions they still have. I bring these questions back to the class at the next opportunity. Often they spur us to talk about the importance of maintaining some boundaries and owning the role of teacher versus friend, while being open and available to students at the same time. Often issues arise that are related to gender, physical appearance (for example, size), sexuality, or age. We make up scenarios to role-play based on their concerns. While my agenda is packed with concepts, materials, activities, knowledge to share, and a carefully structured curriculum, every lesson evolves as a negotiation between what I have planned and what students bring to the table. For me our study of authority is always fresh, fascinating, challenging, and illuminating. Based on feedback from students, it is for them as well. My experience tells me that classroom authority should be a crucial part of teacher education. Our students are eager to grapple with it. Next semester, I will precede the unit on authority with a unit on democratic citizenship education. We will read the introductory chapter from a book I coedited with Janet Bixby titled Educating Citizens in Troubled Times: Qualitative Studies of Current Efforts (2008). My goal is to raise consciousness about the fundamental democratic purpose of schooling—to prepare informed citizens who will contribute to a democratic society. The class will also read Westheimer

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and Kahne’s article “What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy” and explore the diverse meanings of democracy and citizenship. I hope that starting with the topic of citizenship education will open students’ minds to the issues of legitimacy, consent, and democratic governance that are essential to authority in its best sense. It should help them realize that authority, citizenship, and democracy are inextricably linked. I believe that explicit grappling with these issues in ways that (1) connect my students’ own experiences and concerns with theory and research (see Dewey, 1902) and (2) encourage deliberation (Gutmann, 1987; Hess, 2002) has enormous educational potential and import. References Bixby, J. (2006). Authority in detracked high school classrooms: Tensions among individualism, equity, and legitimacy. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.), Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 113–134). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Bixby J. S., & Pace, J. L. (Eds.). (2008). Educating democratic citizens in troubled times: Qualitative studies of current efforts. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gutmann, A. (1987). Democratic education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hansen, D. (2006). Epilogue: The sources and expressions of classroom authority. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.), Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 175–185). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (Producer). (1997). Minds of our own: Under construction [Videocassette]. United States: Annenberg Media. Hemmings, A. (2006). Moral order in high school authority: Dis/enabling care and (Un)scrupulous achievement. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.), Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 135–150.) Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Hess, D. (2002). Discussing controversial public issues in secondary social studies classrooms: Learning from skilled teachers. Theory and Research in Social Education, 30(1), 10–41. Hurn, C. (1985). Changes in authority relationships in schools: 1960–1980. Research in Sociology of Education and Socialization, 5, 31–57. Meier, D. (2002). The power of their ideas: Lessons for America from a small school in Harlem. New York: Beacon Press. Metz, M. H. (1978). Classrooms and corridors: The crisis of authority in desegregated secondary schools. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pace, J. L. (2003a). Managing the dilemmas of professional and bureaucratic authority in a high school English class. Sociology of Education, 76, 37–52. Pace, J. L. (2003b). Using ambiguity and entertainment to win compliance in a lower-level U.S. history class. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 35, 83–110. Pace, J. L. (2003c). Revisiting classroom authority: Theory and ideology meet practice. Teachers College Record, 105, 1559–1585. Pace, J. L. (2006). Saving (and losing) face, race, and authority: Strategies of action in a 9th grade English class. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.), Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 87–112). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Pace, J. L., & Bixby, J. S. (2008). Introduction: Studying citizenship education in troubled times. In J. S. Bixby & J. L. Pace (Eds.), Educating democratic citizens in troubled times: Qualitative studies of current efforts (pp. 3–21). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Pace, J. L., & Hemmings, A. (2006). Understanding classroom authority as a social construction. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.) Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 1–32). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Pace, J. L. & Hemmings, A. (2007). Understanding classroom authority: Theory, ideology, and research. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 4–27. Rosenblum, R. (2006). Standards and sob stories: Negotiating authority at an urban public college. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.), Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 151–174). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269.

Teaching Resources Berger, A. (Producer), & Payne, A. (Director). (1999). Election [Videocassette]. United States: Paramount Pictures. Bixby, J. (2006). Authority in detracked high school classrooms: Tensions among individualism, equity, and legitimacy. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.), Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 113–134). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

62 • Judith L. Pace Bixby J., & Pace, J. L. (Eds.). (2008). Educating democratic citizens in troubled times: Qualitative studies of current efforts. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Bruckheimer, J. (Producer), & Smith, J. N. (Director). (1995). Dangerous minds [Videocassette]. United States: Hollywood Pictures. Haft, S. (Producer), & Weir, P. (Director). (1989). Dead poets society [Videocassette]. United States: Touchstone Pictures. Hansen, D. (2006). Epilogue: The sources and expressions of classroom authority. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.) Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 175–185). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Hemmings, A. (2006). Moral order in high school authority: Dis/enabling care and (Un)scrupulous achievement. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.) Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 135–150). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Metz, M. H. (1978). Classrooms and corridors: The crisis of authority in desegregated secondary schools. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pace, J. L. (2006). Saving (and losing) face, race, and authority: Strategies of action in a 9th grade English class. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.) Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 87–112). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Pace, J. L., & Bixby, J. S. (2008). Introduction: Studying citizenship education in troubled times. In J. S. Bixby & J. Pace (Eds.), Educating democratic citizens in troubled times: Qualitative studies of current efforts (pp. 3–21). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Pace, J. L., & Hemmings, A. (2006). Understanding classroom authority as a social construction. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.), Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 1–32). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Rosenblum, R. (2006). Standards and sob stories: Negotiating authority at an urban public college. In J. L. Pace & A. Hemmings (Eds.), Classroom authority: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 151–174). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Twain, N. (Producer), & Avildsen, J. (Director). (1989). Lean on Me [Videocassette]. United States: Warner Bros. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269. Wiseman, F. (Producer). (2007). High school II. United States: Zipparah Films. Yeager, E. A., & Davis Jr., O. L. (Eds.). (2005). Wise social studies teaching in an age of high-stakes testing. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

12 Using Children’s Books to Explore Power, Tyranny, and Justice Rich Gibson and E. Wayne Ross

Context: Elementary TE, Secondary TE, Multicultural Education, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards:V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions) VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), VII (Production, Distribution, and Consumption) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning Instruction) Topics: children’s literature, critical social theory, government, power/authority, human rights, ethical-political valuation, justice, critical thinking, civic content knowledge Social studies educators are familiar with the strategy of using children’s books, particularly historical fiction, to teach social studies content. For example, The National Council for the Social Studies in cooperation with the Children’s Book Council has produced an annual list of Notable Trade Books for Children since 1972. Books on this list are primarily written for children in grades K-8 and focus on issues such as human relations, diversity of groups, and cultural experiences. What we describe in this chapter is a twist on the typical use of children’s books to teach social studies. A number of children’s books are excellent resources for bringing critical, even revolutionary perspectives to the classroom, whether students are in elementary, middle, or secondary school, undergraduates in teacher education, or graduate students studying social theory and ideas of power, tyranny, justice, and human rights. Teaching with Farmer Duck Every culture that has ever had an oppressed group has also had trickster tales such as Brer Rabbit and Zorro. If you are concerned about reading trickster tales to kids because the stories may prompt rebellions, you might wonder what conditions might make them want to do that, and consider what you might do to change these conditions. You cannot be free if the kids are not free. Kids in school are commonly set up to accept an external, regulated consciousness, in opposition to wisdom and self-consciousness. If you are unfamiliar with the kids’ book Farmer Duck (Waddell & Oxenbury, 1992), go now to the library or the Internet and read it. Then come back. Ready? So, you have read the book, what some call the Communist Manifesto or Animal Farm for kids: There once was a duck who had the bad luck to live with a lazy farmer. While the duck worked, the farmer lay in bed—until one day the other animals decided to take action! How might we expand on this to discuss power in a classroom? First, tell your kids or your preservice teachers the story of Farmer Duck, that hero of all animaldom who had nothing to lose but their Lazy Old Farmer. Let the story flow, as it comes to you, from your memory of reading 63

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the book. Throw your self, your body, into it—and your voice and eyes and arms and legs. Then, have the kids discuss the story. What was this about anyway? Now, take the book and read it to the kids, with all the expressiveness your denied stage-stardom can whomp up. Let the kids discuss this reading, noting that there are likely some differences with what you did in your storytelling. Finally, ask the kids if they would like to make their own book, and illustrate it. The print part is already done, but there is a lot of work they can do. There are illustrations for example, and choosing which way things will point, who will be represented, and how? If you can, get several groups of kids to work on different pages of the book leaving two thirds blank for pictures and printing the words below. This will require that they gather as a planning group and prepare the entire thing. This will take some time, and struggle, but their discussion makes a great video if you can detach enough time to do that as well. Other Relevant Texts The Greeks took up the master/slave as a method of understanding tyranny (see Leo Strauss , On Tyranny), and later on educator Paulo Freire borrowed very heavily from the German philosopher, Hegel (Phenomenology of the Spirit), in writing his most popular book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). In literature, James Baldwin’s brilliant The Fire Next Time (1963), draws on the same tradition, as does Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (1939; take special note of the interchapters as a signal as to how the relationship is mediated). In kids books, see the earlier Joel Chandler Harris “Brer Rabbit” stories. Some of our other favorite children’s books include Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type (2000), How Does the Czar Eats Potatoes (Rose & Janosch, 1973), Minnie and Moo and the Musk of Zorro (Cazet & Kubbie, 2002), and Hooway for Wodney Wat (Lester & Munsinger, 1999). In film, both Salt of the Earth, a banned classic, and Modern Times , draw on the master/slave metaphor. Hegel though, examined the master/slave relationship more closely than most. After reading or viewing several of these resources, address the following questions: Master/Slave Questions Are all people free? Are they free to be fully creative at work and at play? Why or why not? Who is not free? Where are we not free? Are we free at work? Is work the key part of our lives? Does freedom occur in isolation or in community? Which is the greater freedom, being fully alone, or being among the company of equals? If people are not free, who are they? Do you agree that the split of the free and the unfree, is a master/slave relationship? What does the master want? What does the slave want? What must the master do? What must the slave do? What does the master want the slave to know? What does the slave want the master to know? What does the master want the slave to believe? What does the slave want the master to believe? Who has the greater interest in the more profound truth of human existence? Why? What mediates the relationship of the master and the slave? What element(s), within this relationship, might provide the ground to change it? How do we get from what is, to what ought to be, without relying on magic as sometimes happens in these stories? Reflection Hegel posed a master/slave metaphor that said human history began like this: First comes people. With people comes the desire for recognition, a key to understanding human motivation and

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action. With the desire (really the necessity) for recognition comes the need for hierarchy. Who shall recognize whom? When one person meets another, who will submit by offering the first recognition? Then comes a life and death battle, rising out of Hegel’s proposed desire for recognition, that is settled by one person becoming a master, the one who was willing to risk his life for recognition, and another becoming a slave, the one who preferred to live, but in choosing life also had to obey and submit. So, this is how Hegel poses the master/slave relationship as central to the study of human society. Once the relationship of domination is established, at the base of recognition is social production and reproduction. The slave must work for the master. In this sense, the only thing the master and slave have in common is their opposition. Understanding how that opposition is worked out is the crux of understanding how things change in history. Good teaching about power must grapple with the vital tensions of the particular and the general, the actual and the potential, appearance and essence, and the gap between what is and what should be. Things change. We can count on that. At issue is how, and toward what end? We insist that students develop and pursue their own questions, for example: Why do so many people so willingly become instruments of their own oppression, and why do others choose to resist? We prod students as they develop their questions, but always leave the final decision to them. We then prescribe further readings and research, again leaving final decisions to them. Teaching Resources Baldwin, J. (1963). The fire next time. New York: Library of America. (Original work published 1963) Cazet, D., & Kubie, C. (2002). Minnie and Moo and the musk of Zorro. Pine Plains, NY: Live Oak Media. Cronin, D., & Lewin, B. (2000). Click, clack, moo: Cows that type. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Harris, J. C. (1921). Uncle Remus: His songs and his sayings. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Lester, H., & Munsinger, L. (1999). Hooway for Wodney Wat. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Rose, A. K., & Janosch. (1973). How does a czar eat potatoes? New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard. http://kr.geocities.com/ wonwon68/sub1/czar.html Steinbeck, J. (1939). The grapes of wrath . New York: Viking. Waddell, M., & Oxenbury, H. (1992). Farmer duck. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.

13 Learning to Teach the Cultures, Covenants, and Controversies of Universal Human Rights John Myers

Context: TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12 NCSS Standards: IX (Global Connections), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies) Topics: universal human rights, global education, primary sources, perspective consciousness, civics, history, globalization, ethical-political valuation, civic content knowledge, critical thinking This chapter describes a lesson on human rights that I have been teaching for several years in my Curriculum in Social Studies Education course for preservice teachers. It can also be used in grades 6-12 and multicultural education classes. My goal with this lesson is to improve the preservice teachers’ knowledge and understanding of human rights as well as to enable them to fit the topic into the social studies curriculum, particularly within the historical narratives that tend to guide their courses. Teacher education courses normally pay little attention to subject matter content, but preparing students to teach global issues requires explicit attention to this content because students typically have little background on such topics. Furthermore, few teacher education programs require specific prerequisite courses on international issues. This leaves topics such as human rights, globalization, and global citizenship at the margins of the social studies curriculum. Rationale Universal human rights are aligned with a cosmopolitan vision of the world in which individual citizens, global civil society, and global governance are the key actors. In theory, they serve as a moral and legal framework to prevent conflict and ensure the fair treatment of all peoples by imposing moral principles of behavior on nation states. In this sense, universal human rights embody a supranational moral authority that questions the actions and sovereignty of nation states (Doyle & Gardner, 2003; Held, 2002). Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, argued that sovereignty is now being ordered around people rather than states, in large part due to the adoption of human rights, which do not rely on the authority of any single political community. He stated: State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined—not least by the forces of globalisation and international co-operation … A new, broader definition of national interest is

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needed in the new century, which would induce states to find greater unity in the pursuit of common goals and values. In the context of many of the challenges facing humanity today, the collective interest is the national interest. (Annan, 1999, p. 49) In this context, human rights provide a legal and moral foundation for global citizenship and the protection of individual rights on the basis of personhood instead of membership in a nation state. Human Rights and Globalization The need for human rights is especially acute in light of the clash of civilizations that Huntington (1996) has described. He argued that the world has been divided by fundamentally different civilizational values based on religious differences. In light of the legacy of colonization, nonWestern civilizations may view any efforts at global integration as a threat. Human rights from this perspective are understood as imperialistic. Also, one of the major consequences of globalization has been the displacement of peoples through forced and voluntary immigration due to international inequalities of economic development and pervasive conflict. Migration has also led to an increasing number of stateless people (primarily undocumented immigrants, refugees, and migrant workers) and people with second-class citizenship (such as legal immigrants, women and children, and ethnic minorities) who do not receive the full benefits of national citizenship and the rights that such citizenship guarantees (Brysk, 2002; Parreñas, 2001). This situation poses a major challenge for human rights and global civic education: can educational efforts help to build a political culture strong enough to overcome the cultural values dividing the world without undermining cultural diversity? The Human Rights Literacy Gap in the United States Despite the significance of human rights in light of changing world conditions, there is a gap between these realities and public knowledge about universal rights in the United States. This lack of literacy is particularly notable because universal human rights have been a key topic in U.S. foreign policy discourse and rights are central to the democratic creed. The record of the United States in international human rights legislation has been mixed. Although Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, of which the United States is a signatory, it has not ratified several of the international covenants on human rights and, more recently, did not participate in the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education. Universal human rights are largely absent from U.S. public education curricula and human rights professionals do not even see it as a low priority in U.S. schooling (Suárez, 2007). Instead, the human rights that are included in state curricula typically focus on national rights, especially national civil liberties and the Bill of Rights, or within the national historical narratives, such as slavery (Banks, 2002; Orend, 2004). The international covenants, treaties, and declarations, however, are largely absent. This situation contrasts with other nations and world regions, such as in Europe and Latin America where nations have for many years agreed to include universal human rights in their national curricula. Furthermore, there is evidence that preservice teachers have little knowledge about universal human rights and that, although not opposed to teaching about them, they often do not see where they could fit in the official social studies curriculum (Myers, 2007).

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The Teaching In this lesson plan, I attempted to address the need for universal human rights in the U.S. curriculum. There are four main parts to the lesson: (1) readings on the theory of human rights and human rights education; (2) discussion of these readings in class; (3) analysis of international human rights documents; and (4) practice with activities for learning human rights in the classroom. I outline each of these four parts. First, the students read selected works in preparation for the class. These readings change from year to year but recently they were chapter 1 of Gary Teeple’s (2005) The Riddle of Human Rights and Betty Reardon’s (1995) Educating for Dignity, Learning about Rights and Responsibilities. The discussion takes place at the beginning of the class and typically lasts between 30 and 45 minutes. Based on the readings, we discuss several specific issues, including the relevant significance of categories (or “generations”) of rights (civil, political, social, and economic), the fact that human rights are contested, the tension between universality and cultural diversity in respect to human rights, the position of human rights in the social studies curriculum, and the implications for teaching universal, rather than strictly national, rights. These are primarily conceptual discussions although the students also draw on their own experiences in the classroom as student teachers and how their cooperating teachers deal with rights in the curriculum. Next, in small groups, the students compare and contrast human rights documents that highlight issues from the discussion. This step lasts approximately 1 hour. I first distribute Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proposal for a Second Bill of Rights, which focused on economic rights that he argued were insufficiently addressed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. I use this document to highlight the different categories of rights and to highlight that economic and social rights are usually overlooked in social studies in the United States where most of the attention goes to political and civil rights. This document also illustrates the deep concern that political leaders have had with human rights and allows students to see universal rights as an important issue within U.S. history. Next, groups receive either of two sets of paired documents: the U.S. Bill of Rights with the UDHR (a version written in plain English), or the African Bill of Rights with the UDHR. The first pair further highlights the rights categories and leads to questions about the national version of rights in the United States. The second pair emphasizes the interaction between cultural and regional needs with rights as equal for all. The students find the African Bill of Rights particularly interesting because they declare a need for the right to development and group rights. Other documents could be substituted here, such as the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. The groups are then given time to report on their discussions to the rest of the class. Finally, during the rest of the class time students’ activities are geared to have them think about their own views and understandings of rights. They also participate in some brief activities for introducing human rights to their students. Two examples of activities are Ranking Your Rights (adapted from Pike & Selby, 2000) and Taking the Human Rights Temperature of your School (Flowers, 2000). The first of these activities asks students to individually rank a variety of rights from least to most important, a process that requires them to consider the ways that different categories of rights relate and are interdependent. Then the students discuss their choices in groups and rerank the rights by attempting to come to a consensus. The second activity has students think of themselves as the subjects of rights by assessing the extent that rights are protected in their schools; for example, the extent that “My school community welcomes students, teachers, administrators, and staff from diverse backgrounds and cultures, including people not born in the USA” is true in their school.

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Reflection With this lesson, I attempt to prepare preservice social studies students to learn and teach about universal rights from a critical perspective. My aim is for them to acquire a better understanding of the relationship of universal human rights to the national context of rights as well as to see that these national rights are neither isolated nor are they the entire picture. In general, I have been encouraged by teaching this lesson. Although most of the preservice students have little academic background in human rights, many see it as an important topic for social studies education. However, the lesson has also raised several concerns. The biggest challenge is for students to identify opportunities in the existing official curriculum where universal human rights can be discussed. One strategy is to identify topics in their social studies courses that potentially deal with human rights and to connect them consciously. In this way, human rights becomes a curricular theme rather than just another event in the historical timeline. Issues of justice, education, liberty, and war all obviously relate to human rights. Yet, this remains difficult because in my state, the Pennsylvania state history standards only minimally include international topics, which makes it difficult for new teachers to include them in a meaningful way. Second, misconceptions about human rights, largely perpetuated by the mainstream media, make it difficult for teachers to grasp the significance of teaching human rights. There is a strong conviction that human rights violations do not occur in the United States but are what happens in developing nations. This inaccurate view turns human rights into a distant abstraction that teachers and students have difficulty making relevant to their lives. One implication is that global education can be most effectively taught only in conjunction with media literacy education that addresses such misconceptions. Finally, the politics of schooling is a powerful factor in teaching about global issues such as human rights. Conservative groups have historically criticized global education initiatives, and this has restricted efforts to implement human rights education. Instead, teaching global issues remains embroiled in partisan politics. Some teachers today still believe that teaching about global topics, including universal human rights, is unpatriotic or contrary to traditional American values. This lesson helps address this and stems from the conviction that understanding how to live and flourish in our increasingly interconnected and global world is a necessary reality, rather than a subject for partisan debate. References Annan, K. A. (1999, September 18). Two concepts of sovereignty. The Economist, 352(8137), 49–50. Banks, D. (2002). Promises to keep: Results of the national survey of human rights education 2000. http://www.hrusa. org/education/PromisestoKeep.htm Brysk, A. (Ed.). (2002). Globalization and human rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. Doyle, M. W., & Gardner, A.-M. (2003). Introduction: Human rights and international order. In J.-M. Coicaud, M. W. Doyle, & A.-M. Gardner (Eds.), The globalization of human rights (pp. 1–19). Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Flowers, N. (2000). The human rights education handbook: Effective practices for learning, action, and change. Minneapolis, MN: Human Rights Resource Center, University of Minnesota. Held, D. (2002). The transformation of political community: Rethinking democracy in the context of globalisation. In N. Dower & J. Williams (Eds.), Global citizenship: A critical introduction (pp. 92–100). New York: Routledge. Huntington, S. P. (1996). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Myers, J. P. (2007). Rethinking patriotism and nationalism in teacher education: Preservice teachers’ understanding of human rights. In R. Helfenbein & J. Diem (Eds.), Unsettling beliefs: Teaching social theory to teachers (pp. 167–184). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Orend, B. (2004). Human rights education: Form, content and controversy. Encounters on Education, 5, 61–80. Parreñas, R. S. (2001). Servants of globalization: Women, migration, and domestic work. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

70 • John Myers Pike, G., & Selby, D. (2000). In the global classroom (Vol. 2). Don Mills, ON: Pippin. Reardon, B. (1995). Educating for dignity, learning about rights and responsibilities, a K-12 teaching resource. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Suárez, D. (2007). Education professionals and the construction of human rights education. Comparative Education Review, 51(1), 48–70. Teeple, G. (2005). The riddle of human rights. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.

Teaching Resources Amnesty International. (1996). First steps: A manual for starting human rights education. http://www.hrea.org/erc/Library/ display.php?doc_id=511&category_id=6&category_type=3&group= Amnesty International USA. (n.d.). Human rights education. From http://www.amnestyusa.org/What_You_Can_Do/ Educate/page.do?id=1102117&n1=4&n2=79 Andrepoulos, G. J., & Claude, R. P. (Eds.). (1997). Human rights education for the twenty-first century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Brown, M. (2000). Our world, our rights: Teaching about rights and responsibilities in the elementary school. New York: Amnesty International USA. Claude, R. P. (1997). Methodologies for human rights education. http://www.pdhre.org/materials/methodologies.html Crocco, M. S. (2007). Speaking truth to power: Women’s rights as human rights. Social Studies, 98(6), 257–269. Human Rights Education Associates. Resource center. (n.d.). http://www.hrea.org/erc/index.html Landorf, H., & Pineda, M. F. (2007). Learning history through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Social Education, 71(6), 322–325. Osler, A. (Ed.). (2005). Teachers, human rights and diversity. Stoke-on-Trent, England: Trentham Books. Reardon, B. (1995). Educating for dignity, learning about rights and responsibilities, a K-12 teaching resource. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Shiman, D. (1999). Teaching human rights. Denver, CO: Center for Teaching International Relations. Tibbitts, F. (1996). On human dignity: The need for human rights education. Social Education, 60(7), 428–431. United Nations CyberSchoolBus. (n.d.). Human rights in action. http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/humanrights/ index.asp United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Office of the (2000). ABC, teaching human rights: Practical activities for primary and secondary schools. New York: United Nations.

14 Feelings Exploration in Social Justice Education Jeff Passe

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multiculutral Education, K-6, 7-12 NCSS Standards: I (Culture), IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 2 (Learning and Development), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 5 (Motivation and Classroom Management) Topics: history, historical content knowledge, childrens literature, emotional response, civil rights, equity, race, racism, ethical-political valuation, perspective consciousness, integrated curriculum I teach this lesson not only to demonstrate the benefits of teaching toward affective goals, but also to model ways to integrate social justice issues into the curriculum, and to help students understand that often people’s reactions to moral and political issues are rooted in emotional responses that precede logical judgment, and thus their feelings about people, historical events, current issues, and themselves are profoundly connected to their moral and civic judgments and actions. One of the challenges in social studies teacher education is helping students overcome the limitations of a P-12 curriculum that may have neglected crucial interpersonal and emotional elements of a quality curriculum. It is relatively easy to draw preservice teachers to the idea of teaching toward affective or social justice goals, as the intrinsic appeal of those ideas is often sufficient. Yet, those ideas are not likely to be translated into practice without concrete experience practice. Thus, a demonstration lesson is crucial. Goals and Objectives The goals of affective lessons are to promote students’ ability to understand their own values and feelings, improve students’ ability to understand others’ values and feelings, and promote depth of understanding. Additional teacher education goals should be to develop awareness of social injustice and action, develop appreciation of the role of emotion in the development of a moral society, and demonstrate ways to integrate children’s literature toward these ends. The Feelings Exploration Model Feelings Exploration was created by Hilda Taba (Walden, 1969), a pioneer in social studies education, during the 1960s when educational theorists sought to address the need for affective education. By citing Taba’s work, teacher education professors may help their students realize that this model is not a new fad, but instead has a long, venerable history. 71

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Establish the Content Goal First It is important to point out that affective lessons work best when students are already familiar with the content. Unless they know the characters and events, they will be unable to infer their feelings and values. Thus, unlike other models, such as inquiry or exploration, which are used to teach the content, affective models must follow the content lesson. In order to establish content awareness, I assign students to read Robert Coles’s The Story of Ruby Bridges (1994). If that assignment is not feasible, there are excellent summaries available from several sources. For those unfamiliar with the events, Bridges was the first African-American child to enter an all-white elementary school in the American South after a 1960 court decision. Her arrival at the school building, accompanied by federal marshals, was greeted by a crowd of angry protestors, throwing rocks and chanting epithets. For the entire year, she was the only child in the school, her only companion being a white teacher from Boston. Present the Model I recommend presenting the model electronically, so that students will not be so busy taking notes. I engage the students and review what happened. I ask the students how they think each main character or group felt and why they felt that way. I then ask the students whether they have ever been in a similar situation, and have them describe the situation without identifying any feeling. I conclude the discussion by having the students compare and contrast their findings. Demonstrate the Model Using Social Studies Content I ask the students what happened, and I expect them to summarize the key points of Ruby Bridges’ integration of her elementary school. I remind students of the importance of review, for students who may have missed the point, were absent, or not paying attention, as well as to catch any inaccuracies. I ask them to infer how they think Ruby felt upon entering the school, and remind them that because it’s an inference, no answer can be wrong. I use “brainstorming techniques” by recording all answers on the board without praise or criticism to remind students how that promotes thoughtfulness and participation. When students offer their answers, I immediately ask why. I point out how the “why” explanation promotes the best practice for vocabulary development because students are learning the feeling word in context, instead of using a dictionary definition. At first, students will need to be prodded to explain why Ruby felt the way she did. Eventually, the explanations will immediately follow the feeling word as students pick up the routine. Occasionally, I have found that a student may offer a thought, rather than a feeling (e.g., Ruby wanted to go back home). If this occurs, I ask them: “How did that make her feel?” I reassure students that such responses are common, even among adults, because most of us are not encouraged to share our feelings. I review the list with attention toward the nuances represented in the feeling words. I have students compare those finely tuned feelings with usual “mad, sad, and glad” feelings that tend to be repeated in elementary school reading comprehension exercises. I also point out how it is normal to have multiple feelings simultaneously, and that youngsters need to have that reinforced. I next ask the students how the crowd felt and why. I point out that this portion of the exercise allows students to empathize with the “villains” of the story, as it would be easy to dismiss them as mere racists instead of trying to understand how they felt. In other words, this portion of the activity makes them human. I remind the students that doing so does not condone illegal or immoral behavior, but trying to understand their perspectives is the first step toward reconciliation.

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I then ask the students whether they have ever been in a situation in which, like Ruby, they were not wanted. The teacher (me) cannot merely ask if they were ever in a similar situation because, undoubtedly, no one in the class was involved in the integration of an elementary school in the Civil Rights era. Emphasize how the similar situation has to be one that all the students can relate to. After the students’ descriptions of similar situations, I follow up by asking them how they felt and why. I conclude by asking the students whether they have ever been in a situation, like the crowd, in which something was being forced on them. In order to wrap up class discussion on Ruby Bridges’ integration of her elementary school, I ask the students to identify the similarities and differences among the various feelings, using examples to show how people can still feel similarly even if they oppose each other. I also ask students to notice how they feel about what should be done and about taking action. While many of us feel compassion toward victims of injustice it is also common to feel afraid of the social consequences of acting when others don’t, or to feel overwhelmed or inadequate, or to feel compassion but not really connection, that the person or the issue is not your responsibility. Conclusion I caution my students that not every child needs to answer in order to achieve the goals of understanding one’s own feelings and understanding others’ feelings. Even if someone didn’t participate, that person was thinking about their feelings and those of others. I also emphasize how the public expression of one’s feelings is what makes the activity successful. Fortunately, elementary-aged children are usually eager participants in sharing. I also emphasize that the third goal of promoting depth of understanding is key. Students who participate in this affective activity will have a far greater grasp of the Ruby Bridges content than if they had merely listened to the story. I ask which part of the lesson was most powerful. A majority will cite the part in which they had to cite a similar situation. I point out how personalizing the event promotes relevance and concreteness, which are two essential elements of quality education. I have students consider the value of expressing their feelings by pointing out how expressing accurate feelings is crucial to maintaining relationships, whether they be between siblings, friends, parents and children, or spouses. I introduce the term emotionism (Prinz, 2007) which is a theory that argues that emotions are essential to morality. Emotionists argue that one’s emotions lead to the development of moral concepts, which usually lead to moral judgments, and then to moral actions. Feelings like compassion, connection, sadness, fear, and outrage are the starting experiences of moral and political thought. Thus, the development of emotional expression through “feelings exploration” may be considered an important step toward building an increasingly moral and democratic society. I conclude by returning to the affective goals. If we can teach children to express their own feelings and the feelings of others, and to consider the implications of those feelings for how we live together, we may make the world a better place within families, between neighbors, and even between nations and cultures. We teachers can make a powerful difference! References Prinz, J. (2007). The emotional construction of morals. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Walden, N. (1969). Final report: The Taba Curriculum Project in social studies. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley.

Teaching Resource Coles, R. (1994). The story of Ruby Bridges. New York: Scholastic Press.

15 Teaching Procedural Democracy in the Classroom David H. Vawter

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning Instruction), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: cooperative learning, decision making, democracy, rules of order, government, citizenship, democratic education, deliberation, civil content knowledge, civic action, collaboration How important is the teaching of democracy? The preface of the NCSS standards provides the answer, “…our first priority, our first public policy goal, must be to ensure our survival as a free nation through the development of students who can assume the office of citizen” (Hartoonian, n.d.). What are the qualifications for the office of citizen and what are the skills needed to be successful in this office? Democracy is a concept that must be learned and a skill that must be practiced. One way to practice democracy is through voting. However, one recent study from the U.S. Department of Commerce (2002) stated that, “The right to vote is arguably one of the most important rights of citizenship in a democratic country, yet a substantial number of U.S. citizens choose not to exercise this right” (U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, 2002). Perhaps our students do not exercise this right because they have so little experience actually voting and making decisions while in school. There are many ways to teach and practice democracy, and two ways we accomplish this at Winthrop University is by allowing our teaching candidates to experience democracy through cooperative learning and decision making. The goal is for the teacher candidates to experience and practice democracy within the methods class so that they will include these same principles later, in their own classrooms. The first way we accomplish the teaching of democracy in methods is through cooperative learning. Once the students have been divided into academically fair and socially equitable cooperative teams there are many different cooperative strategies (Gunter, Estes, & Mintz, 2006). The students are placed in cooperative competitive teams either by random selection, self-selection, or professor choice. After a few team-building activities the individual groups are instructed to elect officers. We call these group officers president, vice president, speaker, and scribe. Each of these officers has a specific job and set of responsibilities. The president is to make decisions, break ties, and assume the duties of the supply manager. If supplies need to be handed out or picked up, the president will be responsible. The vice president is the official timekeeper, so he 74

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or she is responsible for helping keep team members on task. The scribe takes minutes of the team meetings and the speaker will report on the team’s decisions. To aid in team cohesion and the skill of decision making, each team also chooses a team name and a silent cheer that often corresponds to their team name. Once these group officers are chosen, the class then proceeds to elect class officers, called the grand president, the grand vice president and so on. Each of the grand officers has defined responsibilities, which correlate with those of the group officers. For example, since the president of each group is also the supply manager, the grand president would prepare the supplies and coordinate each group president obtaining supplies for his or her own group. With these officers now in place, giving the students the responsibility of making decisions, the teaching of democratic principles is further enhanced through using parliamentary procedure in a class legislative assembly. In the next class session, a chart listing the rules of order is given out and the process of parliamentary procedure is explained (Robert, n.d.). Since parliamentary procedures are used by virtually all democratic societies including our various levels of government it is important that our students understand how meetings are run. After the chart is explained and examples are provided, this form of rules of order is used in future class legislative sessions to make decisions. A number of years ago, the Social Studies department noticed that another teacher education department, Health and Physical Education, had classy short sleeve shirts that their students would wear around campus and during their field practicum. In order to build pride in our secondary social studies program we decided to design our own social studies shirts. This provided an opportunity to practice democracy in the methods class in hopes that our students would transfer these skills into their own future classroom. In order for the teacher candidates to practice parliamentary procedures, they use these skills to make decisions about the social studies shirts. Past social studies shirts are brought in and displayed. The professor, acting as speaker pro tem, then leads the students through the first use of parliamentary procedures by asking them if they would like to order the shirts this year. So far, each class for the last 3 years has voted to order shirts. The professor is role-modeling, in this first session, how to conduct meetings to provide an example of how a rule of order is used. A motion is made to order the shirt, discussion is held, the question is called if necessary, and then a vote is held. The students are beginning to understand how legislative sessions are conducted. At this point a second important concept in a free and independent society is experienced. One of the greatest motivating factors in human nature is the idea that “People defend that which they help create.” This is the foundation of the free-enterprise system and democracy. Each year the students get excited about designing their own shirt. So when the class resumes a week later a motion is made, discussed, and approved to design their own shirts. This ends the lesson on democracy for this week. Conflict can often arise in the exercise of freedom of speech. Each student has the right to give their opinion and to try to persuade the other classmates to accept their ideas. There has been some frustration and even anger during discussion. The professor lets this play out for a while, and then steps in to talk about how if this class can get worked-up over shirts, what about real legislative bodies that are often divided by political ideologies and real world issues. This real experience provides for rich discussion and deeper understanding. Two of the last three classes have been able to put aside their differences and design a really nice shirt. However, one class could not get past its differences and eventually voted to end the idea. The next class session includes the appointing of committees to choose the design, the color, the wording of the shirt, and finding a vendor. For these and all subsequent meetings the class

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grand-president is presiding over all deliberations. Over the next few weeks a small portion of each class session is given to class meetings where the president calls for committee reports and discussion. The students discover quickly that decision making in a democracy often takes a great deal of work and time. If one of the committees does not do its job, the finial decision is delayed. The students often express frustration with the delays. Also, there is often disagreement on the design of the shirts, the wording of the slogan, even the color. In each vote the majority rules, and those who voted against the motion have to learn that those living in a democracy do not always win their way. Since the process of making a decision takes so much time, the shirts often do not arrive until the end of the semester. At the end of the semester the concluding discussion on the shirt process is very enlightening. Students often state that it might have been better if someone would have just stepped up and made all the decisions. They also state that doing the committee work was frustrating and time consuming. However, by the end of the discussion the students express that with all the problems with the process it is still better than having a “totalitarianistic” form of decision making. The lessons on how to use parliamentary procedures, how to establish committees, how to hold class elections, and how to conduct class meetings are all skills that the teacher candidates can take into their future classrooms to teach the next generation of office holders the concept of democracy and how to practice it. They practiced democracy by voting and participating in the decision making in the classroom, learned to work with others, and learned how cooperative groups can work in their future classroom. (And, as a bonus, we have high quality shirts to wear around campus and in the schools to market our program.) As stated earlier, the human motivation construct of “people defending that which they help create” is the foundation of our democracy. It is so important that our social studies methods students feel ownership in the process and that they take this idea with them into their future classrooms. Only by teaching our social studies methods students the important concepts of democracy and allowing them to participate in the process can we hope for them to teach these same principles to their future students. In this way both our social studies methods students and each group of students they teach will become informed members of a democratic society who are ready to fulfill their duties in the office of citizen. References Gunter, M. A., Estes, T. H., & Mintz, J. (2003). Instruction: A models approach (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson. Hartoonian, M. (n.d.) Curriculum standards for social studies: Preface. National Council for the Social Studies. http:// www.socialstudies.org/stdnards/preface/ National Alliance for Civic Education. (n.d.). Voting matters: Informing youth why voting is essential to American democracy. http://www.cived.net/about_votmat.htm Robert, G. M., Roberts rules of order revised. Retrieved May, 2008 from http://www.rulesonline.com/ U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau. (2002, February). Voting and registration in the election of November 2000. http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p20-542.pdf

16 Preparing Teachers and Educating Citizens The Simulated Congressional Hearing Terrence C. Mason and Jennifer M. Ponder

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, 7-12 NCSS Standards: VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies) Topics: civics, citizenship, deliberation, Constitution, current events, deliberation, civic content knowledge, critical thinking, collaboration Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University, was recently asked by interviewer Charlie Rose what topic he would choose if he could deliver one last lecture to a group of college students. His response was immediate: first, he would address the issue of ethics in American life, and second, civic education. He, along with many others, shares the concern that now, more than ever, Americans need the knowledge, skill, and will to participate actively in public life. Since we rely on our public schools as the source of these qualities, our teachers must possess them as well. Therein lies a great challenge for social studies teacher educators. What experiences can we provide to prospective teachers that will motivate them to make civic education a priority in their teaching? Achieving this goal is especially problematic given the current climate of standardized testing which does not even address social studies or civics content in most cases, and as teachers give up social studies to focus on what is tested. If it’s not on the test, how can we get our future teachers to care about it? Recently, in our elementary social studies methods classes, we have begun to make progress in our students’ understandings of the crucial role that civic education plays in schools and we have strengthened their commitment to integrating it into their teaching. We begin with awareness. On the first day of class, students shuffle into the room with predetermined attitudes about social studies, often related to negative experiences they had with the subject as children. When students are asked to share their experiences and formulate a definition of social studies, they come up with ideas related to dates, isolated facts, reading the textbook, answering the questions at the end of the chapter, and map skills. Students very rarely mention civic education, power, or democratic citizenship. Shortly after this discussion, students consider an alternative definition of social studies, as presented in a clip from the movie, Pay it Forward (Abrams et al., 2000). For those of you who have not seen the movie, the scene we use shows the first day of school in a seventh grade social studies class. The brilliant teacher in this movie, played by Kevin Spacey, asks the children to think about the world and their responsibility as citizens. He encourages them to become global thinkers and step outside of their egocentric ways to change the world. After a very

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passionate speech and some humorous, yet typical, responses from students about their role in society, he flips up a world map to display a year-long assignment on the chalkboard: Think of a way to change the world and put it into action. As we discuss the clip, the students are shocked, yet intrigued with this powerful, unconventional introduction to social studies. Within the first 15 minutes of class a new idea has been introduced and many students are hooked. From that moment on, social studies takes on a new meaning in our courses. After the foundation is set, the activities for the rest of the semester are developed around the concept of civic education. Curriculum materials developed by the Center for Civic Education and other resources are incorporated to promote active learning experiences for preparing thoughtful and engaged citizens. We use activities such as mock congressional hearings, structured academic controversy, and mock trials so students actively participate in deliberations and seminars as we engage varied content associated with the principles of democracy. We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution—Level I is one resource that is designed for upper elementary students (there are also middle and high school versions) that seeks to provide students with “an understanding of the background, creation, and subsequent history of the unique system of government brought into being by our Constitution” (Center for Civic Education, 1988, p. v). A full class session is devoted to an introduction to this curriculum and doing some of the student activities from the book in class such as deconstructing the familiar phrases in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution—“establish justice, insure domestic tranquility….” (Center for Civic Education, 1988, pp. 71–72). Children’s literature such as We the Kids (Catrow, 2002) and House Mouse, Senate Mouse (Barnes & Barnes, 1996) are used to introduce big ideas to the class. Students remark that the readability of the texts, the lively illustrations, and the engaging activities make learning about civics and government more appealing and accessible. But, as Walter Parker (2001) has observed, those of us in teacher education often wonder whether the teaching methods we present in our courses ever become enacted in our students’ classrooms when they become teachers themselves. This will always remain a nagging concern, but introducing highquality resources such as the We the People curriculum into our courses has raised the level of student engagement and interest substantially and, based upon students’ reactions, increased the likelihood that they will use such methods and materials themselves. The We the People materials include directions for conducting a simulated Congressional hearing as a way to assess students’ knowledge of the Constitution. We undertake this activity so that our students can experience first-hand the ways that the Constitution informs the process of making laws and can appreciate “real life” pedagogy. After reading the We the People text, students are divided into five groups and assigned a unit from the text for which they are to become “experts.” Each group is assigned an issue related to their unit topic to serve as the basis for a Congressional hearing (e.g., Should citizens be required to vote? Are there times when freedom of expression should be limited?). Students then prepare and present testimony and respond to questions from a “Congressional Committee” composed of fellow methods instructors. As an extension of this teaching strategy, we recently decided to link the mock Congressional hearing with a hot topic in the news. In light of their latest sweep at the 2007 Grammy Awards and the release of a new documentary, Shut up and Sing (Kopple, Peck, & Cassidy, 2006), the Dixie Chicks, and the discussion of freedom of expression have permeated the news. In 2003, on the eve of war, the lead singer from the Dixie Chicks made a negative comment on a London stage about the president of the United States and the controversy surrounding the war in Iraq. As a result of this comment, the Dixie Chicks received backlash from their fans and the American public in the form of boycotts on the radio, destruction of their CDs, and death threats. Over the intervening

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years, the Dixie Chicks and the American public have been involved in a heated debate regarding freedom of expression. Since it is important to connect concepts with current issues, we decided to capitalize on this controversial topic and connect it to civic education. After playing their hit song in class, “Not Ready to Make Nice” (Wilson, Maguire, Maines, & Robinson, 2006), which is their response to the way they were treated after speaking out against the president and the war in Iraq, we asked students to think about freedom of expression and how it relates to this current issue. Their assignment was to use the We the People curriculum materials to become experts on freedom of expression, and then conduct research to examine multiple perspectives on the issue using different media sources. The following week students brought their research to class and they were randomly divided into the following groups: The Dixie Chicks, the Recording Academy for the Grammy Awards, DJs for country music radio stations, executives from Cumulus Media, and disgruntled fans. The students were given 30 minutes to prepare a statement to present to a Congressional Committee regarding freedom of expression and limitations that should or should not be placed on American citizens from the point of view of their assigned group. Each group had 5 minutes to present their position and connect it with freedom of expression. After each presentation, the Congressional Committee had 5 to 10 minutes to question their statements. This activity proved to be highly effective. Following the mock Congressional hearing, we had an open deliberation and discussed this activity and the issue of freedom of expression in great detail. Students reported that role-playing the different groups of people was extremely beneficial because multiple perspectives were presented, and, as a result, they were forced to think about many sides of the issue. If one of the goals of social studies is to foster democratic dialogue and deliberation, then this activity clearly encourages students to think and act like responsible citizens who make reasoned and informed decisions after examining all sides of an issue. Unfortunately, people are not born with this skill. Deliberation requires practice and activities such as this actively engage students in the process. As simple as this activity sounds, the effects on the students have been remarkable. Ever the empiricists, we collected some evaluation data from the participants to assess the impact of the simulation. Responses were overwhelmingly positive; every student in the class indicated that they would use the materials if they were to teach fifth grade social studies, and expressed confidence in their capacity to lead the simulation themselves as a result of having done it. As one student put it, “It’s easier to teach something after you’ve been through it yourself.” Apart from learning a new way to teach this material, it was evident to us that many of the students were themselves learning about how Congress gathers information to inform their decisions and how the Constitution informs the development of legislation. In her reflection on the experience, one student wrote that “this engaging activity allowed me to learn more in one day than I remember learning in my entire ninth grade year.” Hyperbole aside, it is clear that students were benefiting from the content as well as the teaching method being presented. We regularly use active teaching methods in our courses so students are accustomed to interacting with each other in groups or working with a lot of different instructional materials. The Congressional hearing simulation, however, raises the quality of their activity several notches since it requires them to analyze a complex legal issue and to prepare and present their perspectives on it to a panel of “outsiders” serving as the Congressional Committee. Even though the students are not being judged or graded on their presentations, they come to the event very well prepared and offer well-reasoned and articulate statements on the issues before them. The phrase “learning by doing” has almost become a cliché and certainly not all forms of doing result in meaningful learning. The Congressional hearing simulation, however, affirms for us that student engagement

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in activities that are challenging and focused on important concepts constitutes time well spent in social studies methods courses. References Parker, W. C. (2001). Teaching teachers to lead discussions: Democratic education in content and method. In J. Patrick & R. Leming (Eds.), Principles and practices of democracy in the education of social studies teachers: Vol. 1. Civic learning in teacher education (ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Sciences, 111–133).

Teaching Resources Abrams, P., Carson, P., Levy, R. L., McLaglen, M., Reuther, S., Treisman, J. (Producers), & Leder, M. (Director). (2000). Pay it forward [DVD]. United States: Warner. Barnes, P. W., & Barnes, C.S. (1996). House mouse, senate mouse. New York: Scholastic. Catrow, D. (2002). We the kids: The preamble to the Constitution of the United States. New York: Penguin Putnam. Center for Civic Education. (1988). We the people: The citizen and the Constitution. Calabasas, CA: Center for Civic Education. Kopple, B., Peck, C. (Producers & Directors), & Cassidy, D. (Producer). (2006). Shut up and sing [DVD]. United States: Weinstein. Wilson, D., Maguire, M., Maines, N., & Robinson, E. (2006). Not ready to make nice [Recorded by The Dixie Chicks]. On Taking the long way [CD]. New York: BMG International.

17 Service Learning Field Placements as Community Based Instruction/Action Brian Sevier

Context: TE Elementary NCSS Standards: X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies) Topics: Service learning, civic action, community-based learning, students’ lives and experiences, critical thinking, collaboration Future teachers must become aware of their students’ cultures and communities, work with students to analyze various social and community issues, and find ways to act on these issues by connecting the classroom and the community (Banks, 2001; Boyle-Baise, 2002, 2003; Irvine, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 2001a). In the fall of 2005, I began the process of recreating/reenvisioning our field placement experience. I considered how I could use the elementary social studies methods course and its concomitant school-based field experience to help students understand service learning as an effective form of social studies pedagogy and as a way to help them to connect with their future students and communities. This field-based experience, however, is also suitable for multicultural education courses (Ladson-Billings, 2001b). The service learning field placement focused on the creation of service learning projects relevant to social studies and student/community needs and on participation in these projects with students. Using our university’s guidelines for determining “diversity,” the populations at these schools had to include linguistic diversity (40% or more ESL students), racial diversity (40% or more non-Anglo students), economic diversity (40% or more students on the free or reduced lunch program), or some combination of these categories. The redesign initiated with a question about how we could use the methods course and its school-based field experience to help students understand service learning as an effective form of pedagogy. I hoped that this kind of field placement would model a meaningful way to teach civics, history, economics, and geography and help our teacher candidates imagine relevant ways to connect with their future students and communities. Accordingly, the field placement was intended to operate on two levels: focusing on preservice teachers’ creation of service learning projects relevant to social studies and on their participation in these projects with elementary students and school communities. This chapter examines the social studies service learning practicum, its initial incarnation, and a couple of the challenges/successes we have experienced thus far. The Design and Implementation of the Service Learning Field Experience The Elementary Social Studies Methods course is one of four content area methods courses that students take prior to student teaching. As part of the course, students spend one day a week at 81

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a field placement, working alongside a cooperating teacher in a local elementary school. Prior to the initial implementation of the field placement, I used the first three to four class meetings to assess our students’ understanding of service learning. To initiate these discussions, I asked them about their own experiences with service learning as K-12 students, about their experiences with service learning as college students, and about their definition/understanding of the purpose of service learning. While most understood that service learning had something to do with getting students “out into the community” or volunteer work, few knew anything about the actual implementation of service learning in public schools and none had any experience with service learning in their K-12 years. Armed with these data, I then had the teacher candidates read various theoretical and practical aspects of service learning/social action in the social studies education literature prior to beginning the field placement (e.g., Cousins & Mednick, 1999; Hoose, 2002; Lewis, 1991). As they read and discussed, the teacher candidates began to express their curiosity about the possibilities for service learning and social action in elementary schools. Indeed, they were particularly interested in the differences between social action projects aimed at critiquing social issues/problems and working toward solutions and service learning projects aimed at ameliorating pressing community problems (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). Beginning in the third week of the semester, the preservice teachers got the chance to explore these possibilities. I spent considerable time with cooperating teachers prior to the placement specifically emphasizing the latitude we wanted preservice teachers to have with respect to this field experience. In keeping with the desire to insure that the service learning projects would genuinely reflect student ideas and community needs, I wanted preservice teachers to take as much responsibility as possible in developing the projects with the elementary students at the sites. Together with the cooperating teachers we intentionally offered input/assistance to the preservice teachers only on logistics, resources, planning, and other issues as necessary. Beyond my guidance and suggestions, then, the preservice teachers and the elementary students assumed control over and leadership of the projects. At both field placement sites the preservice teachers began the service learning projects by brainstorming possible projects and actions with students. The preservice teachers designed these brainstorming sessions along the guidelines suggested in both The Kid’s Guide to Social Action (Lewis, 1991) and It’s Our World Too (Hoose, 2002). These invaluable texts stress the importance of deriving service learning topics from students. Beyond conceptualizing classroom–community connections, however, these texts also provide numerous resources for connecting students with organizations dedicated to specific causes, present discussions of various projects created and implemented by elementary school students/teachers, and include a multitude of practical tips and classroom lessons/handouts to help teachers embark on and succeed at service learning. Taking their cue from these texts, then, the preservice teachers used small-group-into-wholeclass discussions to allow the students to determine the most pressing issue/concern in their community and what “remedies” they might undertake as a school. Next, the preservice teachers took each of these issues/suggestions to the other grade-level teams for a vote. Then, once the student vote had determined the focus of the project, students and preservice teachers spent a few weeks establishing plans of action that would allow each class and grade level to assume responsibility for at least one aspect of service/action in relation to the community problem. Significantly, during that first semester, the elementary students at both sites agreed on projects that aimed to help other children/students in their own communities. A closer look at one of our participating schools highlights the basic trajectory of these projects as well as some of

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the (unanticipated) tensions and possibilities that can result from attempting social action in elementary schools. Teen-Aged Drunk Driving and Youth Homelessness Beyond our hopes for the future teachers in our course, this social studies field placement originated from our beliefs that kids of all ages could identify local problems and work toward mitigating these problems. For us, this was the heart of the National Council for Social Studies-based notions of civic participation and community involvement (NCSS; 1994). From the outset, our experiences with this practicum underscored the veracity of these beliefs. At one of our sites, for example, the fourth grade teams quickly identified a relevant community issue: teenaged drunk driving. Just a week prior to the arrival of our preservice teachers, in fact, one fourth grader had brought an article into the school that had identified the local community as having one of the nation’s highest (per capita) rates of teenaged drunk driving-related deaths. Not surprisingly, when our teacher candidates opened up a discussion of community issues this topic dominated the conversation. Many of the students had teen-aged siblings and could also recount stories of local drunk-driving accidents or fatalities. After a quick and nearly unanimous vote from the other third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms that would participate in this project, the preservice teachers began working with the students to figure out the next steps. The grade level teams ultimately decided on separate but related forms of action geared at raising community awareness about and taking action to reduce fatalities associated with teenaged drinking. The third graders wanted to create and perform role-play scenarios for younger kids. These scenarios were designed in accordance with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD; 2007) guidelines, and would help kids identify and decline rides with drivers impaired by alcohol. The fourth graders intended to create role-play scenarios as well. They would perform theirs, however, for the local high school and their content would center on the community/familial impact of teen-aged drinking and driving. Finally, the fifth graders wanted to create a fundraising activity that would simultaneously raise awareness and money for taxi services for teens attending local dances/clubs. None of the grade-level plans, unfortunately, moved much beyond these initial stages. Despite the students’ initiation of and interest in this topic and the weeks of research and planning, a group of very vocal parents and community members expressed concern about elementary students tackling this “adult” social issue. At a monthly PTA meeting they made these concerns known and school administration, fearing for future attempts at community involvement, acquiesced and cancelled the project. Halfway through the semester the students and the preservice teachers had to start over. Once again, the preservice teachers began with the students. As noted above, to even qualify as a placement site, this school had to meet the diversity requirements of the university. And it met this requirement mainly in terms of socioeconomic status of students, with nearly 20% of its population classified as homeless. Indeed, the school district had established the school as a kind of de facto center school for homeless students and had provided extra counselors and resources specifically for this population. So when the preservice teachers asked the students to brainstorm an alternative project their response was again both speedy and contextually appropriate: youth homelessness. With their own experiences as or interactions with homeless youth, the students decided on a three-pronged approach: two public awareness campaigns and a collection drive aimed at specific needs of homeless youth.

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The third and fourth grade teams took responsibility for the two campaigns. They intended that these campaigns raise awareness about homelessness, but their goals were different. In their discussions, the third graders talked at length about the misperceptions about homelessness and families. They wanted fellow students to understand that homeless kids (especially those in the school) had families and that they did not live in the streets. Thus, they decided to create an art project that would depict the actual lives of homeless kids. This collage project, titled, “What Makes a Home?” eventually took up an entire length of one of the school corridors and brought together images captured by the students (on Polaroid cameras) and images from popular media to depict the diversity of homeless experience. The fourth graders, on the other hand, aimed their awareness campaign at the community beyond the classroom. In their research, the students had discovered that the average homeless person in their community was just 12 years old. Startled by this data themselves, despite the fact that many of them were homeless and younger than 12, the students decided that this data had to be made public. Across fourth grade, then, the students participated in an artwork competition to find the best symbolic representation of this information. The students ultimately choose a design that included the statistics, a drawing of an outstretched hand, and the phrase “Reach for another no matter what they look like.” And, with the generous support of local organizations, the students turned the design into posters that adorned gathering spots and youth centers throughout the community for the next several months. Finally, the fifth grade team decided to focus on the material needs of homeless youth. With input from homeless students and a visit from residents of a nearby shelter, the students decided they would collect kits of kid-size toothpastes, toothbrushes, shampoos, and lip balms. Working with the preservice teachers, the students wrote letters to solicit donations from local dentists and grocery stores, created hand-written cards for each of the packages, and staffed donation collection boxes at local recreation centers and restaurants. At the completion of their project, the students and preservice teachers created over 120 of these hygiene kits. Reflection At the close of the initial semester of this field placement, the reflective journals I asked the preservice teachers to keep revealed key insights from the projects. First, they overwhelmingly expressed surprise at the students’ knowledge of community problems and ways in which they could act. They had assumed that the students would need much assistance in coming up with issues and actions. Second, their reflections embodied their growing awareness of the ways in which service learning connected with social studies instruction. Specifically, they connected the NCSS themes “Culture, Civic Ideals and Practices,” and “Production, Distribution and Consumption” (NCSS, 1994) to the service learning projects they engaged in with the students. Without prompting, the preservice teachers related their experiences to the primary goals we held for the service learning field placement: drawing community knowledge from students, engaging with students in participatory forms of social action, and connecting social action to social studies content. Finally, the journals revealed, through the teenaged drunk driving project, that these preservice teachers had begun to grapple with the intricacies of involving kids in social action and service learning. Many students recognized or postulated that the failure of the drunk driving project and the success of the homelessness project might be owing to the more critical (read social action) nature of the former and the more charitable (read service learning) nature of the latter. That is, they were starting to recognize both the differences between social action and service learning and

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the different reactions that can result from undertaking these forms of community involvement. We hope that the insights and experiences they gained will inform their attempts to create these projects in their future classrooms. References Banks, J. (2001). Cultural diversity and education: Foundations, curriculum, and teaching. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Boyle-Baise, M. (2002). Multicultural service learning: Educating teachers in diverse communities. New York: Teachers College Press. Boyle-Baise, M. (2003). Doing democracy in social studies methods. Theory and Research in Social Education, 31(1), 51–71. Irvine, J. (2003). Educating teachers for diversity: Seeing with a cultural eye. New York: Teachers College Press. Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African-American children. San Francisco: JosseyBass. Ladson-Billings, G. (2001a). Crossing over to Canaan: The journey of new teachers in diverse classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Ladson-Billings, G. (2001b). Crafting a culturally relevant social studies approach. In E. Wayne Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities (pp. 201–216). New York: SUNY Press. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). (2007). http://www.madd.org/madd_programs/6297 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). (1994). Expectations for excellence: Curriculum standard for social studies. Washington, DC: Author. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen: The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269.

Teaching Resources Cousins, E., & Mednick, A. (1999). Service at the heart of learning. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt. An expeditionary learning/outward bound text dedicated to classroom examples of K-12 service learning projects. Individual chapters written by teachers explore the development and trajectories of various community learning projects. Hoose, P. (2002). It’s our world too. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. This book is a wonderful resource, particularly for elementary classrooms. It opens with stories of children who have had an impact on their communities and the world and closes with detailed instructional guides and suggestions that describe the ways in which young people can truly make a difference. Lewis, B. (1991). The kid’s guide to social action. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit. This book really is the how-to text for young would-be social activists. In practical and step-by-step ways, Lewis provides myriad examples of students’ action projects. Moreover, the text provides easy to follow guidelines and practical classroom handouts for virtually every aspect of action projects.

SECTION

3

Evidence, Sources, and Interpretation in History Introduction Brenda Trofanenko and Matthew T. Missias

History is committed, almost by definition, to engaging in the disciplinary universals that define it as a distinct subject area. To engage in history is to understand how the discipline itself has developed over time, and how it maintains itself as a discipline with distinctive characteristics separate from other subjects within the social studies. History has brought us a discrete methodology for identifying and evaluating sources, an overarching ideology of establishing warrants based on evidence and interpretation, and a body of specific knowledge. Historical investigation, then, includes knowing what is defined as history and knowing the ways in which we discover, evaluate, and understand evidentiary historical processes. As one develops an understanding of history, that understanding is mediated by both the availability of information as well as a paradigm from which to make meaning of historical information. In this way, history is an undertaking that negotiates multiple and often-conflicting source materials in order to advance what we know about the past and how we come to know it. We are all cognizant of the common arguments toward school history—its boring nature and dependence on so-called fact. Such well-worn claims have prompted a major shift toward invigorating history education by acknowledging the active nature of history as a way of answering questions about the past. According to this view, “doing” history by critically engaging in historical texts and events is a necessary component so that students might better understand the intricacies and complexities of the past. Such a move away from traditional modes of teaching history is evidence that we are collectively grappling with the essential tensions facing historians as they come to understanding the past. Each chapter points to the value of utilizing source materials in our classrooms as a basis for developing historical understanding, and offers up various examples in which students actively engage in “doing history.” The ideal of engaging students in the historical method has come to define history education, and has formed the basis of a broad body of research within social studies. Since the late 1980s, scholars of history education in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom have drawn particular attention to how students engage in historical investigation (e.g., Barton & Levstik 2004; Stearns, Seixas, & Wineberg, 2000; Wineburg, 2001). The result has been a robust collection of research that shows knowing history is not memorizing fact. Yet, as many of us know from teaching in classrooms and in teaching student teachers, memorization is the norm. What is lacking, as many of us also know, is that to understand the past means being firmly engaged in the messiness of history. Teacher education in history must then extend the line of historical thinking research and practice in ways that will enable teachers to question how traditional K-12 history curricula

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have come to consist of particular past events and subjects and engage meaningfully with untidy, conflicting, and sometimes muddled evidence. As historians, many of us engage in the historical process without question. We know, or at least claim to have an understanding that history is not a story or a discrete set of knowledge of particular facts and details. Rather, we contend that we are engaged in the exciting interrogation of materials in order to make sense of contradictory materials and to be critical of what is presented as fact within the public sphere. The two fundamental questions that drive such a vision of teaching—what kind of history have students been taught and what kind of history ought students to be taught—become the crux of historical inquiry in our classrooms. Such questions direct the overarching theme of the following chapters. The initial point of engaging in the historical process is dependent on identifying suitable meaningful supplementary resources. Theresa McCormick discusses the importance of student teachers knowing what value a document may serve to the larger educational project. It is not enough, she implies, to inundate students with source materials that hold no educational value. Rather, by knowing the value as evidenced by an ability to provide a rationale and justification for its selection, documents serve as pieces of a puzzle that come together for historical analysis. Yet, as Frans Doppen asserts in his chapter, engaging with sources in historical inquiry is not just choosing which sources are valuable, but resides in the need to consider sources and locales that might be underutilized. In Doppen’s case, the students actually come to situate themselves in the archive in order to learn to distinguish the depth of source materials as part of the learning process. The students are then faced with questions of who determines the value of a trace of one’s life. Students can then learn about the relationship between authority and learning when they decide which objects they consider most suitable for a particular project. While source materials alone do not ensure learning of the past, other contributors write of the contextualization of the sources. Certainly, the value of any one source lies in its contribution to learning about the past. But a source cannot stand alone. If the overall purpose of history is to develop a sense of critical awareness of history as based on fact and evidence, then we need to consider the collectives of documents that provide contrasting information as well as a context in which to examine the similarities and differences. As Owings Swan, Kern, and Hofer offer, contextualizing the sources provides an opportunity to engage in the close reading of courses and of corroborating or contradicting the information of each source. By positioning historical analysis as akin to detective work, they ensure that the historical process is indeed dynamic. A dynamic sensibility includes constant revisiting of the sources and the interpretation of what evidence it allows. In drawing on the interpretation–reinterpretation circle that makes up hermeneutic inquiry, Blumenfeld-Jones extends that disposition. He works against the easy trap of relativism and suggests any historical interpretation can be acceptable if the claim is based on evidence. He further shows how students can be pushed to see how interpretation is valid but that it does not stand without support of evidence. Metzger also provides support of this reiterative idea of the historical method as involving a constant interpretation of sources. In providing additional resources, he challenges his students to reconsider a historical decision. We see how students come to understand how decisions were made at the time of their occurrence, but with additional knowledge and analysis might imagine alternative interpretations that reside in the road not taken. In their article about history as an inferential discipline, Hicks and Lisanti ask students to engage in a very personal process of first defining themselves and then having others define them based on personal artifacts. The students learn how objects hold significance in defining how we learn to know about the past and how we engage in the process of historical inquiry. This shows how limiting artifacts are, yet how much can be gleaned from them as evidence. The process

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they outline also shows what assumptions we bring to knowing by not knowing, and how those assumptions articulate the constructed nature of history. Finally, Brenda Trofanenko extends the analysis of artifacts beyond the “museum of me” into the real life spaces of museums. She asks her students to use a critical lens in reading how museum spaces are constructed to engage the attendee in particular ways. Further, she seeks to engender a sense within her students that while museums and historical institutions are the stewards of history—cataloging and preserving its artifacts—the methodological scrutiny in ascribing historical meaning into those artifacts is often lacking. In the end the hope is that her students will begin to draw parallels between the representations of history in those spaces and within the walls of their classroom, with the hope to reimagine how history might look as a result. Each of these authors extends the notion of what it means to know history through investigation and interpretation. Each recognizes a unique avenue for discourses that advances historical inquiry in ways that continue to challenge our notion of what it means to understand an event historically. Readers, researchers, teachers, and teacher educators are invited through these texts to consider the implications of historical inquiry that are explicit in these chapters. Readers might consider how teachers in the field utilize the lessons and skills attained through these activities in a way that both addresses “doing history” but also recognizes the tensions that define the boundaries of their practice through institutional policies or the rigors of teaching in the induction phase. Another reading might explore the tensions that arise between history as it is performed in the academy and the possibilities of developing a history pedagogy. Finally, readers of these chapters might consider how history is shaped by subjectivity and power, especially as it relates to their relationship to multicultural education. When it comes to constructing authentic historical inquiry and a meaningful understanding of history, of equal importance to engaging in the messiness of historical inquiry, is elaborating whose voices have remained silent, and for what purposes a particular history might be implicated in historical narratives, and how that might shape the way that students engage in historical inquiry. In whatever case, there is general consensus that teaching, learning, and knowing history is an evidentiary and inquiry-based practice. Yet, as teacher educators seek to engage our students—our future teachers—in historical inquiry that is both meaningful and relevant, these authors seek to move preservice teachers intellectually beyond the transmissive properties of traditional modes of history education, so too are we challenged to participate in authentic historical inquiry. If the legacy of learning about the past is to be advanced within our social studies classrooms, we should be grateful to the authors of the papers in this section. References Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Stearns, P. N., Seixas, P., & Wineberg, S. (2000). Knowing, teaching and learning history: National and international perspectives. New York: New York University Press. Wineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts: Charting the future of teaching the past. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

18 Generating Effective Teaching through Primary Sources Theresa M. McCormick

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, K-6, 7-12 NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 2, (Learning and Development), 4 (Instructional Strategies) Topics: history, artifacts, historical understanding, identity, inquiry, critical thinking, diversity, culture, mutliple perspectives, historical figures, graphic organizers Many professional organizations, such as American Historical Association (AHA; 2002), Bradley Commission of History in Schools (1988), National Council of History Education (NCHE; 2002), National Standards for History (1996), and the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS; 1994), recommend that primary sources should be used to facilitate inquiry within the social studies classroom, and they have adopted benchmarks and standards. Primary sources potentially expose students to multiple perspectives on great issues of the past and present. Primary sources can challenge students to develop the knowledge, skills, and analytical abilities by engaging them to ask questions, think critically, make intelligent inferences, and develop reasoned explanations and interpretations of events and issues in the past and present (Brophy & VanSledright, 1997). The Primary Sources Teaching Packet assignment is designed to challenge social studies methods students to select a collection of primary source materials that present varying perspectives and insights as they relate to a common historical theme, event, or issue. Using VanFossen and Shiveley’s (2000) description of how teachers can use the Internet to “create on-demand jackdaws” (p. 245) this assignment requires students to select primary sources that can be incorporated into a history lesson plan they will teach in their field-based classroom. This chapter provides an overview of selected readings and activities students complete prior to the assignment, a description of the assignment, and rationale for the assignment. Description of the Assignment Each completed Primary Sources Teaching Packet will include an inquiry-based learning cycle lesson plan (Sunal & Haas, 2005), copies of the primary sources selected along with citation, a rationale statement, a brief rationale for each of the primary sources selected, a discussion of how they were used in the lesson plan to develop the habits of mind associated with learning history, and any supplemental materials. The learning cycle lesson plan model includes: teacher and student background knowledge, standards covered in the lesson, learning objectives, teacher and student materials, instructional procedures, assessment, and references. Each completed packet contains 90

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copies of the selected primary sources that can be reproduced for classroom use along with proper citation. Written text may be presented in the original form or transcribed when necessary. The overarching goal of each lesson plan is to strengthen students’ historical knowledge of an era, event, or issue, and to introduce the students to a variety of primary sources. Although most field based placements are limited to one elementary grade level per semester, I encourage students to construct lessons that can be easily adapted for multiple grades based on the appropriateness of the content and primary source materials selected. Preparation for the Primary Source Teaching Packet Assignment My course’s conceptual framework is rooted in constructivist pedagogy and reflective practices in an effort to facilitate the construction of future teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge as described by Lee Shulman (1986). In support of this goal and due to the students’ often limited experiences working with primary sources, they are given supplemental reading assignments and complete an inquiry-based online learning module on primary sources prior to completing the assignment. Assigned readings given a week before include “What Does it Mean to Think Historically and How Do You Teach It?” (VanSledright, 2004) and “Using the Internet to Create Primary Source Teaching Packets” (VanFossen & Shiveley, 2000). The readings help provide background knowledge and a rationale for using primary sources with elementary students. On the day the assignment is given, the class meets in the computer lab where the instructor can guide and assist students as they complete an online activity to orient them to finding primary sources and begin to search for sources for the assignment. The activity is on the Learning Page located at the Library of Congress Web site, and provides an excellent professional development module that is available online and free. The Learning Page is designed with teachers in mind in an effort to develop their expertise in using the American Memory collection to supplement their teaching. The module is divided into three parts: (1) primary sources—what they are and how teachers can use them; (2) how to search, save, and cite online primary sources for classroom use; and (3) an introduction to other reliable Web sites with primary source collections. The activity introduces the methods students to primary sources and requires them to interpret and analyze multiple primary sources to construct historical meaning. The last portion familiarizes them with various Web sites where primary sources for classroom use can be found. After completing this online activity, the instructor goes over the Primary Sources Teaching Packet assignment by instructing students to write a lesson plan that focuses on a common historical theme, event, or issue. Students should select a variety of primary sources (no less than three) from the Internet that they deem appropriate for use in their lesson plan. I ask them to consider the following: (1) interest and background of your students; (2) developmental appropriateness; (3) points of view; and (4) implementation in the lesson plan. Students should consider the following questions: What kinds of primary sources would be of particular interest to my students? What background knowledge will my students need in order for them to place the primary sources into the proper context? What kind of primary sources would be appropriate for my students’ abilities? How might I help my students critically analyze the primary sources? Are various points of view or perspectives as they relate to my selected historical theme, event, or issue fairly represented in the sources I have chosen to use? When and how will the primary sources be used in the lesson plan? What procedures will I follow?

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Reflection Noted educators and scholars in the field of social studies recognize that the integration of primary source materials into the history curriculum can be an invaluable tool in the improvement of K-12 history education. However, many of the students enrolled in social studies methods courses have had little experiences with the tools and thinking of an historian (Wineburg, 2001). Consequently, many teacher candidates are ill prepared to select and incorporate primary sources into their lessons plans (Yeager & Davis, 1995). Based on my own experience teaching elementary social studies methods course, I have found the majority of my students have had either limited or no experience constructing historical knowledge using primary sources. The number of university level social science courses is often limited and varied. Their content knowledge is sometimes limited and full of misconceptions. Furthermore, even some teacher candidates who have had in-depth experiences with primary sources and the nature of historical thinking fail to provide the students in their classroom with guidance in the interpretation of primary sources (Fehn & Koeppen, 1998; van Hover & Yeager, 2003; Yeager & Wilson, 1997). With the Primary Sources Teaching Packet assignment I achieved two goals: (1) to develop social studies methods students’ skills in selecting and incorporating primary sources into their lesson plans and (2) strengthen their expertise in constructing a ready-to-use primary sources teaching packet as a resource when teaching a common historical theme, event, or issue. References American Historical Association (2002). Benchmarks for professional development in teaching history as a discipline of history. http://www.theaha.org/teaching/benchmarks.htm Bradley Commission of History in Schools. (1988). Building a history curriculum: Guidelines for teaching history in the schools. Washington, DC: Educational Excellence Network. Brophy, J., & VanSledright, B. (1997). Teaching and learning history in elementary schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Fehn, B., & Koeppen, K. E. (1998). Intensive document-based instruction in a social studies methods course and student teachers’ attitudes and practice in subsequent field experiences. Theory and Research in Social Education, 26(4), 461–484. National Council for History Education. (2002). Building a history-centered curriculum for kindergarten through grade four. Westlake, OH: Author. National Council for the Social Studies (1994). Expectations of excellence: Curriculum standards for social studies. Washington, DC: Author. National Standards for History (1996). Developing standards in history for students in grades K–4. http://www.sscnet. ucla.edu/nchs/standards/dev-k-4a.html Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 235–250. Van Hoover, S. D., & Yeager, E. A. (2003). Challenges facing beginning history teachers: An exploratory study. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL. Wineberg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts: Charting the future of teaching the past. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Yeager, E. A., & Davis. O. L. (1995). Between campus and classroom: Secondary student-teachers’ thinking about historical text. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 29(1), 1–8. Yeager, E. A., & Wilson, E. K. (1997). Teaching historical thinking in the social studies methods course: A case study. The Social Studies, 88(3), 12–126.

Teaching Resources Library of Congress. (2008). The learning page. http://memory.loc.gov/learn/start/index.html. Sunal, C., & Haas, M. (2005). Social studies for the elementary and middle grades: A constructivist approach. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Teaching with Documents at Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. (2008). Teaching with Documents Packet. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/primsrce.html VanFossen, P., & Shiveley, J. (2000). Using the Internet to create primary source teaching packets. Social Education, 91, 244–253. VanSledright, B. (2004). What does it mean to think historically and how do you teach it? Social Education, 68(3), 230–233.

19 Incorporating Archives in Social Studies Methods Frans H. Doppen

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12 NCSS Standards: I (Culture), II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 2 (Student Learning), 5 (Learning Environment) Topics: history, historical content knowledge, historical understanding, inquiry, local/global communities, primary sources, photographs/pictures, unit development, collaboration As part of my undergraduate secondary social studies methods courses I require groups of four to five students to complete a unit plan that involves using the university’s archives. I have several major goals for my preservice teachers: (1) to introduce them to the plethora of resources university archives have to offer for developing original lesson plans; (2) to help them understand how to use and edit archival resources for pedagogical purposes; (3) to locate archival resources that will enable their future students to make meaningful connections between their own lives and historical events; (4) to use archival resources to help students make connections between local and global events; (5) to help them develop the collaborative skills they will need to work with future colleagues. My assignment begins with an orientation at the Ohio University archives. This requires a prior meeting with the archivist to discuss the topic and theme for the assignment and to make sure the archives will have the necessary resources to make this a viable option. Most universities and many community historical centers and museums have archives that can be used for a similar assignment in your location. Although my students are seniors, the orientation is typically the first time they have set foot in the archives despite the fact that they have taken several history courses and been many times to the university library, in which the archives is located. Typically the archivist reviews archival protocol and explains it is his duty to “create chaos.” He does this by showing my students every possible resource the archives may have related to their topic and explaining that it is their responsibility to “create order” out of this chaos of resources. The students use the archives as part of a unit plan which must have a theme based on historical events that have had both a local and global impact. On several occasions, as part of this “Athens and Beyond” theme (Athens is our town), I have selected chapters from Ohio University’s bicentennial history (Hollow, 2004). Each of the historical themes began with a local event at Ohio University which the students were required to connect to global events. More recently, however, in an effort to encourage them to think more globally, I have begun assigning global events from which they must develop local connections. Based on the state curriculum standards, I have assigned such topics as the Russian Revolution, Decolonization, the People’s Republic of China, the Cold War, the Fall of Communism, Globalization, Genocide, and the Middle East conflict. 93

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When allowed to choose their own topics within the parameters of the assigned theme, my students have been able to develop unit plans on such topics as World War I, Temperance, the Great Depression, World War II, Women at Ohio University, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, Ohio University presidents, and Student Life. For each of these unit plans they have been able to locate materials in the archives and found that meeting separately with the archivist is of tremendous value as it allowed them to discuss the availability of resources. As part of each unit plan the students are required to develop a series of five separate lessons for a 2-week period in which they must use a variety of pedagogical strategies (for more information on pedagogical strategies see part IX in this book). The unit plan must consist of at least five distinct lessons and include a final comprehensive assessment. Four lessons must have a distinctive focus on history, geography, economics, and government, respectively, while the focus of the fifth lesson is optional. In addition, one lesson must include an activity that requires students to actively use computers. Furthermore, the four prescribed lessons must include a lesson with one written primary document, a lesson with one photograph, a lesson with at least four written documents, and a lesson with at least two photographs. All of these resources must be located in the archives. The two lessons with multiple resources must present multiple perspectives on a particular issue and require students to develop their own perspective. Course Readings To help my students develop student-centered activities I use Selwyn and Maher (2003), which is especially useful for making connections between the present and the past. Likewise, Merryfield and Wilson (2005) is an excellent resource for how to teach concepts such as world-mindedness, substantive culture learning, and perspective consciousness. At a more practical “nuts and bolts” level I use several additional articles. Barton (2001) offers useful suggestions for analyzing photographs by using guiding questions and diagrams. My (2000) article presents a unit plan that includes multiple developmentally appropriate edited documents, while Hess (2004) offers suggestions for facilitating effective classroom discussion, especially when students are required to complete perspective taking activities. Reflection In their feedback my students have typically indicated that they enjoyed their visits to the archives. Many stated that if “this course had not pointed the archives out or had [them] go there [they] probably would not have experienced such an interesting place.” Some have suggested they searched through things for “probably about four hours before [they] found what [they] wanted” and “really never had so much contact with primary documents.” They thought that “it was really cool to see all of these documents that were just brimming with the history of the area,” and that “the pictures and hand-written documents were amazing.” Several students even admitted they “kept getting distracted [with other] interesting things” and “kept coming up with more and more ideas that were unrelated to the project.” They began to realize how easy it is to use primary documents to “connect with the community” and how “excited the archivists were to help,” which made the “time spent there very productive, surprisingly pleasant and stress free.” Keep Them Coming Not all students may be as motivated as one might wish, and it is possible that some may approach their assignment, in the words of the archivist, “more like a scavenger hunt which [is] already tak-

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ing up way too much of their valuable time rather than as a chance to locate, select, and interpret formerly untapped historical sources.” While archivists, just like other educators, will occasionally have such discouraging experiences, they also have many wonderful and rewarding experiences with students. For example, as one archivist reported: We had a group of three students come in around noon one Friday, and they were confused, resentful, and depressed about not even having selected a topic yet. I started handing them possible sources such as student handbooks and newspaper clippings relating to women’s life on campus during the 1960s, and suddenly they were energized. They became so enthusiastic about their work, that they had staff and patrons laughing. We had to throw them out at closing, and on Saturday when I arrived to open the archives, they were standing at the door waiting for me. The final product of their work turned out to be one of the best pieces of undergraduate work I have ever seen. It was just a matter of expanding their minds about the possibilities of using primary sources. On another occasion, the same archivist reported that, This week, [there were] two students in particular who were looking at local newspaper clippings for a WW II-related project, another one who was intrigued by photographs of campus protests during the Vietnam War era, a group that discovered the very sad coroner’s inquest testimony of a fourteen-year-old whose twenty-year-old brother was killed right next to him while they were working in the mine, and another student whom I brought over to my colleagues in government documents to look for Ohio education laws. He wrote to me afterwards about his visit to their stacks and said [that] what he learned about government documents, primary sources and websites was invaluable. So, please keep them coming to us. Incorporating archives in the methods course introduces students to what an archive has to offer, and it teaches them how to use archival resources for pedagogical purposes, including making meaningful connections between local and global events. In addition, it helps them develop the skills they will need to plan lessons with future colleagues. Even though some students “felt embarrassed when they [were] scolded for using a pen and bringing a bag into the room, [they] learned how to access documents from the archives,” and thought it was “odd that no history professor [had] ever required [them] to use the archives.” They learned they were able to “better use their time if [they had] a direction and an idea of what [they] wanted to accomplish [but realized it is] important to be flexible with your ideas” as well. Perhaps one student summarized it best when she commented she had “learned about a vast source for sweet documents that are highly accessible,” and was “quite surprised to find out that someone actually gets paid to find these resources for [her].” Teaching Resources Barton, K. C. (2001). A picture’s worth. Analyzing historical photographs in the elementary grades. Social Education, 65, 278–283. Doppen, F. H. (2000). Teaching and learning multiple perspectives: The atomic bomb. The Social Studies, 91, 159–169. Hess, D. E. (2004). Discussion in social studies: Is it worth the trouble? Social Education 68 (2), 151–155. Hollow, B. (2004). Ohio University: The spirit of a singular place, 1804–2004. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Merryfield, M. M., & Wilson, A. (2005). Social studies and the world: Teaching global perspectives. Silver Spring, MD: National Council for the Social Studies. Selwyn, D., & Maher, J. (Eds.). (2003). History in the present tense: Engaging students through inquiry and action. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

20 Historical Perspective, Causality, and Significance The Historical Scene Investigation Project Kathleen Owings Swan, Kathi Kern, and Mark Hofer

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12 NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies) Topics: history, historical content knowledge, historical understanding, critical thinking, inquiry, primary sources, technology/Internet, photographs/pictures The Historical Scene Investigation (HSI) project (http://www.hsionline.org) stimulates historical inquiry by providing teachers with a way to explore technology-rich curricular resources available in the form of self-contained document-based “cases.” Using the metaphor of a crime scene investigation, HSI exercises guide students in analyzing selected primary source documents to solve a historical problem or question. Currently, our site features cases developed around events commonly included in K-12 American history curricula, including the Settlement of Jamestown, the Boston Massacre, and the Battle of Lexington Green, as well as explorations into aspects of American cultural history through a case relating to runaway slaves and another to Elvis Presley. In addition to the case file, we have created a separate section for the teacher. Here, objectives for the activities are provided with links to national content and process standards. Additionally, background information on the content addressed in the activities is provided, with links to additional resources, including related primary source documents. To date, nine activities that are centered primarily on U.S. history have been developed, including additional teacher materials. These activities are hosted on the HSI Web site (http://www.hsionline.org) and are freely available for use in the classroom. Many of the initial investigations housed on the site can be effectively used either on or offline. For an investigation, the teacher could download the case file and either modify the activity or use it as is. We think of this as the “low-tech” approach. More recently, however, we’ve also added investigations in which the technology plays a more integral role. For example, in the investigation on the March on Frankfort, the investigation uses audio and video files and written transcripts of oral histories. In this case, the technology helps to bring the emotion, feeling, and passion of the speakers directly to students. We think of this kind of investigation as a “high-tech” approach. We feel that given the uneven access to technology between and within schools that both approaches are useful. To aid teachers in moving easily through the site, each case follows an identical instructional

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model consisting of the following four steps: (1) Becoming a Detective, (2) Investigating the Evidence, (3) Searching for Clues, and (4) Cracking the Case. In the sections that follow, we detail the purpose of each step and highlight a case, The Boston Massacre, from the HSI Web site. Like all of the cases we have developed, the Boston Massacre “case” takes a pivotal moment in American history and uses it to introduce students to historical methods and thinking skills while deepening their exposure to American history content. Most historians would agree that the Boston Massacre is a crucial turning point, a moment in which tempers flared between Colonists and the British military whose very presence was a source of controversy. The resulting violence and the deaths of five Colonists may not qualify as a “massacre” in the strictest sense, yet few would dispute its importance as a precursor to the Revolution. Becoming a Detective In “Becoming a Detective,” students are introduced to the historical scene under investigation. In each case, we intend to capture student interest by succinctly conveying a defining moment in American history. For example, in the Boston Massacre exercise, students are presented first with the outcome of the trial as a way of introducing the case: In the fall of 1770, British Captain Thomas Preston and eight of his regulars were tried for the alleged murder of five Boston colonials. At the conclusion of the trial, Captain Preston and six of the eight soldiers were acquitted, with the remaining two soldiers found guilty of manslaughter. These two men were branded on their right thumbs and released. Students are then presented with a task to help guide their reading and analysis of the sources: At the request of the Daughters of the American Revolution, you have been selected to review the case, to examine a series of key documents and to determine, “Was justice served?” Investigating the Evidence Students move on to the “Investigating the Evidence” section of the exercise after they have familiarized themselves with the task at hand. Students are provided with hyperlinks to a number of essential digital primary sources that help them begin to piece together a historical narrative, research multiple renderings of an historical account, and assess the credibility of the evidence. To make these cases effective, we sought out documents that relate to one another and that reflect controversy to make the process of discovering historical controversy fairly transparent for teachers and their students. The evidence might include text files, images, audio, or video clips. In the Boston Massacre case, students investigate a variety of documents including competing eyewitness accounts, several artists’ renditions, as well as an excerpt from Joy Hakim’s (2002) textbook series recounting the event. For example, an engraving by Paul Revere in 1770 shows the British firing on an unsuspecting crowd of civilians and he titles the work, The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street. In contrast, another artist (anonymous, 1768) renders the event from a much different perspective as the crowd of minutemen combatively surround the British leaving the viewer to question whether the British had just cause in engaging the citizenry. As this juxtaposition of images illustrates, primary sources accompanied by good questions can lead students into the messy work of historical inquiry. The images, as well as the documents in the Boston Massacre

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case, raise important issues about point of view, causality, historical perspective, as well as the fragmented, partial nature of historical evidence. Searching for Clues When “Searching for Clues,” students are provided with a set of questions in the form of a Detective’s Log that can be printed from the Web site to help guide their analysis of the selected documents. Step-by-step instructions that include both an analysis of the individual documents as well as a comparison between documents, assist students through the process. This scaffolding can be very structured or more open-ended, depending on the instructional goals of the teacher and the abilities of the students. For each case, the Detective Log is provided both in the form of a printable handout and a customizable word processing file for students to work from. In the Boston Massacre case, the Detective Log challenges students with a range of questions that begin with sourcing the documents (i.e., authorship, audience, context, etc.) and typically end with more thoughtful, open-ended questions about the uniqueness and reliability of the document as historical evidence. The documents in this case—especially the competing eyewitness accounts of the incident— are particularly rich historical sources. They confront the students with the difficulty of the basic task of determining “what happened” in the Boston Massacre. In the testimony of British Captain Thomas Preston, for example, the British military was vulnerable to taunting and threats of violence perpetrated by the colonists. Preston, in his defense, claimed he issued the order “don’t fire.” Yet his accusers managed to produce a number of witnesses who claimed he gave the order: “Fire!” In a conflicting account, an anonymous observer declared that “not the least provocation” was given to Captain Preston. Indeed, according to this account, the crowd had their backs to the military at the time of the attack. After examining the evidence, students are prompted to summarize frustrations they encountered when trying to piece together the account. Students are asked within the exercise, “Based on this investigation and what you know about the process of history, what are some of the difficulties that are faced by historians in reconstructing history?” Given the contested nature of the evidence, students may not feel convinced that they can unequivocally resolve certain issues of fact about the Boston Massacre. But their work does not stop there. The source material for this case also provides students and teachers with an opportunity to explore larger questions regarding the nature of colonialism and cultural identity on the eve of the American Revolution. And this is a valuable lesson for students as well: historical evidence can be read to answer more than one question. So although the “facts” of the Boston Massacre remain disputed, the documents clearly reveal the depth of the tensions between colonists and the British military. How each participant narrates the events leading up to the Boston Massacre offers students important clues to the tensions that gave rise to Colonial resistance. Similarly, students are prompted to look at the way colonists articulated their political interests. As the “anonymous” writer illustrates, colonists argued for their rights, not as “Americans,” but rather as British citizens whose freedoms were inhibited by the presence of the British military, a situation “contrary to the spirit of the Magna Carta.” As they search for clues, students engage in a number of vital historical thinking exercises: they consider the fragmented and partial nature of documentary evidence, they sharpen their analytical skills by comparing visual and textual sources, they mediate the competing claims of different historical participants, and they grapple with some of the larger cultural themes embedded in first-person accounts of the event.

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Cracking the Case Finally, in “Cracking the Case” students return to the original question and prepare an answer that reflects their engagement with the historical evidence. Additionally, students are encouraged to ask new questions that have arisen during the process for future investigation. The answer can take many forms. An Advanced Placement U.S. History teacher might opt for students to write a traditional five paragraph essay supporting their conclusion, using the documents as they would in the requisite document-based question (DBQ). An elementary school teacher might choose to have students participate in a structured classroom debate. In the Boston Massacre exercise, students are asked to write a short essay on whether they believe justice was served, indicating whether they were satisfied with the evidence and listing any additional questions that have been left unanswered. Whatever the end product, it is important that students provide an answer to the original question using supporting documentary evidence. Reflection We designed the Historical Scene Investigation (HSI) project with a number of goals in mind. First of all, we envisioned the project as an opportunity to build upon the ever-escalating availability of Web-based historical sources and to frame those sources in a way that would foster student interest in the past. Second, we hoped to address teachers’ pragmatic concerns about not having the time to develop meaningful primary source document exercises for students. As Ms. Angel Justice of East Jessamine Middle School in Jessamine County, Kentucky, attested, “As a middle school social studies teacher, I see HSI as an important resource to help teachers use primary sources…. While the Internet is great in helping me find primary sources, it takes too much time that I plainly do not have as a teacher.” Furthermore, by scaffolding a process for document analysis, we hope the HSI site will help to bridge the gap between the potential of Web-based historical documents and the theoretical frameworks that guide historical thinking. While we originally intended this model for K-12 classroom use, we have also found it useful as a pedagogical model for teacher education as new and experienced teachers get involved in creating historical thinking opportunities for their own students. Like any good scaffold, HSI has helped our teachers envision a lesson or exercise in which they can bring theory into practice. While no instructional model can precisely simulate historical research, HSI cases encapsulate many of the issues common to historical work. They expose students to the process of forming historical questions, to the conflicting nature of much historical evidence, and to the challenge of shaping evidence-based historical narratives. References Barton, K. (2005). Teaching history: Primary sources in history—Breaking through the myths. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(10), 745–753. Holt, T. (1995). Thinking historically: Narrative, imagination and understanding. New York: College Entrance Examination Board. National Archives. The Boston massacre (1768). Washington, DC: National Archives. http://www.archives.gov/research/ arc/ Revere, P. (1770). The bloody massacre perpetrated in King Street. Washington, DC: National Archives. http://www.archives. gov/research/arc/ Swan, K. & Hicks, D. (in press). Through the democratic lens: The role of purpose in leveraging technology to support historical thinking in the social studies classroom. The International Journal of Social Studies Education.

100 • Kathleen Owings Swan, Kathi Kern, and Mark Hofer USA Today. (2001). America is suffering from cultural amnesia—American thought. USA Today, http://findarticles.com/p/ articles/mi_m1272/is_2678_130/ai_80533076

Teaching Resources Hakim, J. (2002). A history of us. New York: Oxford University Press. The bloody massacre perpetrated in King Street, Paul Revere (1770). The National Archives. National Archives Building, Washington, DC. http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/ The Boston massacre, anonymous artist (1768). Washington, DC: National Archives. http://www.archives.gov/research/ arc/

21 Writing from Visual Prompts Animating Imagination for Social Studies and Diversity Education Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, K-6, 7-12 NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies) Topics: history, historical understanding, critical thinking, perspective consciousness, photographs/pictures, primary sources, multiple perspectives Social studies as a subject is ill-regarded by the majority of the students I have taught in our undergraduate elementary teacher preparation program. Most of them have felt disaffected from social studies as elementary, middle school, and high school students. They have been bored in such classes, associating them with memorizing disembodied, uncoordinated, dry-as-dust facts, forgotten immediately upon testing, if retained that long. One way into changing their relationship to “social studies” is to reveal the role of imagination in the practice of historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and researchers in other areas of the human sciences. The activity presented below fosters a more intellectual and imaginative engagement with social studies materials and presents them with a better way of working with their own future students, which can dispel the disaffection toward social studies. Historical, sociological, anthropological, and other kinds of “social studies” understandings always entail interpretation of artifacts, hermeneutical acts, not straightforward telling of what is true. It is important for teachers to understand this, and then have their own students understand this as well. This makes the human sciences “more human,” and rooted in a kind of experience each of them actually performs each day. Most people are not aware that they are constantly performing hermeneutic acts for the most part because their interpretations are instantaneously corroborated so that they do not witness the process they underwent to arrive at their conclusions. Only in the face of misunderstanding, does an individual realize that she or he has been interpreting life’s events all along. Often interpretation is not challenged and is, therefore, taken to be the truth about a situation that inheres in the situation itself. In the activity described and discussed below, interpretive processes are made conscious and active. Description of the Activity This activity has a three-part structure, designed to take place in one 3-hour preservice teacherpreparation class and is suitable for both social studies and multicultural education. I focus primarily on history, but political and social geography, anthropology, sociology, and economics 101

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(and more) could be explored through this type of lesson. Certainly, more time could be spent on this activity but, in our program, many kinds of preparation are to happen within one course. Thus, this activity has been only done once a semester. In terms of its usefulness for classrooms, I envisage it as useful for all levels of classroom: primary, elementary, middle school, and high school. It can be used to develop the curriculum for a unit. It can be used to help learners connect with material. It can help learners understand what human sciences practitioners actually do in their work. It can act as leverage for the development of self-knowledge. Any and all of these outcomes are possible. The activity begins with providing the preservice teachers with a packet of images (photographs, pictures of paintings and other art work, and posters or advertisements) from a particular era, place, and event (or like events). In this case the packet consists of photographs of labor union strike actions in and around the time of the Shirtwaist Factory Fire, posters recruiting for World War I, and artwork of the time (photographs of paintings). Given these materials, the students are asked to surmise, from these visuals, what life was like in this era and in this particular place and during this event (or like events). I then ask the students to develop either a short story pertaining to one of the photographs, a newspaper account dealing with one of the photographs, a diary entry for one of the photographs, or any other written response to one of the photographs. Having done the above, the class shares their writing in small groups for the purpose of hearing how different people respond differentially to the prompts. Further, through discussion, ideas come to the fore for each person which he or she might not have considered or conceptualized about the era/event. In this part of the lesson, the students realize that the hermeneutical horizons of each person are in play as their interpretations are offered. That is, a person always provides interpretations that are situated in history, both personal and social, known to each individual. In this sense, no one interpretation is inherently privileged, although since some students have more access to information/data/facts, their interpretations may be more warranted. Lastly, the class comes together as a whole to discuss the experience of doing this kind of thinking (speculative, but from evidence; imaginative, but grounded in facts). We talk through what it is like to think imaginatively and speculatively about “facts.” More specifically, we talk about the following questions: What does each person know that firmly animates the choices made? What are the sources that one has and how reliable are they? What makes a source reliable or unreliable? What does each person know only speculatively (doesn’t have information that could ground the speculation) and what are the origins of such speculation? How does historical speculation function to bring about understanding? How can historical speculation function to bring about misunderstanding? How can what we know with certainty and what we don’t know with certainty be used to structure an investigation into the era/events? We examined the ways we can demonstrate the correctness of speculation and how we can understand more firmly the event under consideration by gathering information. We consider useful encounters with conflicting points of view about the era/events and compare these accounts to the initial ideas developed by each individual. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we explore how we can use this speculative work and the research to confirm, disconfirm, or create wholly new speculations, which could contribute to the structuring of further study or of an entire curriculum unit. Discussion of the Activity: Interpretation and Evidence Karen Jorgenson, in her book History Workshop (1993), provides the genesis for this activity by recommending that students

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explore historical source materials, read a variety of historical writings, draw, make up stories and recreate historical experiences by comparing their understanding with that of others. The firsthand or primary sources provide the raw material for predictions, while reading and writing stories and drawing offer a context for weaving isolated predictions into a meaningful whole. (p. 13) .

In this regard, Jorgenson sees the writing of stories as a way for students to synthesize…predictions into a meaningful whole. Reading and writing stories forces young thinkers to place isolated and seemingly disparate ideas into context and encourages them to refine their understanding and sensibly create a milieu. (p. 13) While I am sympathetic to this perspective, the way in which Jorgenson plays this out disturbed me. She writes that “many children use personal events as the basis for fictional stories and create characters that embody the personality traits of friends and relatives” (p. 18). Further, in describing some of the children’s products, she uncritically presented incorrect historical information as if it were acceptable. As I conceptualized the activity I developed, I determined that it is important for children to be aware of the difference between fact and fiction. Such awareness of what they don’t know aids in constructing actions for coming to know more accurately. It is important for historical, geographical, sociological, anthropological, or economic interpretation to have warrant by being based on what we do know and it is important not to project our present times into the past as if all of historical time is homogenous. Thus, during the third part of this activity, I stress distinguishing what the learner knows firmly (and the sources of such knowing to see if the sources are credible and how you will come to identify credible sources) and what the learner has projected onto the past as if the past and the present were one and the same, or as if different past eras and events are similar. In this way, understanding and interpretive practices become grounded in empirical evidence. While empirical evidence cannot speak for itself and must be interpreted, if interpretations are based on falsehoods, then the interpretive scheme itself misleads us and brings us to make present decisions based on past events but without the foundation of accuracy. There might be some concern that in emphasizing empirical warrants to validate imaginative practice, we would disconfirm the value of imagination in doing historical or social science research. To be sure, the activity was not, initially, conducted with uniform enthusiasm but not because the place of imaginations was devalued. For some, there has been some initial struggle with making sense of how to pull together disparate materials (photographs of striking factory workers, wartime posters, and abstract art of the time) into a whole that could make sense. Students were challenged by the demand for critical comparative analysis and imaginative synthesis. This may be as much related to past educational experiences that disavowed the value of such work and didn’t develop critical and imaginative capacity as it is a “native” reluctance on the students’ parts. For others, however, the activity was embraced as both stimulating and liberating and they could immediately see the value of it. These were students, generally, who had held less anathema toward social studies at the outset. In doing this activity the students came to know that history (and, by extension, other social sciences) is obviously the telling of stories about the past. Historians tell stories, both fact based and about the interior lives of people, for the purpose of connecting the reader with the history. This “filling in of the interior life” affords the reader displacement out of her or his own time/situation into another’s time/situation. By creating stories, students can

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begin to think about the life of a time, not just its facts, but they can also see the ways in which imagination can “fill in the blanks” and provide more body to understanding. There are yet, two other benefits from this activity. First, engaging in a conceptualization of what life might have been like at that time, opens up how history is related to contemporary life, and this is perhaps the most crucial hoped-for outcome of the activity. If students do the actual research into the warrant for their speculations (the next step in such an activity), they can often find connections to the concerns they have now and the concerns people might have had then. Such a comparison can foster a willingness to enter into historical research to see whether such connections hold or not. There is now a reason for doing historical research; it is not dry-as-dust, disconnected situations, but connected, in a direct way, to other times, other situations. Second, by creating such stories and other written products students can come to distinguish fact from fictionalization and defend fictionalizing as a way of understanding themselves better, using the act of imagination about another time, another people, another situation as the entry point into self-knowledge. That is, the products produced during this activity aren’t only for beginning an historical or geographical or sociological study but, also, a way into self-knowledge. Then the students can come to know that this is what historians and geographers and sociologists do as well: use their study for self-study (even when they avow that they do no such thing). In the end, this activity has the “virtue” of being simple and straightforward and, yet, can provide multiple experiences that point in many directions: intellectual, aesthetic, action-oriented, and self-knowledge oriented all at once. Reference Jorgenson, K. L. (1993). History workshop: Reconstructing the past with elementary students. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Teaching Resources As a social studies educator I gather old social studies textbooks for elementary, middle and high school as a prime source of images from various eras (photographs, art-work, maps, documents). I also gather art books and any other books that contain images from other eras. I also gather history books that are either edited documents (journals, short fiction, poetry) from other eras and edited chapters on an era. Often these edited books also contain various useful images. Murdoch, K., & Hamston, J. (1996), Integrating socially: Planning integrated units of work for social education. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann. An excellent source of social studies activities. It is written by two Australian social studies educators (in Australia the term is social education rather than social studies). It provides both a guide to how to plan integrated social studies units and many developed activities for an integrated curriculum approach.

22 Using Content Resources to Analyze a Historical Decision Scott Alan Metzger

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, 7-12 NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies) Topics: history, historical content knowledge, ethical-political valuation, collaboration, critical thinking, issues-centered approach, controversial issues, World War II, Asia, ethnocentrism, government, power/authority, multiple perspectives, decision making, deliberation, historical understanding, film Issues-centered approaches to social studies have long emphasized decision making as a critical skill. However, making and analyzing decisions are also important to learning history in the social studies. Events that are history today were often first policy decisions in the past. Furthermore, we make decisions about history every time we weigh arguments and debate alternate explanations. I reinforce this intellectual link between issues-centered social studies and history education in my undergraduate methods course by asking my prospective social studies teachers to “revisit” a controversial historical decision: the decision by the United States to use atomic bombs against Japan in 1945. The purpose is to move beyond simply thinking about what historical decision they feel should have been made—instead, they need to analyze the alternate options behind a historical decision and consider why a particular option was decided on over others. “Revisiting” a historical decision requires providing the students with an informational basis in common on which they can draw for their analyses and arguments. For the decision to use atomic bombs against Japan, I have found two resources to be very helpful in this regard. Victory in the Pacific is a 2-hour episode of the PBS series American Experience which first aired in 2005. It puts the atomic bomb decision in the broader political, military, and social contexts of 1945 and examines the brutal violence that characterized the Pacific War. Chapter 12 (“The Decision to Drop the Bomb”) in James W. Davidson’s and Mark H. Lytle’s After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection is an insightful examination of the many factors that influenced decisions in the past and how understanding those decisions necessitates attention to these pressures and procedures. It contrasts two different frameworks for analyzing the bomb decision—the Rational Actor model (“Truman dropped the bomb…”) and a model of Organizational Processes (U.S. political and military bureaucracies that implemented the policy). By having the students read chapter 12 before the class session and then having them watch key portions of the documentary film in class, students are presented with a common base of content knowledge to use in analyzing the historical decision.

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Using the Resources Victory in the Pacific offers an in-depth exploration of the end of the Pacific War between the United States and Japan. The film does not pull any punches in depicting the ferocity of the conflict on both sides. Here, the period footage, much of it in color, is particularly effective. It is still harrowing 60 years later to watch footage of Japanese civilians on Saipan throwing themselves to their deaths off a cliff, rather than surrender to American forces, or kamikaze pilots spiraling out of the sky into enemy ships. Likewise, the film does not flinch from the violence of the U.S. strategy or the virulence of American racism against the Japanese. A sizable segment of the film is devoted to General Curtis LeMay’s aerial campaign against Japanese cities, culminating in the firebombing of Tokyo that killed over 100,000 people in one night. Other scenes show U.S. wartime propaganda depicting the Japanese as childlike, bestial, or physically deformed. Another focal point of the film addresses the battle for Okinawa and the projected invasion of the Japanese home island Kyushu. Far from reeling back and losing resolve, the Japanese fought to the bitter end at Okinawa and the military faction in the Japanese government reinforced the beaches of Kyushu in preparation for a cataclysmic battle. Thus, by the time the atomic bombs were ready, the decision to use them emerges in the context of a long, brutal war that was already haunted by mass deaths of civilians, Japanese resistance to the point of suicide, and racial animosity. As several historians, who appear in the film as on-screen commentators, note, the decision to use the atomic bombs in 1945 was not particularly wrenching for the decision makers. The surprising decision would have been not to use them. I find this film useful because it lays out the alternate options and contending criteria for decision makers in 1945—whether to launch an amphibious invasion of Japan (including General MacArthur’s idea of using the atomic bombs not against Japanese cities but as tactical support for invading troops), demanding unconditional surrender versus a negotiated truce, and ending the war quickly regardless of casualties versus keeping down casualties, even if it meant dragging out the war. The film also reveals the debates between the prowar and “peace” factions within the Japanese government. However, the nearly 2-hour running time of Victory in the Pacific is an obstacle to classroom use. I get around it by selecting portions most useful to my instructional purpose of analyzing the context behind and alternate options for the historical decision. In my lesson, I show the introductory 10 minutes to set the context of the Pacific War generally, jump around to other short portions, and show in whole the last 55 minutes of the film. Chapter 12 in Davidson and Lytle’s After the Fact is a useful companion piece to this film. It directly addresses the controversy in recent decades over the decision to use the atomic bombs, including the debate over precisely how many casualties the United States would have suffered in the planned invasion of Kyushu. The chapter’s critique of two alternate models for analyzing the decision is especially insightful. The Rational Actor model, Davidson and Lytle explain, emphasizes the choices and beliefs of Truman and his cabinet. It presumes that these decision makers were aware of and actively involved in each step of implementation. Davidson and Lytle demonstrate how an Organizational Processes model yields a different picture of events. Once Truman authorized the use of atomic bombs on July 25, implementation passed to the War Department and then to the U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces. The SOP (standard operating procedure) issued to the commanding general outlined target preferences and a vague time table (“as soon as weather will permit…after about August 3”). Planning and conducting the actual attacks passed down to designated bomber group officers. Nagasaki was bombed on August 9th because the bomber squadron was following the SOP, moving on to the next preferred target as soon as the next bomb

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arrived and weather permitted. The value of this chapter lies in both the rich content it supplies as well as its investigation of the strengths and limitations of two different models for analyzing a historical decision. Analyzing the Decision Using the information, evidence, and arguments from Victory in the Pacific and chapter 12 in After the Fact, I engage my prospective social studies teachers in “revisiting” the historical decision by considering alternative options available to the historical decision makers in light of criteria that would have made sense to them. The key here is to avoid intellectually lazy “presentism”—in which students choose among options that seem reasonable today, but not in the past, by applying current-day values that would not have been plausible or persuasive in the past. For example, people today are quite rightly alarmed by radiation and cancer—yet in 1945, they were not well understood even by scientists, and thus the desire not to poison the earth and inflict cancer on people would not have been a plausible criterion for decision makers. To structure the historical analysis, I present my students with five alternative options actually on the table in 1945, drawn from the two sources: (1) use atomic bombs on Japanese cities (what actually happened); (2) use the bombs in support of an invasion of Japan (what General MacArthur wanted to do); (3) invade Japan without using atomic bombs (the planned Operation Olympic); (4) demonstrate the atomic bomb’s power to the Japanese on an unpopulated target, like a mountain or atoll (what some of the atomic bomb scientists suggested doing); and (5) threaten Japan with the atomic bomb and then negotiate their surrender (what the Japanese government hinted they would consider to avoid unconditional surrender). In order to evaluate these options, the students, working in groups of four or five, must choose four appropriate criteria. Together, they must justify why their chosen four are the most appropriate, and then analyze the alternative options in light of how well or badly they would accomplish the criteria. I present them with six criteria from which to choose: (1) changing Japanese government and society (to end Japanese militarism); (2) displaying U.S. power to the Soviet Union (for the already emerging Cold War); (3) ending the war quickly (what General Marshall believed to be most important); (4) forcing Japan’s unconditional surrender (what the Allies agreed to do at Potsdam); (5) maintaining moral high ground on war atrocities (in light of the newly formed United Nations and the planned international trials of Nazi and Japanese war criminals); and (6) reducing U.S. casualties (what President Truman believed to be most important). Each group is asked to present to the whole class their criteria and justifications for choosing them as well as their evaluation of how well or badly each option would have achieved them. There is no “right” answer in this activity; rather, the point is to advance higher-order thinking about differing historical interpretations and evaluate why a historical decision happened. Connecting Past to the Present An important goal of this lesson is to get prospective social studies teachers to engage with the past on its own terms, not through the lens of presentism. However, it is important to acknowledge that the past connects to the present and that we today have moral responses to what happened historically. Analyzing a historical decision by using rich content sources raises essential questions that probe each student’s moral responses. Rather than merely denouncing unpleasant events in the past (too often the result of presentism), participants in this lesson reflect on their own moral

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values today in light of past values and events. For example, why is the decision to use atomic bombs of such great interest in recent decades? Why have attitudes toward the use of atomic bombs changed since 1945? How might the global threat of proliferating nuclear weapons affect what Hiroshima and Nagasaki represents to people today? Ultimately, after watching Victory in the Pacific and reading chapter 12 in After the Fact, the participants should move past the languid presentist notion that decision makers in the past were corrupt or morally defective compared to us today, and instead recognize the complex reasons, pressures, and criteria that steered toward the particular decision made. Teaching Resources Davidson, J.s W., & Lytle, M. H. (2000). After the fact: The art of historical decision (4th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Recommended: Chapter 12, “The Decision to Drop the Bomb,” pp. 284–311. WGBH (Producer), & Hoyt, A. (Director). (2005). American experience: Victory in the Pacific. United States: PBS Paramount. Running Time: approx. 120 minutes.

23 The First Day of Class Developing an Awareness of Inference in History and Culture David Hicks and Melissa Lisanti

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: I (Culture), II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 1 (Structures of the Discipline), 2 (Learning Opportunities), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 5 (Learning Environments), 6 (Communication) Topics: inquiry, history, historical understanding, first day, primary sources, artifacts, critical thinking, identity, diversity, controversial issues, culture, multiple perspectives, studentcentered, students’ lives and experiences The following assignment is designed to introduce students to the inferential and perspectival nature of history. A week before the fall semester, our graduate preservice social studies teachers, who are about to embark upon their first of two methods classes, receive the following e-mail : Dear Social Studies Students (Socstuds), Write in your name to personalize this letter, if you so choose _______________, You will be participating in an activity that requires prior planning. On the first day of class you will need to bring an artifact bag with you. What is an artifact bag you ask? It is a plain bag “paper or plastic?” without any distinguishing markings that holds between 7 and 10 artifacts/sources. The artifacts you choose should help a colleague answer the following big questions: Who is this person? What is their life like? What can I learn about them as an individual—professionally and personally? So include artifacts that reveal something about you, who you are, your history and culture, likes, character traits, etc. Your task on the first day of class will be to look at someone else’s artifact bag and answer the big questions. 1. Here are some examples of artifacts. (This is not a complete list—creativity is desirable) a. favorite quote(s), song(s), sports team, holiday location, hobbies, book, clothing, pets—just a photo please ☺, color b. location of where you live- or grew up c. academic interests d. examples of work with children

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Please don’t include any names or current pictures of yourself. Don’t give the game away. 2. In addition to this, using PowerPoint, I want you to explain the significance of each artifact as it relates to the big questions. Each slide (explanation/significance card) should hold only one artifact explanation. Include detailed but succinct explanations (when possible provide contextual information, such as dates). You will then print out your “explanation/significance cards” as a handout with 4 slides per page. Cut each slide out so you have a series of “explanation/significance cards.” Bring them to class but do not include them in your artifact bag. At first blush the letter looks like a neat icebreaker activity for new students, and the activity does serve this purpose. However, our program at Virginia Tech positions the discipline of history at the heart of the social studies, and the purpose of this opening activity is to create a point of entry to initiate a scaffold through which students, often for the first time, begin to (1) examine the “ways of knowing that characterizes history” as a discipline (Barton & Levstik, 2004, p. 82) and (2) explore how to engage students in the processes of historical inquiry as a vital part of education to invigorate a participatory and pluralistic form of citizenship (for more on this see Levstik & Barton, 2001). One of our goals is to prepare teachers who are ready, willing, and able to go beyond the typical patterned genre of teacher-centered history and instead teach toward a more pedagogically thoughtful level of instruction that advocates student engagement through inquiry, preparing students to think historically. Achieving this goal is a task easier said than done, especially when one considers that, for the most part, our preservice teachers were likely to have experienced social studies classrooms as a bounded space where the teacher talks and students listen. They read the textbook, memorized key facts, and then retrieved the facts for the subsequent multiple-choice test. To make matters worse, many of our preservice teachers probably enjoyed such teaching and performed well on the respective unit test. Now they hope to return to the educational system no longer as students but teachers. The artifact bag and subsequent museum of me activity as described below introduces the idea that students do not simply acquire historical knowledge “by doing overviews,” nor do they acquire historical inquiry skills by simply practicing work with sources (Counsell, 2000, p. 67). Rather, the acquisition of historical knowledge is both the foundation and result of inquiry. The Artifact Bag and Museum of Me Upon entering the classroom the preservice teachers are greeted with an anticipatory set that asks them to: (1) define inquiry, and primary and secondary sources; and (2) write about any well-remembered events when, if ever, they engaged in inquiry, worked with sources, and were explicitly taught and supported in this process. After a brief sharing the students are each provided with the following directions: Artifact Bag: Directions 1. You will be given an artifact bag of a student in this class. 2. Look at the artifacts, list them, and use them as evidence to write a descriptive narrative that answers the big question: Who is this person? Identify different dimensions to the person.

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You can only use the sources at hand as evidence when you craft your account. End the narrative with three questions you have about the person. 3. Can you guess who this person is? As the students begin to unpack the artifact bags they are given a graphic organizer to complete with each artifact. Students are asked to first describe or sketch the artifact within a center box entitled “Source Description.” Using one chart per source they begin to interrogate each individual source by answering the subsequent layered questions that create the categories for the outer boxes. These include Summarizing (what does the source tell us?); Contextualizing (when, why, and how was the source produced?); Inferring (what does the source suggest?); Monitoring/Questioning (What else would I like to find out? What questions do I now need to ask?). Using the insights from the graphic organizers as specific evidence to support their description and identification of the person, students create an account that answers the big question, while also using the evidence to craft a detailed description of the person. The narratives alongside the artifacts are shared with the class. The student then identifies whom they think their narrative best fits—even though they are not that familiar with the person. At that point, the anonymous owner of the artifact bag is asked to come forward and offer brief comments as to the “truthiness” of the account presented. The artifact bags are returned to the rightful owners, along with the newly created narrative. Each bag’s owner is then asked to take their artifacts along with the accompanying explanation/significance cards and create a “museum of me” exhibit at their desks. Students then visit each exhibit to learn about the individuals in the class. More importantly, the students who wrote the narratives based on the artifact bag are asked to compare and contrast their narrative to the museum of me narrative that is presented via the explanation/significance cards. The class discussion to this activity covers a lot of territory and is supported by the following questions. 1. How did the artifact bag and museum of me relate/support/interrupt your concept of history, historical inquiry, and historical thinking? a. To what extent, does this activity have anything to do with the study of history in schools or your understanding of the nature of history? i. What strategies did you need to participate in this activity? ii. To what extent do you think a historian and an everyday citizen require these strategies? How, why? b. How do the different interpretations and significance given to the artifacts between the two account support the notion that: (i) history is an inferential discipline; (ii) history is always less than the past; (iii) history can make connections that people from the time being studied could never make. 2. Consider this statement: It is only when students understand that historians can ask questions about historical sources that those sources were not designed to answer, and that much of the evidence used by historians was not intended to report anything, that they are freed from dependence on truthful testimony. Much of what holds interest for historians… could not have been “eyewitnessed” by anyone, not even by us if we could return by time machine. Once students begin to operate with a concept of evidence as something inferential and see eyewitnesses not as handing down history but as providing evidence, history can

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resume once again; it becomes intelligible, even a powerful, way of thinking about the past. (Lee, 2005 p. 36–37) Did your social studies teachers help you think this way? 3. What implications does this activity have for teaching history simply from a textbook? If you use this lesson in a multicultural education class your question frame could begin with the following questions: 1. Did you make any stereotypical assumptions related to race, ethnicity, region, age, class, or gender? Did you assume this person is like you? Why or why not? 2. Was there anything that made you react with strong emotions? Why? Our goal in our class is to illuminate for students that historical interpretation is never as static nor as reified as it appears in the textbooks they used or will use in school. To highlight this concept, a section of a Virginia history textbook from the 1950s is read aloud. Life among the Negroes of Virginia in slavery times was generally happy. The Negroes went about in a cheerful manner making a living for themselves and for those who they worked. They were not so unhappy as some Northerners thought they were, nor were they so happy as some Southerners claimed. The Negroes had their problems and their troubles. But they were not worried by the furious arguments going on between Northerners and Southerners over what should be done with them. In fact, they paid little attention to these arguments. (Simkins, Hunnicutt, & Poole, 1957, p. 376) We also ask students to reflect on how we used the activity: how we managed and monitored learning, the role the historical source analysis sheet plays in supporting the writing of their account, and the ways in which students were involved. These first day activities and discussion, we believe, provide a solid introduction to a continued examination into how to teach powerful and authentic history and social science. References Barton, K., & Levstik, L. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Counsell, C. (2000). Historical knowledge and historical skills: A distracting dichotomy. In J. Arthur & R. Phillips (Eds.), Issues in history teaching (pp. 54–71). London: Routledge. Lee, P. (2005) Putting principles into practice: Understanding history. In M. S. Donovan & J. D. Bransford (Eds.), How students learn: History in the classroom (pp 31–77). Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Levstik, L., & Barton, K. (2001). Committing acts of history: Mediated action, humanistic education, and participatory democracy. In W. B. Stanley (Ed.), Critical issues in social studies research for the 21st century (pp. 119–147). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Simkins, F. B., Hunnicutt, S., & Poole, S. (1957). Virginia: History, government geography. New York: Scribners.

24 Gazing on the Past Examining the Pedagogical Purposes of Public History Brenda Trofanenko

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6, 7-12 NCSS Standards: I (Culture), II (Time, Continuity, and Change), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategy), 5 (Learning Environments) Topics: history, historical understanding, critical thinking, museums, artifacts, diversity, teacher reflection, controversial issues, issues-oriented approach, community-based learning As an historian who works with history majors during their senior year, I focus a portion of my time with the students on how they translate their knowledge of history and the historical process into pedagogical events within school classrooms. I often pose the question of why we need to distinguish between the academic history they learn as majors within their department of history and the history that is presented within the public realm, whether at museums, memorials, or heritage sites. My aim in working with students who are well versed in historical theory and methodology, then, is to engage them in self-reflection on what counts as historical knowledge beyond the university classroom. By the time I see them as seniors, these students have read widely on historical theory and historiography. They hold a firm foundation of U.S. and world history and understand history’s disciplinary methodology. They are impassioned about history. Then they have their first early field experiences in local classrooms and they resort to teaching history as recall of historical facts. In the process they dismiss what may be learned through multiple sources and document examination, the very methodology that formed the basis of their own history education. They are well aware of the limitations of such practices (as they have experienced them for many years prior to beginning their field experiences), but they also witness the general focus on testing within education. Further, their early field experiences present a tension between their own pedagogical beliefs concerning the inherent complexity history education holds and state-based expectations toward history as fact. To address this tension—between their teaching ethic of providing sound pedagogical opportunities for learning by engaging in the historian’s craft and the absent understanding of history as a discipline with distinct characteristics and methodologies—I encourage the students to test their own ease in accepting historical fact within a public space. As they develop their own reflexive statements of how particular historical representation is or is

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not accepted without question, they are asked to consider how history is institutionalized as fact even beyond the school classroom. The public history assignment requires that the students select a public institution that defines history. The Course Assignment When you come into a museum, do you tend to slow down, walk more quietly? Do you engage in historical methodology? How does the museum present the past and how does the public receive this past? Is your job as a history teacher to continue the museum tradition, move beyond it, or draw attention to it? Consider the museum a site for historical practice. This assignment will show how your understanding of how historical theory and practice may be brought together in a public space. Selecting a Site Begin by selecting a site that presents history in a public forum. Describe the institution, its missions, and identity, what history the institution displays with the prompt “[name of institution] displays [identity history]… and write five statements about this history. For each statement, explain what is presented and how it is presented and complete a paragraph showing this relationship. Historical Interpretation Return to your initial five statements. Consider Phillips’s (2005) argument for the need to blend theory and practice in the museum. Here, theory means the interpretation of information directly from the object and not retrievable from other sources. Practice means the honing of representational skills. Revisit your statements about the history displayed and add what theory and practice is or is not offered. Distinguish the new additions to your writing by putting your comments in bold face. The Focus on Objects To complete the assignment, explain how you would utilize this institution to pose specific historical questions and issues to be answered, by identifying suitable objects for this task, in order to conduct close readings of the objects and to explore corroboration of information obtained from various objects. Also, provide your reflection on the argument that the very existence of an object demonstrates that the past does not die. The students attend the institutions on several occasions, armed with photocopy cards to gather in-house information about their selected objects and digital cameras to photograph the objects and exhibits to be analyzed. They bring this information to the class, and, in working through the various drafts, the students examine how the institution itself works to authorize particular historical narratives over others. I suggest to the students the need to consider the museum as a whole institution to be examined rather than solely a collection of objects and exhibitions. The challenge the students face is that they, too, follow Rosenzweig and Thelan’s (1998) belief that the museum as an educational source is most trustworthy.

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What results in the final draft is the expectation of the museum that most people are familiar with as a result of their own personal experiences. They closely follow the idea that the museum is an institutional complex that visually defines history as objects serving as evidence of a time past (Vergo, 1989). But they also see that what is considered history in a public institution often lacks any engagement in the historical methodology that prompts close readings of objects and texts that work to corroborate or question the evidence needed to answer a question. They often see first hand how the museum processes of collecting, archiving, preserving, and exhibiting are presented as the primary purpose of museums. What is missing within the history museum is evidence of why the museum presents history as a discipline-dependent series of museum practices of display and the robust information about the object that is not always presented to the public. After presenting their information, the students realize how history, as defined by a museum, is often a collection of objects set within a narrative framework. They easily draw the parallel between the histories presented by the museum with the history normalized within the school classroom. Their final discussion then focuses on how best to utilize the museum to learn about the past. Students are aware of their own and others’ consideration of how the object-based evidence of the past has come to be institutionalized. Yet, the conventional ways in which the museum utilizes objects does not allow, they argue, any resistance to the museum’s local practices that incorporate into exhibitionary strategies of the museum itself. This prompts the students to consider alternative ways in which to engage historical methodology within the public institutions. In brief, studies within the new museology emphasize how museums encapsulate a culturally defined method of ordering objects that represent people, places, and other times. Further, understanding how these artifacts—at least in a history museum—assist in developing a national identity that is historically linked to the development of western empires and postcolonial nations means that we need to develop in our students the sensibility to question the larger museum project. At the same time, though, museums can serve as a forum for disrupting national identity assumptions, and for understanding the postcolonial processes that seek to keep current. Museums can be forums for expression and varied experience, contextualized within the increasingly common attitude toward history as an immediate, visually pleasing set of artifacts (Starn, 2005). These students did not miss such an absence. Their experiences in the museum offered an invitation for them to consider what history is learned beyond the classroom and how such a public display sometimes works against what they are seeking to achieve in their classrooms. This public museum assignment helps them not only to reflect on their own past experiences within such institutions, but it also shows how their knowledge base about history and historical methodology can be utilized in places not necessarily warm to the idea of an open critique. Such an activity demonstrates to these students the richness of the knowledge base that they bring to their charges, and how they can continue to advance their own understandings through meaningful engagements. References Phillips, R. (2005). Re-placing objects: Historical practices for the second museum age. Canadian Historical Review, 86(1), 83–110. Rosenzweig, R., & D. Thelan (1998). The presence of the past: Popular uses of history in American life. New York: Columbia University Press. Starn, R. (2005). A historian’s brief guide to new museum studies. The American Historical Review, 110(1), 68–98. Vergo, P. (1989). The new museology. London: Redwood Books.

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History in Social Contexts Introduction Matthew T. Missias and Morgan Ott

Humans are historical beings, with consciousness and memory linked to multiple pasts, multiple historical contexts, and even multiple identities. The act of negotiating those sometimes conflicting identities with respect to understanding history creates a space in which historical knowledge becomes complicated by culturally situated contexts. This is not to say that historical inquiry is problematized, but rather it is through the act of interrogating the intersections between evidence, history, identity, and passion that one comes to know history—and his or her place in it—more meaningfully (Seixas, Fromowitz, & Hill, 2002). Whereas historical thinking and inquiry positions the learner to “do” history—to take on the life roles of the practicing historian—understanding history in its cultural context positions the “historian” as a steward who actively engages in the revisioning of history. In doing so, those who take on the responsibility of teaching history, or teaching history teachers, assume a dual role. They must be conscientious and authentic to the evidence of history, but also imaginative as they investigate the possibilities for how that understanding of history is contextualized. The call for historical knowledge to ascribe significance to and contextualize humans and society (Becker, 1932) is a call that has positioned historical inquiry and teaching in particular ways. The authors in this section begin with the notion that in order to represent history pedagogically, we must first understand history within its cultural contexts. One must be conscientious about examining history on its own terms. The student of history (whether it be student, teacher, or teacher educator) must understand the social, political, intellectual, cultural, economic, aesthetic (to name a few) dimensions of historical peoples with respect to the evidence that supports those contexts (Seixas, 2006). For the student of history to be participating in that task authentically, primary sources and the skills of sourcing, corroboration, contextualization, and comparative thinking are used to make historical assertions (Drake & Drake Brown, 2003; Wineburg, 2001). These are among the evidentiary-based frameworks that define historical thinking. Yet, the student of history cannot be expected to treat all aspects of history “the same” any more than the student of history can shed the lenses that he or she brings to bear on the topics of history. Indeed, the way that historical thinking is framed by issues of morality (past and present), subjectivity, temporality, culture, and discourses that give legitimacy to particular versions and visions of history education (Drake & Drake Brown, 2003; Segall, 2006; Seixas, 2006; VanSledright, 1997–1998; Wineburg, 2001) dramatically affects the choices that are made by teachers, and teacher educators, in developing historical content. The authors in this section are all acutely aware of the complicated and sometimes conflicting characteristics of what it means to teach preservice teachers how to represent history meaningfully. Their collective aim echoes Maxine Greene’s understanding that to get students to break free from

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the yoke of convention, the teacher too must experience disruption (Greene, 1995). The authors here consider “how much disruption has to do with consciousness and the awareness of possibility that has so much to do with teaching other human beings” (p. 109). They, of course, have a myriad of ways of arriving at this, but as they consider what it means to teach history meaningfully, they are fully engaged in the idea that disruption and possibility are modes by which preservice teachers, and they themselves, come to understand possibilities for history education. In Dewitt’s chapter, he aims to provide students an opportunity to experience some of the messiness and arbitrariness involved in writing history. Through partaking in a lesson involving an Indiana Jones movie, students learn that written, White, and Western modes of recording history are often the most prevalent in history classes of K-12 schools. Students are challenged to think about how historical accounts are created by highlighting the interpretive nature of history. In pushing students to examine history in this way, he asks students to read history as a story with a cultural context rather than the story. Slekar aims to expose preservice teachers to model teachers who teach history according to three classifications: the storyteller, the scientific historian, and the reformer. To exemplify these classifications, Slekar uses a lesson on the Boston Massacre. This exercise encourages preservice teachers to use stories, documents, and other evidence to help understand how the narratives of history are constructed. This becomes a lesson on interpretation as students begin to realize that the idea of teaching and learning history is complex, requiring a depth of knowledge, not just of content, but of what content is represented. An understanding is developed that teaching and learning is much more than the memorization of facts. Johnson continues this idea through understanding the value of a source, but in his case, it is through the use of oral history sources. As a type of source that is associated with the often-absent voices of those excluded from the canons of history, Johnson suggests the need to include such voices into the mainstream narrative. He cautions, however, against accepting oral histories as an unquestioned source. Rather, it provides an alternative context that requires equal vigilance regarding issues of inclusion and exclusion, of conformity and contradictions. Landorf and Lowenstein promote Academic Service Learning as an ideal model for multicultural education and social studies courses. This is demonstrated by a unit that is coplanned by a classroom teacher and a methods instructor. Preservice teachers are paired with elementary students for an “e-pal” learning partnership that lasts throughout the term. Together, the elementary student and preservice teacher engage in various activities that help them learn more about each other and an agreed upon broad topic, such as the civil rights movement. In the end, the preservice teacher and elementary student have learned from each other in unconventional ways, having “journeyed to areas of their head and heart where they have never been and from whence it is difficult or impossible to return.” David Gerwin aims to push his preservice teachers to consider how their students could become smarter after a semester by connecting preservice teachers’ college majors with their classroom planning. Gerwin’s students create assignments that demand more disciplinary capability, more complex ideas, and use ideas and documents that continue to reappear as the semester progresses. To help demonstrate this idea, Gerwin assigns a thematic essay to his preservice teachers. Gerwin argues that a methods class that simply assigns a “unit plan” rarely develops preservice teachers’ ability to plan for a semester’s worth of growth in student abilities. He believes that assignments should be thematically connected and grow increasingly demanding, and he requires his students to plan curriculum for an entire semester. This requires students to develop college-level ideas and concepts that lend coherence to their curriculum. It also reminds students to pick one conceptual focus to be developed throughout the semester-long curriculum they plan.

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Two chapters represent ways of dealing with one of the more ubiquitous and complicated cultural and historical symbols in (U.S.) history: Christopher Columbus. Both vilified and subject to heroification (some believe rightfully), Columbus becomes much more than a historical figure. He also becomes a symbol for history itself. Coming to terms with Columbus in terms of evidentiary and contextual processes is the crux of how these authors attempt to negotiate the person (and topic) of Columbus. To do so means to eschew essentialist representations of history in favor of embracing the complexity of who Columbus was and what he represented. Ben Justice uses the phenomenon of Christopher Columbus to examine how historians, teachers, and popular media talk about the past. Students are asked to question how they will design and teach curriculum about a complicated historical and cultural figure. The goal is not to indoctrinate students into one line of thinking or another, but to disrupt the notion that there can be a single, definitive narrative for a particular historical topic. Justice’s goal in this lesson is that preservice teachers will recognize that history has multiple, equally valid perspectives, and also depends on the use of good evidence and clear reasoning. Jennifer James uses an investigative unit on Christopher Columbus to emphasize the importance of historical thinking as a means of developing the critical thinking skills necessary for active and thoughtful participation in today’s pluralistic and democratic society. In learning about Columbus through different perspectives, students are pushed to consider the subjective nature of historical knowledge. In time, students grow more comfortable with the subjectivity of history as they gain greater confidence in their ability to make evidence-based judgments. In the end, the authors here use a variety of methods to challenge their students, and us their readers, to embrace a vision of history education that, while rooted in evidentiary based methods, is cognizant of the role of the historian in constructing history and the need for diligence in understanding how that history positions the content of history, but also how it positions the learner to understand history. In doing so, these authors ask us to implicate ourselves as teachers, scholars, students, and citizens within the very historical contexts to which we are committed. For those teacher educators who are faithful to representing cultural diversity and multiculturalism within historical content, this is not a new endeavor, but does serve as a reminder for us of its importance for a kind of teaching that is marked by openness, welcomes conversations about dissent, and is ever meticulous in the pursuit of truth (hooks, 1994). References Becker, C. (1932). Everyman his own historian. American Historical Review, 37(3), 221–236. Drake, F. D., & Drake Brown, S. (2003). Systematic approach to improve students’ historical thinking. The History Teacher, 36(4), 465–489. Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York, Routledge. Segall, A. (2006). What’s the purpose of teaching a discipline anyway? The case of history. In C. H. Cherryholmes, A. Segall, & E. Heilman (Eds.), Social studies: The Next Generation — Re-searching in the postmodern (pp. 125–139). New York, Lang. Seixas, P. (2006). Benchmarks of historical thinking: A framework for assessment in Canada. http://www.histori.ca/ benchmarks/documents/Benchmarks%20of%20Historical%20Thinking%20A%20Framework%20for%20Assessment%20in%20Canada.pdf Seixas, P., Fromowitz, D., & Hill, P. (2002, Fall). History, memory and learning to teach. Encounters on Education, 3, 43–59. VanSledright, B. A. (1997–1998). On the importance of historical positionality to thinking about and teaching history. International Journal of Social Education, 12(2), 1–18. Wineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts: Charting the future of teaching the past. Philadelphia, Temple University Press.

25 The Nature of Evidence and Interpretation in History Scott W. DeWitt

Context: TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategy) Topics: history, historical understanding, multiple perspectives, critical thinking, marginalization, perspective consciousness, film At the outset, I need to make it clear that I am quite sure that the idea for this lesson is not my own. Like many teachers, I incorporate ideas from wherever and whomever I can. These ideas get adapted based on resources, students, and instructional goals, so that sometimes the final lesson is not identifiably related to the original. Unfortunately, I don’t remember when or where I came across the instruction that gave me the idea for this lesson. If forced to guess, the names of the two best teachers and mentors I know would first come to mind: Dr. David Naylor of the University of Cincinnati and Dr. Diana Hess of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The purpose of this lesson is to provide students with an opportunity to experience some of the messiness and arbitrariness involved in writing history. In the process, they also get a very limited sense of what it means to be one of those privileged to have their voices included in history and what it means to be left out. I use this lesson early in the semester, and refer back to it frequently as students gather resources for their own lessons and as we talk about how they can help their students better understand the nature of history. The Teaching The lesson directions are quite simple. Students are given the name of a character from the climactic scene of the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Ford, Connery, Lucasfilm Ltd. Productions, & Paramount Pictures, 1989). The characters in the scene are: Dr. Jones (the younger), Dr. Jones (the elder), Walter Donovan (Male German civilian), Dr. Elsa Schneider (female German civilian, German military officer), Sallah (Arab guide to the Jones group), and a local man conscripted to assist the German military. They are told to watch the events of the movie clip through the eyes of their character. For homework, they then must write a diary entry of up to one page that relates the events shown in the scene as their character would have seen and experienced them. I suggest to the students that they take notes, but make sure they know that additional time will be provided after seeing the scene for making notes. The written directions for the assignment are: “Take notes based on

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what ‘you’ see and experience. Before class meets next week, make your notes into a typed ‘diary’ account of the events. Your account is very unlikely to be longer than 1 page.” The clip begins approximately 30 seconds after the start of DVD chapter 33, “The Three Challenges.” With the video or DVD paused at the beginning of the segment, point out the various characters so that students know who to “become.” Then show the clip, stopping as the characters race to leave the collapsing cave (about 16 minutes). At the conclusion of the clip, provide several minutes for students to write or complete their notes. At the beginning of the next class, collect their written diary accounts. Divide them into seven groups, by the name of the character. Pick up the pile representing the “Walter Donovan—Male German civilian” and ask what happens to him in the film (he dies). “Well, then, I guess he was not able to write an entry in his diary for that day, was he?” While finishing this observation, tear these accounts into pieces. Repeat this with the diary entries for the “Dr. Elsa Schneider—female German civilian,” who also dies in the film. Then pick up the “Local man conscripted to aid the German military” accounts. Ask the students whether local tribesmen in North Africa or the Middle East at the time were likely to be literate. These accounts, then, also are destroyed because they would not have been written. I then ask students whether the guide to the Jones group was likely to be literate. At this point, they are anxious to avoid further destruction of their work, and they reply that he was. This leaves four accounts of the events—the two Dr. Jones, the German military officer, and the Arab guide. Turn these over so that you cannot see which account is which, and mix them up. Pick one at random and announce, “This account was in a basement in New Orleans and was destroyed by a hurricane.” Crumple the paper up and toss it away (or submerge it in a bowl of water to symbolize a flood). Pick another account at random and subject it to fire, tornado, or flood, or just have it be relegated to a box in someone’s attic. Then announce which of the accounts survived the vagaries of time and are available to historians to help reconstruct the event. At this point, the activity is essentially over, and I ask several debriefing questions. These include: (1) How complete is our knowledge of the events given the information we have lost? (2) Whose perspectives will be represented in the history of this event, and whose will be left out? (3) How did you feel when I destroyed your account of the event? (4) How do you think people feel when it is not just a homework assignment that is left out, but when their entire stories are left out of history? Reflections It is important to note that written, White, and Western modes of recording history are privileged in this scenario. In some classes, students have pointed out that oral traditions provide a record of events in societies without written traditions, and that recent historical scholarship more frequently includes such perspectives. This is an important point, but one that must be balanced with a recognition that most history taught in K-12 schools is still based on written sources. In some ways, the selection of a fictional Hollywood movie that presumes the existence of a Holy Grail reinforces, rather than challenges, students’ prejudices about history. This particular selection, however, is effective partly because students see a familiar story in a familiar format and thus are comfortable in taking ownership of their “diary” entries. There is little anticipation among students of the potential for disruption that they experience when their work is not honored. Also, this particular scene separates the characters in such a way that their experiences differ. This

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allows students to experience the impact of the idea that “history is written by the winners (and excludes many others)” in a way that is more personal and visceral than is felt through traditional school sources. Other scenes with similar characteristics, however, certainly could be effectively substituted for Indiana Jones. There are several variations on this lesson. Sometimes, I color code the groups of accounts, so that each group has each perspective represented. After eliminating whichever accounts are destroyed over time, students from each group gather with whatever is left and create a single “historical” account of the event based only on the information remaining. This strategy highlights the differences that can occur based on the availability of different sources, but also has problems. First, since all students witnessed the “event,” many have difficulty limiting themselves to the sources that remain. Second, the “event” is intentionally quite narrow and limited; frequently there is little signifant difference between the diary accounts. The similarity of the perspectives provided in the accounts can be addressed by providing more guidance to students prior to viewing the video clip. For example, rather than having all students write diary entries, some students may be assigned to write official reports to the military (the German military officer and one of the Drs. Jones are most appropriate for this). The German military officer, in particular, might be encouraged to think about how to phrase his report given the results of the “event” and the consequences to his career. Different religious perspectives can be included if the Arab guide to the Jones group is identified as Muslim and writes his account from a non-Christian perspective or the perspective of a colonized person possibly resentful of European power. Any of the characters could be designated as specifically atheist or Christian. I have found this lesson to provide a valuable “gut reaction” in students when they see their work being destroyed and ignored. For most of my preservice students, who are White and were successful in school, it is a new experience to have their perspectives discounted in this way. The activity also, I believe, provides an opportunity for these students to begin to think about how historical accounts are created. The importance of bringing multiple perspectives to bear on historical issues is a point that I return to often. As students look for materials they can use to write lesson plans, the discussion of Indiana Jones is frequently referenced as we seek to uncover the stories that have been left out of school history. In addition, highlighting the interpretive nature of history through this lesson pushes my students to read history as a story rather than the story. Bringing that message into their future classrooms provides their students with opportunities to productively apply the skills and knowledge learned in history classes as citizens in a complex and changing world. Given the didactic nature of much of their history education, helping them to unpack this process so that they can then help their students be more critical consumers of historical writing is an important goal of teacher education in the social studies. Teaching Resource Lucas, G. (Producer), & Spielberg, S. (Director). (1989). Indiana Jones and the last crusade [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount Pictures.

26 A Boston Massacre in Room 202 Understanding the Construction of Historical Narratives Timothy D. Slekar

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, 7-12 NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 2 (Student Learning), 4 (Instructional Strategies) Topics: history, historical thinking, government, power/authority, multiple perspectives, critical thinking, role-play/simulation, American Revolution, photographs/pictures In what follows, I provide a glimpse into my elementary social studies methods course and look more deeply at a simulation I use in an attempt to get my preservice teachers to understand how views of historical content knowledge, views of learners, and views of teaching influence classroom discourse. In other words, I try to provide a model of best practice for the teaching of history. This simulation provides one of the few models of powerful social studies teaching my preservice teachers experience during their time in teacher education. For a more in-depth coverage of my social studies methods teaching see Slekar (2005). I expose preservice teachers to “model” teachers who teach history according to three classifications: the storyteller, the scientific historian, and the reformer (Brophy & VanSledright, 1997). The goal is to provide preservice teachers with new models of teaching and learning. Teaching the Boston Massacre Brophy and VanSledright’s case studies illustrate how teachers’ epistemological views of content, views of learners, and views of teaching shape practice (1997). Below I present a synopsis of how I used the storyteller, scientific historian, and reformer approaches to teach about the Boston Massacre. For another lesson on the Boston Massacre, see chapter 20. My first lesson represents the storyteller in action. I use the Boston Massacre to illustrate how a storyteller might go about teaching this content. I use the classroom as a stage and tell them a story about the Boston Massacre. I draw my story from Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre. I paint a picture of a very angry Boston, with angry people, angry citizens who feel violated by the Quartering Act and who feel violated by their own country—England. I play Colonial martial music in the background, softly, as I tell the story. Toward the end of the drama I use some of the preservice teachers to role play Boston citizens standing in front of a line of British soldiers. Behind the desk I have the back of a flintlock rifle loaded with black powder in the flash pan. I encourage each group (Bostonians and Soldiers) to taunt each other and then quickly I yell, “fire!” and pull

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the trigger allowing a large puff of smoke to emerge from the flash pan. I stop the drama, put up Revere’s engraving on the overhead and simply read the names of the dead. Below is what one of my students recorded in her journal. Kim’s Journal: “I wonder if a colonist actually fired the first shot to get people upset with the British and create that feeling of unity. Then, I wonder if I had heard that before or was it just Tim’s story. Nevertheless, before taking this class, I would never have questioned a story about history that was told to me in class.” As the scientific historian, I provide the students with different documents—primary and secondary—associated with the Boston Massacre and attempt to help them analyze the documents. I want each preservice teacher to come up with the same view of what happened at the Boston Massacre. To make this happen, I ask them what really happened at the Boston Massacre and then lead the analysis and direct my students on how to interpret and link the primary documents together. They need to “find out” that the Boston Massacre as portrayed in the Revere engraving was not historically accurate. Instead of an innocent group of civilians being gunned down by British soldiers, my preservice teachers need to understand that the documentation supports a self-defense claim from the British point of view. I was not open to multiple interpretations. Once again here is what Kim had to say: Tim, without us knowing, modeled chapter 5 in our purple book. He taught the way the teacher taught. I couldn’t help but feel betrayed because I couldn’t understand why he kept telling us to stay on task. In addition, he stopped side conversations that he knew had to do with the topic. It wasn’t until the end of the class that I figured out he was not betraying us or acting out of character. He was teaching us how the woman we read about actually taught. Lastly, the reformer class begins with a short PowerPoint presentation. The first slide is an image of the World Trade Center on September 11 as a plane is about to crash into the building. The second slide shows both buildings on fire, the third slide is an image of President Bush sitting with elementary school students being told about the terrorist attack, the fourth slide displays a woman standing covered in yellow ash; and fire fighters at the wreckage hoisting an American flag is the last slide. After finishing this exercise I display the Revere engraving of the Boston Massacre and I ask them to analyze this picture in light of the slide show they just witnessed to see if they can come up with any similarities. After all, they had just learned that the event called the Boston Massacre was the result of Bostonian mob mentality and self-defense on the part of the British soldiers: something very different from the depiction in the Revere engraving. My hope is that my preservice teachers will be able to identify the use of propaganda across the centuries. Kim wrote, Tim’s PowerPoint slide was short and powerful. Moments of deep thought happened a lot as we compared the Revolutionary war and the current wartime status of our country…. 9/11 was an event in history that is personal to our time. It is an event that has affected the entire world as did the Revolutionary war. Considering both wars, it’s amazing how propaganda was used back then and how it’s probably being used today to make us want to kill Iraqis…. This man is going to put me in a rubber room.

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Conclusion In summary, I attempt to model for preservice teachers the use of stories, documents, and other evidence to help them understand how the narratives of history are constructed, and therefore, are an exercise in interpretation. Simulations such as the “Boson Massacre,” as described above, offer social studies professors an opportunity to model for preservice teachers some best practice ideas. And, according to Kim, something happened during the “Boston Massacre.” The evidence suggests that she was wrestling with fundamental questions regarding the teaching and learning of American history. There were moments of confusion, passion, and comprehension. Kim began to realize that the idea of teaching and learning history is a complex endeavor—that it requires a depth of knowledge, not just of content, but of what content is represented; and how and why teachers make curricular and instructional decisions regarding the social studies. Kim started to understand that teaching and learning history was much more than the memorization of facts. References Brophy, J., & VanSledright, B. ( 1997). Teaching and learning history in elementary schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Slekar, T. D. (1998). Epistemological entanglements: Preservice elementary school teachers’ “Apprenticeship of observation” and the teaching of history. Theory and Research in Social Education, 26(4), 485–508. Slekar, T. D. (2005). Case history of a methods course: Teaching and learning history in a “rubber room.” The Social Studies. 96(6), 237–241. Slekar, T. D. (2006). Preaching history in a social studies methods course: A portrait of practice. Theory and Research in Social Education, 34(2), 241–258.

Teaching Resources Archiving Early America. (2008a). Enlargement of Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre. http://www.earlyamerica. com/review/winter96/enlargement.html Archiving Early America. (2008b). The world turned upside down. http://www.earlyamerica.com/music/WorldUpsideDown.midi Linder, D. (2001). The Boston Massacre trial: An account. http://www.law.umkc.edu http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/ projects/ftrials/bostonmassacre/bostonmassacre.html

27 Oral Histories in Social Education Edric C. Johnson

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multlicultural Education, K-6, 7-12 NCSS Standards: I (Culture), II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 2 (Student Development), 3 (Diverse Learners), 4 (Instructional Strategies) Topics: history, historical content knowledge, World War II, oral history, historical understanding, multiple perspectives, role-play/simulation, interviewing, diversity, perspective consciousness It is common for method instructors to highlight the benefits of oral histories in social studies and some multicultural education classrooms as part of historical investigation and interpretation. However, most of my students do not recall effective uses of oral histories as a part of their own previous learning experiences. One of my goals is for future teachers to actively take a role as the student and critically examine how historical representation is subjective. I raise this awareness by developing a space in my course to criticize and discuss the effectiveness of using oral histories to create a performance (Johnson, 2007). It is important that I allow students to experience firsthand having the power to select information, represent a story, and look at other representations of a story in the class. Recommended Book on Collecting and Performing Oral Histories First, I would highly suggest you read Daniel A. Kelin’s To Feel as Our Ancestors Did: Collecting and Performing Oral Histories. The step-by-step procedure of collecting and performing a person’s oral story suggested in Kelin’s (2005) book are: (1) project a theme, (2) drama skills building, (3) mock interviews, (4) collect oral histories, (5) devising sequence, (6) music and movement workshops, (7) design and production, (8) rehearsal process, (9) performance, and (10) project assessment. The process involves students in oral history interviews, choosing certain material to explore, creating and performing stories, and sharing their learning with peers (Kelin, 2005). Although Kelin’s book was intended for teachers to use in their communities in the middle/ elementary classroom, I use his approaches in the social studies methods course as a means to examine each other’s historical interpretations. We read and adapted Kelin’s book by conducting a performance activity in class. After the students created their performances, their assignment was to write a short self-evaluation. The brief description of the assignment and self-evaluation from the course syllabus follow:

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Guidelines for Performance 1. As a class, we will interview a woman from Japan. Given a transcript of the interview, in groups of 4 or 5, you should choose a story from the interview that: (a) has a central conflict; (b) is action based; (c) features a clear central character or characters that journey through the conflict; (d) suggests a clear resolution; and (e) can easily be broken down into scenes. 2. In preparation, groups will discover their chosen story’s sequence by creating a series of tableaux highlighting important events. 3. Groups will create narration and titles for every tableaux. 4. Dialogue among the characters will be optional. Our Engagement and Act of Consciousness with Oral History In this example, because the content theme of the course was World War II, I invited a Japanese woman who experienced discrimination during this period to be the interviewee. Given other course foci you might select a civil rights leader, a Holocaust survivor, or a person significant in an aspect of local history; for example, prior to the invitation, the students read Kelin’s book and engaged in drama skill building exercises. One important technique was the creation and use of tableau, which is typically a small group pantomime activity where students create a series of frozen pictures of an event or idea. Kelin (2005) elaborates on how tableaux serve as a foundation for creating a meaningful performance: Starting with tableau helps them break the story into essential pieces. Once they have created a series of tableaux illustrating the storyline, then they have already chosen the parts to play, decided on the actions of the characters and how the characters are interacting with each other, and gotten a general sense of their character’s reactions and emotional responses to the action. They have also broken the story down into more manageable pieces to build into scenes. (pp. 33–34) Next, I prepared a biographical sketch of the guest speaker for my students. This helped them make decisions on what the interview focus should be. When the topic was established, students conducted some of the interview skill building exercises suggested in Kelin’s book before they developed the actual questions. For example, when my class interviewed the Japanese woman, a few of the questions in the interview included: 1. Can you talk about your school policy that prohibited military discussions in the classroom? 2. What was your father’s involvement in the Japanese military during World War II? 3. Did your school and father ever conflict? Can you share an episode? During the interview, which lasted approximately an hour, students were listening for major conflicts in her life. After the interview, the students selected one conflict for performance; the conflict involved her father’s military status and her elementary teacher’s antimilitary views. Students divided into two groups and created a performance based on this conflict. First, both

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groups were asked to create in sequential order, four tableau events depicted in the oral telling. Second, they added narration to their tableaux. Third, they were allowed to add any improvisation and acting to their performance. Keep in mind that both groups listened to the same oral telling of that event; afterwards, they created and performed that event in four scenes. After the class watched each other’s performance, they compared and contrasted them. The students were able to examine the differences between the two performances. Although each group heard the same telling, they had developed a different interpretation and representation of the Japanese woman. A student commented, “We did in class the same story with two different groups, but the groups interpreted things differently. Performing an oral history about the same story can help students interpret different views.” It is important to note that the difference between the two performance groups involved gender representation. One group interpreted and developed a stereotypical representation of a Japanese female while the other group did not. Collecting and performing oral histories in courses allows your students to think about ways guest speakers can promote critical listening, writing, and speaking in their future classrooms. Before students enter their own classrooms, it is necessary to offer assignments that help them develop their own understanding of historical investigation. In this situation, students develop sensitivity toward the historian’s task because they themselves wrestled with the direct experiences of becoming the author and telling someone’s history. By the end of the assignment, after reflective writing, students were more aware of how their own positions and bias told a particular story and were more aware that the existence of multiple possible interpretations creates a subjective historical representation. References Johnson, E. C. (2007). Involving preservice teachers in collecting and performing oral stories. The Social Studies, 98(5), 197–199. Kelin, D. A. (2005). To feel as our ancestors did: Collecting and performing oral histories. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Teaching Resources Kelin, D. A. (2005). To feel as our ancestors did: Collecting and performing oral histories. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

28 Designing an Interactive Learning Center Museum in the School Context1 Hilary Landorf and Ethan Lowenstein

Context: TE Elementary, Multicultural Education, K-6 NCSS Standards: III (People, Places, and Environment), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 7 (Planning Instruction), 10 (Collaboration, Ethics, and Relationships) Topics: service learning, civics, civil content knowledge, ethical-political valuation, critical thinking, collaboration, community-based learning, learning centers, civil rights, identity, artifacts, learning centers, museums, film Academic Service Learning (ASL) can be an ideal pedagogical model for multicultural education and social studies courses, as it allows preservice teachers to organically construct their understandings with regard to both subject and learner and in relationship to important civic learning goals. Since 2004, the two of us, both teacher educators at public institutions of higher education in different states and different contexts, have been designing, refining, and implementing similar elementary social studies education courses which center on academic service-learning. We have had multiple goals during this process. In our respective courses, we have tried to design a powerful service learning experience for preservice elementary teachers and their students that would enhance specific social studies learning objectives, model effective service learning practice, and could be implemented using limited resources. We have also been interested in creating a dialogue around important civic issues that would be truly intergenerational and cross-cultural by following the words of Wade (2000), who encourages social studies teachers, when possible, to “seek projects in which the boundaries between server and served become blurred through mutual goal setting and collaboration” (p. 95). Specifically, we have engaged preservice teachers and elementary students in an examination of the history of the civil rights movement and current struggles for civil rights within local contexts. We chose this theme for its potential to connect current and local social justice issues to student and teacher social realities, and because of the availability of local community organizations to serve as partners in our project. Like Anand et al. (2000), who designed an oral history service learning project to be “intimately local and then provocatively global; but foremost so that it would connect our students historically and today, to their community and the history of activism that constitutes this community” (p. xii), we have tried to navigate the tension between teacherdirected and student-constructed knowledge by collectively examining the history of racism and the continuing struggle for civil and human rights within a local context. In both of our courses, we have partnered with elementary schools in which the students are 129

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predominantly African American. Below, we briefly describe each step of the process of using academic service learning in elementary social studies methods classes to create an interactive learning center museum on the civil rights movement. Planning The classroom teacher and methods instructor co-plan the unit. First they select “big ideas” themes, and essential questions for inquiry. Then they map the unit from the academic learning goals of both the classes to the final teaching and learning event. At the same time, they align the curriculum within district and state standards and benchmarks. Finally, the classroom teacher and methods instructor pair the elementary students with the preservice teachers for “e-pal” learning partnerships. Discovery Stage-First Steps In their separate classes, preservice teachers and elementary students develop and share “identity boxes” with one another. These are literally boxes the students design into which they place artifacts that represent themselves as cultural beings. They also reflect on their learning styles and preferences using tools like Multiple Intelligences inventories. At this point the preservice teachers engage in a number of activities designed for self-reflection of their racial and cultural identity and enhancement of their understanding of the civil rights movement. First, they do a K-W-L chart regarding the civil rights movement. Then, they write their first letter to their learning partner. In this letter they introduce themselves, describe who they are as cultural beings, identify their own learning styles and preferences, and express their interests regarding the social studies theme for the term. They also ask their learning partner questions about their learning styles and preferences and interests. For the next activity, the preservice teachers read, grapple with, and discuss a reading or video deliberately chosen to challenge their understandings of the civil rights movement and their racial and cultural identity. We have used the video Freedom on My Mind (1994), Milton Meltzer’s book for young readers, There Comes a Time: The Struggle for Civil Rights (2001), and Studs Terkel’s interview with former Ku Klux Klansman C. P. Ellis, in his book My American Century (1998), all to great effect. Students are then asked to write a reflective essay, which we call a “Discovery Report,” about using the resources given to them by the instructor (e.g., primary and secondary sources, children’s literature, local civil rights activists and organizations to investigate and interview). While the preservice teachers are actively reflecting on their understandings of the civil rights movement and examining their notions of culture and race, the elementary students reply to the first letter sent to them by their “e-pals.” By answering questions regarding their learning styles and preferences and interests in the civil rights movement, the elementary students themselves engage in self-reflection and begin to form a relationship with their partners. To continue this relationship, the methods class visits the elementary school for up to a half day. Several structured activities are planned for this time. The learning partners get together to share identity boxes. Groups of learning partners engage in a “circle writing” activity concerning a critical social justice question relating to civil rights. In this activity, the methods instructor and classroom teacher together pose one question to students and preservice teachers who are sitting in mixed groups. Students and preservice teachers write about the question, pass their writing to the left, and then respond to their group member’s writing. The methods students also conduct a K-W-L with their

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partners in small groups during their time together so that they may further assess the elementary students’ interests, learning styles and prior knowledge relating to civil rights. Curriculum Writing and Interactive Museum Design This stage of the process of designing the interactive museum begins by having the preservice elementary teachers write a 3 to 4 page reflection about their experience during the elementary school visit. For this assignment, the students are asked to reflect on what they learned about themselves as teachers, as learners, and as cultural beings. The methods instructor then facilitates a class discussion in which the students choose four to five concepts and topics regarding civil rights in their local contexts. These concepts/topics become the subjects of the learning centers that will constitute the interactive museum. Examples of concepts and topics our students have explored include the history of Virginia Key Beach (the only beach in Miami-Dade County that was legally available to African Americans from its opening in 1945 until the civil rights laws of the early 1960s), Black entertainment in Miami, the civil rights movement in Detroit, and children in the civil rights movement. The students then break into groups based on similar interests. Each group is responsible for designing and using one learning center with their elementary partners. In addition to the physical construction of the learning center, each group plans learning activities based on their content knowledge, their own interests, and the learning profiles of the elementary students. During this stage, the preservice teachers also continue their correspondence with their elementary learning partners, informing them of their chosen concepts and topics for the learning centers, and asking about their own plans for the interactive museum day. At the same time that the preservice teachers are beginning to design their learning centers, the elementary students are planning learning activities of their own for their end-of-term visit to the university, based on their knowledge of their partners. The elementary teacher coordinates his or her students’ efforts to make contact with a local community organization, which will play a part in the culminating activities as well. Interactive Museum Day The elementary students and their parents visit the university for a day to take part in the interactive museum and other activities. During the interactive museum, the elementary students, some with their parents or other adults, rotate through the learning centers on a timed basis. At each learning center, the preservice teachers engage the “museum-goers” in active learning activities that focus on the concept or topic of that center. For example, at the Virginia Key Beach learning center, visitors lie on beach chairs, play in real sand, and listen to jazz music from the 1950s, until they are interrupted by the sound of cranes about to tear down the arcade at the beach. After the “museum-goers” have rotated through the learning centers, the elementary students lead the preservice teachers through their own learning activities. Guest speakers from the partnering community organization then engage both groups. The day also includes a campus tour, lunch in the campus cafeteria, and a gift exchange between the learning partners. Final Thoughts The degree of preservice elementary teachers’ needs is astoundingly high, as are the stakes for our country and world if these teachers fail to learn to teach and act responsibly in a diverse world.

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The combination of great need and high stakes can lead to ignoring what teaching reality is, what teacher knowledge is, and how teachers learn. It would be hubris to think that the preservice teachers in our classes would leave as expert social scientists, experienced political activists, and advanced reflective practitioners. What is essential is that they leave having journeyed to areas of their head and heart where they have never been and from whence it is difficult or impossible to return. Note 1. The two authors contributed equally to this chapter and in their collaborative writing alternate first and second authorship.

References Anand, B., Fine, Michelle, P., Tiffany, Surrey, D., & the Renaissance School Class of 2000 (2002). Keeping the struggle alive: Studying desegregation in our town. A guide to doing oral history. New York: Teachers College Press. Chandler, M. (1994). Freedom on my mind. Berkeley, CA: Clarity Educational Publications. Meltzer, M. (2002). There comes a time: The struggle for civil rights. New York: Random House Books for Young Readers. Terkel, S. (1997). My American century. New York: New Press.

Teaching Resources Wade, R. (2000). Challenges to Effective Practice. In R.Wade (Ed.), Building bridges: Connecting classroom and community through service-learning in social studies (pp. 91–97). NCSS Bulletin 97. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies.

29 Scaffolding Conceptual Reasoning about History David Gerwin

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning Instruction), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: history, historical understanding, critical thinking, diversity, creating teaching materials, issues-centered approach, unit-development, curriculum planning My goals for my social studies methods course are to connect my students’ college majors with their classroom planning, and to push them away from mere coverage of topics toward an engagement with questions and ideas that cohere around a single worthy theme. I push them to consider how their students could become smarter after a semester, not what their students will know. I thus want assignments that demand more disciplinary capability, more complex ideas, and use ideas and documents that reappear and are compared against new material as the semester goes along. I’ve crafted three interlocking assignments that achieve these goals: a semester-long curriculum, a thematic essay, and a “Change over Time” essay explaining how their curriculum grows more challenging. Barton and Levstik (2004) observed that the more teacher educators address historical thinking, the more we don’t find it encouraged in the curriculum teachers enact in the classroom. The way to entice teachers into doing history, they suggest, is through addressing concerns about citizenship. My own systematic analysis of student work suggests that the preservice teachers I train worry about patriotism and how to present the past more than about theories of interpretation. My attempt at a resolution of my interest in college-level ideas built around historical evidence that allows for multiple interpretations and my preservice teachers’ interest in lesson plans on specific curriculum topics, is to build all the course assignments directly around creating curriculum. The assignment I’ve settled on, to plan an entire a semester-long curriculum (U.S. 1865 to the present is the default), forces my students to address a large chunk of curriculum. On its own this assignment primarily helps them confront the limited numbers of days in a semester, so they decide what topics to leave out. Thus I also assign the thematic essay that requires students to develop college-level ideas and concepts that lend their curriculum coherence. The “Change over Time” essay reminds students focused on the content they must teach that planning over several months of work requires that they plan for and teach to achieve specific growth in aspects of students’ thinking and abilities. These interlocking assignments directly confront the coverage approach to presenting history as one topic or event after another with no conceptual coherence and a mind-numbing sameness in evaluation predictably, worksheets, multiple choice tests and topical essay questions. My favorite among the many scholarly observations of this problem is Bruce VanSledright’s (1995) 133

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interviews with eighth graders, who describe what they’ve learned after a standard unit on colonial America, “I Don’t Remember—The Ideas Are All Jumbled In My Head.” The thematic essay requires my students to pick one conceptual focus to be developed throughout the semester-long curriculum they plan. Recent examples of themes include the environment, immigration, gender, equality, freedom, foreign policy, and industrialization (sometimes linked with deindustrialization and the service economy). These themes leave room for my preservice teachers to address their concerns about patriotism or exposing students to some other aspect of the past. On at least this theme, my preservice teachers need to specify how the curriculum they plan will leave their students smarter about the world at the end of the semester than when the course started. The essay requires a college level conceptual engagement with ideas, citations to different scholarly positions about that idea, and several examples of topics and events across time and geography that their pupils will investigate in order to think through these ideas. I am consistently surprised that students find this to be the hardest assignment of the semester, requiring multiple drafts to achieve an acceptable form. While most history papers demand a thesis and a narrative, this essay instead requires an inquiry question and a multivocal approach to evidence, stressing a range of interpretations, not an argument for one position. My students initially approach the semester-long curriculum by asking, “What should I cover?” For a U.S. 1865 to the present curriculum with a theme built around “immigration” the answer seems clear. From 1880 to 1920 there was a big immigration through Ellis Island of southern and eastern Europeans drawn to America by jobs in factories, cities, and the chance for land. In the 1920s Congress instituted quotas, a system that buckled as America absorbed refugees after World War II, and was subsequently reformed, leading to the “new” immigration starting in the 1960s, particularly of Hispanic and Asian ethnic groups. Current event assignments revolve around whatever current immigration reform is pending in Congress, and students debate whether immigration is good or bad for the United States. As a concept, students might learn that “PUSH” factors include reasons immigrants leave their country of residence, and “PULL” factors include reasons immigrants come to a destination. Students might look at urbanization and industrialization through immigration; they might then choose to teach about Japanese internment and not Rosie the Riveter during World War II or the Vietnam War rather than the Cuban Missile crisis. A thematic focus for a semesterlong curriculum helps students make these choices about what to include and what to skip, but without the thematic essay the focus might only result in a more benign and meaningful form of coverage rather than a more powerful investigation of ideas and evidence. The thematic essay I hope they write requires students to grapple with concepts, theories, and ideas. A student writing about immigration, with a little bit of checking, discovered through an Organization of American Historians Magazine of History article (Hoerder, 1999) that most scholars working in this field discuss migrations rather than immigration. This opened up the focus of her topic since plants and animals migrate (not only people) and migrations take place whether or not people are settling permanently or are simply crossing nation-state boundaries. Native Americans were migrants, and the Great Migration of African Americans to the North in the early and mid-20th century adds another example and dimension to the curriculum. Movements of Mexicans in search of work both before 1848 and afterwards sometimes kept the same migration patterns, even if, after the Americans captured California, Arizona, and New Mexico these same people might become immigrants. Historian Mae Ngai’s (2004) argument in Impossible Subjects that the idea of an illegal alien might be juxtaposed to the alien citizen, a person who, legal status aside, the polity cannot absorb, provoked a new perspective on Chinese exclusion and Japanese internment for her. My student also came across an argument by sociologist Nancy

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Foner (2000) arguing that rather than looking at what ethnic group an immigrant belongs to, regardless of time, it may be more important to investigate when an immigrant group came, in what migratory wave, as migrants coming to an industrial economy share more characteristics with each other, regardless of ethnicity, than they do with migrants of similar ethnicity arriving in a different wave. Writing in her thematic essay about the “illegal alien” and “alien citizen” or “waves” versus “ethnic groups” as concepts advanced by societies or used by social scientists to help make sense of migration helped turn a closed narrative of topics into a broader investigation of theories, evidence, and ideas. Strikingly, my student had encountered the work of Nancy Foner before, but it did not strike her as something to incorporate into her narrative of immigration that she would teach in school. Not until she did a complete revision based upon academic sources did she find a way to incorporate her college education into her high school teaching. This complete transformation from topical coverage devoid of ideas to a rich investigation of evidence, theories, and ideas rarely happens in a single semester; many of my students continue to write narratives rather than essays engaging questions about a theme. Overall, even when they fall short, thematic essays hold students accountable to the work of social scientists and historians, and help them document what they think they know about topics, resulting in more challenging curriculum. Here is how I introduce my second essay, the “Change Over Time” assignment. The purpose of the “Change Over Time” essay is to articulate for me how each part of your curriculum builds upon the previous assignments or prepares the ground for future work. It explains to me why, of all possible material you could have used, you chose to use these particular materials on this theme/topic and ask students to do this particular activity. You need to explicitly explain your curriculum scaffolding and how it builds on itself to pay specific attention to the development of your students’ historical or social science abilities. I’m going to give you feedback on whether or not I think it will work, but I’m going to grade you on whether or not you plan a curriculum that expects GROWTH in your students’ abilities to understand the content, the concepts and the disciplinary structures of history and social science AS TIME PASSES DURING THE SEMESTER. This assignment requires that students take the sophisticated reasoning they have articulated in the thematic essay and envision how the curriculum design can help high school or middle school pupils reach that sophistication. For example, immigration might begin with a simple discussion of the 19th century border with Mexico. In a carefully constructed curriculum, by the time the late 20th century is taught the pupils might be able to consider citizenship as a historical category rather than self-evident, and understand being an American as a shifting status that is not always the same as citizenship. Second, the “Change Over Time” essay requires preservice teachers to consider how students can demonstrate an increased ability for historical thinking. In the crudest form, this might mean something like (1) working with one primary source in the first week; (2) working with several primary sources in the second week; or (3) comparing a primary source and secondary source in the third week. It also means planning for increasingly independent work. For example, the entire class might get the same packet of documents in the first unit, or get separate packets to work on in each of their groups in the second unit or they might have separate projects and need to find their own resources in unit 3. More sophisticated forms of change over time combine increased critical capacity and the growth of disciplinary knowledge in the same assignment. A current events program might start by giving students a definition of checks and balances, asking students to produce and briefly annotate

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five newspaper articles that demonstrate this aspect of the Constitution. Over time students might bring in newspaper articles along with their own analysis, or compare print and visual media, or compare how well checks and balances are working now with how well they worked in a period the class is studying. Assignments thus move from Bloom and Krathwohl’s (1956) lower order information, application, up to the higher order thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and judgment. By the end of the semester the teacher should have planned assignments that require pupils to discuss the historical development of checks and balances as well as current issues, the relative strengths of different branches, and draw on a variety of primary and secondary sources to make an argument about a moment in history, or about military policy versus domestic issues. Reflection The “Change Over Time” essay helps future teachers craft assessment alternatives to the nearby Queens and Long Island schools where teachers end all units with a set of multiple choice questions, a Document Based Question similar to what appears on the Advanced Placement exam, and an essay. This format replicates the New York State Regents examination in global and U.S. history, and is similar to the eighth grade social studies test. This sameness flattens curriculum in many schools, so that although the topics change the level of work does not change. A methods class that simply assigns a “unit plan” rarely develops preservice teachers’ ability to plan for a semester’s worth of growth in student abilities. Thinking, as many students do, about each topic and assignment separately also inhibits them from using the sophisticated college-level ideas they’ve acquired in their majors. Preservice teachers correctly object that their students will not understand college ideas about their material. I simply amend their statement with “—at first.” But over the course of a semester students can develop more complex reasoning about focused themes particularly when they are explicitly connected to prior definitions, documents, and secondary readings. The “Change Over Time” essay supports the work of the thematic essay by acknowledging that secondary students will start off with limited conceptions, but helps preservice teachers plan for more sophisticated understandings to develop. The greatest challenge I face in this assignment is that students observing local teachers do not often see change over time. The assignments change, but in most schools they never see a document that was used a week ago retrieved and placed next to a document or a secondary reading for this week to elicit a more complex idea. They may see a multistep project, or an end-of-semester “exit project,” but they rarely see a series of thematically connected assignments that grow increasingly demanding. The task of planning curriculum for a semester, not just a unit (supported by the Thematic Essay and an essay requiring preservice teachers to plan for change over time) is not in opposition to what anyone is doing—coherence will not get a teacher fired, nor will planning for growth over a semester. It can incorporate any particular pedagogic strategy or mandate from lecture to group work to promoting literacy in any format. Within these limits it makes a limited but significant change. References Barton, K. & Levstik, L. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Bloom, B. S., & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals, by a committee of college and university examiners. Handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York: Longmans. Foner, N. (2000). From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s two great waves of immigration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Hoerder, D. (1999). From immigration to migration systems: New concepts in migration history. Magazine of History, 14(1), 5–11. Ngai, M. (2004) Impossible subjects. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. VanSledright, B. (1995). “I don’t remember — The ideas are all jumbled in my head”: 8th graders’ reconstructions of Colonial American history. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 10(4), 317–345.

30 Teaching Historical Understanding with Christopher Columbus Benjamin Justice

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: I (Culture), II (Time, Continuity, and Change), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategy) Topics: history, historical understanding, Christopher Columbus, indigenous peoples, historical figures, historical content knowledge, multiple perspectives, creating teaching materials, jig-saw, children’s literature I’m a big fan of Christopher Columbus. Not the man, the phenomenon. Columbus plays a major role in how historians, teachers, and popular media talk about the past. For the big winners of the Atlantic encounter—those Europeans who settled North America and accumulated vast wealth— the story has typically been told as a triumph, a grand narrative with a happy ending. For those people who lost in the exchange—the people of Africa, the Americas, and others—the story is a disaster. The moment when Columbus touched land in the Caribbean marks the beginning of one of the greatest shifts in human history: the appropriation of the land and resources of two continents by the people of a third; the depopulation by accident or disease, or, some argue, by conscious policy, of tens of millions of people in North and South America; the abduction and wanton killing of tens of millions of Africans to work as slaves on that “new land.” In any case, triumph, disaster, or pivotal moment, Columbus, more than any other historical figure I have yet encountered, can serve to create the necessary cognitive dissonance for future social studies teachers to unlearn what society tells them history is for, what heroes are made of, and how social studies instruction can be a force for inequality and racism or, instead, for democracy and thoughtful inquiry. I devote an entire session to Columbus in each of my two social studies methods courses. What follows is a description of how we examine Columbus (the phenomenon) as a complicated historical and cultural symbol. The first case is an elementary methods course where I ask students to consider how an alternative reading of the Columbian encounter troubles the traditional representation of Columbus as a hero. The second case, a secondary methods course, utilizes Seixas’ (2000) and Segall’s (2006) curricular and disciplinary representations to ask students to question how they will design and teach curriculum about a complicated historical and cultural figure. In both cases, the primary goal is not to indoctrinate students into one line of thinking or another—Columbus as hero or Columbus as villain, for example. Rather, the goal is to disrupt the notion that there can be a single, definitive narrative of the Columbian encounter, and that

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fashioning such a narrative is not only an act of interpretation, it is an imposition of the present onto the past. Elementary Methods Course In my course “Teaching Social Studies in the Elementary School,” Columbus fits into a broader discussion about history and hero worship. Throughout the course I ask students to wrestle with related notions in social studies curriculum and pedagogy: how does social studies convey notions of justice and injustice, racism and antiracism? What does it mean to understand something and how can we teach for understanding? And what the heck is social studies anyway? In preparation for the Columbus class, I assign “The True Importance of Christopher Columbus,” a chapter from Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me (1996), and “Unsung Heroes” and “Teaching About Unsung Heroes” from Au, Bigelow, and Karp’s (2007) Rethinking Our Classrooms, Vol. 2. I also assign groups of students a particular children’s book related to the Atlantic encounter, including Yolen’s Encounter (1996), Dorris’s Morning Girl (1992), Conrad’s Pedro’s Journal (1999), Fritz’s Where Do You Think You’re Going, Christopher Columbus? (1997), and Roop and Roop’s Christopher Columbus (2001). In their weekly essays written in preparation for class, many students express outrage that, according to Loewen, Columbus oversaw the enslavement, torture, rape, and eventual genocide of the people he encountered. Some argue that Loewen is exaggerating. A few make the case that replacing Columbus the hero with Columbus the villain is equally problematic: we cannot judge people in the past by contemporary standards. In my actual lesson plan I try to model what would be effective approaches to Columbus in an elementary classroom. I ask students to coteach portions of the class with me, and this past year the students began by making a web map of the word hero, on the board, plotting words that people associate with that concept. They then asked their classmates to name personal heroes from their own childhoods and then explain their choices. In a large group discussion we examined the historical perspective that Loewen articulates about Columbus. I began by asking students for their gut reactions to the piece. I then asked them to identify Loewen’s argument and to evaluate his evidence. One of Loewen’s claims is that the mythical Columbus is ubiquitous, and to that end I had students meet in jig-sawed book-review groups to share their particular book with others who had not read it. Groups looked for how each of their books jibed with the evidence Loewen presents, and then picked their most and least favorite. Nearly all groups selected Morning Girl or Encounter as the best of the lot, and this raised an important question. Both books are highly fictionalized accounts of Columbus’s encounter with the Taino people, based on almost no historical evidence. I challenged their choices. If Loewen’s argument is that the Columbus myth relies on lies and withheld information, how can Morning Girl and Encounter be excellent books? Many hands shot up, and the two students who spoke made the point that seemed to speak for all the hands: These two books may be fiction, but they offer something kids almost never get: an indigenous perspective on Columbus. Discussion My goal is that my student teachers will understand the tension between doing good, ethically responsible history and using history as political tool. This understanding should lead, I hope, to the recognition that history has multiple, equally valid perspectives on the one hand, and also depends on the use of good evidence and clear reasoning on the other. Teaching kids “the facts” is

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sometimes a subversive act, but can also be a repressive one. Making the choice to teach Columbus as a hero is not a neutral decision, but a biased one which negates the historical record and the perspectives of many Americans. An uncritical view of Columbus as an unscrupulous villain has similar problems. My recent addition of the Rethinking Classrooms pieces on hero worship has, I hope, added to students’ understanding of what it means to pluck a hero from history, and the very limited way that Columbus functions in that capacity. This year’s children’s literature jigsaw indicated that most of the class, at least, understood that Native Americans had perspectives as valid as European ones, and that we as historians need to navigate among these and other ways of seeing the past. Secondary Methods Course Unlike the elementary student teachers, the men and women in this course typically hold BAs in history or other social studies-related fields. In my course “Analysis of Social Studies Curriculum,” which comes at the end of our EdM program, I ask students to dig into the underlying theory of the fields of history and social studies. Columbus provides a chance for them to grapple with ways in which historical narratives serve political ends; but it also provides an opportunity to see how scholarship changes over time, how scholars actually do history, and how the many other academic disciplines within social studies can converge. I design the lesson in the same fashion as the elementary class. In advance I assign the Loewen chapter to all students and assign particular groups select pages from scholarly books on the encounter. Each year I try to update the list, and this year it will include: Cortés and Montezuma (Collis, 1954); The Broken Spears (Leon-Portilla, 1962); The Columbian Exchange (Crosby, 1972); and Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond, 1997). We begin class by discussing Loewen. After students share their gut reactions, we dig into questions of evidence and argument. I focus the discussion less on Loewen’s argument that Columbus is mistaught in textbooks than his claim that the Columbus myth is inherently White-supremacist. In this group of students, only a few argue that Columbus should be a national hero, and accuse naysayers of being hypercritical, too liberal, or America haters. As the discussion unfolds, I challenge them to answer the question: Is Loewen’s argument about Columbus the final word, or are there alternatives? I then break students into groups to discuss their book assignment with others who read the same. I ask them to identify the argument, the evidence, the strengths and weaknesses, and report back to the class. On the board, I chart group responses to each book, including a new concept, “unit of analysis” (a unit of analysis is the building block of a historical argument). As groups discuss their books, they see how units of analysis have changed with each scholarly argument: Collis looks at great men; Leon-Portillo focuses on national groups from a native perspective; Crosby examines flora and fauna; and Diamond looks at the biggest unit yet: the geographic distribution of humans across the planet for the last 10,000 years (this book is more anthropology than history). Students concede that each book makes excellent use of evidence, is convincing, and tries to “revise” scholarship that came before it. Each has strengths as well as weaknesses. And yet, each is so completely different! As my culminating activity, I create jigsaw groups that consist of representatives from each book group. I charge these new groups with developing an actual curriculum for the encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. I use Peter Seixas’s (2000) three models for social studies instruction. Some groups must write a “best story” textbook entry. Others must create a curriculum using either a disciplinary or postmodern approach. Each group reports back and

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we debrief. The disciplinary groups usually have the easiest time. They identify primary source documents, come up with interesting activities, and aim to help children develop their own interpretations of the past. The postmodern groups typically emphasize Internet research into the politics of Columbus Day, looking at how various people and groups seek to construct narratives of Columbus as a political act. One year the postmodern group designed an activity where kids critically analyze their textbooks. Every year, the group in charge of writing a textbook entry has the hardest time. Their struggle highlights many of the problems inherent in the production of ostensibly “neutral” historical narratives: How can one story of the past suffice? Discussion My goal for this Columbian encounter is that students will understand the process of how history gets made, and in so doing, better understand what social studies is really about: identifying genuine social questions or problems and using reasoned inquiry (through disciplines such as history) to generate answers. In the case of the Columbus phenomenon, any narrative of who Columbus was is a product of a series of choices—of units of analysis, of which evidence to include and exclude, of where the story begins and ends, of whose perspective we take. In this way of thinking, Columbus is neither a villain nor a hero, but a work in progress. References Segall, A. (2006). What’s the purpose of teaching a discipline, anyway? The case of history. In A. Segall, E. E. Heilman, & C. H. Cherryholmes (Eds.), Social studies—The next generation: Re-searching in the postmodern (pp. 125–139). New York: Lang. Seixas, P. (2000). “Schweigen, die kinder!” or, does postmodern history have a place in the schools. In P. Stearns, P. Sexias, & S. Wineberg (Eds.), Knowing, teaching, and learning history: National and international perspectives (pp. 19–37). New York: New York University Press.

Teaching Resources Elementary Methods Course Au, W., Bigelow, B. & Karp, S. (Eds). (2007). Rethinking our classrooms: Teaching for equity and social justice (Vol. 1). Williston, VT: Rethinking Schools. Bigelow, B. (Ed.). (2001) Rethinking our classrooms: Teaching for equity and social justice (Vol. 2). Williston, VT: Rethinking Schools. Conrad, P. (1999). Pedro’s journal: A voyage with Christopher Columbus. New York: Scholastic. Dorris, M. (1992). Morning girl. New York: Hyperion. Fritz, J. (1997). Where do you think you’re going, Christopher Columbus? New York: Putnam & Grosset. Loewen, J. (1996). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster. Roop, P., & Roop, C. (2001). Christopher Columbus (in their own words). New York: Scholastic. Yolen, J. (1996). Encounter. New York: Harcourt Children’s Books.

Secondary Methods Course Collis, M. (1954). Cortés and Montezuma. London: Faber & Faber. Crosby, A. (1972). The Columbian exchange: Biological and cultural consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: Norton. Hoxie, F. E. (1992, December). Discovering America: Ani. The Journal of American History, 79(3), 835–840. Leon-Portilla, M. (1962). The broken spears: The Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico. Boston: Beacon Press.

31 Addressing Subjectivity in Historical Thinking Who was Christopher Columbus? Jennifer Hauver James

Context: TE Elementary, K-6 NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategy) Topics: history, historical content knowledge, critical thinking, Christopher Columbus, historical understanding, historical figures, indigenous peoples, teacher reflection, collaboration, creating teaching materials Current conversations in history education emphasize the importance of historical thinking as a means of developing the critical thinking skills necessary for active and thoughtful participation in today’s pluralistic and democratic society (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Gagnon, 1988, 1989; Miner, 1994; Wineburg, 1991). However, too often, these conversations take place in the context of middle and secondary teaching and learning. Not enough scholarship has explored children’s early exposure to historical content and the extent to which this experience serves as a foundation for their later efforts to engage in critical historical and democratic thinking. The overemphasis in the K-3 curriculum on national symbols, holidays, and famous figures seems to imply that young children are either not able or not ready to engage in constructing their own meanings of history, yet there is mounting evidence to the contrary (Henning, Snow-Gerono, Reed, & Warner, 2006; VanSledright, 2002). In my years as an early childhood and elementary social studies methods instructor, I have developed a strong commitment to preparing teachers to engage young people in historical thinking. This commitment evolves from my experience as an early childhood teacher, where I learned that young children can indeed make sense of history when given the chance. I also believe that the process of learning to think historically ought to begin with the onset of studying history if students are to be given ample time to master this important set of skills. In what follows, I describe an investigative unit on Christopher Columbus that serves as a core learning experience for my early childhood social studies methods students. Investigating Christopher Columbus I choose to investigate Christopher Columbus because he is a central figure in social studies curriculum in the early grades. Regardless of the grade one teaches, one is likely to be faced with teaching Columbus and his legacy. As Ben emphasized in the previous chapter, how teachers

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characterize Columbus (as a hero, a villain, or something in between) is likely to reflect their own knowledge and understanding of Columbus’s contributions to American history. Thus, I too believe it is important for prospective social studies teachers to thoughtfully engage this content prior to teaching it to children. I begin by asking students to individually complete the first two columns of a K-W-L chart on Christopher Columbus. Students then share what they think they know and would like to know about Columbus, contributing to a class K-W-L chart. Next, I ask students to write a reflective piece about how they are thinking about teaching Columbus prior to the investigation. We read together “An Untold Story” (in Rethinking Columbus, pp. 42–43), a narrative account of the initial encounter between Taino people and Columbus written from the Taino perspective. Using a tchart, students write descriptors of this encounter from one perspective. I then distribute a copy of Columbus’ Journal: The First Few Days (in Rethinking Columbus, pp. 96–98) and have them complete the other side of the t-chart. From here, we engage in a conversation about how we will make sense of these two seemingly opposing viewpoints. I ask students to consider which story seems more compelling and why, sparking a flood of discussion about the credibility and reliability of the resources, similarities and differences between them, authorship and purposes for writing. When necessary, I ask questions to prompt thinking and discussion. As our discussion continues, I make notes on the board and discuss various skills we might use to make sense of the past. Examples include corroborating sources and asking questions about the author’s purpose, context, or audience. This list, “Historians’ Toolbox” will remain up throughout the remainder of our investigation. As we begin our inquiry around the central question, “Who was Christopher Columbus?” I ask students to identify and bring to class one credible resource that will aid in our study. Students typically bring books or articles on Columbus, the Taino people, the system of empire, or European history. I then distribute a packet of documents (see Teaching Resources for list). Students are expected to record the title of the resource read, the author, the date of publication/record, the argument/perspective represented in the document, and how the student is making sense of this document with regard to the other resources she or he is reading. I refer students to our evolving list of “Historians’ Tools,” as they work together to make sense of Columbus’ contributions to American history. I also distribute copies of a chart, “Questions Historical Detectives Ask to Solve the Mysteries of the Past” taken from VanSledright’s (2002) book, In Search of America’s Past (p. 40) to help guide their inquiry. At the end of our study, I ask students to write a reflective piece on how they have come to understand Christopher Columbus’s contributions to history. I ask them to articulate how they envision engaging young people in a study of Columbus and what they hope children will take away from the experience. We share (in small groups and then as a whole group) how we are thinking about Columbus and ways we might engage students in a more historically accurate study of his contributions to history (drawing on their statements prepared for class). I ask small groups to work together to name “essential questions” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2000) that might be worth exploring as they think about Columbus with children and what they hope children will take away from the experience. Students often offer “What does it mean to ‘discover’ something?” “What is a hero?” and “Whose perspectives are represented in our history?” as possible historical inquiries on Columbus. I end by asking students to consider the use of historical investigation in the early childhood classroom and what other methods might be useful in helping young children think like historians.

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Reflection I like this series of activities because it pushes students to wrestle with the subjective nature of historical knowledge. The way they talk about history changes as they begin to understand that the stories we tell are often oversimplified or inaccurate. Because students are generally unfamiliar with historical investigation themselves, they sometimes grow frustrated that there is not one “truth” to be discovered. Many begin to doubt the credibility of all sources—what VanSledright (2002) and others describe as the danger of “nihilism.” My response is to continuously emphasize the process of historical knowledge construction whereby historians strive to develop defendable explanations about historical events. We abandon the word truth and strive for greater historical accuracy, realizing that our sources are limited. In time, students grow more comfortable with the subjectivity of history as they gain greater confidence in their ability to make evidence-based judgments. In the end, students generally arrive at a place where they are both angered by the fact that they were not engaged in such activities as young people themselves, and excited about the potential of inquiry-based instruction in early childhood history classrooms. There are, however, tensions that arise when students consider the practicality of such methods in early childhood classrooms. To begin with, students do not believe there will be ample time to engage young children in such in-depth investigation of history given the marginalization of social studies curriculum in schools today. They see themselves as primarily responsible for managing curriculum in such a way as to get through each objective in a timely manner, regardless of the extent to which individual students come to understand the complexity of content or its relationship to other disciplines or their own lives. Even more troubling is the concern my methods students share about not wanting to expose young children to the complexities of history either because it is too confusing or because they believe it may be morally inappropriate. This image of teacher as protector seems to prevent some students from being willing to engage young children in historical investigation for fear of upsetting them or making them feel ashamed of their collective history. This discourse of protection is deeply interwoven with prospective teachers’ own anxieties about their lack of content knowledge and classroom management skills (for more on this, see James, 2008). These tensions students feel about the practical application of historical investigation present important points of analysis and discussion for teacher educators, administrators, and curriculum theorists. Arguably, in light of these tensions, one could conclude that this initial experience is not likely to be sufficient preparation for the responsibilities prospective teachers will soon have for teaching social studies to young children. I believe, however, that including this series of learning activities provides students with the opportunity to make an important first step in rethinking their own constructs of history and history education, in questioning the objective nature of historical narrative in textbooks, and moving toward a more critical engagement with the past. References Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (2003). Why don’t more history teachers engage students in interpretation? Social Education, 67(6), 358–362. Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Gagnon, P. A. (1988). Why study history? Atlantic, 262(5), 43–47, 50–57, 60–66. Gagnon, P. A. (1989). Historical literacy: The case for history in American education. New York: Macmillan. Henning, M. B., Snow-Gerono, J. L., Reed, D., & Warner, A. (2006). Listening to children think critically about Christopher Columbus. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 19(2), 19–22.

144 • Jennifer Hauver James James, J. H. (2008). Teachers as protectors: Making sense of pre-service teachers’ resistance to interpretation in elementary history teaching. Theory and Research in Social Education, 36(3), 172–205. Miner, B. (1994). Why students should study history: An interview with Howard Zinn. In B. Bigelow, B. Harvey, S. Karp, & L. Miller (Eds.), Rethinking our classrooms: Teaching for equity and justice (pp. 150–156). Williston, VT: Rethinking Schools. VanSledright, B. (2002). In search of America’s past: Learning to read history in elementary school. New York: Teachers College Press. Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2000). Understanding by design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Wineburg, S. (1991). On reading of historical texts: Notes on the breach between school and academy. American Educational Research Journal, 28, 495–519.

Teaching Resources Primary Documents Avalon Project, The (1997). Privileges and prerogatives granted by their Catholic majesties to Christopher Columbus: 1492. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/colum.htm Mar, P. H. (1996a). Medieval sourcebook: Columbus’ letter to the King and Queen of Spain, 1494. http://www.fordham. edu/halsall/source/columbus2.html Mar, P. H. (1996b). Medieval sourcebook: Christopher Columbus: extracts from journal. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ source/columbus1.html Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education. (1998). The Columbus letter translation: Concerning the islands recently discovered in the Indian Sea. http://www.usm.maine.edu/~maps/columbus/translation.html

Secondary Sources Applied History Research Group, The. (1997). The European voyages of exploration. http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/columbus.html Christopher Columbus Biography. http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/The_Great_Republic_By_the_Master_Historians/columbus.html Cowley, G. (1991, Fall/Winter,). The great disease migration [Special Issue]. Newsweek, pp. 54–56. http://www.millersville. edu/~columbus/data/art/COWLEY01.ART Wilson, S. M. (1990, December). Columbus, my enemy: (a Caribbean chief resists the first Spanish invaders). Natural History, pp. 44–49. http://www.millersville.edu/~columbus/data/art/WILSON02.ART In addition, students are expected to read the following excerpts from Rethinking Columbus: the next 500 years: Barreiro, J. (1998). The Tainos: “Men of the good.” In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.),Rethinking Columbus: The next 500 years (pp. 106–107). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Bigelow, B. (1998). Open your hearts: A Dominican friar speaks out [Adapted from de la Casas (1542), History of the Indies]. In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking Columbus: The next 500 years (pp. 103–104). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Bigelow, B., & Peterson, B. (1998). Timeline: Spain, Columbus, and Tainos. In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking Columbus: The next 500 years (pp. 99–102). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Martin, P. (1998). Scalping: Fact and fantasy. In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking Columbus: The next 500 years (pp. 96–98). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Thomas, T. (1998). An untold story. In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking Columbus: The next 500 years (pp. 42–43). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.

SECTION

5

Perspective Consciousness about Identity, Power, and Culture Introduction Ramona Fruja Amthor and Elizabeth E. Heilman

Social studies concepts are sometimes addressed as if they refer to neutral conceptions of culture, identity, space, and place. The authors in this section argue that, instead, social studies must offer tools for examining all concepts with a critical consciousness of perspective. To take a critical perspective means to be concerned with the intersections among power, knowledge, and identity and to be motivated by an ethos of justice. Teachers, students, and curriculum all reflect social locations and positionality (race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ableness) and these affect perceptions and learning (Banks, 2001; Foster, 1997; hooks, 1994; Tate, 1997). The chapters in this section explore these issues on different levels, examining machinations of power at the macrolevel of political and economic structures, cultural power in language, texts and curriculum, and the immediate microexperiences of power, possibility, control, or oppression in specific educational settings and sets of individuals. This is a central element of both multicultural and social studies education. For example, the National Social Studies Council has also stated that effective social studies programs will include the study of individual development and identity, individuals, groups, and institutions, as well as global connections. Even when students as individuals begin with learning about themselves, they can learn at increasing levels of complexity about contexts that lead to their social positions and behaviors, and make personal connections with time, places, and sociocultural systems thus exploring “commonalities and differences that exist across age groups, cultures and social structures” (NCSS Standards). The chapters in this section begin with the micro and personal and move out to consider structures and institutions. These chapters thus follow the epistemological and pedagogical premises for powerful learning experiences about the self and others in and through the global context, aiming at guiding students toward understanding not only how others see the world, but also to position themselves in that world and see from the perspectives of others. These authors argue for both personal and political analyses that take into account the importance of perspective consciousness and invite us to reflect on what the term cultural exploration may really mean when the two groups (the local community and the other) are interacting in historically charged spaces and in the midst of different material conditions. In the opening chapter, Rock begins the collection by arguing that the teaching of social studies is implicated in all aspects of the classroom experience, from the beginning of the course with new people coming together, to earnest debates that have to do with the class’s own policies and decision making. She demonstrates how beginning activities such as organized self-introductions and getting to know the others in one’s class can provide meaningful experiences that can model

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ways to think about what it means to make inferences about others and the consequences of shifting focus on either commonality or on difference. Such approaches can make for powerful reflection activities, yet they need to occur in a context that does not reduce them to notions of happy multiculturalism that overlook intractable differences and the importance of debate. Similarly, Hoge demonstrates a powerful activity that not only engages students in a first-day structured social inquiry that focuses on the diversities within their life experiences, but also models important methodological considerations related to how to design and use of surveys of political, economic, and social issues. In this lesson, students confront the many problems associated with social science data collection, reduction, and reporting and thus acquire not only a better understanding of each other, but also a critical, more nuanced perspective on the interpretation of social data. Through such activities, these teachers both foster classroom community and connect the process to key social sciences concepts, which is a main aim for Sensoy’s approach as well. Aligning the lesson not only with social studies standards, but also to multicultural perspectives, students explore the history of each person’s name to reflect on the relationships among the individual and the multiple social groups one belongs to. Names often reflect an individual’s multiple social locations—such as gender, ethnicity, class, family culture, religion—and they emphasize our participation in these locations as well as their impact on us. In the following chapter, Heilman’s project on “Seeing the Hidden Curricula of Social Spaces and Places” takes these multiple social locations and examines their presence in the construction of physical spaces. Through photography and the theoretical deconstructing tools that she offers her students, Heilman engages them capturing educative public spaces and critically assessing their discourses and “hidden curricula”—the stories that they tell about who belongs there, and what the expectations are for functioning in those spaces. Subedi finds that teaching texts written by authors from outside of the Anglo-American tradition are fraught with challenges and she describes lessons related to the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence about three Indigenous Australian girls who escape a school where they were to be “civilized” to walk 1200 miles back to their families. Through such activities, these teachers foster classroom community and connect the process to key social sciences concepts. In turn, McCrary and Turner-Vorbeck, respectively, move students openly away from thinking only at the level of the individual towards considering how family histories and structures—their own and those of others—play a major role in social position, life experiences, opportunities, and development. McCrary involves students in a family history project that challenges their selfperceptions and their understandings of others, as they engage with deeper, more memorable, and more generative understandings of cultural differences, civic ideals and practices, power and privilege, development and identity. Turner-Vorbeck then deliberately challenges the traditional focus on diversity issues such as race, gender, culture, and language and adds a missing perspective by also considering family diversity—the differences that exist in the very structures of families. In the classroom activities she describes, students have the opportunity to examine how deeply rooted and widely held assumptions about “good” family structures can impact children’s selfperceptions and thus their learning and growth. She compellingly argues that future teachers need to consider such aspects of diversity. Similarly, Martinez challenges deeply engrained notions that affect children in our schools, as she uses Native American mascots (used by intercollegiate and professional sports teams) to get students to think critically about the relationship between power and stereotyping in U.S. society. She shows that “cultural representations and signifying practices from the mainstream affect how Indigenous people experience school life” and that indeed, such practices reflect more

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pervasive—although allegedly subtle—forms of institutional racism that certain groups need to face daily. The author engages students in personal reflection on how these practices affect them, as well as in thinking about larger-scale implications that affect not only Indigenous people, but other minority groups. Finally, Sadlier moves the issue of inequity and marginalization into more material dimensions, as she invites her students to consider the disparities existent among different groups’ access to suitable and equitable educational conditions. Modeling age-appropriate activities with preservice teachers, she advocates classroom activities that promote habits of awareness and interest in enduring social problems, habits which in turn can be steered towards lifelong models for civic engagement, an aspect that is crucial in our teaching—students need to see and feel self-efficacy as citizens and participants who can indeed make positive change in their surroundings. In the context of critical learning about the world and one’s place in it, beginning with the personal levels requires learning how to move beyond the personal to the political as well as learning how to see the political as personal—as the two concluding chapters in this section do. This does not mean that students begin the process from an individual perspective in order to justify and reinforce self-focused and ethnocentric interpretations of the world. On the contrary, a key concept in the teaching and learning of social studies, originating in the scholarship of global education, is that of “perspective consciousness” (Hanvey, 1982). In simple terms, the concept refers to the recognition that perspectives are different from opinions, since perspectives are the outcome of a complex interplay of the contexts of our lives. As a result, one’s own view of the world will not be universally shared, and the perspectives of others may have their own legitimacies. Social studies and multicultural educators, then, expect students to develop the ability to take divergent cultural perspectives—to be able to see the world as others see it to the extent possible—and to understand the place their own rootedness and actions take in the formation of these perspectives. To this end, Merryfield moves students toward recognizing that teaching and learning traditions that overlook what other groups think and write, not only leave us ignorant but also remain inherently racist. She uses the example of overlooking African perspectives on their own history, which leaves out what over 60 nations and thousands of cultures know about the world. A critical consciousness of perspective is both challenged in important ways by persisting racist modes of interpretation, and it simultaneously offers a possibility of change. Finally, Segall concludes the section by inviting students to implicate themselves in the realities and oppressions of others and consider the social structures that we implicitly and often unthinkingly participate in that make such oppressive realities possible. He argues that one of the most difficult realities to address with future teachers is the depth and endurance of racist thinking. According to the author, this is because, more often than not, students’ experiences with race in classrooms have positioned them to think of racism as a thing of the past and to consider racism as a social or curricular issue, not one that implicates them personally. In many ways, these students see race issues as theoretical—and important to consider in their teaching—but not something which inescapably implicates them as teachers. Through his lesson, Segall challenges students to move beyond this stance and to make what seems remote and political much more powerful and personally relevant. Indeed, these are goals of each author in this section References Banks, J. A. (2001). Citizenship education and diversity: Implications for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(1), 5–16. Foster, M. (1997). Black teachers on teaching. New York: New Press.

148 • Ramona Fruja Amthor and Elizabeth E. Heilman Hanvey, R. G. (1982). Global education. Theory into Practice, 21(3), 162–167. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. NewYork: Routledge. National Council for Social Studies. (1997). National standards for social studies teachers. http://www.socialstudies.org/ standards/teachers/home.html Tate, W. F. (1997). Critical race theory and education: History, theory, and implications. Review of Research in Education, 22, 195–247.

32 Exploring Identity, Commonality, and Difference Tracy Rock

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: I (Culture), IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 2 (Learning and Development), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: commonality and difference, classroom community, first day, families, cultural artifacts, democratic education, student centered, students’ lives and experiences, identity, cultures, historical understanding I stress with preservice teachers that the important concepts and understandings of the social studies can be introduced and reinforced through daily activities and interactions that occur in the classroom, and not only in the designated social studies lessons. With focused attention to the purpose and goals of the social studies, teachers can create meaningful learning opportunities as they carry out necessary tasks of classroom life. In determining classroom rules, making decisions that impact classroom life, resolving conflicts that arise, or building classroom community, for instance, teachers can deepen students’ knowledge and strengthen participation skills that are essential for active civic engagement. Planning with social studies in mind should thus begin on day one. For example, we know that establishing a classroom community is important from the very beginning. I thus model for preservice teachers how to begin building teacher–student and student–student relationships, while also focusing on ideas important in social studies and multicultural education. Following an overview of the course syllabus, I engage my preservice teachers in the following activities on the first class session of the semester. Activity 1: Introducing Me! Artifact Investigation Big Idea: Artifacts Identify How a Person or Culture Has Developed One purpose of this activity is to allow my students to learn about who I am so that the important teacher–student relationships can begin to form. Many researchers have noted that teachers, especially in the elementary grades, should devote substantial energy to creating a stable classroom community that is governed by group goals and strong relationships between teacher and students. For the first day, I select an activity that fosters the development of social science skills and big ideas. This is the other purpose of the activity. Prior to class, I fill up a briefcase with various artifacts that I collect out of my office, providing clues about me, both individually and

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culturally. For example, I include family pictures, research journals I have contributed to, pennants from universities I attended, a paper weight made of coal with the West Virginia state emblem that my grandfather gave me, a family bible, favorite books, and pieces of children’s literature. In teams, students are given one or two artifacts with the task of identifying the object and then they come up with ideas of what it tells about me. Following the brainstorming time, each team reports to the group what artifact they investigated and what hypotheses they came up with. As they report, I either confirm their assumptions or make corrections to their ideas. With careful observation, it is amazing what the students are able to conclude about who I am. They learn I come from a family of West Virginia coal miners, they identify my research interests, what religion I practice, my favorite things to do with my family, and so on. Following the activity, I ask my students, “Is this social studies?” We discuss that one important way to learn about a person or culture is to study the artifacts that belong to that person or culture, while acknowledging that people and cultures are complex and cannot be reduced to these artifacts. This activity, however, gives elementary students the opportunity to develop skills in studying artifacts that can be built on throughout the year as they study various cultures and peoples. Students begin to develop an understanding of how artifacts are telling sources of information used by social scientists, while also establishing vital connections between teacher and students. For more about using artifacts, see chapter 24 in section 3. Activity 2: Let’s Get to Know You! Interviews, Introductions, and Movement Big Idea: I Am Both Alike and Different From Others Following my introduction through the artifact activity, I have the students get to know one another through interviews and introductions. The students are paired with a colleague they do not know and given a Venn diagram that says We Are All Alike and We Are All Different at the top. Their task is to have a 5 minute conversation with their partner and identify at least three similarities and three differences between them. As they talk and ask each other questions, they record their findings on the Venn diagram. After the 5 minute time limit, we go around the room and each person introduces her or his partner with one telling about their similarities and one telling about their differences. Most have many more then three similarities and differences recorded, but in the interest of time I ask them to select the three most fascinating. The students and I make many connections with one another that otherwise may have never been known. For example, students may identify someone else who enjoys the same author or has traveled to the same foreign country. Meanwhile, I learn a great deal about my students’ interests, passions, and cultural backgrounds. Following the sharing, I have students find some personal space in the room with their partner and ask them to stand toe to toe. For every difference they were able to identify, they will take that many steps backward and then for every similarity they found to take a step forward. It is great fun to watch them, especially when some end up hugging one another! We then have a discussion about what this activity illustrates. Most often students discuss how they were surprised at how many similarities and differences they were able to discover with their partner. Some realize that they were more similar to their partner then they realized, while others talk about the surprising differences that were discussed. Some focus on details like hobbies while others delve more deeply into different political, religious, and moral values. We discuss this too. I often have to direct their attention back to the movement activity and ask, “What happened when you and your partner focused on only your differences?” “What happened when you and your partner focused on your similarities?” “What does this mean to you?” They are able

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to articulate through the activity that if they focused solely on their differences this drew them apart, but discovering their similarities brought them back together. This notion of searching for common ground is important to living, working, and playing together in a community, especially in multicultural environments. However, it is important to include in this student discussion the problem of intractable difference that they face within a democratic society and the classroom; that is, things they could never agree upon. Sometimes the differences we encounter with one another are deeply significant and should not be brushed aside or simplified, but living in a liberal democratic society necessitates that individuals explore even difficult differences and are able to participate in public arena negotiations and peaceful resolutions even when they encounter intractable difference. I ask my students, what do you want your students to understand about problem solving in the midst of differences? I look for my students to understand that some individual beliefs are intolerable to others; for example, the death penalty. Slavery was once both tolerated and legal and intolerance helped change the law. Conflict and intolerance are thus necessary to democracy. The first step toward solving challenging problems of differences is to begin by identifying common beliefs, principles, and desired outcomes and then second, as possible solutions are generated, they should be evaluated based on core democratic values and ideals. The result is that some things are considered undemocratic. I have students brainstorm questions they would pose to students as they problem solve in the classroom that would focus them on these ideas. Some questions they have generated are: “What might be the consequences of each possible solution on all the persons involved?” “Will the solution help or hinder the realization of democratic values such as liberty, the common good, and fairness?” I conclude the activity by stating that careful planning and attention to the big ideas of the social studies allows teachers to accomplish classroom community building while leading students to important social studies understandings. I also share with my students some good pieces of children’s literature that they may want to use with their students as they explore these ideas: We Are All Alike, We Are All Different by The Cheltenham Elementary School Kindergartners and Laura Dwight (2002), All the Colors We Are by Katie Kissinger (2002), and People by Peter Spier (1988). I also usually assign them to read chapter 2 “Setting Up For Success” in Seeing the Whole Through Social Studies by Tarry Lindquist (1995). This reading provides additional rationale and ideas for how social studies can be an integral part of setting up a successful classroom. References Brophy, J., & Alleman, J. (2007). Powerful social studies for elementary students (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). The right to learn: A blueprint for creating schools that work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Teaching Resources Cheltenham Elementary School Kindergartners, & Dwight, L. (2002). We are all alike, We are all different. New York: Scholastic. Kissinger, K. (2002). All the colors we are: The story of how we get our skin color. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press. Lindquist, T. (1995). Seeing the whole through social studies. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Spier, P. (1988). People. New York: Doubleday.

33 Who Are We? Exploring Our Class as a Cultural Demographic John D. Hoge

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: I (Culture), IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 5 (Motivation and Classroom Management), 6 (Communication Skills), 7 (Instructional Planning), 8 (Assessment), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: diversity, first day, consciousness raising, cultures, student-centered, students’ lives and experiences, identity, democratic education, perspective consciousness The following “Who Are We?” activity is one that I have successfully used for over 20 years in a variety of courses designed for future elementary, middle, and high school teachers. However, with appropriate modifications this activity can be used with any 4th through 12th grade social studies class. The activity sprang from my desire to better know my students and my realization that they did not naturally have substantial insights into their own cultural ways of being. I typically encourage students to “push the envelope” of what they might consider to be polite inquiries concerning their culture, but I leave the ultimate decisions up to them as they form groups to investigate various aspects. “Pushing the envelope” of acceptability is an important tactic since students quickly learn that very little is off limits if we learned to address one another with respect and keep our focus on ideas rather than individuals’ personalities. This activity is helpful especially when done in the beginning of a social studies methods or multicultural education course. It requires at least 15 students but works best with 25 to 30. It takes 1½ to 2 hours and can be split across two sessions if necessary. The purpose is to engage students in a structured social inquiry that focuses on the diversities that exist within their life experiences and culture. This lesson also serves as a “social icebreaker” and helps establish an open classroom environment. The Teaching After I have taken care of any necessary administrative tasks in the first class, I explain that the “social” part of social studies implies that we are concerned with our society and the quality of life that people experience as Americans. At this point, I write the words Who Are We? on the board and challenge the students to tell me what they know about our dominant culture:

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What would you tell a visitor from Mars about our culture? What might the visitor infer about us by simply looking at our group? How might we explain these traits? How are our Mexican or Canadian neighbors, for example, different from Americans? How is our culture in the South (or Northeast, etc.) different from our culture in the Midwest, for example? How has our culture changed in the past 30 or 50 years? What are some current trends that are taking place within our culture? What is causing these trends? I try to limit this Q & A discussion to no more than 10 minutes and ask “easy” questions, affirming reasonable answers, since it is important that students not feel intimidated or ignorant. I also explain that social studies is about people and that most social studies teachers attempt to get to know their students because they are genuinely interested in them and feel that they can do a better job of teaching them if they know something about who they are. I request help from the class to identify a set of categories that individuals in the class would like to know about our group and I post these words around the phrase Who Are We? Some typical categories are hobbies, favorite movies, favorite books, favorite songs/groups, favorite foods, foreign travel, religious affiliation/experiences, home town origin, pet stories/experiences, political affiliation/experiences, worst/best high school experiences, “love status,” drug use attitudes/experiences, family secrets/ problems, health care policy, labor unions, and best/worst parts of America. I sometimes may have to add the more “dicey” or controversial categories. I explain that the students are going to form into two- or three-person survey teams to design a set of questions to illuminate these aspects of our culture, pointing out that some of the categories that are naturally more controversial may be more fun than others and also may require that a survey team adopt procedures that protect students’ identities. Students themselves will be in charge of posing their survey questions and adopting a survey method that gathers the needed data. At this point I typically bring up religion, politics, or love status and ask the students to help generate a few of the questions that might go on a survey of these aspects of our culture. They usually begin with the most obvious questions such as, “What is your religious (or political party) affiliation? and “Are you dating, married, divorced?” If they have difficulty going beyond these informative but none-too-exciting questions, I drop some “ethical bombs” to spur their thinking, such as “Do you believe God is aware of your conduct?” “Do you believe in angels?” “How often do you attend services at your mosque/synagogue/church?” “How often do you pray?” “How important is the religious affiliation of our president?” “Could you vote for a Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or Atheist president?” “How would you describe your own political party and how would you describe the opposition party?” “Which of these candidates (show list) would you vote for?” “Are you registered to vote? If not, why?” “Do you support gay marriage?” “Are you opposed to premarital sex?” “Have you ever dated more than one person at a time?” Sometimes the students simply don’t want to use any of the more “juicy” categories and questions that I suggest for the surveys but I do not force them to. Students are then allowed to select the category that they want to work with. Many will select safe topic categories, but some will jump at the opportunity to “push the envelope” and take categories such as love status, politics, and religion. As students go to work drafting their survey

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questions, I point out that each group should be considering how they will aggregate and display their data. We also consider methods to protect confidentiality and make sure that everyone has a chance to respond to the survey questions. All survey groups are visited prior to being allowed to implement their survey. This visit is designed to ensure that each group understands how their questions will function and how they will aggregate, display, and report their findings. Occasionally I find a group that needs help creating a more interesting survey and I sometimes find a group that has crossed an admittedly fuzzy threshold of acceptability. If you teach in a room with computers, students can easily do this on surveymonkey.com or related sites, although some of these sites may require a subscription. The data collection can now begin and it is likely to be chaotic for some 30 minutes. This is also the point when some groups realize that they are not going to get answers from all of their classmates and that certain items are not functioning as they desired. These are useful results for they will provide a basis for discussing the inevitable limitations of surveys during the debriefing of the activity. Once data collection is over, groups re-form to determine how best to display and share their findings. If chart paper has been used, we post the completed graphs and charts around the room. Some students like to use the statistical and graphing functions of a spreadsheet and many turn to PowerPoint as their preferred presentation platform. As the charts and graphs go up, ask each student to silently make a generalization about what the data shows: “The majority of us…” To stress cultural diversity, I also ask students to identify how they are different from the rest of the class on at least five aspects of this culture survey. As each group presents the results of their survey I urge the entire group to stand and take part in sharing their group’s survey results. I use these presentations as opportunities to talk about what we know about American society and to challenge the students to learn more about these topics. Groups are also asked to describe any data collection problems or display problems they experienced and I use these difficulties to talk about the limitations of all surveys. Beyond setting the tone for an open classroom environment, this activity also models some important methodological considerations and problems related to the design and execution of popular political, economic, and social issues surveys. Matters of privacy invasion, confidentiality, anonymity, and “social demand characteristics” of some survey questions all come into play as groups design and implement their surveys. At the end of this lesson students will identify at least five ways in which they are similar to and different from their fellow classmates and write a 1 to 2 page statement that describes what they like or dislike about their culture. I typically conclude this activity by talking about how it can be modified for use with students at different grade levels and writing these suggested modifications on the board. Students often realize that it would be important to use simpler and perhaps less controversial categories, that younger students would need much more assistance in formulating their survey questions, designing their data collection procedures, and in processing and presenting their findings. As an assignment for our next class I ask the students to write a 1 to 2 page paper that describes what they like and dislike about our contemporary American society using information from the surveys and class discussion if they wish, but not limited to these perspectives. We discuss these at the start of the next class and I stress that it is important for them as future teachers not only to help students understand our diverse culture, but to encourage students to seek to live up to the democratic cultural ideals that they have helped to define and must seek to actualize and defend in our society.

34 It’s All in Your Name Seeing Ourselves in Historical and Cultural Context Özlem Sensoy

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: I (Culture), IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institution). INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategy), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: first day, issues-centered approach, cultural context, perspective consciousness, identity, students’ lives and experiences, identity, history This chapter describes a first day activity, called “What’s in a Name?” that aims to combine getting to know one another with introducing some key concepts. The activity was inspired by two articles by the same title. The first is high school English teacher Diane Shearer’s 1998 article in Teaching Tolerance. In this article, Shearer describes how she turned a student roster routine into a writing lesson for her twelfth graders who learned and wrote about the history, linguistic norms, and cultural patterns influencing their given, sur and nicknames. The second inspiration is journalist Karen Lincoln Michel’s “What’s in a Name ?” in American Indian. Michel described the Ho-Chunk naming ceremony, and her own Ho-Chunk name, Wakanchunk Mahnee (Holy Walker) given by her grandfather. It is this name that Michel describes as defining her identity as a human being, and shaping of her professional life. Inspired by Shearer and Michel, I conduct my own “What’s in a Name” without announcing it as an activity. I begin class by introducing myself in my role and identity as a university professor. I describe my position and responsibilities (which many students have never heard described before). After this brief opening about my professional identity, I shift to a pronunciation exercise about my name, Özlem, and how the “Ö” is pronounced like “eu” in the French, deux. Students repeat, and it offers them a safe way to practice saying a name that many have never heard, much less uttered before. I talk about writing my name and discuss how in North America the “dots” are often absent from the “O.” I talk about the script change in Turkish, which is now written in a modified Latin script, but up until the 1920s was written in a modified Arabic script. I wonder aloud about what that means for me today. How is the way my name is written connected to the way my name is spoken? I talk about the process of reclaiming the correct (or, a correct) spelling, and why such a process was significant for me, and about the etymology of my name. It is Turkish, and in Turkic languages, nouns and verbs have roots and suffixes that change them into combinations of meaning. For example, the noun root of my name is “Öz+” means “essence.” Adding the “le-“ turns the noun into a verb: Özle- which means “to miss” or “to long for” (and implied: to long for one’s completion, essence). The final “–m” turns it back into a verbal noun, meaning “the state of longing, missing.” Although loosely translated, Özlem means “to hope for”

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or “to long for,” at a deeper, etymological level one can discern the relationships between words and a worldview. In this case, the hoping or longing for something is deeply connected to a subject’s essential being. After this not more than 10 minute discussion, I say something like, “Now let’s learn a little bit about each other…” and I begin the roll call, inviting each student to “tell us about your name” leaving it up to them to share whatever and however much they know about their name. Sometimes prompts like the following are helpful: “Who named you?” “What does your name mean?” “Do you have a nickname?” “If so, how did you get it?” “What do you know about the roots of your name?” Sometimes students are struck by how little they know about their names, and this too is significant. But we endure, asking questions about cultural norms, and some engaging patterns among students’ names inevitably emerge. The key is to foster a tone of curious wonder, not opinion or judgment about a lack of knowledge. A light tone is a formative part of this process. It is critical that this tone be set. I first wonder aloud about my own name and cultural connections before asking students to volunteer theirs. I also make space for us to do this activity as a whole group. In that first session, I want our focus to be tight and to ensure equal, quality time to each student. This is a key trust-building measure, for in future sessions we will ask harder questions of ourselves, and our own feelings about one another and about upholding or challenging the normative assumptions embedded in our schools and the curriculum. In the name discussion, we often wonder about: • The connections between religion and culture, since many religion-influenced naming patterns emerge. For example, the middle names Kaur (for girls) and Singh (for boys) are signifiers of Sikh heritage, just as Paul and John have theological significance for families of Christian heritage. • What has been lost by institutional practices (such as immigration procedures or officers) that shortened or “corrected” the names of an ancestor, such as a Pavl “corrected” to Paul, and the inability of certain sounds or characters to be represented in “new” languages in “new” lands? • Naming rituals such as being named in honor of a beloved relative or close friend, or a family pattern—“…all my siblings’ names start with a P….” • The norms of marriage. Who changes surnames? Why? What are contemporary norms of hyphenation about? What norms of naming apply to same-sex partners whose marriages are recognized in Canada? The institutional profit connected to norms such as getting a new driver’s license and other documents reprinted? For whom are these significant issues? When a student inevitably says, “I don’t know, my mom and dad just liked the name,” I ask them if they have ever had a pet, and how long they spent thinking about the perfect name. Or, I ask what term of endearment they prefer to call a loved one (or prefer to be called), and what anchors these preferences. It does not take much to shift students’ attention back to the significance of names and of naming rituals in cultural contexts. The Connections to Key Concepts in Social Education In addition to getting to know one another, I have found this activity to powerfully connect us with key concepts we take up later in the semester. Also, the activity models a style of thinking I expect from students where much depends on one’s ability to articulate and understand the multiplicity

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of social location. If, as social educators, we believe that democracy and education are intimately connected, then teachers have an undeniable responsibility to model the type of perspective-taking practice vital to the health of pluralistic aspiring democracies, such as Canada. I often refer back to the example of our names to get at a key social sciences concept: the tension between me as individual, and the multiple social groups I belong to. Understanding these tensions is my way of unfixing the facts-based knowledge process. I want students to see the fluidities of their own identities and from there, begin to unravel the complexities of their experiences as shaped by the identities that emerge in a given social space. I conclude the activity by making this connection for students. Yes, our names represent our individuality. And, our names simultaneously represent the multiple social groups we belong to such as gender, ethnocultural, religious, linguistic, and other group identities. When meritocracy begins to creep into any future conversations, I can often remind the class about the “simultaneity” principle; for example, how might the “problem” of student poor achievement be rooted in both individual and simultaneously socially constructed dynamics? Thus, for the social education approach I adopt (which is an issues-based, critical multicultural education approach), it is essential that students think and speak critically about both individual traits and challenges, as well as about shared social group identities and conditions. This activity also aligns with a critical multicultural education approach to social education. Banks (2004a) explains, “Each individual belongs to several groups at the same time. An individual may be White, Catholic, female, and middle class, all at the same time” (p. 14). Part of the skill-development necessary to further an issues-based approach is what Evans, Newmann, and Saxe (1996) describe as “developing skills in perspective consciousness, the ability to recognize, examine, evaluate, and appreciate multiple perspectives on a particular issue or concern, including perspectives critical of mainstream institutions and social practice” (p. 2). Before stepping into the perspectives of others, students must first demonstrate an ability to recognize, examine, evaluate, and appreciate the lenses that shape their own way of looking at an issue and also understand that any individual has multiple lenses, perspectives, or standpoints that emerge differently in different contexts, an insight from poststructuralism. As Freire (1993) explains, “In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (p. 83). By beginning with the example of social identities embedded in our names, we can then move to more complex conditions for perspective taking within aspects of education and schooling including the curriculum, the standards, schools, students, and communities. Also, there is an equally important need for both the teacher and students to develop perspective-taking skills—especially those skills to see one’s own “normative” experiences. As Banks (2004b) explains, the mainstream curriculum has negative implications for all students. For students who experience privilege, the mainstream curriculum often offers a simplistic presentation of key social issues. While for students who experience oppression along historically marginalized group identities, the curriculum often does not represent their groups’ contributions to human history, social and scientific achievements, and exploration. Thus, the ability to identify and ask questions about missing perspectives, and to pose critical questions about the perspectives that are there, are skills that student teachers must themselves demonstrate if they are to lead young people through the same process. According to Banks (2004b), “to participate effectively in democratic social change, students must be taught social criticism and helped to understand the inconsistency between our ideals

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and social realities” (p. 253). The “What’s in a Name?” activity is one way to have student teachers enter into social critique through an awareness of the relationships between our individual opportunities in democratic societies, and our social group-determined opportunities, based in historical, political, and culturally rooted privileges. By excavating some of the historical, political, and cultural dimensions underlying students’ identities, I hope to introduce a set of issues to return to in deeper and more rigorous ways. References Banks, J. A. (2004a). Multicultural education: Characteristics and goals. In J. A. Banks & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (5th ed., pp. 3–30). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Banks, J. A. (2004b). Approaches to multicultural curriculum reform. In J. A. Banks & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (5th ed., pp. 242–264). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Evans, R. W., Newmann, F. M., & Saxe, D.W. (1996). Defining issues-centered education. In R. W. Evans & D. W. Saxe (Eds.), Handbook on teaching social issues (pp. 2–5). Washington, DC: NCSS. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum.

35 Seeing the Hidden Curricula of Social Spaces and Places Elizabeth E. Heilman

Context: TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (People, Places, and Environments), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategy), 7 (Instructional Planning), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: ethical-political valuation, critical thinking, student-centered, democracy, citizenship, power/authority, consciousness raising, critical literacy, photographs, pictures, prejudice, racism In this chapter I describe an assignment in which students learn to use the tools of social construction and deconstruction and come to better understand how power functions through culture and how “hidden curricula” are taught in different spaces. I believe that one of the most important educative techniques for democracy is to be able to critically deconstruct social meanings and to reflect on how we come to understand ourselves and our worlds. As we make ordinary choices as citizens in any particular circumstance and, more broadly, as we live and imagine a life plan and a good society, we make reference to the language, discourses, concepts, ideals, archetypes, stereotypes, and images available in our culture—these, despite immediate appearances, are not neutral. Many important civic concepts—what power and authority are, how one should behave, who people are, what gender, class, and culture mean—are learned most powerfully through the hidden curricula and through the conventions and assumptions imbedded in language and culture. Our culture and our language inevitably contain biases and even violence and dehumanization; the very conceptual tools we think with contain prejudices. In preparation for this assignment that involves capturing educative public spaces with photography and critically assessing their discourses, the students explore Daniel Chandler’s Semiotics for Beginners (2008) Web site, and read Stuart Hall’s first chapter in Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997) along with my chapters “Little Hegemonies and Transgressions of Family”(2007) on the hegemonic representation of families, to exemplify the deconstructive process. We review the deconstructive activities in the Hall text and I show additional images and scenes on PowerPoint so that we can practice analyzing—what are the elements in the image (signs) and what does it represent (signifier). We consider what sort of discourses, hegemonic ideals, binaries, and myths are suggested by each image. What then is the hidden curriculum? Magazine advertisements are good choices for this activity. This prepares students for the assignment below.

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Conceptual Tools for Deconstructing Hidden Curricula At the most macrolevel the overarching structuralist concept is hegemony. According to its originator, Antonio Gramsci, this is the permeation throughout society of an entire system of values, attitudes, beliefs, and practices that have the effect of supporting unequal power relations. A hegemonic society employs discourses as the “organizing principles” of everyday life. A discourse is a system of signs and signifiers, which means words and images (signs), what they connote (signifiers) that establish the boundaries for making sense of the world. A discourse is a whole way of speaking and thinking. When discourses are internalized they are hegemonic. When they come to be felt as “common sense,” they create a culture and social structure that actually favors those with power but this appears as the natural or neutral order. There is generally a dominant discourse in society—for example, in the United States I could say it is neoliberalism—as well as subdiscourses such as progressive discourse, consumer discourse, environmental discourse, medical discourse, academic discourse, or sports discourse. One way to understand and break down a discourse is to begin to notice its important oppositions or binary structures of meaning and value. These binaries could include, for example pass/fail, heath/illness, Black/White, public/ private, or male/female. With deconstructive analysis you can ask how these terms are positioned within a field so that one of each pair always appears to be the normal, the right, and the only one in a situation. When you ask questions such as: “Why does passing and failing matter? How is passing like failing and failing like passing?” an opposition that seems true, becomes instead a zone of exploration in which the basic orthodoxies of the discourse can be contested. A hegemonic representation is smaller than a discourse—it is usually more of a noun, a particular concept like ideal family, good student, blond, nigger, or patriotism, and it is held up within discourses and their binaries. Hegemonic representations are attempts to dominate a field of discursivity, “to arrest the flow of difference [in order] to construct a center” (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 112). To understand a field of discursivity for a concept, imagine a diagram where you could plot all meanings and definitions for a term and the hegemonic meaning would be at the center and the more creative or radical meanings are at the edge. For “family,” a married couple with two kids, born 3 years apart are at center as the hegemonic ideal and a “family” with two gay men without kids would be at the periphery. Fifty years ago they would not have been in the discursive field for this concept at all, since too many language users would say you cannot use that image for this word. Yet social change has pushed the boundaries of the discursive field for the concept of “family.” Because these fields are socially constructed, you can, over time, push the margins and change or diffuse the center. At the same time, however, if your individual representation moves far enough away from how the listener imagines the center and sets the boundaries, you do not claim a new meaning. Instead, you, your representation, or your claim disappear instead. Things that we say are no less “real” than physical things that we do, since both are given “reality” by their interpretation. That is why a damaging hegemonic social construction is a form of real violence. When I say or think “Layla, that nigger” I create Layla as the nigger. When I say, kike, I might help create the person, the nonperson, and the story that comes with the Auschwitz narrative. When I say, Jewish Human Rights, I might help create the people and the story that come to destroy Auschwitz. Further, right now as you read, the term Jew inescapably includes the significations of kike and rights. We do not have to actively invoke representations behind words. Instead, we cannot escape them. We simply cannot think of a Black person without the nigger in our head. We cannot quite think of a blond woman without Barbie. We cannot think of a “professor” without thinking of an older man with glasses and a beard.

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A hegemonic ideal is in effect and has a powerful influence when a certain idea, group, or type “naturally” seems better or right and everyone knows what it is; a hegemonic representation is a more general term and it is in effect when everyone comes up with a similar image and interpretation in response to a simple word like blond or scientists, or family. Hegemonic ideals and representations are in effect when most people give “spontaneous consent” to the “general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 12). An important point here is that you do not personally have to feel you believe in it for it to affect you and be operating as a truth that affects what you can communicate. You can tell it is hegemonic when you have to recognize it because it is ubiquitous. So if I were to ask you to describe what society thinks the ideal man, good student, or typical immigrant is like, and you all came up with something similar, you would demonstrate the presence of a hegemonic construct. We think with reference to a cultural storehouse of pictures, stories, and feelings, and through psychoanalytic compulsions, not just rational ideas. I think of what Roland Barthe calls a myth as the story and feelings that go with hegemonic ideals. In “On Myth” Barthe explains that we have “myths of Order” that are necessary for social control and cohesion. We use them to both to interpret action, objects and scenes, and to suggest choices. They organize understanding over time. They have a plot. We are generally proud to fulfill an ideal or a myth and ashamed to not do so. Motives can have a multitude of sources and they always occur in the discursive context given to us. Another helpful conceptual tool is place which signifies the meanings associated with a “space,” physical or material. Critical perspectives of geography explore the role discourses, ideals, and binaries play in taking “material spaces” and creating “metaphoric spaces.” Place is “socially produced and reproduced” (Soja, 1989) and is recursively tied to identity and interpretation. Also, because place and space are not neutral terrains, neither are the constructions of borders or the identities they define. The hidden curriculum refers to how all of these messages are communicated by the organization and operation of a school, a place, or an institution apart from the obvious function or official purpose. The messages of the hidden curriculum maintain hegemony and implicitly form your attitudes, values, identity, and behavior. The Assignment—Analytic Tools in Action: Deconstructing the Hidden Curriculum of a Place I ask students to use cameras to document and deconstruct any public space or a “placed” event and consider how it is educative in some way, keeping in mind that most if not all spaces have a hidden curriculum and can be “read” and be educative. It can be a museum, a football game, a store, part of a school, a clinic, a hotel, a dorm, a gym, a library, a public health clinic, the food stamps office, a bank, a real estate office, a community center. In this assignment they need about two dozen pictures (digital or one roll of 20–24 exposures). There is no need for permission to take pictures in public places, but I tell them that if they are challenged they should explain that they are looking at the place anthropologically, for a school assignment. I ask them to mount the prints in a “poster session” format that is on a board and write captions or explanations for the photos that include at least a few quotes from the readings. However, the written material on the poster must be covered by paper flaps so that we as a class can look first at the photos and later at the captions. Also, I ask them to write a 1000-word essay to explain it all. The written directions I provide begin with the following observation.

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All places will “tell” us something about the gender, age, social class, culture, and expected behavior of those who come here—who belongs and who does not belong. There are also specific hidden curricula for specific places. For example, some possible concepts in a school lobby are: success, punctuality, citizenship, competition, authority, patriotism. Neighborhood: ideal family, recreation, home, community, public/private boundaries. Nature center: nature, ecology, wild, Native American, science, inquiry. Coffee shop: technology, leisure, economics, and developing nations (free trade coffee), coolness, health. My written directions next ask students to consider some of the following questions: “What is explicitly and implicitly ‘taught’ here? What people, concepts, and behavior matter here and how do you know this?” I also ask students what dominant discourses operate in this place and whether hegemonic ideals, concepts, or counterhegemonic views are present. I have students describe how they understand the discursive field of these major “hidden curriculum” concepts and whether the representations in this place are hegemonic or not. In these descriptions, I have students examine whether binaries are reinforced (legal/illegal, public/private, man made/nature etc.) and how this space and place suggest values, how they control behavior, and whether surveillance or authority are present. In addition, I push students on the question of how this place might contribute to the production of schoolish “discipline,” such as deferred gratification, patience, hierarchy, respect for authority—where it takes place and who is involved in teaching and learning it. My students explore different ways in which power relations might be present in the values implicitly expressed by places, gendering of the place, and in the behavior and forms of knowledge suggested by being in this place. In addition, I ask my students to consider exactly how some spaces are constructed to shape identities—they can consider female domains such as the fabric store, for example—and to explore how different groups relate to the place and the ways in which this process might lead to unequal social relations. They are asked to critically evaluate the different ways in which cultural identities are thought of as related to places and to provide photo examples to illustrate their points in considering what makes something a public space, an economic space, or a private space. Furthermore, I have them examine what the boundaries are within the place, how it is subdivided, and what the divisions suggest. I ask my students how there might be spaces within spaces: private within public, public within economic, male within female, old within young. To conclude, I have them consider an historical perspective, and to show how any changes (like changing demographics or economic activities) might contribute to the changing character/meaning of a place. For example, I ask them to consider how the character of a place and daily interaction in or with it can change as a result of globalization, deindustrialization or the development of technology or new electronic media. Students bring these projects to class and we view them museum style, first with the interpretations covered and then students uncover the captions and explain their work. As we do this, it becomes clear that what appear as neutral, ordinary places are more obviously political and power-laden places. With multiple projects in the room, the influence of implicit social constructions and the hidden curriculum is suddenly much clearer. If we want a less controlled and hegemonic society, it is exactly these kinds of projects and reflections that help us learn to push the boundaries of language, representation, and patterns of emotional responses, in order to create new thoughts, new identities, new places, and a more just world.

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References Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (H. Quintin & G. Nowell Smith (Ed. & Trans.). New York: International. Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2001) Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso. Soja, E. W. (1989) Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. New York: Verso.

Teaching Resources Chandler, D. (2008). Semiotics for beginners. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html Hall, S. (Ed). (1997). Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Open University Press. Heilman, E. (2007). Little hegemonies and transgressions of family: Tales of pride and prejudice. In T. Turner-Vorbeck (Ed.), Other kinds of families: Diversity in school and culture (pp. 7–27). New York: Teachers College Press.

36 Teaching from a Critical Global Perspective Investigating Power and Marginalization Binaya Subedi

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: I (Culture), III (People, Places, and Environments), IV (Power, Authority, and Governance), IX (Global Connections) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 6 (Communication Skills), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: perspective consciousness, marginalization, film, issue-oriented approach, literature, indigenous peoples, sociological content knowledge, anthropological content knowledge, historical content knowledge, ethical-political valuation Global perspectives are often marginalized in multicultural education and in social studies methods courses. Even when global histories and cultures are taught, the perspectives of diverse people of color in the world are often missing. Unfortunately, U.S. schools often emphasize selective dimensions of global knowledge that construct international aspects of differences as exotic and inferior. A lack of critical conversation about global issues and events can lead students to develop stereotypes and prejudice. The dichotomous approach to representing cultures as superior or inferior comes from influences of the historical legacy of Western colonial and neocolonialism which are deeply entrenched within educational discourses (Smith, 1999). Rarely have I encountered students in my methods courses who have unlearned their Whiteness in the global context (for a more detailed discussion of this issue, please see Segall chapter 44). Since students in U.S. society are often socialized into viewing the United States as the political and the cultural center of the world, it is not uncommon for students to take less seriously the knowledge they encounter about non-Western societies. However, through this lesson and the overall orientation of the course, I expect students to learn to critique dominant forms of global knowledge and identify useful resources on how global societies interpret culture, history and experience. I have found that teaching texts written by authors from outside of the Anglo and American traditions is fraught with challenges since the students that I teach have rarely been exposed to texts that have been authored by people from Asia, Africa, or the Americas. For me, teaching from a critical global perspective means foregrounding issues of marginalization, power and oppression, particularly in relation to social differences such as race, ethnicity, gender, economic inequities, religion, etc. With these concepts in mind, I teach about Nugi Garimara’s (Pilkington, 2002) book, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, as a way to help students understand themes and events in relation to oppression in the global context. Utilizing oral history as a methodology, the book provides Aboriginal interpretation of Australian history and helps 164

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students recognize the challenges indigenous people have faced in gaining self-determination. A film was made based on the book and I also use this. Set in the 1930s Western Australia, the book highlights broader issues of displacement, White doctrine on racial purity, and how the institutionalization of Christianity, the English language policy, and related law impacted the everyday lives of Aboriginal people. The book documents the hardships faced by three girls (Molly, Gracie, and Daisy), aged 14, 11, and 8, who were part of the Stolen Generation forcibly removed from their communities by Anglo Australian government officials because of their mixed racial heritage. The girls, including the author’s mother, Molly, escape from a prisonlike settlement and walk back barefoot to their community, following the 1000-mile fence for many weeks in the desert. Unlike mainstream narratives on experience, the book does not valorize the deed of an individual but focuses on the collective ordeals of the girls. At the end of the text, the author, who was also removed by government authorities from her mother, provides information on how the three girls led their lives as adults and contextualizes how they had been “educated” to serve White communities. Overall, the narrative helps students recognize how dominant conceptions of education often colonized indigenous people and how disenfranchised people face enormous challenges in preserving their culture and ways of knowing. A critical theme in the book is the recovery of silenced history and experience which open up spaces for the students to consider topics such as marginalization, cultural renewal, and agency. To this end, I emphasize the following topics for students to reflect on: global dimensions of marginalized people’s history experiences; the legitimization of knowledge through experience; individual vs. collective identities (gender, indigenous, etc); the power of marginalized peoples to question and resist dominant practices; reasons why the experiences shared in the book are typically unknown to students; connection between beliefs of racial superiority and power; and the range of ways that people can be physically, culturally, and emotionally violated. As part of the course assignment, students identify paragraphs and sentences that they find useful for the purpose of classroom discussion. To help students understand Aboriginal perspectives on history, I ask students to reflect on the specific incidents or events the author emphasizes. I similarly raise broader questions such as: Why was the book written? How is the book unique in its approaches to writing about experience and history, particularly in relation to oppression? In what ways does the author utilize indigenous style of writing? How is the narrative approach different in comparison to writing methods used by European-American historians? What sources does the author rely on to write indigenous history? How is gender contextualized in the narrative? Why does the author emphasize that Aboriginal people gain “cultural strength from the land”? (cited in Watson, 2002, p. 33). What implications does the text have in contemporary society in regards to teaching about race, gender, culture, and generally about social justice? In the past, students have been less committed to reading the substantive aspect of the text and were more invested in sharing how they felt about the author’s writing style. However, close to the end of the class discussion of the book, I invite students to critically reflect on why they may have considered the text to be “hard to get through, difficult to read,” Or, as one student put, why some students are “unable to connect with the story.” Or what factors may have contributed to their being ambivalent about how the experience was narrated in the text? Did the discussion of race influence how students responded to the book? For me, some students’ views about the text lacking in emotional appeal helps us think critically about why they like what they like and how and why authors use different approaches to narrating experiences. Undoubtedly, the students’ responses also reflect that many had limited or no exposure to texts written by diverse authors, particularly authors who use indigenous expressions or terms to frame their narratives. Indeed, the telling of the experiences in the book is mediated by cultural influences since the narrative

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relies on dreams, visions, and indigenous forms of knowledge to frame Aboriginal ways of life. In the text, history does not begin with the White Australian narrative on conquest but instead unfolds with how the Nyungar people, an indigenous community, coped with the arrival of the Europeans who named and claimed the region for Britain. It highlights how these indigenous people were immensely impacted by the dispossession of their ancestral land, including how the enforcement of English laws gave White settlers new ways to control and punish indigenous people who resisted the occupation of their land. For the purpose of class discussion, I also ask students to consider how nonmainstream authors negotiate the audience they write for. This helps students understand how authors may have multiple audiences in mind when they write texts and how different audiences, depending on their knowledge or experience, interpret texts differently. I supplement the reading with the book-based film Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) to help students recognize the power of the visual medium in retelling experiences that have been silenced in the past. Students then write a critical reflection guided by the following questions: Why was the film made? In what ways was the film effective (sound, music, expressions, scenery, etc) in portraying the experiences of Aboriginal communities? How (and why) is the plot of the movie different from the plot of the book? Furthermore, I ask students to discuss poignant scenes such as (1) the forced removal of the girls by government authorities; (2) White official who explains racial purity doctrine; (3) the home-coming of the girls; (4) or scenes that depict the differences of cultural values or beliefs between White and Aboriginal societies. Although the film utilizes conventional approach to film-making, it convincingly captures the ordeals faced by the girls. Students also view the segment that explores the director’s perspective on the film-making process, including how the director negotiated representation. The director also speaks about how the inclusion of the Aboriginal cast for the film was a significant part of film-making process since indigenous actors have often been silenced in films or documentaries about Australia. I invite students to consider why the director, as a White Australian male subject, faced challenges in directing a film that included an indigenous cast and which was based on a book written by an Aboriginal woman. A useful way to incorporate texts such as the Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence in social studies and multicultural education classrooms is by making connections to event-oriented or issuesoriented global oppression. Such issues are common across cultural contexts and teachers can use texts such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1959/1994) and R. K. Narayan’s Waiting for the Mahatma (1981) to address themes of European colonialism in the context of Africa and South Asia. Works of literature such as The Bone People, written by Maori author Keri Hulme, and autobiographical account I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (1984), similarly describe issues of oppression and agency in a range of national contexts. Overall, such texts help us redefine our understanding of global and provide multiple examples of how social justice and injustice are central to learning about global issues. References Achebe, C. (1959/1994).Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor Books. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous people. London: Zed. Watson, C. (2002). Nugi Garimara (Doris Pilkington) interviewed by Christine Watson. Hecate, 28(1), 23–38. Noyce, P. (Dir.). (2002). Rabbit-proof fence [DVD]. Miramax.

Teaching Resources Pilkington, D. (Nugi Garimara). (2002). Follow the rabbit-proof fence. Brisbane, Queensland: University of Queensland Press. Hulme, K. (1986). The bone people. New York: Penguin Books. Menchú, R. (1984). I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian woman in Guatemala. London: Verso Books. Narayan, R. K. (1981) Waiting for the mahatma. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

37 The Family History Project Uncovering the Personal as Political Nancye E. McCrary

Context: TE Elementary, Multicultural Education, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 4 (Instructional Strategy), 6 (Communication Skills), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: families; inquiry, technology/internet, geography, oral history, interviewing, identity, power/authority, diversity, race, cultural context, primary sources This project accomplishes multiple outcomes. Historical perspectives are personalized and opportunities for understanding time, continuity, and change are enriched. It also provides a situated context for talking about diversity, especially among cohorts of mostly homogenous teacher candidates. In fact, most of the National Social Studies thematic strands emerge as students complete and present their family histories. This project can foster deeper, and more generative understandings of cultural differences, civic ideals and practices, power and privilege, development and identity. The expectations for this assignment are understanding: (1) that culture is a system of beliefs, knowledge, institutions, customs/traditions, languages and skills shared by a group of people; (2) history is an account of human activities that is interpretive in nature; and (3) that a variety of tools (e.g., primary and secondary sources) are needed to understand historical events. It is a marvelous tool to make history come alive, especially for children. The project includes the following components: (1) research; (2) collecting, analyzing, and selecting artifacts; (3) using technology as a teaching and learning tool, as well as for presentation; and (4) writing a reflection on the educational opportunities and possible adaptations of this type of project for elementary social studies teaching and learning. I expect them to share the highlights by presenting and discussing the final product with the class. I encourage them to use a variety of media in this presentation, such as still photographs, video clips, original documents, voice-over sound, music and visual art. They may use PowerPoint, Moviemaker, Web site development, or any other program to create the presentation. They can also use a document viewer to project hard copy images. Our classroom is equipped with an online desktop computer, projector, and large screen; and in your own classroom, you may wish to limit or expand these presentation options based on what you have available. To begin the project, we review questions that can guide their research: What are the cultural origins of your family? Immigrants from what country, when, why? What are your family’s most valued family stories? How have family stories evolved over time? Were they altered, exaggerated, or was any critical information left out? What kinds of work have members of your family done? How did your family get to where they are now? What is your place/role in your family? What 167

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contributions did members of your family make? Are there any untold or incomplete stories? Who are your family heroes/heroines? What rituals extend over generations in your family? Rituals can be activities centered on holidays, meals, housekeeping, weddings, funerals, births, or anything that seems to be practiced across generations, time, and place. As they do their research, I ask them to reflect on: • • • •

Evidence: How do you “know” this? From where did this information come? Viewpoint: Whose story is this? Who is speaking and what is their perspective? Cause and Effect: What led up to the events you describe? What resulted? Importance: Who cares or why is it important, and to whom? What can be learned?

To complete this project, I ask my students to investigate family history through interviews with family members, searching old and recent photographs and other artifacts that represent their family history, customs, culture, beliefs, values, and contributions. Since some students were adopted, or grew up in multiple families or foster care, they define family as they wish. Further, if they are uncomfortable doing a family history project because their family situation seems unusual or particularly sensitive, I encourage them to be creative in thinking about how they might complete the requirements of this assignment. I reassure them that if their family history includes some disturbing information that makes them uncomfortable, they don’t have to share it. I remind them that as a teacher, it will be important to model respect for difference in families, including nontraditional families, families of choice or circumstance, and families with more or less privilege and income. As they research their own families, I remind them to think carefully about children from very different familial contexts and how you might adapt such a project for diverse learners. I ask them to interview family members, read old letters and investigate the history and geography of their families’ origins, going back in time as far as possible and using any sources available. They also read books and articles on important events that relate directly to their families’ experiences from a historical perspective. For example, if their ancestors came to the U.S. through Ellis Island, they might include some historical information on the experiences of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. They might also discuss the ways cultures in their families may have blended over time. I explain to them that through this project they will combine their own experiences and memories with photographs, documents, and stories told, heard, and remembered by and about family members to create a presentation for the class in some digital/electronic medium. Emphasis will be on the story they want to tell about their family that may include time lines, family tree(s), country(s) of origin, conditions of immigration to the United States, recurrent themes, occupations, military service, cultural practices, religious beliefs, etc. Reflection Since I teach in Kentucky, it is not uncommon for one student to present a history that includes ancestors owning slaves, while another shows an old photograph of the last slave in her family. Issues related to power, ethnicity, race, class, and gender will emerge in any class doing this project. The discussion that follows about such issues is rich and reflective. This project often affords an opportunity to talk about racially mixed families or the challenges of being the first to attend college. One semester, for example, a student framed her family history as the first time she understood the extent to which her family lived in poverty. The fact that she was the first to complete a secondary education over six generations of self-sufficient farmers had been constructed by her family as abandonment of family values. A significant outcome of this family history assignment is deeper understanding of issues

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of power and privilege. Students are often dismayed at their otherwise invisible differences. In Kentucky, for instance, there are striking economic disparities between descendents of coal mine owners and those of miners. There are students who have never traveled beyond their small rural communities who discover global connections in the immigration patterns of their ancestors or similarities and differences in farming or mining families throughout the world. Perhaps most valuable are the conversations this assignment inspires. Students interview family members, particularly parents, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, and distant cousins. Stories emerge, contrasting perspectives become apparent, and students find themselves interacting with the past and the present to make meaning and construct identities. This project thus centers on both the representational and interactional functions of narrative (Wortham, 2001). Students’ family histories represent the stories they choose to tell and become a basis for dialogic interaction on a range of social issues. This use of narrative encourages interpretation and imagination in representing human behavior and events as lived experience prompting learners to infer meanings that are not explicit (Bruner, 1990). As a fulcrum for dialogic interaction, the stories they tell and omit about their families create contexts for class discussion on diversity and representation as learners engage in reflective self-narrative. For example, one student included in her family history the fact that her mother is homeless. This disclosure moved the class not only to discuss homelessness, but also prompted discussion of the biases many have towards those living in poverty. The family history project encourages critical thinking, requires the integration of a variety of technologies, and situates the study of history, geography, economics, civics, and anthropological inquiry in contexts that are both personal and meaningful. The increasing cultural and economic disparity between teacher education students and the children they will teach might contribute to pedagogical approaches that can be characterized as promoting a spectator view of human differences. Without the ability to critically examine one’s own perspectives, pre-service teachers may be left to look on changing school environments as spectators, increasingly removed from the students they are preparing to teach and the contexts in which they will work. As spectators, pre-service teachers are unlikely to internalize issues of social justice, civic responsibility, and diversity. In programs where very little diversity exists among teacher candidates themselves, in-class discussions on diversity can become us and them conversations that further separate future educators from the students they will teach. Without teacher education students who represent a range of abilities, cultures, and perspectives, we are often left to talk about diversity in methods courses with little opportunity to interact in meaningful ways with those others we view as different from ourselves. Exploring and sharing one’s own family history encourages the kind of dialogue that mediates an understanding of diversity more effectively than talking about the differences of others. Both presenting and being audience for the family history presentations are key to the kinds of discussions that can change the way pre-service teachers think and talk about human differences. As one student said, “This project opened my eyes to a lot of differences that existed among my classmates. As similar as we look on the outside, I have found that we are actually a very diverse group who all have unique histories.” Such realizations prompt deeply personal conversations on difference that otherwise might have been more polite than authentic. In this way, the family history assignment provides a unique opportunity for teacher candidates to examine human differences as participants in the diversity of the world in which we live. References Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wortham, S. (2001). Narratives in action. New York: Teachers College Press.

38 Who Has a “Good” Family? Exploring Beliefs and Prejudices About Family Structures1 Tammy A. Turner-Vorbeck

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, K-6 NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 3 (Diverse Learners), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Instructional Planning), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: families, diversity, bias-reduction, prejudice, identity, students’ lives and experiences, marginalization, perspective consciousness, ethical-political valuation, creating teaching materials, film Teachers are often prepared to focus on important traditional diversity issues such as race, gender, culture, and language issues. Missing from this perspective is a consideration of family diversity; however, expanding the definition and scope of multicultural education curriculum holds the potential to prepare new teachers to practice diverse family inclusion in several ways: (1) by broadening preservice teacher awareness of diversity to include family structure diversity, since the composition of the American family has changed drastically and continues to evolve; (2) by assisting preservice teachers in discovering and examining their own prejudices concerning children from diverse family backgrounds and providing them with ways to address those biases; and (3) by exposing preservice teachers to ways to reflect upon their own thoughts and practices as well as ways to work collaboratively with others to raise awareness and solve problems. The Family Diversity Curriculum Unit Because of time constraints in any course curriculum, setting the stage for this unit that takes only several hours is very important. During the class session before the Family Diversity Unit, a brief introduction is provided, an attitudinal questionnaire is administered and collected (anonymity is maintained), and the short, foundational readings are assigned and provided (see “Materials” section). The Family Diversity Unit is then taught during the next class period(s), requiring a minimum of 2 hours of class time. Laying the Foundation After spending a few minutes on introductions (if any guest speakers are present), the overarching and focusing question for the unit is shared with students as a point of orientation: “How 170

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can teachers help their classrooms to become more inclusive and accepting environments for children from differing family structures just as we know they should be sensitive to the gender, racial, cultural, and language differences of students?” The opening query uniformly results in a majority of students admitting that they have not previously considered that family diversity would be a likely issue in their classrooms or in their curricula. Following the brief discussion of the introduction of the topic of family diversity, the objectives for the unit are shared with students: (1) develop an awareness and an initial understanding of the issue of family diversity; (2) discover our own opinions and biases on family diversity; (3) create/explore some tools for use in the classroom; and (4) reflect on our views of family diversity through journaling. Objective 1: Develop Awareness and Initial Understanding of Family Diversity To accomplish the first objective of developing an initial understanding of the topic, a very brief lecture is given to provide foundational information. The changing demographics of our nation’s school population are addressed, including the fact that less than 50% of children in schools in America are represented by a two biological, heterosexual parent family and that the trend away from traditional, nuclear families is increasing. This demonstrates the necessity for teachers to contemplate how they will address and work with issues of family diversity in their classrooms. A few short narratives (see Teacher Resources for an example), collected from people from nontraditional families, in which they shared some of their personal painful school experiences are read to the students to help to put a human face on the real consequences of teacher ignorance or indifference toward family diversity. Various forms of families are introduced (e.g., foster, adopted, step, grandparent/relative, gay/lesbian, interracial, etc.) to expose students to a wide variety of forms of family with which they might not have been familiar. To compliment descriptions of difference, a discussion of the unifying themes across families, is provided. This notion is based upon how families function with similar goals and purposes such as, “providing for basic needs, child rearing, socializing members, establishing and maintaining cultural traditions, and delegating responsibilities and roles.” Objective 2: Discover Student Opinions and Biases on Family Diversity The second objective is achieved through a guided discussion of the two assigned readings (shown in what follows) as well as discovery of the students’ own biases. The students are asked to write down their responses to this question: Being honest, what are some of the personal prejudices you hold or have previously held about nontraditional (single-parent, adoptive, gay/lesbian, stepparent, multiracial, etc.) families? Students are then asked to move into pairs to share their responses with a partner and to work together to complete these two questions: How do you think those prejudices translate into the classroom environment? How, as a teacher, might you create a more positive, accepting environment for children from nontraditional families?

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The class is reconvened as a whole group and answers to the question of biases held about differing forms of family are verbally volunteered, written on the board, and discussed. Responses to the second group of questions answered in pairs are then collected and discussed. Many students are amazed at the extent to which they and their classmates hold strong prejudicial beliefs against nontraditional forms of family. Objective 3: Create Activities for Use in the Classroom on Family Diversity Having laid a foundational understanding of family diversity, followed by guided discovery of existing biases held by students, the third objective provides a positive and practical direction in which to turn by requiring some creative thinking about how to use classroom activities to be inclusive of many forms of family. The exercise begins by first critiquing the traditional family activities where seemingly innocuous assignments are exposed as having a negative impact on many children. Students from nontraditional family structures often feel awkward and excluded when asked to write an autobiography, bring baby photos to class, make a family tree, or do genealogy studies. If they are being raised by single parents, stepfamilies, grandparents/relatives, gay parents, or in adoptive or foster families, they will likely have some background that is missing, complicated, or even kept secret. Well meaning teachers can be exclusionary by using such familiar activities without realizing it. An example of an inclusive alternative to the traditional activities, called the ME Poem, is shared with the class. In this activity, students are encouraged to complete each of nine descriptive statements about themselves, their interests, and their lives, including family members: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

MOLLY (first name) smart, athletic, funny, crazy (4 adjectives) sister of Maureen (family) who loves Mom, Maureen, Dad, and Judy who needs love, good friends, and loyalty who wonders about other cultures, diseases, and other states who would like to see Florida, Paris, and people being nice to everyone else resident of Petaluma, California on Ellis Street REGIN (last name)

The class is then instructed to break into small groups of three or four students and work with the markers and large sheets of paper provided to create a unique activity which can allow K-5 students to express information about themselves and their families in a free and unrestricted fashion. The excitement in the room surrounding this exercise is always palpable and the ideas generated are enthusiastically shared in a lively “show and tell” session afterward. Students routinely express satisfaction with their ability to ideate a tangible solution to the challenge of using inclusive activities on family. Additional commercially available examples of such activities, materials, and lessons are then shared, such as the film and accompanying instructor’s guide, That’s a Family! Objective 4: Reflect on Views of Family Diversity through Journaling Before giving students their reflective journaling assignment to be completed outside of class, the overall class totals for the attitudinal questionnaire are shared (maintaining individual confiden-

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tiality). Their individual completed questionnaires are then returned to them by use of a special labeling code. The journaling assignment sheet with the following questions is then given out: • Use your own paper and thoughtfully answer the questions that follow. This should represent approximately 2 to 3 pages of written reflection. Return your assignment to your instructor. • Thinking back over the readings on family diversity, what issue(s) intrigued you most or caused you to think about something you had not considered before? • During the class discussions, many issues concerning family diversity surfaced. What made the biggest impression on you and why? • How do you feel that these issues have impacted your ideas about teaching? • Do you see any of these ideas translating into your own teaching practice? How? • Do you have any personal experiences which you can relate to this discussion? • Revisit the answers you gave on the questionnaire. How would you answer these questions now? • Describe what family diversity means to you. • What types of families do you expect to see represented by the students you will teach? Reflection In the course of participating in this project, participants are exposed to readings on family diversity written from the perspectives of people living these experiences. Bringing these family situations to life is an important part of the experience, overall. Through the attitudinal questionnaire and subsequent discussions, participants are asked to search into their own histories and to explore their own biases against particular family structures and how they thought those biases might or might not impact upon their teaching. In addition to discussing the affective elements involved in the teaching of students from nontraditional families, participants are also able to “deconstruct” traditional classroom activities on the topic of family, often thought of nostalgically (such as the “family tree” activity) but shown to be detrimental to children who have hidden histories or simply lack that information altogether. Participants are then able to work together in small groups to create new and innovative activities that would be inclusive of all students. Tying this all together and mirroring the theory-into-practice notion, participants reflect again upon their original answers to the questionnaire on attitudes toward differing family structures, their experiential readings and discussions, traditional exclusionary activities and improvements upon those, and their new perspectives on family diversity and how to address it in the classroom environment. Experiences • If the instructors are unable or unwilling to supply their own stories, others are available through published work in this area (e.g., Turner-Vorbeck & Miller-Marsh (2007). • Personal stories may be volunteered by students of the class. Attitudinal Questionnaire The attitudinal questionnaire consists of 10 Likert-type questions and two open-ended questions. It was designed to provide a baseline for locating the beliefs about families held by each

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participant and for participant reflection upon their responses after the unit’s completion. The closed-ended questions ask for degrees of agreement or disagreement (5 = Strongly Agree, 4 = Agree, 3 = Undecided, 2 = Disagree, 1 = Strongly Disagree) and is provided below. Question 1 As a teacher, you would worry about children in your class whose parents were divorced. Question 2 The definition of a family is a group of people in which there are two married, biological parents who are both living at home and caring for their children. Question 3 You plan to use a “family tree” exercise to talk about family genealogy and help children to be proud of their “roots.” Question 4 Talking openly in the classroom about gay or lesbian relationships is a form of supporting those types of relationships. Question 5 You plan to hold a “Bring your grandparents to school day.” Question 6 You feel sorry for the children of single mothers because they do not receive the amount of attention and support they need at home to be successful at school. Question 7 Not mentioning types of families other than traditional, two-parent families can cause a student from a nontraditional family to suffer self-esteem troubles. Question 8 You plan to practice an antibias curriculum. Question 9 You often think to yourself, “Why can’t we just let children be?” or “Children don’t have any prejudices.” Question 10 Children who were adopted are no different from other children in terms of their development and their needs at school. The open-ended questions produce a variety of responses as participants are asked to consider: 1. Describe what family diversity means to you. 2. What types of families do you expect to see represented by the students you will teach? Some students will reveal inclusive definitions of families that stretch beyond the traditional, nuclear family. A larger number typically demonstrate an understanding that a significant number of the students in their future classrooms will not be from traditional, nuclear family structures. Overall, the results of the attitudinal questionnaire provide some illumination of the biases that exist prior to the family diversity unit. Supplies for Activity • Large marker paper • Markers, colored pencils, etc. Examples of Commercially Available Materials • In response to growing attention to this issue, there are materials being newly produced. A worthwhile activity for this unit is to have students research what materials are currently available.

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• The classic example referred to in this writing is, That’s a Family! which includes a short, 30 minute film and an instructor’s manual. Note 1. The following information was first published in the journal Multicultural Education (Winter, 2005) and appears here with permission of the editor/publisher of that journal.

Reference Turner-Vorbeck, T., & Miller-Marsh, L. (2007). Other kinds of families: Diversity in school and culture. New York: Teachers College Press.

Teaching Resources Derman-Sparks, L. (1989). Anti-bias curriculum. Washington DC: NAEYC. Geis-Rockwood, W. (1990). Shapes: Families of today. (2nd ed.) Santa Barbara, CA: Stepfamily Association of America. Okun, B. (1996). Understanding diverse families: What practitioners need to know. New York: Guilford Press.

39 Representation, Power, and Stereotyping A Lesson on Indigenous People and Sports Mascots Glenabah Martinez

Context: TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC Standards: 3 (Diverse Learners), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: indigenous peoples, diversity, controversial issues, marginalization, perspective consciousness, consciousness raising, critical thinking, ethical-political valuation, bias reduction, power/authority, photographs/pictures, ethnocentrism, film, racism, prejudice According to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2001), the practice of using Native American images and nicknames as sports symbols “has the potential to create a racially hostile educational environment that may be intimidating to Indian students” (p. 3). As with other forms of public policy, the statement is the result of national campaigns led by individuals such as Charlene Teters of the Spokane Nation, who led a movement in the mid-1990s to end the use of “the Chief ” (Chief Illiniwek) at the University of Illinois, and organizations like the Society of Indian Psychologists of the Americas to call attention to the problematic nature of this practice. Indigenous scholars such as Barbara Munson (1998) and Cornel Pewewardy (1993, 2000, 2004) have examined the impact of this practice in education. Munson (1998) of the Oneida Nation articulates the abusive nature of stereotyping Indigenous People: “Indian” logos and nicknames create, support, and maintain stereotypes of a race of people. When such cultural abuse is supported by one or many of society’s institutions, it constitutes institutional racism. These logos—along with other abuses and stereotypes—separate, marginalize, confuse, intimidate and harm Native American children and create barriers to their learning throughout their school experiences. Additionally, the logos teach non-Indian children that it’s all right to participate in culturally abusive behavior. (p. 131) Similar to Munson, Pewewardy (2004), of the Kiowa and Comanche Nations, calls for educators to seize these “powerful teaching moments” to take up the challenge of eradicating the “ongoing use of Indian mascots in school-sponsored events” (p. 184). In my 23 years of teaching experience, and throughout the studies I conducted, I also found that cultural representations and signifying practices from the mainstream affect how Indigenous People experience school life. Given the pervasive nature of the stereotyping of Indigenous People by professional and intercollegiate sports teams, I developed a lesson for students to think critically about the relationship between power and stereotyping in U.S. society. Specifically, I was interested in facilitating this frame of

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mind among Indigenous youth participating in the University of New Mexico’s American Indian Summer Bridge Program (AISBP) that prepares them for their first year of college. As part of my Native American studies course in the program we also address the topic of Indigenous Peoples and representation. We begin with a virtual tour of the National Museum of the American Indian to view a broad range of exhibits created by Indigenous People and provide students with visual information on how we, as Indigenous People, represent ourselves in multiple forms of art. The students then view documentaries produced by Indigenous People, such as Niya DeGroat Henry’s Trapped in Images and Victor Masayesva’s Imagining Indians. Then, drawing on the work of Stuart Hall (1997) as a theoretical framework for thinking about the relationship between power and representation, we move to the issue of Indigenous People as sports mascots. The activity explained here is designed for a 2-hour class session, but it can easily be adapted to cover two sessions. I begin by asking the following questions: (1) What does it mean to stereotype a person or a group of people? (2) Have you ever been stereotyped? How did you know and how did you react? (3) Have you ever engaged in stereotyping? Why or why not? Do you remember how you felt during and after engaging in stereotyping? (4) Whose interests are served with stereotyping? After a brief discussion, the class is divided into three groups, each with the task of identifying high-school, college, and professional sports teams that use each of the following racial/ethnic groups as a sport mascot: Latino/a/Hispanic, Asian/Asian American, African American/Afro-Caribbean/Black, Native American/Indigenous People/American Indian, or White/Euro-American/Anglo. I provide each student with a worksheet that guides them through several steps. First, I have students work in their groups (high school, college, and professional) for 10 minutes to identify the teams. For the next 10 minutes, I have each group present their findings to the entire class. As each group reports its findings, I have students record the information on their own worksheets. Next, I direct the class to engage in a large-group discussion of the activity by asking: (1) Was the task difficult, easy or both? (2) What part of the task did your group find to be challenging? (3) Based on the information provided by each group, what conclusions can be reached? What do the data tell us about racial/ethnic groups and sports mascots? Next, I have the class read a short description of stereotyping based on the work of Stuart Hall and discuss the reading in conjunction with the activity. I ask how the information on stereotyping might aid in their understanding of the continued use of Indigenous Peoples as sports mascots. In presenting a theoretical perspective of stereotyping, my objective is to provide the students with a framework for connecting power and representation. I also ask what else we should consider in thinking about why and how schools continue to use Indigenous Peoples as team mascots. I have found that dialogue is critical to the effectiveness of this lesson. Through dialogue, students are able to hear multiple perspectives on the issues presented and I have witnessed different responses during and at the end of the lesson. Some students immediately respond to the first set of questions posed, and the majority focuses on their personal experiences being stereotyped. Students also spend considerable time thinking about whose interests are being served with stereotyping. A common response focuses on the practice of advertisers who exploit people of color to make a profit. Examples include the use of Mexican culture to sell tacos, or Indigenous People who sell tomahawks at fairs. Students think critically about how stereotyping operates in states like New Mexico where tourism is a major part of the state’s economy. I ask them to think about the economic, political, and sociocultural relationships between Indigenous Nations and tourists who flock to our aboriginal homelands to “see a real Indian.” We also talk about the role of the

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state, local governments, and the business communities (inside and outside of the Indigenous Nations) in constructing the presentation of Indigenous People to the public. The final part of this lesson is the viewing of In Whose Honor? produced by Jay Rosenstein. The documentary is crucial in three ways: (1) It focuses on a specific event in time and place. (2) It provides an excellent starting point to interrogate similar practices among schools in the region such as the Mountain West Conference. (3) It is a foundation for clarifying values on an issue that might otherwise be ignored or be dismissed as a “nonissue.” After viewing the documentary, I ask the students to share their initial reactions to the issues raised in the video. They are asked to voice their opinions on the positions taken by the people who supported the continued use of Chief Illiniwek as the school’s mascot, and how the documentary might be received by various groups. I also distribute to students Christine des Garennes and Julie Wurth’s 2007 news article, “UI Trustees Approve Resolution to End Chief Illinewek,” and conclude the lesson by having them develop narrative responses based on what they have read, heard, and viewed in the unit. I ask whether their opinion on the use of Indigenous People as sports mascots has changed and ask them to explain their answers. The lesson is important in moving my students toward developing a critical consciousness. My hope is that they will contribute to the important work of antiracist educators across all nations, and to the efforts of people like Charlene Teters who seek to eradicate the use of Indigenous Peoples as sports mascots. References Commission on Civil Rights. (2001, April). Statement of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the use of Native American images and nicknames as sports symbols. http://www.aics.org/mascot/civilrights.html Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Munson, B. (1998). Human beings are not mascots. In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking Columbus: The next 500 years (pp. 131–132). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Pewewardy, C. D. (1993). The tomahawk chop. Multicultural Education, 1(2), 14–15. Pewewardy, C.D. (2000). Why educators should not ignore Indian mascots. Multicultural Perspectives, 2(1), 3–7. Pewewardy, C. D. (2004). Playing Indian at halftime: The controversy over American Indian mascots, logos, and nicknames in school-related events. Clearinghouse, 77(5), 180–185.

Teaching Resources Des Garennes, C., & Wurth, J. (2007, March 13). UI trustees approve resolution to end Chief Illinewek. The News-Gazette, March. http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2007/03/13/ui_trustees_approve_resolution_to_end_chief_illiniek Martinez, G. (in press). Native pride: The politics of curriculum and instruction in an urban, public high school. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Henry, N. (Producer/Director). (2002). Trapped in images [Videorecording]. United States: UNM Media Arts Project. Masayesva, V. (Producer/Director). (1992). Imagining Indians [Videorecording]. United States: Documentary Educational Resources. Rosenstein, J. (Producer and Director). (1996). In whose honor? [Videorecording]. Champaign, IL: Smoking Munchkin Video.

40 Breaking Down Barriers, Constructing Connections Strategies for Connecting “Us” To “Them” Heather Sadlier

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, K-6, University NCSS: VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), VII (Production, Distribution, and Consumption), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: economics, history, civics, ethical political valuation, critical thinking, perspective consciousness, social action, current events, school funding, civic action, inequality, equity, marginalization, race, role-play/simulation, prejudice, bias reduction, emotional response Enduring social problems, like poverty, prejudice, environmental issues, crime, and war and peace, transform current events into controversial topics. Classroom experiences with such topics increase students’ knowledge and stimulate their civic-mindedness. By designing class sessions and assignments to address enduring public issues, social studies teachers can tap into the interest and excitement that such topics naturally generate in our students. Classroom activities that promote habits of awareness and interest in current events and social problems can help counter society’s emphasis on individualism and affluence while age-appropriate explorations of these issues provide students with life-long models for civic engagement. The three broad goals Parker (2005) identifies for teaching about enduring or perennial public issues—current events that “don’t go away” include: (1) Awareness and Knowledge: Teachers should provide opportunities for students to develop a basic understanding of the history of the issue and to evaluate facts about causes and consequences, and proposed solutions. (2) Caring: The assignments and class activities should help students connect to the issue with shared commonalities that stem from or generate a “reason to care.” (3) Action: Students need opportunities to act and “make a difference,” based upon what they have learned about an issue. These goals guided the following class session1 and related assignments. The activities were chosen or designed so preservice teachers could explore the enduring issue of fairness or injustice in age-appropriate ways for early elementary and middle school students. The assignments due for this class session included readings from primary and secondary sources related to educational inequalities. That’s Not Fair,2 an activity for early elementary students from Teaching Tolerance,3 was the initial activity for the class session. Students were asked to assume the persona of second grade students for the task of coloring and cutting out paper dolls. Students were divided into two groups. One group worked at a spacious table with the following supplies: multiple pairs of new scissors,

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an array of colored markers, and clear and colorful paper doll templates. Instead of a table, the other group had to use the limited work surfaces of small desks, cut with a single, malfunctioning pair of scissors, use faded copies of the paper doll template, and share a few markers with a limited variety of colors. Each group spent half of the allotted time (about 7 minutes) in each setting and had to produce a finished paper doll with the available supplies. Students gathered in a circle on a simulated “rug” in the classroom to process the activity as second graders; the teacher captured their reactions and recommendations on chart paper. Students were asked questions like the following: Which of their paper dolls did they like better? How did they feel when they were trying to make their paper dolls with the scissors that didn’t work well and only a couple of markers? Did the art supplies make a difference in how their paper dolls turned out? Is it fair for one group of students to have better materials than others? Why? What do you think are some of the reasons that some schools don’t have enough quality materials for their students? What questions do you have about funding schools? Following the “role playing” responses, students discussed the value of conducting such an activity in their future classrooms. A similar activity that involves making unequal houses can be found in rethinking globalization, and is described in chapter 46. In preparation for the second in-class activity, students completed homework assignments that prepared them for a discussion regarding information about the following overarching question: Why do educational inequalities exist and persist in our schools? Once they understand the causes, we can move to asking “What actions could they take as a class to help out the girls and boys in a school that doesn’t have good supplies?” The students’ preparation for the in-class discussion required reading articles, collecting information, exploring a Web site, and writing responses to questions: • What historical educational reality did the Brown v. Board of Education decision purport to change? Check out the following Web site for information: http://www.archives.gov/ education/lessons/brown-v-board/ Write a few sentences about the important points to remember. • Write one paragraph about an important learning—an “ah-hah”—from the article by Jonathan Kozol (2001). • What are some of the causes of unequal educational realities for the students in our nation’s schools, according to the Kozol article, the article by Eilene Zimmerman (2005) and you? Write a one paragraph response. Think locally about your town and state, as well as nationally. • What has been done in different states to address this issue? What works and what problems remain? (Note: In many states, school funding inequalities have been successfully addressed). • How can these inequities be further remedied so that the playing field is leveled for all our nation’s public school students? Prepare a bulleted list of your ideas, informed by the articles/other research. • What are possible actions that we can take—as citizens, as students, as teachers, as parents— to make the current situation in schools fairer? You will use notes you took while reading the articles and during the in-class discussion to offer possible answers to this question. Students were assigned to each question in small teams and expected to prepare a presentation of the important points from the reading, share how the team members addressed the related question, and invite and encourage comments and responses to their particular question from the rest of the class.

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During the in-class discussion, the teacher’s role was to listen and reinforce, extend, or, if necessary, correct conclusions based upon the assigned readings. Teachers can encourage participation in such class discussions by being prepared to push students’ thinking and understanding with questions that require students to explain their positions, share their responses to the reading, support their answers with evidence, and apply what they’ve learned to make recommendations for taking action. Recommended actions from the “second grade” students included adopting a “partner” school that did not have adequate supplies and doing fund-raising projects to provide the materials that would make it “fairer” for the students in the underfunded school. Recommendations from the middle school level of this class activity included a desire to meet with elected representatives from the local and/or state level; the students saw this as an opportunity to ask how and if new legislation or changing funding priorities could make a difference at the state and national level regarding educational inequities in schools.4 Including these two activities in the same class session enhanced the impact of the examination of this enduring public issue. The That’s Not Fair activity gave the students a concrete, common experience, which they could utilize for vivid examples to illustrate key points in the discussion of their responses to Brown v. Board of Education and the articles by Kozol and Zimmerman. It is important to emphasize the “taking action” dimension of this experience of examining enduring public issues. By supporting our students in planning and taking age- and issue-appropriate action, we teach them a special and vital kind of self- and civic-efficacy: in addition to helping our students acquire the requisite knowledge about these issues and the possible actions that could make a difference, we must also support them in actually accomplishing the ways they choose to be active. In this way, teachers empower students with a belief that they not only should but can make a difference. When teachers stop short of asking students to problem solve and take age-appropriate actions in response to the study of enduring public issues, teachers encourage helplessness and hopelessness, reinforcing that students should “stand idly by,”5 when modest or egregious inequities happen to others. Notes 1. At the previous class session, students completed an anonymous, five-question, self-scored quiz: two questions focused on celebrities in the news; three questions focused on national events involving the Congress and Senate, and an international situation between the United States and another country. The ensuing discussion focused upon causes and consequences of citizens knowing more “current events” about celebrity lifestyles than about “current events” related to important local, national and international issues. 2. http://www.tolerance.org/teach/printar.jsp?p=0&ar=795&pi=apg 3. Teaching Tolerance materials are available free of charge to educators; an order form is available at http://www. teachingtolerance.org 4. Some of my students met with a member of Congress from our state and were able to voice their informed opinion on this enduring public issue to a receptive audience, and learned about the impact on elected officials when they receive letters, e-mails, or phone calls from their constituents. 5. Phrasing inspired by Elie Wiesel, who said: “Thou shalt not stand idly by.”

References Parker, W. (2005). Social studies in elementary education. New York: Pearson. Zimmerman, E. (2005, October). Class participation: How local fund-raising promotes school inequality. Harper’s Magazine, 311(1865 ).

Teaching Resources Kozol, J. (2005, September 1). Still separate, still unequal: America’s educational apartheid. Harper’s Magazine, 311(1864).

41 A Meeting On the Congo Race, Voice, and Representation Merry M. Merryfield

Context: TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12, Univeristy NCSS Standards: I (Culture), II (Time, Continuity, and Change), III (People, Places, and Environments), IX (Global Connections) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 5 (Motivation and Classroom Management) Topics: global education, perspective consciousness, Africa, primary sources, historical understanding, history, literature, indigenous peoples, racism, crtical thinking, multiple perspectives I teach this lesson1 to demonstrate one way to teach perspective consciousness, an element of both multicultural and global education that Hanvey (1982) described as “the recognition or awareness on the part of the individual that he or she has a view of the world that is not universally shared, that this view of the world has been and continues to be shaped by influences that often escape conscious detection, and that others have views of the world that are profoundly different from one’s own” (p. 162). The lesson is also aimed at helping students recognize what the infusion of African perspectives can add to the study of the continent. Debriefing the lesson raises questions about voice and representation, and historical truth vs. interpretation. The lesson usually opens people’s minds to the realization that people in other cultures often see events and issues quite differently from mainstream American interpretations found in most texts and media. From feedback over the last 15 years, I have learned that many teachers adopt this lesson to create awareness of multiple perspectives and help students recognize how we can learn from conflicting interpretations of events. Some teachers use it to introduce perspective consciousness at the beginning of the year and then refer back to the lesson when other cultural encounters are studied in world history, world cultures, or current events. Most of the people I work with have never been taught African history from the perspectives of Africans. I try to follow this lesson with ones that use excerpts from African literature and primary sources to increase their appreciation of ideas and experiences from across African nations and time periods. The purpose of this lesson is for the students to recognize the meaning and significance of perspective consciousness and multiple perspectives in researching, writing, and reading history so they can develop similar lessons for their classrooms. Teachers can use this lesson idea with conflicting primary sources related to any important event or issue—the Columbus encounter is most often used but I have had students develop similar lessons for apartheid in South Africa, the Boxer Rebellion in China, labor union organizing in the United States, and women’s right to vote. Next, I explain the steps in the lesson. First, introduce the students to the concepts of perspective consciousness and multiple perspectives through an example in their own lives or the local 182

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community. Have them explain how a person’s perspective might influence the way she or he makes meaning of an event. Help them break down the terms. Ask, what is consciousness? Can you think of ways in which you and your friends or family might have multiple or conflicting perspectives about something going on this month?). Next, give half the class the reading “That Was No Brother” and the other half “That Was No Welcome” (see chapter appendix) but don’t let them know that there are two different handouts. Ask them to read the handout and circle words that identify the author’s perspective on the event. Then ask some students who read the African perspective, what happened on the Congo River? What are some words which tell us the perspective of the author? Then ask some people who read the other perspective, the same questions. When they get into questions or disagreement, let them discuss the readings for a few minutes before letting them guess (or some students may figure it out quickly) why they understand the meeting differently. Finally, give each student the other handout to read. After they have done so, ask them why we have two different write-ups of the same event. What do these two readings mean for our study of history? Is one reading correct and the other wrong? If we want to understand African history, why would we benefit from understanding both points of view? As you end class discussion, ask students to discuss the implications of people developing perspective consciousness: What effect would such skills have on our everyday lives? Are there negative as well as positive effects? For homework, ask the students to bring in an article from a newspaper or magazine that demonstrates either a single perspective or multiple perspectives and explain what might be gained or lost by the author’s choice of only one or more than one perspectives. Note 1. A version of this lesson was originally published in Lessons From Africa, which I edited in 1989. Bloomington, Indiana: ERIC and the Social Studies Development Center, Indiana University.

References Hanvey, R. G. (1982). Theory into practice. Global Education, 21(3), 162–167. Schiffers, H. (1957). The quest for Africa. New York: Putnam. Stanley, H. (1885).Through the Dark Continent (Vol. 2). New York: Harper & Row.

Appendix That Was No Welcome Henry Stanley was the first white man to travel down the entire Congo River. He was a newspaper man and wrote a book about his travels. In this story he recounts how he was met by some Africans while traveling down the river over 100 years ago. About 8 a.m. we saw a market place where there were many small canoes. The men got into them and circled all around us. We stayed still a long time, but they became bolder and began to throw their wooden spears whenever anyone cried “mutt” (the word for sticks). We shot our guns a few times which made them leave. Drums then awakened the whole country and horns blew deafening blasts. Some canoes boldly followed us. At 2 p.m. we came upon a very large stream. There we saw a greet fleet of canoes. The men in the canoes stood up and gave a loud shout when they saw us and blew their horns

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louder than ever. Looking upstream we saw a sight that sent blood tingling through every nerve and fiber of our bodies: a fleet of gigantic canoes bearing down on us, which was bigger in size and numbers than anything we had seen…. There were 54 of them! A monster canoe led the way. In the bow were ten young warriors, their heads gay with red feathers; at the stern, eight men with long paddles, whose tops were decorated with ivory balls and guided the monster vessel. The crashing sound of drums and horns and the thrilling chant of 2000 human throats did not help calm our nerves. I said to them “Boys, be firm as iron; wait till you see the first spear, then take good aim. Don’t think of running away because only your guns can save you.” The monster canoe aimed straight for my boat as though it would run us down, but when it was 50 yards away it swerved to the side. When it was nearly opposite us the warriors threw their spears. Every sound was lost in the ripping cracking gunfire. We were angry now. It was a murderous world and we felt for the first time that we hated the filthy people in it. We followed them upstream until we saw their villages. We hunted them in the woods until we finally stopped. (Adapted by Merry Merryfield from Stanley,1885, pp. 268–273) That Was No Brother In the story below King Mojimbo, who lived along the Congo River, tells how his people welcomed the first White man they had ever seen. He told this story to a Catholic priest. When we heard that the man with white skin was traveling down the river, we were openmouthed with surprise. We stood still. All night long the drums told the strange news—a man with white skin! If he has white skin he must be from the river kingdom. He is one of our brothers who was drowned in the river. All life comes from the water, and in the water he has found life. Now he is coming back to us. He is coming home. We will prepare a feast, I ordered. We will go meet our brother and bring him into the village with rejoicing! We will put on our ceremonial dress. We got the great canoes. We listened for the gong which would tell us that our brother has arrived on the river. Now he enters the river! We swept forward, my canoe leading, the others following, with songs of joy and dancing, to meet the first white man our eyes had ever seen and to honor him. But as we came near his canoe there were loud sounds, bang! bang! bang! And fire sticks spit bits of iron at us. We were frightened. Our mouths hung wide open and we could not shut them. Things as we had never seen, never heard of, never dreamed of—were they the work of evil spirits? Several of my men fell into the water. Why? Did they fly to safety? No, for others fell down in the canoes. Some screamed terribly. Others were silent. They were dead and blood flowed from little holes in the bodies. “War, war, this is war,” I yelled. “Go back!” The canoes sped back to our village with all the strength we could give to our arms. They followed us. That was no brother! That was the worst enemy our country had ever seen. (Adapted by Merry Merryfield from remarks of King Mojimba, as told to Father Joseph Fraessle, reprinted from Schiffers, 1957, pp. 196–197)

42 Implicating Race in Students’ Learning How to Teach History1 Avner Segall

Context: TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: Critical social theory, race, racism, prejudice, bias reduction, student centered, ethicalpolitical valuation, teacher reflection, history, multiple perspectives Contextualizing the Activity One of the bigger challenges facing critical teacher educators is not only having students explore the relationship between the existing manifestations of education and the broader political, social, and economic realms that give rise and meaning to them, but to also implicate themselves in those very systems and the discourses they do and do not make possible. By implication I mean having students examine their own relationships to those systems and discourses; that is, the degree to which they are, personally, a product of such systems, how they might have benefited from them, and how their own practices as teachers might, often unintentionally, perpetuate them. This means encouraging students to “see” what they have often not seen, have not been invited to see in their prior education, or have refused to see, often in spite of educational invitations to do so. These different forms of not seeing fall under what Felman (1982) calls ignorance. Ignorance, according to Felman, is not simply a passive state of absence—a simple lack of information: “it is an active dynamic of negation, an active refusal of information…. the incapacity—or the refusal—to acknowledge one’s own implication in the information” (p. 26). Anyone working in teacher education has, no doubt, experienced this notion of ignorance, whereby students either actively avoid issues or avoid implicating themselves and their teaching contexts in issues that are discussed, especially when the latter are issues raised by critical social theory, such as equity, social justice, race, and gender that require students to implicate education, and themselves as agents in or of the existing system of education, in broader societal contexts. I referred earlier to the relationship between students not seeing and previous educational experiences. This is a complex and long-standing relationship, one that can be traced to the detached, “rational,” modernist learning that pervades schools, whereby students’ achievement is more often than not measured in ways that account for students’ ability to write “objective” reports in the third person, to muster disconnected facts, and to remain scientifically reserved in their judgments. In other words, to remove themselves from their own learning and to remove what they learned from the actualities of their daily lives. Student teachers sitting in our methods 185

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courses are ones who have normally succeeded in the public school system so it is only natural that they bring these same dispositions into our university classrooms (to be fair, many university classrooms utilize the very same methods to consider “success” as those used in school, so students are in fact given affirmation that these dispositions that have served them well thus far will continue to do so through higher education). In fact, by the time students have reached our classrooms, they have had ample experiences in reading texts (articles, book chapters) without writing them. That is, without implicating themselves in that which is written and without connecting their own teaching/learning to what is said. Avoiding such implication tends to leave theorizing the world and its workings in the hands of the writers, not those doing the reading. As a result, students are implicitly taught that theory resides in the writings they read and that as students their “job” is not to theorize but rather to devise ways to implement theories generated by others (Segall & Gaudelli, 2007). Such forms of reading are problematic when one wishes to invite students to theorize education and consider it otherwise. No area, my own experience working with student teachers has illustrated, is more difficult to invite students to implicate themselves in than that which pertains to race. This is not because students have not had courses in which they learned about race and its relation to education. It is not because students, especially those studying social studies, don’t understand that (and how) race plays in society and in the curricula they teach. Rather, it is because, more often than not, those experiences, important as they are, have positioned our students to think of race as a societal/curricular issue, not one that implicates one personally as a teacher and is implicated in one’s positionality as a teacher. Not seeing the implication of the personal in race issues is compounded by the fact, much noted in the literature on teacher education, that not only are the majority of teacher education students White, but they also too often consider Whiteness as a noncolor and being White as standing above (or beyond) the need to recognize their own implication in race issues—whether those pertain to teaching, learning, curriculum, or pedagogy. In many ways, these students see race issues as theoretical—perhaps important, even necessary to consider in one’s teaching—but not something which implicates them as individuals. For many of them race is a topic to be taught in particular curricula locations (e.g., Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement), not an ongoing issue that pervades the very foundations of what is taught in social studies (and how it is taught) regardless of topic being considered. How I Address This Issue in My Methods Course What I present below is rather easy—a quite simple pedagogical approach, one that takes only a few minutes to prepare and about 20 minutes to administer—yet I have found its potential is both powerful and generative for students’ future learning. When I first taught the methods class I had students read a series of articles and chapters from the school of critical social theory. Yet, as mentioned earlier, more often than not students refused to implicate themselves or the schools in which they teach in that theory, maintaining it at arm’s length, and avoiding its implications. One of those readings was Terrie Epstein’s (1998) piece, “Deconstructing Differences in African-American and European-American Adolescents’ Perspectives on U.S. History,” in which she so powerfully highlights how African-American and Euro-American students think and believe differently about history and its role in education. Having asked participants (high school social studies students) to rank the most important people and events in American history, Epstein demonstrates how, while Euro-American students chose the traditional White, “national” figures and events, their African-American colleagues included

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African-American figures and events pertaining to their history (or “national” events seen from an African-American perspective) in their lists. Another of Epstein’s findings was that while White students tended to trust the (traditionally White) teachers and the textbook for historical information, African-American students tended to trust outside sources such as families, churches, the media, more than they did the textbook. I chose to use this piece in my first year of teaching the methods course because I believed it could (and would) help my mostly White students rethink what, how, and whose history is taught and how it tends to position the other as “Other” and, in the process of that rethinking, perhaps as an impetus for it, to consider their own location as White persons in the equation Epstein pointed to and thus consider how they might structure their own teaching (often to students of color) differently. Yet none of this happened. Instead, having read Epstein’s piece, all my students claimed that, having gone through our teacher education program, especially the designated course on “difference,” none of this was new to them; that is, in no way do they think like the White students in Epstein’s study or act to perpetuate the divide noted in her piece. Refusing to implicate themselves in the issues Epstein raised, to consider their unproblematized positionality as problematic when attempting to teach all students, and seeing the issue as a “dead” one for them, there was little I could do and the conversation, beyond a general, “academic” discussion of the piece, was basically over. Having learned from this experience, I now do things differently. I have my students respond to the same questions Epstein posed to her participants before they read Epstein’s piece. When we now discuss her piece and my students begin making claims similar to those expressed by students in my first year of teaching, I simply take out the tabulation of this class’s answers to Epstein’s questions and put it on an overhead. I then ask them to compare those to the answers given by the White students in Epstein’s study. There is always (I have been doing this for 6 years now) a few seconds of silence and distress before students, somewhat surprisingly, acknowledge how similar the responses are (and how different they are from those given by the African-American students in Epstein’s study and, as we discuss, probably from the responses given by the AfricanAmerican students in the very classes they are currently teaching). Having collected this kind of data in the last 6 years, I share responses from students in previous classes. While, on the one hand, my students are relieved to see that former students responded similarly, the gravity of the similarity soon settles in; that is, they realize how systemic, widespread, and deeply rooted the issue is. No longer able to ignore their own implication in Epstein’s piece, the discussion takes on a very different turn, exploring the why issues—why do my students think the way they do, what has structured such thinking, how do power and discourse (and whose power, whose discourse) play in the degree to which students embrace or reject knowledge in school, and what might they need to do in order to allow African-American students to “own” the curriculum and, at the same time, to help White students who think of the teacher and textbook as providers of truth to begin to critically examine and question the relationship between power, discourse, and truth. Addressing such issues inevitably spills into a discussion of the incorporation of multiple perspectives in social studies education. This idea is not new to my students; they have discussed this more than once in their previous courses. Indeed, by the time they come to my class, they all believe in and advocate the inclusion of multiple perspectives in the curriculum. Naturally, I do little to dissuade them of this notion. What I attempt to trouble, however, in our discussions are the assumptions underlying their descriptions of these newly incorporated perspectives—most often referring to them as other perspectives. That is, I invite them to pause and consider that by referring to them as other perspectives they are not only othering these perspectives but are also placing the dominant White, middle-class, male perspectives at the center (and thus as central).

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More, by relegating some perspectives as other (other than what?) they are defining the traditional curriculum as an extraterritorial space outside of history and agency, beyond positionality and its own location in a cultural struggle to dominate meaning. Embedded in the idea of multiple perspectives is the notion that nonmainstream lenses often provide renditions of the past that tend not to paint U.S. history in as favorable a light as that of the traditional curriculum. So while my students understand the need to show multiple versions of history, they are disturbed by the ability of what they often terms as bad stories to portray a negative side of the United States, troubling students’ existing sense of pride in their country. Thus, as we consider issues of balance and audience and debate the purpose of social studies education (is it to reproduce the existing social order or to challenge it?), we also focus on the very use of the terms good and bad stories and what that might indicate about my students’ own location within the politics of knowledge production in schools. This inevitably leads to a discussion about what stories tend to dominate the curriculum, what such stories promote, who benefits from them and who does not, who has the power to put them there and what forces conjure to invite us to consider some stories as good and others as bad? Note 1. This activity has been discussed, albeit in a broader framework, in Segall (2008).

References Felman, S. (1982). Psychoanalysis and education: Teaching terminable and interminable. In B. Johnson (Ed.), “The pedagogical imperative.” Yale French Studies, 63, 21–44. Segall, A. (2008). Why teaching critical social theory as “theory” might not be enough. In J. Diem & R. Helfenbein (Eds.), Unsettling beliefs: Teaching social theory to teachers (pp. 15–30). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press. Segall, A., & Gaudelli, W. (2007). Reflecting socially on social issues in a social studies methods course: What does it make im/possible? Teaching Education 18(1), 77–92.

Teaching Resources Epstein, T. (1998). Deconstructing differences in African-American and European-American adolescents’ perspectives on U.S. history. Curriculum Inquiry, 28(4), 397–423.

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6

Local and Global Communities and Economies Introduction Ramona Fruja Amthor and Elizabeth E. Heilman

A perennial challenge for all social studies teachers is to connect classroom practices to students’ lives, providing interpretive frames for social phenomena, and more powerfully, providing inspiration for students’ social values, civic commitments, and actions. Local communities and economies and their global connections would seem naturally relevant and interesting to students, especially in a context where the increasingly “global” nature of our world is highly mediatized. Yet student interest and personal relevance are not always evident. Teachers find there are real challenges to teaching about local and global communities and economies. There is a two-faceted starting challenge—first, to establish basic relevance in students’ lives and second to bring personal and local relevance to standards and set curriculum frameworks. Teachers face the challenge of teaching in light of existing curricular focus and standards, addressing issues of power and justice, and helping students feel efficacious about issues that seem both near and far. In the chapter opening this section, Janet Alleman begins by expressing a goal all successful social studies educators aim for—she wants her students to “understand and appreciate the world through a social studies lens and to make meaning and experience memorable, learning in ways heretofore not imagined.” To this end, she designed an activity that engrossed the students and attuned them to the interpretative frames that social studies offer. As students are assigned to interpret their seemingly mundane activities through social studies lenses, they make use, deductively or inductively, of social education big ideas and connect them with personal experience, or connect themselves as actors to the complex world around them. Students are thus drawn into intellectual exercises that whet their appetite for a layered social understanding and an ability to challenge the illusion of the “irrelevant”; that is, both that social studies may often be irrelevant to their lives, and that their own daily experience may be “irrelevant” to social understanding. Diane Illig also begins with her students’ personal experiences, but attempts to move them into engaging with economics, one of the least focused upon areas of the social studies. While economic understanding is essential both in individual lives and to the understanding of broader social and historical structures that shape daily experience, it is often difficult for teachers to involve students in the knowledge that moves them beyond allegedly basic economic concepts. More difficult still is finding ways to help middle-class students grasp the effects of structural inequality on individuals and families in the United States. To this end, the exercises Illig offers enable hands-on ways to virtually engage students with the experiences of income disparity, without singling out specific groups. Like Illig, Peter Moran aims to improve student understanding of economics from the frame 189

190 • Ramona Fruja Amthor and Elizabeth E. Heilman

of personal experience. Moran, however, uses a lesson on students’ personal consumption as a springboard beyond student experience and the country’s borders, into global economics. Beginning with personal items of clothing, students explore manufacturing and trade relationships in the global industry, labor markets, looking at working conditions and exploitation as well as the debate over the “race to the bottom” phenomenon of capital investment by which countries lower their wages, environmental standards, and working conditions laws, to attract foreign capital. Understanding grander-scale economic decision making and its impact on lives requires multidisciplinary approaches that include not only economics, but also history, geography, and political science, all the while attempting to enhance attitudes toward social justice. There are thus conceptual and ethical challenges in teaching on these themes, because both community and global issues entail fundamental conflicts of power, inequality, and justice, and these issues are often obscured or rationalized in mainstream textbook presentations. In her chapter that examines privilege in the context of globalization, Sandra Schmidt highlights the importance of challenging dominant perspectives of global economic development, requiring that future teachers, as part of a critical tradition, think about global positions of power and how they, their students, and the curriculum participate in interrelated global structures. Teaching these issues from an ethical platform means bringing to the forefront the relationships by which each of us affects others through daily experiences, and emphasizing the space where each of us can act differently for benefits beyond our own (Lewis, 1998). However, the intersections of local and global issues, with a focus on ethics and justice, are not naturally present in the curriculum. This presents, therefore, real curricular challenges, since social studies seems to be mostly a nonglobal curriculum, featuring United States communities, regions, history, news, economics, and geography. Students then need explicit guidance in connecting local to global issues and seeing global presence and implications throughout the disciplines. Powerful social education, however, does this in ways that purposefully find global issues in seemingly regional and national curriculum. In this section, both Elizabeth Heilman and Todd Kenreich make this important move. Heilman provides an overall framework within which to “make room” for the global in situations where the state curricular standards lack explicit global education and the local demands make it more difficult to include these themes in daily curriculum. Her suggestions range from including global-themed literature on issues that connect with the standards-based topics, to making explicit the global impact on local economic changes already familiar to the children’s communities, as well as involving them in social action projects. In a similar fashion, Kenreich offers preservice teachers the opportunity of a project to create curricular resources they could use in their own teaching and which can, in the meantime, increase their own understanding of the local as deeply embedded in global sociocultural, historic, and economic relationships (Myers, 2006). Having future teachers engage in this type of thinking that challenges ethnocentric interpretations in very immediate ways offers a good foundation toward becoming themselves educators with global mindsets (Merryfield, 2001). The move away from ethnocentrism in the interpretation of students’ position in the world is also the goal in KirkwoodTucker’s approach to understanding current events from a global perspective. In keeping notions of diverse and global teacher education in mind, it is important to recognize that teaching current events and engaging students in controversial discussions and debates have broader ramifications outside of the classroom. If students truly are our leaders of tomorrow, it is imperative that they learn to engage in critical debates and discussions over current, controversial global issues. Toni Fuss Kirkwood-Tucker thus examines how and why teachers and students should strive to obtain a global perspective on news and current events in a rapidly globalized society. Her analysis is

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largely based on the Hanvey model, emphasizing five critical points: perspective consciousness, state-of-the-planet awareness, cross-cultural awareness, knowledge of global dynamics, and awareness of human choices. In effect, she provides a contemporary perspective to the issues addressed in other chapters. Powerful social studies education, however, not only promotes this kind of understanding, but also addresses the relationship between understanding and action. This poses yet another real challenge to democratic, participatory education. Promoting social action and responsibility can be especially difficult when related to global issues and economics, because the problems can seem far away and also controversial when multiple and very often conflicting viewpoints are involved. In concluding this section, Hursh, Martina, and Fantauzzo address this problem through the lens of health, by approaching the “near” and “far” issues that simultaneously affect more than local communities. Both personal and public, inquiring with students into health issues that affect persons and the environment enhances their ability to work with others in structured ways toward a common goal for the common good. References Lewis, B. (1998). Life beyond the classroom. In The kid’s guide to social action (pp. 7–22). Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Press. Merryfield, M. (2001). Moving the center of global education: From imperial world views that divide the world to double consciousness, contrapuntal pedagogy, hybridity, and cross-cultural competence. In W. B. Stanley (Ed.), Critical issues in social studies research for the 21st century (pp. 179–208). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Myers, J. P. (2006). Rethinking the social studies curriculum in the context of globalization: Education for global citizenship in the United States. Theory and Research in Social Education, 34(3), 370–394.

43 Social Studies Is Everywhere Developing Social Scientist Sensitivities Janet Alleman

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: III (People, Places, and Environments), IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 3 (Diverse Learners), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 5 (Motivation and Classroom Management), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: geography, inquiry, teacher reflection, students’ lives and experiences, communitybased learning, photographs/pictures The “Social Studies Is Everywhere” assignment was born out of sheer frustration. As I was doing final preparation for my upcoming social studies class, I was pondering what I could say or do to inspire students to return from spring break having read the assigned material and prepared to participate actively. I have always dreaded that first class after an extended vacation –extra time is needed to regroup and students often seem to be mentally elsewhere. Suddenly, I had a flicker of what I now think of as brilliance –only because it has produced amazing results. That afternoon I told my students that I would use the last hour to set the stage for a learning opportunity I had “cooked up” for their break. Some eyes rolled as if to say “I dare you to assign something,” and a couple of students expressed curiosity. I was a bit nervous. Spending an hour on something not on the syllabus was out of character for me. The first 2 hours flew by, and then my storyline went something like this: Social studies is everywhere. All semester I have been hammering at this. Remember the day you took a minifield trip around the College of Education building and each of you was assigned a role as a historian, geographer, anthropologist, etc., and you asked questions through the lens of that discipline? For example, “How old is this building?” “I wonder why the College of Education is located next to the International Center.” “I wonder how much it costs per year to heat this building.” “I wonder how many cultures are represented in teacher education classes this semester.” You probably also recall the day we were discussing teaching government in the elementary grades and I shared with you the photo essay depicting government in the life of a second grader. On one level, I’m sure you understand the importance of connecting social studies to students’ lives. Today, as I was preparing for class, it hit me: why don’t we all engage in an experiment over the upcoming 10 days and really see how much social studies creeps into our activities? For the record, I’m going to engage in this experience with you. (I delayed the reading assignment published in the syllabus.) When we return from break, you will have a chance to share your authentic experience through a social studies lens. Identify a theme and be prepared to list the big ideas 192

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that serve to inform what you did. Then describe your experience, highlighting what you learned. Include any new questions that come to mind. I encourage you to bring artifacts such as photos, pictures, postcards, receipts, maps, coins, packaged food, articles of clothing, taped interviews, travel documents, graphs, charts, games/toys, etc. to enhance your story. I would like you to add a written piece to support your oral presentation. However, you can submit that later. While many were relieved that there were no readings or written work required on the first day after break, several said things such as “I’m not going anywhere”; “I’m going to get my wisdom teeth pulled and I’ll be in bed”; “I’m just working”; “I’m moping because I had a chance to go to Florida with my friends, but I maxed out my credit cards so I really need to stay home and make some money. Besides, the boss called and has given me extra work hours”; “I’m not doing anything special. I’m just going to visit my boyfriend’s family”; or “I’m going with a youth group to Appalachia. We are going to be engaged in a building project.” For many of these students, social studies meant travel. They understood the importance of personalizing the subject at one level, but they hadn’t totally internalized it. They were struggling with this challenge in their lesson plans, too. At this juncture, I asked those who seemed clueless about how they might approach the assignment to share how they were spending their time during break. Then as a class we brainstormed possible social studies links. When I felt comfortable that every student had imagined some possibilities, I shared a sample list of big ideas, like the one at the end of the chapter that could anchor their stories. My students have several lists of big ideas that they use as resources when designing lessons and units. For the assignment, “Social Studies Is Everywhere,” I explained that the use of big ideas can be inductive or deductive: You can think about your experience through a social studies lens and ask, “So what are the big ideas that explain my life this week?” or you can start with “Here are the big ideas I want to experience. Now, I’ll frame my experience to match them.” The verbal presentation (as well as the facts, vignettes, artifacts, etc. in the supportive paper) should reflect these big ideas and illustrate social studies in meaningful and memorable ways. My overall goal (which I shared with the students) was for them to understand and appreciate the world (their week as an actor within it) through a social studies lens and to make meaning and experience memorable learning in ways heretofore not imagined. As I said “Bon Voyage” and wished them well for their 10 days of R and R, I wondered what the net result would be. Their facial expressions and comments were encouraging. Ten days later, students were arriving before I even had the classroom ready. They were weighted down with boxes, bags, and charts. No one was a minute late! The class decided on a strategy for sharing (including time allocations). I did not favor their plan initially, so I was a bit anxious. How redundant would these large group presentations become? To my amazement, there was no duplication and to a person, big ideas were at the core. Topics were diverse and included: 1. Adopting a Dog: Geography to locate humane society, economics to buy all of the supplies, and political science for following the laws/regulations to legally obtain a pet. 2. Opportunity Costs: My friend and her family went on vacation and invited me, but I decided to stay home and make money. What opportunities did I miss? What were the costs? What did I gain?

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3. The story of a 7-day bar crawling experience in Miami: Mapping at its best (PS I felt so guilty that on Friday I went to a museum.) 4. Planning my father’s 50th birthday party: A timeline he will cherish forever 5. My trip to Italy to visit my girlfriend 6. The story of getting my wisdom teeth pulled—and where my drugs and food came from 7. My job at “Johnny Rockets”: Where the food products come from, and how profit margins are calculated 8. Government can’t do everything: Volunteering in Appalachia Each presentation was more fascinating than the last and the energy and enthusiasm that my students exuded compensated for the amount of time they spent sharing and manipulating the artifacts. Benefits abounded. A persistent reform ideal that this assignment addresses focuses on generating more student interaction with subject matter (Kennedy, 2005). We want teachers to increase students’ interest, capture their imagination, or pique their curiosity. We want students to engage actively with important ideas. Without intellectual engagement, learning cannot occur. The assignment also allows for choice. It insures that all students can be successful if they put forth the time and effort. Finally, students find it worthwhile. In order to make the most of this assignment, it is helpful if you engage in the assignment yourself and provide sample lists of big ideas; list possible artifacts and make sure every student leaves with some possibilities for addressing “social studies is everywhere” within his or her context. Be sure to allow the written narratives to be submitted after the oral presentations because this encourages expanded reflection and allows the initial focus to be on experiencing rather than “doing” another paper. You should also underscore the self-efficacy aspect during the class discussion—social studies ideas coupled with experiences empower individuals to make sense out of their world in ways heretofore not imagined. After experiencing the “Social Studies Is Everywhere” assignment, my students’ lesson plans and enactments in classrooms contained more authenticity. Attitudes associated with social studies became more positive as they realized that social studies is a natural part of people’s lives and that, with a little effort, they could make meaningful connections. Periodically I receive an e-mail from a former student who is on a trip, who is engaged in decision making, and remembers the opportunity cost concept, or who is shopping or watching a television program and thinking about how the experience could be drawn into classroom instruction. These students have been once more reminded that social studies makes sense—it serves to explain what is going on. I smile when someone says, “I can’t get social studies out of my mind, Alleman; it is everywhere.” References Kennedy, M. (2005). Inside teaching: Classroom conditions that frustrate reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Appendix Sample List of Big Ideas • Historical change is gradual transformation; some aspects of the situation change and these changes may range from trivial to radical. • Major events have multiple causes and multiple effects.

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• Past events have influenced contemporary beliefs, attitudes, and life experiences including our own and those of groups with which we identify. • Different communities have different needs based on their location and size. • People work in communities, regions, and nations, which are affected in very different ways by local and global economic policies to try to satisfy their needs and wants. • The decisions, policies, and laws that have been made for a given society are based on the values, beliefs, and traditions of that society. • Rules and laws are designed to remind people of their rights and responsibilities. They help people get along, keep things fair, protect individuals and public property, and keep people safe. In the United States, rights and responsibilities are based on the democratic principles in the constitution. • Volunteering and charity work provides time, money and direct services like food, clothing, shelter to promote a cause, provide a service, or work to solve a problem without making new laws. • Civic action and justice work are directed at the root causes of problems and address the underlying structures or causes of these problems by changing laws, policies, and practices. • Location tells us where, and place tells us what is there. All places have distinct characteristics that give them meaning and character and distinguish them from other places.

44 Understanding Personal Choice and Structured Inequality as Aspects of Family Finance Diane S. Illig

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: III (People, Places, and Environments), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VII (Production, Distribution, and Consumption) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 2 (Learning and Development), 3 (Diverse Learners), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Instructional Planning), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: economics, economic content knowledge, sociological content knowledge, marginalization, equity, race, inequality, critical thinking, perspective consciousness, families, issues-centered approach, role-play/simulation Although it is one of the least focused upon of the social studies disciplines, economic understanding is central to both individual lives and to understanding broader social and historical forces. The National Council for Social Studies (NCSS, 2008) asks for students to “apply economic concepts and reasoning when evaluating historical and contemporary social developments and issues” and most state standards aim for both broad and individual perspectives on issues like scarcity and choice, personal financial resources and consumer decisions. Still, I struggled to find a way to help my mostly middle-class students understand the effects of class inequality on individuals and families in our country. These exercises became a hands-on way to enable students to virtually experience the reality of income disparity and gain perspective on whether there are patterns of income inequality based on race/ethnicity, gender, and family type, including such differences as single parents, two minimum-wage earners, or grandparents and difference related to the number and age of dependents. Each exercise can be used independently for a specific concept (e.g., labor trends, housing shortage, etc.), but I teach these for cumulative effect in a weeklong enterprise. In the first exercise, students discuss their expectations about their futures. What jobs do they hope to have? What kind of place do they expect to live in? What kind of transportation do they intend to use? What things are “must haves” in their future lives such as cable, Internet, and cell phone, and how many TVs do they think they will need? I ask about their expectations about the number of children they will have, the types and frequency of vacations (beaches, amusement parks, traveling; once a year, more often, every couple of years). They even report plans for eating out (how often, what kinds of places, etc.) and attending movies/plays/concerts. Each student records these dreams and expectations on a handout. In the next exercise, students use Internet sources to explore their dream jobs including educational requirements, average income, major tasks and responsibilities, and benefits. One online 196

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source, hotjobs.com, allows for local, state, and national comparisons of average incomes for various jobs. Further exploration requires students to compare these incomes by race and gender and to adjust their expected income accordingly. One source for this is “Statistical Abstracts” which is available online through the census.gov. Again, the students record the information obtained on a handout. We then begin the third exercise, which has the students researching the average costs of housing in the locality or state. They must determine both the average mortgage payment and the average rent payments for different types of housing (single-family dwelling by number of bedrooms, condo, apartment, trailer court, etc.). You can also use local newspapers and have students calculate the average purchase price and rent advertised in housing for the last several weeks. Often a local realtor is willing to be a guest lecturer and provide the needed data. Students are to note whether or not utilities are included and if so which ones. Students also need to find the average cost for heat/air, electric, water/sewage, garbage removal. I provide a worksheet to guide students through the details and some need to use calculators. In the fourth exercise, students receive “virtual” families. Virtual families are used so that privacy isn’t violated and no student’s own experience is stigmatized. In this way we can also cover a variety of representative families. No gender or ethnic distinctions are made which often allows for lively discussions about the assumptions students make about whether their family heads are, for example, female or Black, based on the type of job and family configuration. So far I have used seven different family forms: (1) a single parent with two teenage children; (2) a minimum wage family with three children; (3) a retired grandparent raising two school-aged grandchildren; (4) a two-parent family both earning the national median income with two small children at home; (5) a high earning person with an at-home partner raising three school-aged children; (6) a single-person living beyond his or her means; (7) and a family with elder care responsibilities. I give each virtual family specific job title(s), income(s), housing, transportation, and other details. Some families have members with medical issues, others have high entertainment costs; one is told they have no insurance of any kind. For example, family scenario (1) is: You are a singlemother with two children; one in middle school and one in high school. You work in Human Resources. Your annual income is $38,647. You rent a three-bedroom apartment @ $650/month, utilities are separate, and you take public transportation to work ($90/month). And scenario (7) is: You’re a truck driver making about $25,000 a year and your wife is a hair dresser bringing in $19,680. You have one child and your great uncle who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease living with you. Your uncle’s out-of-pocket expenses cost you $150/month. You have no personal health insurance coverage. You live in a rented house that costs $700/month including utilities. In this exercise they list their income and designated expenses. The last exercise requires the students to calculate their net monthly income by deducting taxes and other payroll deductions such as benefits (health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, prescription options, retirement contributions, etc.). Once they have their net monthly income, they deduct their virtual family’s set expenses as indicated in exercise (4). Finally, they estimate their other monthly expenses, such as food, utilities, entertainment costs, children’s expenses, outof-pocket medical costs, vehicle costs, membership dues. They then decide how much money, if any, they can afford to put aside for savings. A chart of local costs, which also includes the changes in major expenses from last year to this on things like gasoline, milk, bread, and other staples is provided to the students. They use a worksheet to record their deductions and expenses. Some students may need to use calculators.

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To conclude, students write a reflection paper comparing their personal dreams from exercises (1) and (2) with their virtual family’s reality in exercises (4) and (5). These can be generated at home or written in class. The guiding questions are: How well did your virtual family do in providing and saving for its family members? What changes would you recommend to your virtual family? Considering your goals and dreams, what thoughts do you have about them after doing these exercises? What impact did these exercises have on how you think about and use money right now? These exercises are real eye-openers for students of any age. From college students to seventh and eighth grade at-risk students, these exercises are remembered long after the experience. Students are typically surprised by the actual costs of living and are especially shocked by how little a family with two minimum wage earners can actually buy. We thus discuss the differences in opportunity and lifestyle that result. I hope that students are able to make more informed choices, not only as workers and consumers, but also as citizens facing public issues such as minimum wage levels and the availability of affordable health care. Reference The National Council for Social Studies. (2008). NCSS curriculum standards for social studies update - draft, http://www. socialstudies.org/standards/taskforce/fall2008draft

45 The Race to the Bottom An Introduction to Textile Manufacturing and Working Conditions in the Global Economy Peter Moran

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: III (People, Places, and Environment), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), VII (Production, Distribution, and Consumption), IX (Global Connections), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Content Pedagogy), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: economics, economic content knowledge, geography, geographic content knowledge, globalization, global economy, capitalism, industry, inequality, perspective-consciousness, local/global connections, issues-oriented approach, categorizing ideas, film, maps This activity is designed to enhance preservice teachers’ understandings of several themes related to geography, global economics, and social justice. It also provides preservice teachers with interdisciplinary methodological approaches that can be used in introducing their future students to these themes. We explore topics such as manufacturing and trade relationships in the global apparel industry; labor markets and the corporate interest in minimizing production costs in the global economy; and working conditions and worker exploitation in the garment industry as social justice concerns. Between 1990 and 2004, the number of American workers employed in the textile and apparel industries fell by about 60%. In short, American workers and, in particular, unionized American workers, demanded higher wages than workers in other countries and production shifted to less expensive labor markets. The garment industry is often cited as the classic example of “the race to the bottom” in the global economy. Essentially, this means that clothing production constantly moves toward the cheapest labor markets where wages are low and job security is tenuous, but the potential profit margin for the clothing label is greatest. This activity is an exploration of the race to the bottom concepts. The primary focus of the activity is the global apparel industry and relationships that occur in the production process. Specifically, we focus on the countries that produce many of the articles of clothing that are in the preservice teachers’ closets and dressers. Although they are generally quite conscious of the brand name on a clothing label, they typically have not taken notice of the labels indicating where various articles of clothing they own were produced. Recording the country of manufacture for different pieces of apparel begins to provide the preservice teachers with a sense of which countries compete in different niches in the global economy, as well as the brand names that subcontract the production and assembly processes to manufacturers overseas. To this 199

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end, prior to class they complete a homework assignment that requires them to go through their closets and record the country of manufacture for the following items: four T-shirts, four pairs of pants (not Levi’s), four dress shirts or blouses, two pairs of shoes, and two articles of outerwear (jackets, coats, hats, etc). They also read the preface, prologue, and chapter 4, “Cotton Comes to China,” in Pietra Rivoli’s (2005) Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy. We begin class with a whole group discussion of selected photographs from Peter Menzel, Charles C. Mann, and Paul Kennedy (1994), Material World: A Global Family Portrait. Preservice teachers are encouraged to share their observations regarding economic inequality as documented in the photographs of typical family possessions in various countries (for further discussion on using this book with preservice teachers, please see chapter 46). Having gathered data related to where apparel is manufactured, in groups of four or five, preservice teachers compile the results of the homework assignment for their table. Representatives from each group then meet with other groups to share data so that, in the end, each group should have all of the data. Each preservice teacher then uses the data to create a bar or pie graph of the results for one of the categories of clothing. The data from the graphs are then translated to an outline map of the world. Using maps and atlases, the preservice teachers locate countries and create a key for the articles of clothing so that the map represents the data collected for the class. Next, they return to the Material World photos to consider the income levels in the top 10 countries where our class members’ garments are made. I also provide data on per capita income, minimum wage, and human development index measures and they locate these for the top 10 nations. They notice that some nations with medium average income have no or very low minimum wage, showing unequal income within, not just across nations. Sharing of the data, graphs, and maps leads to interesting points of discussion related to the global economy. For example, how can a T-shirt be assembled in Sri Lanka, shipped across the globe, and sell for only $5.00 in the United States? At this point, we shift toward analyzing films and readings related to working conditions and wages in different countries of the developing world. Excellent films to show include Race to the Bottom and the older, but still powerful, Global Assembly Line. We begin with the assigned reading from Rivoli, Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, paying particular attention to the findings regarding labor markets in China and the United States. Other readings are distributed to jigsaw groups for further discussion. I typically use “Myths of Underdevelopment,” “The Story of a Maquiladora Worker,” and “Child Labor,” from Bigelow and Peterson’s (2002) Rethinking Globalization, the chapter on China in Jared Diamond’s (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, a World Bank (2001) article examining environmental degradation in developing countries associated with globalization, an article by McClear (2005) that explores trade agreements and the quota system in the global textile trade, as well as one article by Hudgins (1997) that takes an opposing view on trade regulation. Each member of a jigsaw group prepares a onepage synopsis of their reading and the discussion of global trade and labor conditions in different parts of the world continues the following day. This aspect of the activity requires preservice teachers to examine the global apparel industry as a social justice topic. In doing so, they learn about laborers’ wages and working conditions in different countries ranging from the modern sweatshops of South and East Asia to the maquiladoras of Central America. Examining working conditions also leads to deeper understandings of the uneven development of the global economy and how free trade has often failed to translate into improved quality of life for most workers in the developing economies which produce much of the clothing worn in America. Moreover, the analysis of working conditions allows preservice teachers to make connections related to the exploitation of women and children in these enterprises.

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After these activities and discussions, preservice teachers write a reflective journal entry focusing on what they have learned about global trade, labor conditions, and environmental impacts, what they would like to research further on their own, their ideas regarding how one individual, one classroom, or one elementary school can become engaged in working to reform the economic injustices revealed in the reading, as well as their ideas regarding how to present these concepts to students. The activity is indeed modeled as an approach for beginning a unit centered on the same themes for students. Teaching this activity in the early grades familiarizes students with issues of global development, economic relationships, and social justice. Moreover, this integrated activity provides students with opportunities to develop literacy skills and analytical abilities, as well as data tabulation and organization, creating diagrams, and applying map skills. The majority of the readings from Rethinking Globalization are concise, and accessible to upper elementary students, while the other readings can be used for upper grades. Teaching Resources Bigelow, B., & Peterson, B. (2002). Rethinking globalization: Teaching for justice in an unjust world. Milwaukee. WI: Rethinking Schools. Written for teachers and for use in classrooms, this book examines the uneven development of the global economy. It highlights several social justice issues related to globalization, including: poverty, working conditions, corporate power, and the status of women and children in the global workforce. For this activity, the chapters examining global sweatshops, child labor, and culture, consumption, and the environment are most on point. Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Penguin. Using case studies, Diamond analyzes factors that influence whether societies thrive or collapse. He concludes that while not all societies collapse because of environmental factors, the relationship with the environment is crucial. The chapter on contemporary China and the environmental consequences of its remarkable economic growth is germane to the themes developed in the lesson. Gray, L. (Director). (2002). The global assembly line. United States: New Day Films. Hudgins, E. (1997). The myth of the race to the bottom. From http://www.freetrade.org/node/454/print Hudgins limits his discussion of the impact of globalization to the American economy and work force arguing that globalization has strengthened the position of American workers in the global economy. He maintains that globalization has encouraged innovation and greater efficiency in production which has resulted in steady gains in income and the creation or new jobs, particularly for workers possessing technology skills. McClear, S. (2005). Race to the bottom for garment workers. Z magazine, 18(3). http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/ viewArticlePrint/13921. McClear analyzes the impact of the World Trade Organization’s 2005 decision to terminate the quota system established in 1974 that placed export quotas on all textile manufacturing countries. She argues that the end of the quota system will reverse the modest gains that textile workers have secured in many developing countries, and will increase pressure to exploit cheaper labor markets where unions are nonexistent. Menzel, P., Mann, C., & Kennedy, P. (1994). Material world: A global family portrait. San Francisco: Sierra Club. A collection of photographs document the incredible disparities in material culture between different countries around the world. Each photo captures a typical family’s material possessions and accompanying essays discuss daily life, work, family relationships, and so on for each family. The book also provides demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural information for each country. Rivoli, P. (2005). The travels of a t-shirt in the global economy: An economist examines the markets, power, and politics of world trade. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. A fascinating analysis of the global garment industry, the book begins at a cotton farm in Texas and follows the cotton through the production process in a Chinese factory, to the finished garment’s marketing and sale in the United States. The book provides a rich portrait of working conditions in China, as well as insights into the trade agreements and import quotas regulating the global apparel trade. World Bank (2001). Is globalization causing a race to the bottom in environmental standards? http://www1.worldbank.org/ economicpolicy/globalization/documents/AssessingGlobalizationP4.pdf One work in a series of World Bank briefing papers, it assesses globalization, growth, and poverty in developing nations. The report explores the relationships between globalization, air and water pollution, and resource depletion in various countries. The report synthesizes the findings of several other studies and finds widely varying results.

46 Examining Privilege in Globalization Sandra Schmidt

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: III (People, Places, and Environments), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), VII (Production, Distribution, and Consumption), IX (Global Connections) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: economics, economic content knowledge, global economy, capitalism, inequality, justice, perspective-consciousness, local/global connections, issues-oriented approach, teacher reflection, role-play/simulation, film, photographs/pictures, power/authority, government A primary goal of my teaching is to have students critically reflect about practice so that they are able to see themselves, their teaching contexts, and their curriculum within social, political, historical, and economic contexts. I want students to see themselves and their teaching within the context of systems that tend to organize students and learning in particular ways and I want them to understand the complexity of how these systems work. In class, students critically examine these typically inequitable systems and reflect on their own roles in reproducing or changing them. I remain hopeful that students’ critical inquiry will encourage them to teach their own students to think critically about social issues and systems as they relate to the social studies. The ability to do this type of teaching does not develop from merely reading about inquiry; prospective teachers need to engage in this type of inquiry in their coursework. One theme I particularly want preservice teachers to examine more critically is globalization. While these lessons utilizes economics and global studies, the framing of this inquiry addresses how countries position themselves and are positioned in relation to others, which makes it more broadly relevant to political science, geography, history, and social studies themes. Geography lessons about boundaries, history lessons about wars, and civics lessons about legislation are essentially about power and asserting one’s position in relation to others. The global perspective I hope to develop in this lesson asks students, regardless of content area, to think about global positioning and how they, their students, and the curriculum participate in interrelated global structures. I also teach from an ethical platform. When my students teach their students to see themselves and others in a particular way, they are often either perpetuating or challenging sets of interactions. When I ask students to question systems of globalization and implicate themselves and their country, I hope they see this set of relationships as one in which they do affect others through their daily experience and one in which there is space to act differently. The premise of this lesson is to query the concept of globalization and the language we use for evidence of how nations are valued, characterized, and positioned in relation to one another and how, according to many measures, globalization helps some countries at the expense of others. 202

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Globalization, as I am using the term, is a predominantly Western concept related to neoliberalism (Ferguson, 2006; Harvey, 2005). Neoliberal globalization is typically taught in ways that normalize economic access of U.S.-based corporations to global labor and the markets. The World Bank, IMF, and WTO are typically presented in popular culture from the perspective of the G-8 nations. The recipient countries are often presented as poor, corrupt, inefficient, and ungrateful. Beginning with a conference at Bretton Woods in 1944, policies were created to provide global stability by reconstructing and developing countries in need—first those who suffered directly from participation in World War II and later newly independent states—through short and long term loans via the World Bank and IMF that required structural readjustment (Ismi, 2004; Sachs, 2005). These loans required public sector layoffs, social service cuts, and restricted investment in public sector health and education, as well as “free market” access to a country’s consumers. Many people in the world, however, argue that neoliberal economic policies diminish their ability to compete in the global economy and that participation is accompanied by negative social change. Another perspective suggests that these measures are underdeveloping parts of the world (Englund, 2006; Ferguson, 2006). They contend that urbanization and capitalism which serve the market needs of Western countries are displacing local social, cultural, government, and economic institutions and structures. In addition to helping students understand the complex structures of globalization, I also want them to evaluate terminology and concepts that comprise the language of development. The lesson is developed around three activities presented during two 3-hour seminars. To introduce the lesson, I ask students to read the first four chapters of Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty (2005), the introduction to James Ferguson’s Global Shadows (2006), the first chapter in William Easterly’s White Man’s Burden (2006), and the first two chapters of Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom (2000). These texts provide different models for thinking about development, as well as some historical analysis of the causes of global economic inequality which are at the heart of this lesson. We then discuss key concepts that underscore economic comparisons in a global context. We highlight the concepts developing/developed/underdeveloped, First/Second/Third World, Structural Adjustment Loans (SALs), Human Development Index and its component parts, Millennium Development Goals, trade balance, and gross domestic product (GDP), explaining where they come from, how they are used, and when and to what extent these terms are useful. We return to these during the lesson as we develop a more complex understanding of globalization. In the first activity we use a book and poster series—The Material World (Menzel, 1995). The Material World was designed to provide readers with a comparative sense of material wealth across countries. This is premised upon finding an “average” family in each country and having them display their worldly possessions and family members in a photo outside their home. The book also contains vignettes about the jobs and daily life of the family. The poster set is specifically designed for teachers and is accompanied by activities that have students identify and label the countries as haves and have-nots. There are a series of ranking activities and additional information including common human development indicators such as GDP, infant mortality, life expectancy, and literacy rates. Finally, there are questions about lifestyle and values that provide some juxtaposition, showing that not all families value material goods in the same manner and demonstrating how some families are able to get by on so little. The questions about how life is organized arise from a particular framework of how material wealth, education, and health should be organized, hence, these posters serve as a comparison of what unites the “haves” and constructs the “have-nots.” The series seems to close the possibility that the Bhutan family may

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be more spiritually grounded than the U.S. family or that the large family and community in Mali may be a source of strength, rather than one that prevents them from being wealthy. This activity is intended to engage students in categorizing and then questioning these categories in terms of what this values, establishes as valuable or dismisses, how/why/from whom the categories arise, other possibilities for organization, and how we might misuse this information as educators. It is not my intent to suggest that people living in economic poverty are content in their way of life, but to assess struggle and contentment at all levels of the economic spectrum, as well as pose questions about the impact of creating this kind of global comparison. Concepts such as development position and orient people and possibilities in the world and this cannot be forgotten in the conversation about contentment. As they view the posters, I ask students to construct their own categories to help us evaluate these countries. I ask them to note what families seem to value, who is part of the family, and what other items in the pictures might tell us about the lives of these people. It is also important for students to understand the complexity of the causes of poverty and wealth and the diversity of national experiences and to think about this as well when they look at the pictures. For example, nations with a history of trade and mercantile systems like Thailand or a history of good education and literacy like India generally do better. Students can consider whether a country featured was at war enflamed by the competing interests of democratic capitalist nations and communist nations as occurred in Cambodia, Guatemala, or Afghanistan. Looking at African portraits, they can consider how significant differences in poverty are rooted in colonial experiences such as the extent to which national boundaries were created sensibly in terms of ethnic groups and the extent to which one ethnic group was favored by the colonizer, which fostered ethnic conflict, war, and even genocide as in Rwanda. In Africa, how the postcolonial transition was managed had a big effect on development and the pictures can lead to conversations about how French colonies like the pictured Mali had many years to transition to autonomy and learn how to govern, while the abrupt withdrawal in the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique and the Belgian Congo contributed to civil unrest and then war and poverty. As Sachs details, geography matters in different ways in different nations, leading to his suggestion for “clinical economics” that focuses on the key underlying causes of poverty and solutions responsive to each country’s specific conditions. After agreeing on a set of categories, I ask for sites of contention or different categorizing schemes. We begin with how the sense of an “average” or representative national family that the posters portray positions the viewer to hold a particular sense of wealth, development, and universality. For example, the posters suggest that all Malians live in sparse adobe houses rather than in cities with electricity. Next, we look at the words we used to label the countries and the ramifications, intentions, and limitations of our language. I situate our language and comparisons within the framework of the Human Development Index (HDI) and what is included versus the more recent Gross National Happiness (GNH) index. While the qualitative GNH indices are more difficult to quantify than the HDI, its four pillars—equitable and sustainable socioeconomic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance—propose that there are frameworks other than economic and health measures for evaluating human well-being (Revkin, 2005). My second activity is designed to raise questions about the distribution of world resources. The activity is a simulation in which students are provided with resources which they exchange on a “global” market. No one has enough resources to make a complete product, but throughout the room there are sufficient resources to produce the goods. They are forced to interact if they want to “play.” In this activity, students attempt to make candy bars by collecting enough raw materials (chocolate and peanuts), technology (poker chips), and capital (money). At the start of the game, the

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resources are unequally distributed around the room. The technology and capital are in the hands of a few while peanuts are readily available to everyone, which is to the detriment of the majority of students who have only peanuts. At the end of each round, more raw materials are distributed, which continues to disadvantage the students who hold only peanuts because their resource becomes increasingly less desirable. We continue for several rounds as students attempt to make and then sell whole candy bars to acquire more capital and technology for subsequent rounds. The conversation following the activity focuses on the winners, losers, and those in between and conditions that set people up to win or to lose. Often the discussion about what constitutes winning and losing is contested by the peanut holders who have managed to acquire more resources in a game stacked against them. The discussion is also enhanced by individual behaviors I observe during the periods of interaction. There are typically students who withdraw completely or who do “radical” things like stealing or making false promises. This activity, with real-world parallels, offers a starting point for valuable conversations about power and how it is negotiated to the advantage of certain groups. The purpose of this inquiry is to think about who has access to global markets under what terms and the national and supranational institutions and corporations that create/limit access and how their policies and laws arise and are implemented. Based on readings and their own ideas, students suggest alternatives to deal with economics, and share the strategies and options they plan to present to their own students. Our final activity is to view Life and Debt (2001).1 This sometimes polemical documentary by Stephanie Black uses voice-overs from Jamaica Kincaid’s essay, A Small Place (1988), to contrast what well-off tourists to Jamaica see, with the debt, frustration, and poverty experienced by the Jamaicans the tourists gaze at, but do not really see. Black takes Western viewers into places long unexplored by Westerners to highlight examples of the unequal access to travel, income, and opportunity experienced by many Jamaicans and people around the world. The traveler often takes for granted the privilege of being able to travel to this “other” and participate in a gaze that cannot be reciprocated. Black simultaneously examines the role of the IMF and World Bank as well as trade policies in the national and individual debt in which Jamaica and Jamaicans are entrenched. The film explores a number of economic sectors in Jamaica. Black explains that Jamaica, newly independent in 1962, began to accumulate debt with the IMF in 1977 when fuel costs skyrocketed during the oil crisis and the debt increased during the subsequent structural adjustment policies implemented by the IMF. Black does not portray Jamaica as a passive participant, but as a country that made a decision to survive in the global market by taking out a loan and subsequently becoming entrenched in an endless cycle of debt. The devastating effects of “free market” access to the Jamaican consumer is clear when heavily subsidized American and other G-8 farmers sell their products, like milk and potatoes for less than it costs to produce them. We watch as farmers cannot afford to sell their food at such a low price and the entire Jamaican farming sector is decimated and international corporations move in to offer low wage assembly jobs in special enterprise zones that will pay no taxes. These polices have been widely critiqued and while still pervasive, students also learn that they no longer represent the dominant thinking among development economists. For example, the member states of the United Nations (2008) and the world’s leading development institutions have agreed to try to realize the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, including ending extreme poverty, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, and providing universal primary education. The guiding principles include not just efficiency with resources, but also equity and distributive justice, freedom, empowerment, and sustainability. The film presents a perspective on global economic policies that is rarely raised in classrooms and disrupts common notions of developed countries “helping” other through the international loans. The film tends to disrupt students’ notions about “the other”—brown people in “developing”

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nations—as Kincaid’s voice-over narrates experiences many of them have had. But the images of Jamaicans and their voices as they tell about their experience and the efforts they go to in order to try to compete and participate in the global economy, are important in sparking compassion or even outrage, but at least a greater interest in understanding the complex politics and policies of global economics. The debriefing aspects of this teaching are critical so that the preservice teachers can understand the lesson as one that is intended to challenge their personal frameworks and enrich their knowledge, rather than a set of replicable lessons. The frameworks and questions they confront offer ways of thinking that extend across disciplines. Engaging in these lessons challenges both our approach and our content. A U.S. history teacher does not need to talk about the banana industry in Jamaica but she does need to pose questions about how and why the World Bank and IMF were created at the conclusion of World War II or to examine how U.S. imperialism is part of the world student’s experience today. Across disciplines, we can pose questions about how local actions affect global systems. These lessons ask prospective teachers to question concepts and language and, more broadly, to question their position in the world and how this works to the advantage and disadvantage of others, a conceptual framework relevant to any social studies classroom. Note 1. For additional information and perspectives about Jamaica’s economic experience and the role of the World Bank and IMF throughout the world see Ismi (2004), Sachs (2005), and Witter (2004).

Teaching Resources Black, S. (2001). Life and debt. New York: New Yorker Films . Blaut, J. M. (1993). A colonizer’s model of the world. New York: Guilford Press. Cassel, A. (2001, August 20). Free trade—the movie version—is pure fiction. The Philadelphia Inquirer, p. C01. D’aluisio, F., & Menzel, P. (1996). Women in the material world. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Easterly, W. (2006). The white man’s burden: Why the West’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good. New York: Penguin Press. Englund, H. (2006). Prisoners of freedom: Human rights and the African poor. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ferguson, J. (2006). Global shadows: Africa in the neoliberal world order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holden, S. (2001, June 15). One love, one heart, or a sweatshop economy? The New York Times, p. E18. Ismi, A. (2004, July). Impoverishing a continent: The World Bank and the IMF in Africa. Ottawa, Canada: Halifax Initiative Coalition. Jackson, P. (2005, July 21). Free trade or fair trade? The Daily Yomiuri, p. 17. Kincaid, J. (1988). A small place. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Menzel, P., & Mann, C. C. (1995). The material world: A global family portrait. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Menzel, P. (2007). The material world: Curriculum guide. Culver City, CA: Social Studies School Service. Merryfield, M. (2006). Whose worldview? Representation and reality in the social studies. In A. Segall, E. Heilman, & C. Cherryholmes (Eds.), Social studies—The next generation: Researching in the postmodern. New York: Lang. Michel, L. (2004). European Commission report on millenium development goals, 2002–2004. Brussels: European Commission. Revkin, A. (2005, October 4). A new measure of well-being from a happy little kingdom. New York Times. http://www. nytimes.com/2005/10/04/science/04happ.html Sachs, J. D. (2005). The end of poverty: Economic possibilities for our time. New York: Penguin Books. Said, E. (1995). An ideology of difference. In H. L. Gates (Ed.), “Race,” writing, and difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sen, A. (2000). Development as freedom. New York: Anchor. Smith, D., & Armstrong, S. (2002). If the world were a village: A book about the world’s people. Tonawanda, NY: Kid’s Can Press. Superka, B., & Parnell, R. (2003). Going after Mr. Goodbar. In C. Starbird (Ed.), Teaching international relations: Bringing the world to your classroom (pp. 115–115). Denver, CO: Center for Teaching International Relations. (Selections available online through Google Books) United Nations. (2008). Development goals. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ Witter, M. (2004). Trade liberalization: The Jamaican experience. Kingston, Jamaica: UNCTAD.

47 Teaching Global Education in Seemingly Regional and National Curriculum Elizabeth E. Heilman

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: I (Culture), III (People, Places, and Environments), IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VII (Production, Distribution, and Consumption), IX (Global Connections) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 2 (Learning and Development), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Instructional Planning), 9 (Reflective Practice). Topics: history, historical content knowledge, geography, geographic content knowledge, civics, civic content knowledge, globalization, global education, local–global communities, perspective–consciousness, ethical–political valuation, graphic organizers, deindustrialization, families, issues-oriented approach, commonality and difference, multiple perspectives, social action, emotional response, standards, curriculum planning One of the biggest challenges that I have faced in trying to encourage global teaching is the seemingly nonglobal K-12 curriculum. Elementary social studies often follows the expanding communities approach and presents a nonglobal curriculum that features American communities, regions, history, economics, and geography—nothing about the wider world. Secondary social studies seem to offer only world geography and a few world history courses as places for some global education, while civics, economics, and history remain mostly national disciplines. To address this issue, I help future and current teachers consider ideas for curriculum in three ways. I help them explore global education conceptually, I use two focused brain-storming activities and I expose them to a wealth of inspiration from the Internet. Exploring Global Education Concepts First we need a sense of what global education entails. To this end, I ask students to read three articles discussing global education theory (Gaudelli & Heilman, 2009; Heilman 2007; Kirkwood, 2001) and then read and skim American, British, and Australian national global education curriculum documents, and the United Nations Peace Education materials. I also ask them to look for any global education curriculum statements from developing nations, since to this date, I have not found any. I ask students to compare, contrast, and critique the readings and make an organizational chart, a diagram, or some other visual representation, comparing the theories’ elements. They are to write a short paper (about 1200 words) explaining what they found. I ask: “How would you characterize elements of global education? What elements seem to be in common? Different? Contested? What conceptual or pedagogical challenges do you identify? How 207

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does it vary by nation and organization?” When students bring these to class we have a very rich discussion. Starting with Global Concepts and Getting to the Disciplines and Standards: Brainstorming During this work on global education theory and curriculum, preservice teachers notice that there is a disconnect between global education theory and K-12 curriculum that requires creative use of the disciplines and standards to explore multidisciplinary global issues. In class, I ask students to create a detailed curriculum planning web in which a global issue or concept of their choice is in the center, and then show layers of connections to various disciplines. All global issues involve applying understanding from more than one discipline. The curriculum standards, however, are based not on global themes but on parts and subparts of disciplinary knowledge. This means that teachers most often must address global issues within and across disciplinary standards. To illustrate what students are to do alone, we first try some examples as a class. With “poverty/ child labor” written on the board, students quickly point out that it entails history, economics, geography, and even how different cultures view the role of children in the family. They decide that “global warming” involves world politics, economics, comparative geographic region study, and an understanding of scientific conceptions ranging from ecosystems to water sheds to energy circulation. In class, students share their work and they get excited by the possibilities revealed by their collective creativity. Many of the global topics that emerge involve topics already in the curriculum and students can better see how to teach them from the perspective of inquiry into a global issue. Still, interdisciplinary curriculum requires a great deal of teacher creativity and classroom time. An elementary teacher might be able to do one interdisciplinary unit based on a global issue per school year. That potentially leaves the rest of the curriculum “unglobal.” And, indeed, standard social studies curriculum like communities and American history and geography seem very “unglobal” indeed. But they do not have to be. Starting with the Disciplines and the Standards and Getting to Concepts: Brainstorming Seemingly national and parochial topics can become global through two broad approaches: looking for global issues and dimensions, and using global examples and comparisons. I provide students with copies of their state or city social studies curriculum, divide them into groups by the grade level they hope to teach, and ask them to make these global connections and suggest resources and teaching ideas for as many topics as they can. For instance, they might notice that “families” have a global dimension because families migrate and immigrate. Global issues and changes such as fuel costs and what jobs are available by location affect families as well. Families can also be taught through global comparison. Books such as Wake Up, World! A Day in the Life of Children around the World and Material World: A Global Family Portrait and others listed below are great starts. Regional folktales can easily be compared with global tales. Curriculum standards and textbooks typically describe communities, states, and regions of the United States with little reference to the global, yet fundamental aspects of economics, culture, and even climate are deeply affected by global issues. For example, the Southeast Region is facing increasing frequency and severity of hurricanes and also rising shorelines. Region study can be approached through global

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comparison of climate, as children discover how people in nations with ecosystems or economic systems like theirs, and different from theirs, are dealing with these issues. In order to really understand changes in American communities and regions, students need to learn about global economic concepts such as deindustrialization and deregulation. In Michigan, third graders learn about the effects of globalization on the auto industry, students study changes in the global steel industry in Pittsburg, and in North Carolina children learn about how regional furniture factories are closing in the face of cheaper imports. A new book, Zapizapu Crosses the Sea: A Story About Being Fair makes the macroeconomic concepts of fair global market prices and international trade accessible to even lower elementary students. When we teach economics with global examples, it not only helps students understand their community, but also helps them to learn about lives and experiences in communities that may be very different from their own. Even provincial, state and national historical topics that seem not obviously global can be taught through global comparison. For example, students studying the American Revolution and the colonial experience of gaining freedom from England are fascinated with exploring the independence of other English colonies like India and Jamaica. American students can interact with students in other nations to collaboratively learn about their countries’ experiences with colonization. While most students learn about the American colonies, fewer link this historical experience with other colonial experiences. When learning about American industrialization and related issues such as labor rights, and the employment of women and children, students can consider what is happening right now with China’s industrialization. When studying pioneer life and westward expansion, they can compare it to the early settlement in Australia. Studying American slavery or Civil Rights can lead to a study of the comparative history of South African Apartheid or to the issue of global slavery today. Becoming Inspired by Examples: Resources After students brainstorm and understand how to make these connections, ask them to bring in an actual example of a globalized curriculum or examples of real teachers doing this kind of teaching. The project registry of Global Schoolhouse is a good place to look: It shows projects that promote collaboration among students from schools all over the world. The Internet resources below connect students to organizations with rich, inspiring resources, including both lessons and units. Teaching Resources Exploring Global Education Concepts Edna Australia. (2008). Global perspectives: A statement on global education for Australian Schools. http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/122 Gaudelli, W., & Heilman, E. (in press). Reconceptualizing geography as democratic global citizenship education. Teachers College Record. Heilman, E. (2007). Dislocating imaginative and ethical aims of global education (pp. 83–104). In K. Roth (Ed), Critical issues in education in a global world. Boston: Kluwer Academic Press. Kirkwood, T. (2001).Our global age requires global education: Clarifying definitional ambiguities. Social Studies, 92, 1–16. National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). (2009). Preparing students for global community. http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/global United Kingdom Department for Children, Schools and Families (2008). Developing a global dimension in the school curriculum. http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/guidanceonthelaw/115_00/index.htm United Nations. (2009). Peace education. http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/peace/home.asp

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Books Abad Vergara, D. (2007). Zapizapu crosses the sea: A story about being Fair. New Bern, NC: Trafford. Hollyer, B. (1999). Wake up, world! A day in the life of children around the world. New York: Henry Holt/Oxfam. Hollyer, B. (2004). Let’s eat: What children eat around the world. New York: Henry Holt/Oxfam. Kindersley, A., & Kindersley, B. (1997). Children just like me: Celebrations! London: Dorling Kindersley.

Organizations with Global Education Curriculum American Forum For Global Education. (n.d.). http://www.globaled.org/database/ Global Education. Web site by AusAID. (n.d.). http://globaleducation.edna.edu.au/ Global Schoolhouse. (n.d.). http://www.globalschoolnet.org/GSH/ Global SchoolNet: Global Schoolhouse. (n.d.). http://www.globalschoolnet.org/index.cfm Goble’s third grade in Cannelton, Indiana. (n.d.). http://www.siec.k12.in.us/cannelton Peace Corps Kids World. (n.d.). http://www.peacecorps.gov/kids/ United Nations Cyberschoolbus. (n.d.). http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/index.shtml

48 “Baltimore and the World” Project The Intersection of Local and Global Issues Todd W. Kenreich

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), III (People, Places, and Environments), IX (Global Connections), X (Civic Ideals and Practices). INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Instructional Planning), 8 (Assessment) Topics: geography, geographic content knowledge, history, historical content knowledge, economics, global education, issues-oriented approach, inquiry, human rights, creating teaching materials, ethnocentrism, local/global communities, social action, communitybased learning A central theme of global education is the exploration of interconnectedness, specifically, the dynamic relationship between local and global issues. A local-global approach can help challenge our often ethnocentric tendency to view global issues as remote and assess them only from our own perspective. (For more on ethnocentrism, see Subedi, chapter 36). When issues are remote, teachers and students can avoid the difficult questions of complicity in the existing power relations that shape inequity at home and abroad. Exploring the local community as a microcosm of the world can bring fresh perspectives to seemingly remote global issues. Inspired by the program, New York and the World, from the American Forum for Global Education (1998) and by earlier appeals for a strong focus on local and global connections, I designed the Baltimore and the World Project. I ask our preservice teachers to select a global issue and prepare resources for a one-week unit of instruction on the issue and its connection to Baltimore. This not only gives them the opportunity to learn more about the local-global connections, but also prompts them to think in these terms as they prepare for their own teaching. To set the stage for this project, at the beginning of the semester, I introduce preservice teachers to global education as a framework for curriculum reform. Preservice teachers read and discuss global education theory (Case, 1993; Collins, Czarra, & Smith, 1998; Hanvey, 1982) and practice (Hicks & Ewing, 2003). To explore the interconnectedness of one issue in-depth, we examine the issue of human rights (for more on this, see Myers, chapter 13). Based on a reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we compare and contrast these provisions with the more familiar guarantees in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. Then we examine the historical and geographical contexts for the current conflict in Darfur by reading Straus’s (2005) article in Foreign Affairs. Preservice teachers conclude this topic by reading the introduction from Lewis’ (1998) guide for designing social action projects. I facilitate a brainstorming session about how our local community is involved in including refugees in our local community and those involved

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in awareness or aid activities. We look up our local congress people’s opinions and voting record on intervention. We consider what we might do to raise campus awareness and money for humanitarian aid in the region. Several weeks into the semester, the preservice teachers coordinate a daylong genocide awareness and fundraising event and contribute the proceeds to the Darfur Schools Project, a campaign to provide schooling for children displaced by the violence in Darfur. Activities include an outdoor poster campaign about the issue of human rights in Darfur, a bake sale fundraiser for the Darfur Schools Project, a panel discussion with a human rights activist and a U.S. diplomat to Sudan, as well as a campus screening and discussion of the film, Darfur Dairies. After the day, we reflect on the benefits and limitations of our social action project. The readings and activities on human rights are intended, in part, to help our preservice teachers understand the issue as an immediate emergency in order to move beyond traditional teaching about extreme human rights violations as chiefly occurring in the past. These global education readings and activities lead to the Baltimore and the World Project. Numerous issues can be readily explored from a local and global perspective. Consider race relations, health care, transportation, unemployment, hunger, homelessness, and the environment. Examples of recent projects include comparative projects such as The Problem of Racial Discrimination in Johannesburg and Baltimore, HIV-AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa and Baltimore, Crime and Punishment in London, Riyadh, and Baltimore, Homelessness in Baltimore and Mexico City, and projects focusing on the local context of global issues such as The Port of Baltimore: Gateway to the World, Russian Immigration and the Development of Baltimore, and Urban Growth in the Chesapeake Watershed and the Global Environment. The Baltimore and the World project can also be adapted for preservice teachers in less populated settings. While the evidence of interconnectedness may be stronger in large cities like Baltimore, savvy teacher educators can point to evidence in small and medium-sized towns. Issues such as global food production, global warming, the global economy, global cultures, entertainment, and global migration affect every community in some way. You can also consult the local historical society or chamber of commerce for information about the town’s international ties—past and present. Preservice teachers often find the early instructional planning to be challenging. During the initial stage of the project, I find that many identify a global issue and soon discover that they must narrow the scope and scale of the issue in order to fit the parameters of the project. Writing a 2-page rationale for the importance of the issue and explaining its relationship to the social studies curriculum is the first step that frames the project. Too often, preservice teachers take a global issue as “given” without carefully considering why it is important and how it relates to other topics in the social studies. Next, a short list of curriculum goals (step 2) is drafted with parenthetical cross-references to content standards and to Hanvey’s (1982) five dimensions of a global perspective. Most preservice teachers struggle with this step because our local school districts have moved to tightly scripted instruction. In fact, some despair that their issue cannot be found anywhere in the content standards. My role is to help them take a closer look to identify national, state, and local standards that directly or indirectly address the issue. Rather than developing full lesson plans, preservice teachers then design a lesson matrix (step 3) with daily topics and activities. The largest part of the project is a set of “photocopy-ready” classroom materials (step 4) such as maps, student readings, handouts, and assessments. The project closes with a concise 2-page essay (step 5) that critiques the strengths and weaknesses of the project. Throughout the process, self-assessment and peer-editing shape the project. To illuminate the challenges inherent in instructional planning for global issues, I share one preservice teacher’s experience with the project. Lily (pseudonym) is a White, non-Hispanic,

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first-generation undergraduate pursuing a degree in social sciences with teacher certification for secondary social studies. She titled her project: The Port of Baltimore: Gateway to the World. In her rationale for the topic, Lily explained that her interest in the port stemmed from the stories of an uncle who worked in the steel mills along the port. She prepared her project to explore the issue of international trade in the context of the Port of Baltimore. In her project critique, Lily explained the challenges she faced in her instructional planning. I thought about what a tenth-grade student already knows about economics, trade, and the Port of Baltimore, but I was not ready to begin with a lesson on the gap between developed and underdeveloped countries. I had to narrow the topic as I went. I kept the port focus all along the way, but I wanted to explore the economic gap between Baltimore’s main trading partners. My original plan was to include eight countries—four importers and exporters. More countries would have made the unit more global. Right? But, eight was too much. It would have confused the kids and extended well beyond the five days in the classroom. In the end, I chose China and Canada to show the gap. As Lily makes decisions about the scope of her project, breadth versus depth concerns are apparent. Such concerns are not new for instructional planning, but the complex nature of global issues brings this into sharp relief. Lily initially equates a larger scope (eight countries rather than two) with a more global approach to her project. However, she reconsiders this in light of the purpose of the project, the needs of her students, and limited instructional time. Indeed establishing the scope of the issue can be one of the most challenging aspects of instructional planning for local and global issues. It is important that preservice teachers understand the concept of interconnectedness because teaching the local–global relationship requires that they interpret and negotiate the mandated curriculum. The traditional “concentric circles” approach to the P-12 social studies curriculum marginalizes local issues in the upper grades. As such, the state curriculum standards for secondary social studies and state-level assessment in Maryland—and those in other states—largely ignore local issues. Teachers who “teach to the test” may not see much value in highlighting interconnectedness. Even some exemplary high school programs in global education treat local and global dimensions of issues in isolation rather than in a dynamic relationship (Myers, 2006). Given the structural forces at work against local issues in the curriculum, I need to be strategic in preparing teachers for global perspectives. With careful support in a methods course, preservice teachers can move toward being cosmopolitan teachers who envision the social studies curriculum as a vital place for the intersection of local and global issues. References American Forum for Global Education. (1998). New York and the world. New York: Author. Hanvey, R. (1982, Summer). An attainable global perspective. Theory into Practice, 21, 162–167. Myers, J. P. (2006). Rethinking the social studies curriculum in the context of globalization: Education for global citizenship in the United States. Theory and Research in Social Education, 34(3), 370–394.

Teaching Resources Case, R. (1993). Key elements of global perspective. Social Education, 57(6), 318–325. Collins, H. T., Czarra, F. R., & Smith, A. F. (1998). Guidelines for global and international studies education: Challenges, cultures, and connections. Social Education, 62(5), 311–317. Hanvey, R. (1982, Summer). An attainable global perspective. Theory into Practice, 21, 162–167.

214 • Todd W. Kenreich Hicks, D., & Ewing, E. T. (2003). Bringing the world into the classroom with online global newspapers. Social Education, 67(3), 134–139. Lewis, B. (1998). Life beyond the classroom. In The kid’s guide to social action (pp. 7–22). Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Press. Straus, S. (2005, January/February). Darfur and the genocide debate. Foreign Affairs, 84(1), 123–133. http://www.polisci. wisc.edu/users/straus/Straus.pdf United Nations. (1948). Universal declaration of human rights. New York: Author.

49 Teaching Current Events from a Global Perspective Toni Fuss Kirkwood-Tucker

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: I (Culture), II (Time, Continuity, and Change) III (People, Places, and Environments), IX (Global Connections), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 3 (Diverse Learners), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Instructional Planning), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: geography, geographical content knowledge, global education, current events, cultures, local/global communities, citizenship, multiple perspectives, perspective consciousness, ethnocentrism, film Global education prepares teachers to build bridges across cultural boundaries, and prepares citizens to be able to communicate and collaborate with those whose attitudes, values, knowledge, and ways of doing things differ significantly from their own (Cushner & Brennan, 2007). Over the last two decades, teacher educators have attempted to respond to national professional organizations, businesses, and commissions to add a global dimension to teacher education programs in order to help prospective and practicing teachers gain knowledge, skills, and dispositions to teach from a global perspective (Merryfield, Jarchow, & Pickert, 1997; Quezada & Cordeiro, 2007). Yet, they are still concerned about the lack of historical knowledge, geographic skills, and global content of their undergraduate preservice teachers. I suggest the integration of current events, taught from a global perspective, in undergraduate social studies methods courses to help our future teachers acquire an expanded knowledge about the cultural, sociopolitical, economic, and geographic interdependence of the world. I make the integration of currents events from a global perspective a regular weekly assignment throughout the semester, and have individual students (small classes), pairs, or teams of students (large classes) report on current events at the beginning of class. Since I teach all my classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels from a global perspective, my students are required to read the full text of An Attainable Global Perspective (Hanvey, 1976), the classic discourse on how to obtain a global perspective in a rapidly changing and increasingly interdependent world. I consider this document a cogent and useful conceptual framework in the early global education literature “since its first publication the work has been widely used, has been reprinted a number of times, remains timely, in demand, and is valid. In many ways it is a classic of the literature of global education” (Kniep, 1987, p. 82). The following represents a synopsis of the core of the document:

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• Perspective consciousness: Awareness of and appreciation for different perspectives of the world. • State-of-the-planet awareness: An in-depth understanding of global issues and events and their cause-and-effect relationships. • Cross-cultural awareness: Awareness of the diversity of ideas and practices in human societies around the world, and how they compare; developing empathy and transpection. • Knowledge of global dynamics: Comprehension of traits and mechanisms of the world system, with an emphasis upon theories and concepts that increase consciousness of global change and resultant interconnectedness. • Awareness of human choices: Awareness of the problems of choices confronting individuals, nations, and the human species as consciousness and knowledge of the global system expands. After an in-depth discussion of the Hanvey document and my illustration of recent events occurring across the globe, which points out the affected countries on the world map and reviews basic geographic skills (latitude, longitude, hemispheres, and time zones), I demonstrate the reporting of a contemporary event to the class applying the five dimensions of the Hanvey model to structure and analyze the reporting of current events. I use one 3-hour class period: (1) to teach geography with hands-on activities; (2) to discuss the Hanvey article required for homework reading; (3) to show a film with students in groups applying the five dimensions of the Hanvey Model to the content; (4) to demonstrate the application of the five dimensions to a current event; and (5) to require each student to model their teacher (me) in presenting their self-selected current event, beginning with the next class period and for the duration of the course. Procedure While standing in front of my world map, which is my faithful companion wherever I teach, I ask: “Why am I beginning with the State-of-the-planet Awareness first?” I expect my students to recognize that current trends and issues are discussed in this dimension. Students should also be able to define each dimension of the model and to understand how we structure our discussion under each. I then proceed to ask my students to describe the current event according to who, what, where, when, and how. I engage the students in analyzing the current event and its relevant geography by posing questions about its capital, longitudinal and latitudinal position, region, time zone, and other aspects of its geography. I then ask the students to draw conclusions about the country’s geopolitical position (advantages, disadvantages, etc.) and the implications this positioning may have on the current event. I conclude by asking the students to examine the cause(s) and effect(s) of the current event, and the impact it may have on their individual lives, communities, and schools. Perspective Consciousness I continue engaging with the students, and ask them to identify the various perspectives exhibited in the article. I ask the students how the deeply held beliefs of these individuals are formed, and ask whether they agree or disagree with these beliefs. I also ask the students to examine what Hanvey suggests in addressing our disagreement with others, and we proceed to a discussion on cultural relativism and its application (or not) to the current event.

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Cross-Cultural Awareness Continuing with the Hanvey model, I engage the students by asking whether there is evidence of culture, such as language, literature, food, religion, tradition, values, or way of life in this current event. I ask the students about how this culture is manifested and the role that it plays in the current event. I then ask the students to examine both similarities and differences between this country and their own country, and the lessons we can learn to gain a cross-cultural awareness. Knowledge of Global Dynamics I challenge the students to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the current events to other countries, including their own. I engage the students in examining the effects these interconnections have on their country, schools, communities, and individual lives, keeping in mind both anticipated and unanticipated consequences that might arise from this event, and the ways in which these consequences should be addressed. Awareness of Human Choices I continue challenging the students to make decisions to address this issue. I ask them what type of action they would take (if any), and whether they would prefer to be a bystander or an upstander. I ask them to think of activities or projects that they and their future students could become engaged in to work toward a more peaceful, sustainable world, such as adopting a school in a developing country when they are ready to teach. The questioning procedure is endless, but must eventually stop due to time constraints. If you choose to integrate this pedagogy into graduate methods classes, the levels of engagement and analysis become more sophisticated and complex, with students being encouraged to acquire knowledge about NGOs, the United Nations and its organizations. Conclusion When the reporting of current events is concluded, it is critical to hold a debriefing of the semesterlong activity in the roundtable configuration so that all students have the opportunity to be engaged in the discussion. I ask the students to reflect on what they have learned about reporting current events, focusing on whether there was a preponderance of events in some regions of the world and not in others. I also ask the students to generalize on the predominant content of the events, and to draw conclusions. I conclude by asking the students whether this activity was important, and what actions they would recommend that their future students should take in light of these current global issues. References Cushner, K., & Brennan, S. (2007). Intercultural student teaching: A bridge to global competence. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield. Kniep, W. (1987). Next steps in global education: A handbook for curriculum development. New York: Global Perspectives in Education. Merryfield, M. M. (1997). A framework for teacher education in global perspectives. In M. Merryfield, E. Jarchow, & S. Pickert, (Eds.), Preparing teachers to teach global perspectives: A handbook for teacher education, (pp. 1–24). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

218 • Toni Fuss Kirkwood-Tucker Quezada, R., & Alfaro, C. (2007). Biliteracy teachers’ self-reflections of their accounts while student teaching abroad: Speaking from “the other side.” Teacher Education Quarterly, 43(1) 95–113.

Teaching Resources 1.

Form geographic teams (name them according to the region/continent they are representing such as Asia, Africa, Europe.) consisting of an anthropologist, geographer, historian, economist, and futurist (political scientist) each representing the Hanvey model in reporting the event. 2. Assign a student to be in charge of a “Current Events Wall” titled “The State of the World” to which the current events articles are attached. 3. Geographic teams plan and create newspaper in class with headlines, captions, editorials, cultural events, and information students deem important for a grade. Hanvey, R. (1976). An attainable global perspective. Denver, CO: Center for Teaching International Relations.

50 Environment Toxins Near and Far Health and Civic Responsibility David Hursh, Camille Martina, and Michael Fantauzzo

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (People, Places, and Environments), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VIII (Science, Technology, and Society), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflective Practice), 10 (Collaboration) Topics: civics, government, geography, student-centered, citizenship, environment, ethical political valuation, health, primary resources, social action, technology/internet, unit development, curriculum planning Every day we learn more about how the environment can impair our health. For example, the toxic soup of Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters, childhood lead poisoning from older neglected housing, potential danger from pesticides and herbicides applied to agricultural land and residential lawns, and the spread of tropical diseases as the globe warms (Steingraber, 1998). Understanding the risks we face and how we might respond to them as individuals and as members in a community is crucial to our well-being, and, as such, provides an excellent opportunity to involve students in examining and affecting local governments. However, environmental health issues are rarely included in the social studies curriculum. The unit, Environmental Health: From Problem to Public Policy, was developed and implemented in Michael Fantauzzo’s 12th grade Participation in Government course (New York State).1 One of the most common questions my (Michael’s) high school students ask me is: “I’m not going to run for Congress, so why do I need to know social studies?” While your initial response might be, “I’m not sure the people in Congress know social studies,” how you answer this question will either win or lose the hearts and minds of your students. This question alone will reveal more about your beliefs as a social studies teacher than any other question you will explore or defend in a college project or paper. It is of the utmost importance that you prepare to answer this question the first day and every day you teach, because high school students have an uncanny ability to size up a teacher’s honesty and integrity. Social studies is not just for politicians. It is for anyone who identifies and addresses community goals and problems. Furthermore, the place in which citizens are likely to have the greatest impact is at the local rather than state or federal levels. To paraphrase John Dewey (1916) in Democracy and Education, schooling is not merely preparation for life, it is life, and, therefore, should be a place in which students not only learn about but also engage in democratic practices. This unit responds to two common problems social studies teachers confront. First, while many of my students, when asked to define citizenship in a democracy, use the right buzzwords, like freedom, liberty, and individual rights, few students have grappled with the complexity of these

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ideas, or been asked to apply them to authentic situations. Students are likely to be overwhelmed by many social issues, such as terrorism or poverty, and this can lead to resignation and apathy. However, social studies teachers need to inform students that citizenship does not begin at the national or even the global level, but at the local level. Students can respond to the environmental health issues by changing their own behaviors, and those in their family or school, or working to affect local policies. At a minimum, students will come to appreciate how a small change in their own actions and attitudes can have a combined and collective effect in overcoming larger problems that appear to be out of the realm of individual control. Moreover, students can become informed and support local efforts to reduce environmental risks from various toxins. For example, many local communities, including our own, have instituted new regulations aimed to reduce dangers from lead poisoning, and pesticide and herbicide applications. Beginning the Unit I begin the unit with a class brainstorming activity in which students list examples of environmental health issues and public health. After discussing this list first in small groups and then as a whole class, students define each concept and consider how these two ideas might align or contradict each other. The class is then given five different letters, one to each student, each letter written by a fictitious author asking the local authority to investigate a potential problem and provide some course of action. The topics point to problems with pesticide use, lead poisoning, electronic waste, state recycling deposit programs, and hazardous materials transportation. The details of the problem have been made to fit the local environment and have been personalized with well-known landmarks and features. For example, the letter regarding pesticide use reads as follows: To Whom It May Concern: As a resident for over 50 years, I have become increasingly concerned about pesticide use in agricultural and residential areas. Many of my neighbors now have their lawns “treated,” while local farmers have increased their use of pesticides. Recently, I noticed a foul smell emanating from my faucet along with an acrid flavor from my tap water. Concerned about our well water, my husband and I conducted a quick survey of our land, which is bordered on the southern side by a large cornfield. The eastern and western borders of our property are residential and both of our neighbors have their lawn tended by a local lawn-care company. There is a small dairy farm across the street from us and, much to our surprise, a puddle of standing water appears to have run off adjacent to our property and has the same smell as our tap water. I ask the town reexamine its regulations regarding pesticide use in light of possible risks to residents. Sincerely, Ivanna Kleenup From this point students identify the environmental problem and begin an investigation into the nature of the problem and the effects on human health. Most of their research is conducted via the Internet. To assist students in conducting their research, a list of reliable resources, including the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, are provided (see Teaching Resources

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below). Students are also given two handouts to help them assess and organize the information they collect. One handout, “Source Evaluation Form,” requires that they (1) summarize the content of the source and how it will be used; (2) assess the credibility of the source, including when the source was written, authors or organization sponsor; and (3) say whether and why they would recommend the source to a concerned citizen. In this way students begin to analyze information for objectivity and scientific accuracy. A second handout, “Environmental Health Issue Research Guide,” asks students to record what they learned from the source regarding (1) the extent of the environmental risks on living organisms, including infants and children, adults, and the elderly; and (2) whether there are any regulations at the local, state, and federal levels that need to be followed when addressing this environmental issue. After an extended period of guided research, students propose a course of action and follow through with that action by writing and debating laws and speeches, creating educational tools, or developing their own public service announcements using i-Movie, which they then present to the class. By requiring students to present to the class gives the students a real audience for their writing, making authorship more meaningful, and exposes the entire class to all five environmental health problems. What the Students Learn Teaching this unit has enabled me to achieve several goals. First, in the years previous to teaching this unit, students’ research papers were often on topics to which they have a strong emotional connection. As a result, students wrote opinion essays instead of truly objective research papers. In contrast, very few students have previous knowledge regarding environmental health issues, and, therefore, are forced to do more research, thus solving the problem of reading yet another paper on “Why Marijuana Should Be Decriminalized” or “How Gun Ownership Benefits Society.” Second, students are required to build on and expand their knowledge and skills in other subject areas beyond social studies. For example, students improved their English as they wrote policies and essays, their knowledge of science and health as they learned about watersheds, toxins, and illnesses, and their artistic skills when they ‘filmed’ their i-Movie public service announcements and created storyboards, wrote scripts, and learned about camera angles, lighting, sound-mixing, and computer editing technologies. Third, students began to realize that citizenship requires more than voting. For example, Paul (a pseudonym), who researched the danger of lead poisoning, recognized that citizenship means getting “more involved with what is going on in the government and your neighborhood,” so that you can prevent harmful activities that “you will end up regretting.” Sara, who investigated electronic or e-waste, learned that this course differed from her other social studies courses, where she was taught “other people’s opinions.” In this course, she learned that “there is no one right answer and no one way to do things. In public policy there are different policies that you can choose and every person will have an opinion about which one is best. I think I have a bigger capacity to be more of a citizen now that I know this and I need to be more aware, involved, to have an opinion, and learn.” The environment has an enormous effect on our health and does so in ways that students can easily comprehend and do something about. Therefore, examining some of the environmental

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health issues in your community provides an excellent opportunity to examine government and promote citizenship. Note 1. A complete description of the unit, with handouts and rubrics, is available at http//:www2.envmed.rochester.edu/ envmed/EHSC/outreach/curriculum.htm. The unit was developed as part of the project: My Environment, My Health, My Choices (funded by EHSIC Grant #ES10717 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

References Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: Macmillan. Steingraber, S. (1998). Living downstream: A scientist’s personal investigation of cancer and the environment. New York: Vintage.

Teaching Resources The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has resources on environmental health. http://www.cdc.gov/Environmental/National Institute of Environmental Health Resources K-12 teacher resources: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/ health/scied/index.cfm Public Agenda is “a nonpartisan opinion research and civic engagement organization” with resources on both “the environment” (uses Issues Guides) and how to engage public officials and change public policy: http://www.publicagenda. org/issues/ Scorecard provides information on different kinds of pollution with in-depth reports for local communities: http:// www.scorecard.org/

SECTION

7

Current Events and Controversial Issues Introduction Elizabeth E. Heilman and Katie Gjerpen

Life in democracies requires us to critically evaluate diverse and controversial policies and practices and also to be able to tolerate the right to hold views very different from our own. Democracy relies on more than sophisticated institutions that manage policy. Democratic communities and institutions involve the struggle for culture and power, which generates human passions that are liable to challenge peace and stability. Every “building block” of democracy can also contain the seeds of violence, so we each need values, skills, and dispositions for the peaceful management of our inevitable and valuable differences. These capacities do not come naturally, and society needs education in order to help develop them. In this section, various theories and methods are presented for educating preservice teachers on how to teach current events and controversies in the classroom. Engaging students in current events learning is, almost always, inextricably linked with discussing in controversial issues. A common challenge for teachers, then, is how to facilitate meaningful discussion about current events and controversial issues without allowing those discussions to become too polemical, too personal, or to collapse into trivial debates. In the chapters that follow, educators explore a wide array of approaches, influenced by their professional and personal experiences, about how to advance educational and effective current events learning. At a metalevel, there exists controversy regarding how teachers come to form their beliefs on teaching current events in the classroom. This debate exists over whether teachers should share their personal beliefs, at all or in part, or do their best to maintain complete neutrality when facilitating discussions about the current event or events. While some contend that teachers should act as entirely neutral arbiters to facilitate discussion (Stenhouse, 1983), others emphasize value in teachers sometimes acting with neutrality in addition to sometimes sharing their own views on the issues (Harwood & Hahn, 1990; Kelly, 1986). Furthermore, others argue that teaching with complete neutrality is in itself a political act (Ross, 2000). This section begins with an examination of teachers’ political, personal, or attitudinal beliefs, and whether these should be disclosed to the classroom. This is examined in-depth in Diana Hess’s chapter, “Teaching Student Teachers to Examine How Their Political Views Inform Their Teaching.” Hess emphasizes that teacher educators need to be aware that their personal or political views influence what and how they teach their preservice teachers. She focuses specifically on two ways teacher educators’ views influence these beliefs: how they conceptualize what a controversial issue is and how much (if any) teachers should disclose of their personal beliefs. This is examined further in Thomas Levine’s chapter, “Preparing Future Teachers and Citizens to Address Controversial Issues: The Four Corner Debate.” Levine articulates how the “four corner debate” can be used to examine whether teachers should disclose their personal viewpoints, ranging in degree from never to always. Levine provides teachers with

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helpful pedagogical insights to bring with them to their own classrooms, such as methods of structuring debates in the classroom without students becoming overly competitive. Once teachers determine whether to share their personal views with their students, they must also design effective class settings to actually teach the current events themselves. A multitude of perspectives exist on the most effective, efficient and/or realistic methods to engage students. Many researchers stress that an open, nonconfrontational atmosphere encourages all students to participate (Hess, 2002; Hess & Posselt, 2002; Ratcliffe & Grace, 200 3) and can be beneficial and conducive to learning. Kenneth Vogler’s chapter, “Good Discussions Don’t Just Happen: Verbal Questioning Skills,” provides useful tools on how to facilitate educational and engaging class discussions. Vogler reflects on his successful experiences in creating “question scripts” to facilitate these discussions. He contends that strong verbal questioning skills are a precursor to effectively teaching both current events and controversies to one’s students. Deborah Byrnes, in “Getting Students to Actively Follow the News,” provides an in-depth look at the effectiveness of her “Staying Up on the News” assignment, which she gives her teachers. She both stimulates and evaluates her students’ capabilities to stay up on the news through participation in class discussions. In “Teaching about Disasters Reported in the News,” Brian Lanahan explores how we can deal with large-scale disasters. Lanahan contends that large-scale disasters, such as September 11, provide opportunities for preservice teachers to expand their roles, and to use their own experiences as catalysts for devising lesson plans in their own classrooms. Hess’s, Vogler’s, Byrnes’s, and Lanahan’s chapters are similar in that they promote open, nonconfrontational classroom settings as a way to teach students about current events. These teacher educators, however, differ in their methodologies and approaches to such teaching, provide unique perspectives, and valuable tools for preservice teachers. Oftentimes, current events involve controversial issues about which students have strong, differing opinions. It is important for teachers to emphasize that there are different viewpoints surrounding every controversy, and that many, if not most, controversies do not have only one morally or democratically justifiable response (Day, Dillon, Grace, & Oulton, 2004). Thus, it is important for teachers to educate their students on how to deal with controversial issues with tolerance for the rights of others to hold differing views and how to develop ethically compelling and factually substantive arguments. In “Issues-Centered Social Studies Unit Sampler,” Kim Koeppen emphasizes the importance of issues-centered social studies (ICSS) lessons to teach controversial and current issues. Too often, Koeppen argues, educators focus on traditional teaching styles that foreclose the possibility of ICSS methods. Koeppen argues that ICSS methods are important for students to critically evaluate current societal dilemmas, ranging from foreign aid and democracy promotion, to civil rights and discrimination. Furthermore, the structure of this engagement can be both entirely independent or a wholly collective pedagogy. Teaching with a specific ethical intention, Beth Rubin’s chapter, “The ‘Daily Dilemma’: Sharing Power with a Purpose” examines critical pedagogy as a way to foster good class discussions. She has different student leaders facilitate pedagogical engagements over controversial current events, such as Virginia Tech, leading the class in debates and discussions. Instructors also teach about social issues not in terms of divergent viewpoints, but have instead as their aim understanding the origin and the process of a social problem, and the complex interactions of associated causes for social disturbances. Grimberg teaches about the Los Angeles 1992 Rodney King riots with this intention. Still other instructors aim to persuade student to a particular point of view about a controversy or to at least aim for students to notice the way in which they position themselves in relationship to one view. Todd Dinkelman shares a controversial

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lesson called the “execution class” which challenges students to think about the lines separating what they see as legitimate, justifiable methods of teaching from those that verge on indoctrination or manipulation. Good citizens ask questions and think through issues before reaching conclusions and taking action in public life. One first needs an inquiring spirit in order to do this, which is the emotional and intellectual openness to new and even difficult ideas and experiences. Citizens also need to be able to make judgments, which requires the intellectual capacity to judge the logic of concepts, policies, and arguments along with the ability to judge the ethics on democratic grounds. The writers in this section help students develop these capacities and understand that exploring controversy is foundational to democracy. References Day, V., Dillon, J., Grace, M., & Oulton, C. (2004). Controversial issues—Teachers’ attitudes and practices in the context of citizenship education. Oxford Review of Education, 30(4), 489–507. Harwood, A. M., & Hahn, C. L. (1990). Controversial issues in the classroom. Bloomington, IN: ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education. Hess, D. (2002). Teaching controversial public issues in secondary social studies classrooms: Learning from skilled teachers. Theory and Research in Social Education, 30(1), 10–41. Hess, D., & Posselt, J. (2002). How high school students experience and learn from the discussion of controversial public issues. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 17(4), 283–314. Kelly, T. (1986). Discussing controversial issues: Four perspectives on the teacher’s role. Theory and Research in Social Education, 14(2), 113–138. Parker, W. (1996). Curriculum for democracy. In R. Soder (Ed.), Democracy, education and the schools (pp. 182–210). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Ratcliffe, M., & Grace, M. (2003). Science education for citizenship: teaching socio-scientific issues. Maidenhead ,UK: Open University Press. Ross, W. (2000). Redrawing the lines: The case against traditional social studies instruction. In D. W. Hursh & E. W. Ross (Eds.), Democratic social education (pp. 43–64). New York: Taylor & Francis. Stenhouse, L. (1983). Authority, education and emancipation: A collection of papers. New York: Heinemann.

51 Teaching Student Teachers to Examine How Their Political Views Inform Their Teaching Diana E. Hess

Context: TE Secondary NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 5 (Learning Environments), 6 (Communication) Topics: controversial issues, teacher reflection, civics, critical thinking, ethical–political valuation, categorizing ideas, decision making, deliberation, bias reduction Clearly, the political views of those who teach social studies and multicultural education influence how and what they teach. Rather than a problem to be prevented, I view this as a reality to be examined. Thinking about this reality is important not as an intellectual exercise, but so teachers recognize that the influence of personal politics applies to them so they may become thoughtful about the ways in which their politics inform what happens in their classrooms. For the past several years, I have experimented with lessons that help prospective and practicing middle and high school social studies teachers investigate how their political views may influence their teaching. I have used this lesson in secondary social studies method courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and as part of short courses I teach on controversial issues discussions at other institutions. The purpose is to help teachers develop or critically analyze a decision about a particularly thorny controversial pedagogical issue that deserves analysis and reflection: whether social studies teachers should explicitly disclose their own views on the controversial political issues that their students are taught to discuss. The lesson plan I currently use has three objectives, takes about 3 hours, and is split into two class sessions. The first objective is for students to become acquainted with two different ways in which teachers’ political views shape their teaching. The second objective is for students to recognize that these two processes apply not only to other teachers but also to themselves. The third is to examine and deliberate philosophical, empirical, and practice-oriented evidence on the disclosure issue toward the goal of helps these future teachers make a personal decision about disclosure that will shape their practice. The first class session begins with a brainstorm. I ask students to list all the ways in which they think teachers’ political views influence what they teach, how they teach, and what their students learn. This task presupposes the idea that teachers’ views inform their teaching. This may seem like a controversial position, but it is one I arrived at through quite a bit of practice, research, and 226

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reflection. It highlights my view that teachers are political beings and that social studies teaching, in particular, provides multiple opportunities for teachers’ political views to influence their work. This is not to suggest that social studies teachers should indoctrinate students into particular political positions, but it reflects the reality that, by definition, curricular decisions teachers make will be influenced by their own views. The fact that students have no trouble developing long lists during the brainstorming portion of the class has convinced me that this is a readily apparent truth to social studies methods students. When the students finish brainstorming, I explain that this lesson will focus on just two ways in which teachers’ political views influence their teaching: how they conceptualize what is a controversial issue and their beliefs about what teachers should disclose. At this point, I explain that I once thought that teacher disclosure was the primary and most important way that teachers’ political views showed up in the classroom, but the first study I conducted on this changed my mind. In that study, I asked teachers to explain what criteria they used to determine if they would include a controversial public issue in their curriculum, prompted by a list of issues (on such topics as abortion, gay rights, etc.). I was stunned when it became apparent that the teachers disagreed about whether some of the issues were issues in the first place (Hess, 2002). The results of the study showed that well before the disclosure issue even arises, teachers make a prior decision that is undoubtedly as important as whether they share their own views with their students. This decision is to determine whether a question is an issue for which they want their students to examine multiple views and one for which there are competing views, or instead is a question for which there is a right answer that they want students to believe. At this point, I pass out a short article I wrote for Social Education (Hess, 2005), which includes a typology of four ways in which teachers conceptualize what is a matter of “legitimate” controversy and how they approach issues with their students (1) Denial: It is not a controversial political issue: “Some people may say it is controversial, but I think they are wrong. There is a right answer to this question. So I will teach as if it were not controversial to ensure that students develop that answer.” (2) Privilege Teach: Teach toward a particular perspective on the controversial political issue: “It is controversial, but I think there is a clearly right answer and will try to get my students to adopt that position.” (3) Avoidance: Avoid the controversial political issue: “The issue is controversial, but my personal views are so strong that I do not think I can teach it fairly, or I do not want to do so.” (4) Balance: Teach the matter as a genuine controversial political issue: “The issue is controversial and I will aim toward balance and try to ensure that various positions get a best case, fair hearing.” Students read the typology, and I briefly explain each category using examples from the article. Then, I ask them to list issues, phrased as questions (e.g., should the death penalty be outlawed?), that they would put in each of the four categories. Then, each student discusses his or her list with a partner, with an emphasis on why the questions have been placed in particular categories. I then write each of the four category labels on the board, and each student writes an abbreviated notation for one item in each of the four categories. When students return to their seats and look at the board, the first thing they notice is that many of same issues are listed under different categories. Next, I ask students to talk about what accounts for these differences as a way to surface the criteria they use to categorize issues. We talk about the criteria and how these criteria illustrate one way in which teachers’ views inform what is in the curriculum, how the topics are treated, and consequently, what students might learn. I conclude this part of the lesson by explaining how important it is for teachers to be aware of and critically reflect on what criteria they use to determine matters of legitimate controversy versus uncomfortable and avoided questions and

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“settled” questions. In other words, I do not suggest that the fact their views influence these decisions is a problem. Instead, I try to help them understand that people have widely disparate ideas about what constitutes a matter of legitimate controversy as well as what criteria should be used to make that determination. Just as importantly, I try to help my students see how significant it is for teachers to make their decisions transparent and to engage in discussions about them with their colleagues. Then, we turn to the issue of teacher disclosure. I purposely do not ask students to share their opinions about the disclosure issue at the beginning of this part of the lesson so that they do not stake out a public position too soon. I begin by asking them to take the teacher disclosure survey from my current civic education study, which asks them to provide the degree to which they agree or disagree with statements such as “I feel like my students want me to have the same opinion on issues as they do,” “I feel like my teacher wants students to have the same opinion on issues as she/ he has.” They discuss their answers with a partner, again with an emphasis on the whys of their answers. Next, I share data from the teachers who have participated in this part of the study and ask each student to examine that data with a partner. The key question to prompt analysis and discussion is: What do you notice about the teachers’ responses to the survey questions? Then, I share data from the students of the teachers in the study and ask my students to continue working with their partners to analyze and discuss using the above question and adding another: What are the similarities and differences between the teachers and the students, and what do you think accounts for them? I am careful to point out that the data is from high school students (and is not a nationally representative sample), and that younger students may well answer these questions quite differently. At the conclusion of the first class session, students receive the excellent article from Miller-Lane and his colleagues (2006) reporting findings from a study of how middle and high school teachers in one school district think through teacher disclosure, along with excerpts from the qualitative data from my current study.1 Their assignment is to prepare for a “controversial pedagogical issues” discussion by developing their best arguments for each of two competing claims in the disclosure debate: teachers should explicitly disclose their views to students during discussions of controversial issues and teachers should not do so. I encourage them to use the data from both studies, discussions with their cooperating teachers, and any other relevant information to develop the arguments, aiming to set up a fair-minded and robust analysis of competing perspectives and the evidence that supports them. Their charge is to develop their strongest arguments for both positions—regardless of their own views at this point.2 The second class session opens with a discussion of the teacher disclosure issue, following what I consider “best practices” for controversial issues discussions (Hess, 2004). I have used two different structures for this discussion—a scaled down version of the “public issues model” (Singleton & Giese, 1996, pp. 59–65) and structured academic controversy (Larson & Keiper, 2007, pp. 241–247). The public issues model uses three specific types of questions (factual, definitional, and value-oriented) to guide the discussion of larger public policy issues. Developed as part of the Harvard Social Studies project in the early 1960s, this model works well with the disclosure issue if the question is not whether an individual teacher should disclose or not, but whether a policy on disclosure should be enacted by a school or school district. Structured academic controversy is a form of cooperative learning in which pairs of students prepare for and advocate a particular position on a controversy to another pair, then switch sides and repeat the process, followed by a discussion in which the group of four deliberates the issue. We end with a “take a stand” (Larson & Keiper, 2007, pp. 236–238).

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Reflection As is the case with all the lessons I use in class, I consider this a work in progress. The brainstorming section engages students’ attention and is a quick way of establishing the thesis of the lesson, which is that teachers’ political views inform their teaching. While this may seem obvious to many methods professors, in my experience, students seem to think this phenomenon is somehow wrong or unprofessional. The next part of the lesson works well but needs further development. It is a good start to help students more explicitly identify the ways in which their views about what is a controversial issue might influence whether and how they teach about it and ask them to talk about the criteria they use to make these decisions, but it would be helpful to have a more elaborate discussion about which criteria students think should be used to make curricular decisions. This part of the lesson could benefit from turning the question of which criteria we should use into a controversial pedagogical issue in which students are asked to deliberate and begin to form a position. Finally, the disclosure portion of the lesson works well—in large part because the data from the two studies provide a lot to analyze and move the discussion beyond their own personal experience and preexisting views. One problem with the structure of this part of the lesson is the binary nature of the question that students prepare to deliberate. The lesson I describe here that stakes out four positions on disclosure for students to discuss illustrates the limits of my previous approach. The next time I teach this lesson, I will start with the binary (especially since it works so well when using structured academic controversy) and then do the “taking a stand” conclusion with the four positions on disclosure lesson (see Levine, chapter 52 this volume). Acknowledgments Thanks to Shannon Murto, Keith Barton, and Simone Schweber for helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. Notes 1. Excerpts from the qualitative data are available by contacting the author at [email protected] 2. Invariably during the disclosure discussion, a student asks my position on this issue so I am forced to make a decision myself about teacher disclosure. I respond that I have changed my mind on this issue at least three times since I began teaching and that I have learned that there are excellent teachers who disclose and excellent teachers who do not, illustrating this with two specific examples. Sometimes I quickly identify the arguments on each side that I think are strongest, and then say that in my teaching now I tend to disclose. I have seen no evidence that my views on disclosure are interpreted as the “right answer” by my students.

References Hess, D. (2002). Teaching controversial public issues discussions: Learning from skilled teachers. Theory and Research in Social Education 30 (1), 10–41.

Teaching Resources Hess, D. (2004). Controversies about controversial issues in democratic education. PS: Politics and Society, 37(2), 267–261. Hess, D. (2005). How do teachers’ political views influence teaching about controversial issues? Social Education, 69(1), 47–48. Larson, B., & Keiper, T. (2007). Instructional strategies in middle and high school classrooms. New York: Routledge. Miller-Lane, J., Denton, E., & May, A. (2006). Social studies teachers’ views on committed impartiality and discussion. Social Studies Research and Practice, 1(1), 30–44. Singleton, L. R., & Giese, J. R. (1996). Preparing citizens to participate in public discourse: The public issues model. In R. W. Evans & D. W. Saxe (Eds.), Handbook on teaching social issues (pp. 59–65). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies.

52 Preparing Future Teachers and Citizens to Address Controversial Issues The Four Corner Debate Thomas H. Levine

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 5 (Learning Environments), 6 (Communication) Topics: civics, ethical–political valuation, critical thinking, controversial issues, citizenship, power/authority, identity, leading discussion, deliberation, decision making, teacher reflection Political scientists, journalists, multiculturalists, and social studies educators continue to argue that citizens in a democracy must develop the ability to publicly discuss controversial questions and sort through conflicting perspectives. Most textbooks and teaching, however, often avoid such controversy. How can we encourage and prepare teachers to allow controversy in their classrooms? How can teachers help their students to engage in thoughtful deliberation about and disagreement over controversial issues? When, if ever, should teachers share their own beliefs regarding difficult social and political issues? Citizens in a democracy should have the skills and confidence to make arguments and influence others in public meetings or letters to the editor even when their audience might be initially hostile, and citizens should be able to listen to views that they might not initially like. We, as individuals, are not born having the skills and attitudes required to publicly take and defend a stand, to engage others thoughtfully, and to be both critical of and open to others’ efforts to persuade us. Further, both multicultural education and social studies are inherently controversial, with issues ranging from affirmative action to bilingual education and foreign policy at the heart of the fields. I also believe that the social studies are the most important site in K-12 curricula for students to learn from multiple perspectives, including perspectives of different cultures and eras. The experience of hearing others’ views and trying to make sense of their stance helps push young people beyond their natural egocentrism into a more mature interest in and engagement with multiple perspectives. The Four Corner Debate These ideas are on my mind as my preservice teachers sleepily saunter into Room 301 sipping cups of coffee. A question greets them on the whiteboard: “When is it appropriate for teachers to share their own opinions on controversial issues?” In each of the four corners of the classroom,

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students see a large piece of paper with a possible answer to the question: (1) never; (2) okay to share views or even actions (i.e., participation in boycott/petition/protest) once or twice a year to model how adults engage in talk and action on issues; (3) never on political parties or candidates, but okay on social issues (i.e., abortion, gay rights/marriage, etc.) or historical controversies as long as there is no pressure on students to agree with the teacher and multiple views are represented; and (4) okay any time as long as it is relevant to what you are teaching and is age appropriate. Before the students take a stand on the larger question, I offer a mini-lesson on active listening. First, I talk about the poker chip model of conversation, where all participants toss in their thoughts—like tossing a poker chip onto a table—without any effort to build something meaningful. I then discuss how a listener can rephrase what another speaker has said—and check for understanding—before engaging with another’s ideas. I put language on the board that students can try using: “I heard you say…,” “so you think that…,” “Maria told us that…,” and “John believes that….” I describe how summarizing one or more past speakers’ ideas can form the basis for a more coherent conversation while providing individuals with the means to extend an argument, to frame a disagreement, or to raise a question that the group isn’t yet considering. I urge students to provide their students with explicit language—such as the phrases I’ve put on the board. I acknowledge that using these phrases will feel awkward and artificial at first, noting that providing such language would be more appropriate for and acceptable to elementary or secondary school students. I explain that mastering new conversational tools such as active listening can enable us to do, say, hear, or think things that would be much more difficult without tools; thus, scaffolding students’ mastery of new conversational moves empowers students while building basic skills for discussing controversial issues. Good resources on active listening include “Active Listening” (Conflict Research Consortium, 1998) and “The Art of Active Listening” (Center for Community Support and Research, n.d.). To motivate my students to practice active listening, I give each a playing card which they can toss into the center of the room if they make a contribution which explicitly acknowledges another speaker’s points. I tell students I hope this encourages them to build on others’ points, disagree with or ask questions about what others say, and leads us to speak to each other rather than just offering personal opinions. We proceed to the question of when, if ever, teachers should share their own views. I ask my students to stand at the place in the room that comes closest to their current beliefs. They can stand halfway between two posted answers, for instance, if they’re equally drawn to both. My students then spend 15 minutes seeking to persuade others to move toward their preferred position—wherever they find themselves—and listening to others to see if they can be persuaded to move. Students proceed to change positions—literally, in the room—as they offer each other reasonable arguments on all sides of the issue. I remain silent, or enter only to play devil’s advocate if there’s a corner of the room not being represented. My preservice teachers enthusiastically engage each other, covering some of the key dilemmas: • Can teachers present their views without influencing students’ views? • Is it okay for teachers to influence students’ views? If so, under what conditions? • If teachers do share their views, will students feel that it’s safe or worthwhile to explore all sides of an issue? • If teachers only act as a tabula rasa or devil’s advocate, never betraying personal passion or commitment to issues, do students miss the chance to see a rare model of thoughtful and engaged citizenship?

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• When is it acceptable not to represent both sides of an issue? Can a teacher decide that it’s not acceptable practice to present racist arguments but legitimate to let students hear antigay stances? As the session ends, I resist taking the last word. I’m happy to model critical thinking and promote divergent answers rather than creating a sense of closure, at least on this issue. Debriefing the Four Corner Debate We begin by debriefing the use of active listening, noting where students succeeded, what active listening added, and how we might improve listening if there were a “next time,” as there would be in my teachers’ own social studies classrooms. We consider other mini-lessons teachers might offer at the periphery of class activities to help students refine and practice a repertoire of skills conducive to civil discourse such as asking probing or facilitative questions, building on others’ ideas, negotiating compromise, making meta-observations about group processes, calling on those who are quiet, and helping those who dominate to learn new roles. We tease out ideas about how teachers can increase the odds of a generative discussion in a four-corner debate by creating an initial statement that will generate multiple viewpoints or craft concise alternatives likely to attract at least a few adherents. We then consider when and how one could use a four-corner debate in social studies teaching, and practice writing four corner options relevant to Truman’s decision to drop the bomb. We do this as an example, and we discuss the affordances and constraints of this pedagogy. If students do not note key points, I highlight how this activity promotes more divergent thinking than a two-sided debate but does not encourage exploration of positions beyond the four poles. An alternative is to offer three corners and leave the fourth open to views not captured in the first three. In this case, students could be required to write, on a large sheet of paper, a sentence capturing their preferred stance, thus insuring that all participants must take a stance—a strength of this activity—to insure that this “other” corner enhances the debate rather than letting some students avoid taking a position. I also ask students to reflect on how the activity creates opportunities for students to engage in and then reflect on logical argumentation and other forms of persuasion and values multiple points of view and listening skills. I finally note some other pedagogies useful in exploring controversial issues, including the structured academic controversy (Johnson & Johnson, 1994) which we had previously used in class while working with primary sources. We model and debrief one more activity, a “consensus circle,” inviting students to see how close they can come to reaching consensus on rating a U.S. president. This activity also uses space to model the center and margins of agreement. As we close with the discussion I’m ready to seize on students’ questions, observations, and the activities that just unfolded, and I also contribute my own questions: What are controversial public issues, or CPIs, and why is it important for students to discuss them? What more could teachers do to help students become more skilled in—and more willing to engage in—civil discourse, open disagreement and exploration of issues, logical argumentation, listening, and the negotiation of compromise when appropriate? When, if ever, should students, citizens, families, and coworkers be allowed to opt out of such discussions? How do we assess outcomes? Can and should teachers grade the quantity and nature of students’ contributions to such discussion? Students’ reading of Hess’s “Teaching Students to Discuss Controversial Issues” (2001) and Hess and Posselt’s “How High School Students Experience and Learn from the Discussion of Controversial Public Issues” (2002) informs our discussion.

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Discussion The four corner debate requires every individual to take a stand, and provides opportunities to practice engaging ideas and individuals. This session also lets us consider how teachers can promote key skills for civil disagreement, and identifies specific skills that teachers can target through minilessons, practice, and feedback. A format like the four corner debate—or an exercise in trying to come to consensus on controversial issues—seems more promising than a traditional debate as a means of helping students to see issues from others’ perspectives. Debates—whether run between two students or two halves of a class—can surface opposing arguments, but the emphasis on maintaining a role and winning a debate can overwhelm thoughtful deliberation (see Johnson & Johnson, 1994). The four corner debate moves students toward entering into consensus building and empathizing with others’ point of view while interacting in an environment where each will either persuade others or be persuaded by them. The particular four corner debate I describe here addresses a pressing concern of my preservice teachers and for the larger field of social studies education. As my teachers prepare to take over teaching in their clinical placements, they often raise the question of how their own views should inform their teaching. In the broad field of social studies education, there has been a longstanding tension between teachers socializing students for specific values and promoting students’ independent and critical thinking. Earlier in the course, we’ve talked about how these two conflicting aims have been present to varying degrees from the origins of the social studies in the decades around 1900, and how each aim has waxed and waned in prominence since, at least as evident in key reports and projects (Hertzberg, 1981; Saxe, 1992). This tension will inevitably show up in the decisions all teachers make about what history and literature to teach, how to teach it, and what and how to cover the more ideological aspects of economics and government courses. This dilemma is particularly poignant for teachers who enter with strong commitments to a cause like teaching for social justice or promoting respect for the law. To what extent should teachers share their own commitments or let these commitments guide their curricular and pedagogical decisions? I want my teachers to understand and live out such tensions as they teach content and structure students’ engagement with controversial issues. Finally, this activity fulfills my vision of good teacher education. This activity lets me model specific pedagogies which satisfy preservice teachers’ desire to develop a “bag of tricks.” When my students can grasp the practical import of what we’re doing, and feel that their own practical needs are being met, they seem more willing and able to address the underlying theoretical questions, and I hope such experience increases the odds that they link theory back to practice. Modeling also helps students experientially grasp the affordances, constraints, and quirks of specific pedagogies. I want this session to help some preservice teachers’ experience a more compelling and participative social studies than the one they knew as students. I hope this session and others like it will encourage social studies teaching that allows students to critically engage with texts, ideas, and fellow students. References Hertzberg, H. (1981). Social studies reform, 1880–1980. Boulder, CO: Social Science Education Consortium. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1994). Structuring academic controversy. In S. Sharan (Ed.), Handbook of cooperative learning methods (pp. 66–81). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Saxe, D. W. (1992). Social studies in schools: A history of the early years. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

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Teaching Resources Center for Community Support and Research. (n.d.), The art of active listening. University of Kansas Self-help network. http://www.selfhelpnetwork.wichita.edu/images/pdf/ActiveListening.pdf Conflict Research Consortium. (1998). Active listening University of Colorado. http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/ treatment/activel.htm Hess, D. (2001). Teaching students to discuss controversial public issues. ERIC Digest. Bloomington, IN: ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 457106) Hess, D., & Posselt, J. (2002). How high school students experience and learn from the discussion of controversial public issues. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 17(4), 283–314.

53 Good Discussions Don’t Just Happen Verbal Questioning Skills Kenneth E. Vogler

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 6 (Communication) Topics: civics, ethical–political valuation, critical thinking, leading discussion Researchers have noted that one of the key skills critical to proficient teaching is verbal questioning, and research on teachers’ uses of verbal questioning has shown that this skill is typically less effective than it could be. This lesson is designed to help preservice teachers develop verbal questioning skills. A good lesson needs to have an opening that sparks student interest. For a lesson on verbal questioning, a topic some students think they already know, a good way to begin is to use an activity that tests their verbal questioning skills. I give each student a handout with 20 different political cartoons and instruct them to pick one cartoon, interpret its meaning, and then write a series of questions to “teach” the meaning of the cartoon. Interpreting political cartoons requires a number of lower and higher level thinking skills such as identifying the subject or issue, explaining the use of historical references and images, locating and identifying the source, interpreting the message or viewpoint, and judging the cartoonist’s bias in terms of one’s own point of view (DeFren, 1988; Heitzmann, 1988, 1998; Holub & Bennett, 1988; Langeveld, 1981; Steinbrink & Bliss, 1988). Political cartoons are also a great conversation starter and provide students with multiple ways to begin and lead a discussion. I ask two or three students to use their series of questions, otherwise known as a question script, to lead a classroom discussion on the meaning of the political cartoon they chose. By the end of the opening activity, most students realize that asking questions and leading a classroom discussion—even with a question script—is not easy. What Research Says About Discussion Questions I share the findings of research (Gallagher & Ascher, 1963; Wilen, 2001) literature on verbal questioning by first asking the following the true–false questions. After students have answered true or false to each statement, we discuss research. Usually, students are amazed, even astonished, to find out how many of their opinions and beliefs regarding verbal questioning differ from the research. Different Patterns for Research Questions 1. Questioning is a natural teaching behavior that does not require planning. This is false. It takes considerable planning for a teacher to having thoughtful, meaningful, and effective 235

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2.

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discussion. Key questions must be planned in a patterned sequence to guide the discussion and enhance the students’ thinking, comprehension, and learning. The more questions the teacher asks, the more students will learn. This is false. The quantity of questions may not be relevant in a situation in which it is better to ask a few high-cognitive level questions that require students to take time to analyze the issue and synthesize and evaluate their positions. There are no bad questions. This is false. Good questions are generally brief, naturally phrased, adapted to the level of students in the class, and sequenced to achieve objectives. Inappropriate questions are those that confuse and frustrate students. Higher-level cognitive questions are more critical than lower-level questions. This, too, is false. In certain situations, lower-level questions can be more important and more appropriate than higher-level questions. Lower-level questions can be used to help the teacher diagnose students’ preparedness to move to higher-level understandings. Also, a rapid sequence of lower-level questions provides effective practice to help review information. In the long run, higher-level cognitive questions are more important because they can lead to the development of thinking skills that are associated with problem solving and decision making, but lower-level questions have an important, distinctive role. Higher-level cognitive questions elicit higher-level answers. Again, false: Teachers’ intentions and students’ perceptions of those intentions sometimes do not match. There is only a 50% congruence between the cognitive levels of teacher questions and students’ responses. Teachers need to prepare students to meet their expectations by informing them of the relationship of questions to thinking and demonstrating the relationship with different types of questions and answers. Teachers should ask lower-level cognitive questions before progressing to higher-level questions. This is false. If students know the basic facts and do not need to review what they have read, or if the intention is to stimulate interest or curiosity as the entry to a lesson or unit, then starting a lesson or unit with higher-level cognitive questions is warranted. Either starting a lesson with lower-level cognitive questions and progressing to higher-level questions or starting with higher-level cognitive questions and progressing to lower-level questions are both equally effective strategies. Teachers give students enough time to answer questions. This is both true and false. This may be true for students answering knowledge-level questions that only require memorized responses, however, it is not true for students who need time to think as they respond to higher-level, more thought-provoking questions. Research shows that teachers wait approximately one second for a student’s response before they repeat, rephrase, ask a different question, or call on another student. When questioning students, teachers should call only on volunteering students. This is false. If a teacher’s intent is to find out if students know the material, he or she cannot accomplish that by calling on only a few volunteers. Research findings show a positive relationship between calling on nonvolunteering students and gains in achievement. Teachers encourage students to ask questions. Again, false: Research shows that older students generally expect to answer questions, not to have to ask them. Also, teachers usually do not encourage questions, forgetting that student-generated questions do have a role in the classroom. Things a teacher can do to encourage student-generated questions include limiting the amount of questions asked, directing students to write a question related to an issue or event discussed in class, and having students work in pairs to devise questions.

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Next, we focus on question taxonomies, which students read about prior to class. After a discussion about the more “famous” taxonomies, such as Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain, or more commonly, Bloom’s taxonomy (1956) and Krathwohl’s taxonomy (2002), the majority of time is spent explaining the different categories in Gallagher and Ascher’s taxonomy (1963). Because being a skillful questioner requires not only an understanding of the cognitive levels of individual questions, but also an understanding of question sequencing and patterns, we review the following six questioning patterns noted by Wragg and Brown (2001): 1. Extending and lifting. This questioning pattern involves asking a number of questions at the same cognitive level, or extending, before lifting the level of questions to the next higher level. 2. Circular path. This questioning pattern involves asking a series of questions which eventually lead back to the initial position or central question. 3. Same path or extending. This questioning pattern involves asking questions all at the same cognitive level. 4. Narrow to broad. This questioning pattern involves asking lower level, specific questions followed by higher level, general questions. 5. Broad to narrow or funneling. This questioning pattern begins with high level, general questions followed by lower level, specific questions. 6. Backbone of questions with relevant digressions. In this questioning pattern, the focus is not on the cognitive level of the questions but on how closely they relate to the central theme, issue, or subject of the discussion. After reviewing the six questioning patterns, the lesson concludes with a final activity using political cartoons. Students are asked to pick another political cartoon from the handout, interpret its meaning, and write a question script. This time, however, their question script must use one of the six questioning patterns, must contain at least one question from each category of Gallagher and Ascher’s questioning taxonomy, and should not reflect the misconceptions about questions that we discussed. I like the Gallagher and Ascher taxonomy because there are just enough categories in this taxonomy for most students to recognize different levels of questions without having difficulty identifying which category questions belong. Generally, students leading a discussion during this activity do a better job than students in the first activity. Their questions reach different cognitive levels, are well sequenced, and delivered at a better pace. Asking good questions and leading classroom discussions well can have a positive impact on student learning. Good questions help teachers monitor student comprehension, help make connections to prior knowledge and stimulate cognitive growth. However, good questions and classroom discussions don’t just “happen.” References Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives, handbook: Vol. 1. Cognitive domain. New York: McKay. DeFren, M. (1988). Using cartoons to develop writing and thinking skills. The Social Studies, 79(5), 221–224. Gallagher, J. J., & Ascher, M. J. (1963). A preliminary report on analyses of classroom interaction. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 9(1), 183–194. Heitzman, W. R. (1998). The power of political cartoons in teaching history. Occasional paper. Westlake, OH: National Council for History Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED425108) Heitzmann, W. R. (1988). Political cartoon interpretation. The Social Studies, 79(5), 212–213. Holub, B., & Bennett, C. T. (1988). Using political cartoons to teach junior/middle school U.S. history. The Social Studies, 79(5), 214–216.

238 • Kenneth E. Vogler Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(4), 212–218. Langeveld, W. (1981). Political cartoons as a medium of political communication. International Journal of Political Education, 4(4), 343–371. Steinbrink, J. E., & Bliss, D. (1988). Using political cartoons to teach thinking skills. The Social Studies, 79(5), 217–220. Wilen, W. W. (2001). Exploring myths about teacher questioning in the social studies Classroom. The Social Studies, 92(1), 26–32. Wragg, E. C., & Brown, G. (2001). Questioning in the primary school. London: Routledge Falmer.

54 Getting Students to Actively Follow the News Deborah Byrnes

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 10 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: current events, civics, citizenship, civic action, multiple perspectives, technology/internet, collaboration, critical thinking, ethical–political valuation, media literacy, geography, geographical content knowledge, anthropological content knowledge, sociological content knowledge, ethnocentrism, maps I have been frustrated in past semesters that so many of the students in my social studies methods classes seemed unaware of current events. It was clear from class discussions that many of my students, given their busy schedules, were not taking time to become informed about ongoing national and world events. My solution was to make staying up on the news one of my reading requirements. My hope, long-term, was that my preservice elementary education students would get in the habit of being knowledgeable about current events and thus be more informed citizens and effective social studies educators. My students inevitably believe in democracy but they don’t always practice civic responsibilities for democracy. Some students seem to see staying informed and participating in their communities as a burden that one gets to if one has time. By including a “Staying up on the News” assignment in my course, I am reinforcing the message I give them that every citizen of a democracy needs to devote time and energy to understanding current events and issues, forming thoughtful judgments about them, and acting to bring about positive change when they think it is needed. In my introduction to this assignment in the past I have displayed Bertrand de Jouvenel’s observation that “a society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.” Staying Up on the News Each week I ask my social studies methods students to participate in a discussion or activity that involves knowing what the most salient national and international news stories of the week have been. I emphasize that being effective and informed social studies educators requires knowing what is going on around them and knowing how to meaningfully engage their own students in current events. To prepare for this part of class they must stay abreast of the news. They are to do this by subscribing to a major newspaper or visiting one of the many free news Web sites on a regular basis and perusing the headlines for national and international news stories that are both 239

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significant and of interest. Examples of prominent national news Web sites I suggest are listed in the teaching resources section. I let them know that with some of these sites, they can have the headlines sent directly to them via e-mail everyday. For an international perspective on world events I encourage them to also visit http://www.virtourist.com/newspapers/ for a list of hundreds of international online newspapers. International newspapers they might visit include: China Daily, The Australian, Middle East Times, and the International Herald Tribune. If they prefer, they can also get their news from the radio or television. If they choose this option, I ask them to be sure to select a radio or television station that spends more than just a minute or two on national and international reporting and that makes some effort to present a range of perspectives, so highly polemical left- and right-wing radio is not an option for this assignment. National Public Radio member stations and affiliates are news oriented in the morning, so I encourage them to consider listening to “drive time” news from a public radio network as they get ready for school or walk or drive to classes. Students love to multitask so listening to or watching the news while they get ready in the morning is a popular option. Sample Activities Because everyone in class is reading or hearing the news, I use current events content to model a range of social studies methods, especially those found in newspapers in education programs. As part of each news related activity I always talk about how it can be adapted for use with elementary and middle-school students. Lasting News In this activity students are asked to individually list what they feel are the most important national and international stories of the week. Then, I ask students to compare their lists with those prepared by others at their table and to select the one event most likely to appear in a public school history textbook some day. Each small group writes a headline for the textbook story on a construction paper banner that is provided. Underneath the headline students share why they think this story is historically relevant. Later they compare their choices and reasoning with other groups. Places in the News We do the following short news activity on the day we discuss “teaching geography.” On world maps students identify places where a number of current events are taking place. Each event has a number by it and students are asked to place the number of each event on the country or state to which it pertains. To make it more challenging, the world political, natural, and geographic maps I provide do not include labels. Examples of the types of items I have used are: (1) This war torn African country is in the news because of the millions of starving refugees who need help there. (2) These two states are being compared with respect to their handling of natural disasters. (3) Hamas is creating serious concerns about support for terrorism in this territory. (4)Toys produced in this country and sold in the United States are being recalled because they contain lead paint. After completing their own map, students work with others at their table to check the location

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of events they weren’t sure about or didn’t know. If necessary, they use the atlases in the back of the room or the Internet for assistance. In their groups, they discuss why knowing the physical location, demographics, and physical features of places is sometimes critical to their understanding of a news event. For example, to truly understand a story about citizens protesting the expansion of an airport, you would need to know where the airport is located and that urban sprawl has resulted in many new communities being located close by. To understand aspects of the conflict between two countries you need to know that they share a border. And, to understand the death toll in a natural disaster you need to know where the highest population density is in that region. In discussion I ask students how they did on the assignment. What did completing this activity tell them about their own knowledge about current events and world geography? Why is it important for children to have a sense of where events are taking place and what those places are like? How can we adapt an activity like this for use with children? Jeopardy Category: The News Students enjoy the opportunity to flex their collective memories for news details in an activity that requires a group of students to work together to come up with an answer to each jeopardy question. Teams of four to five students seated around various tables compete to see which group can get the most right answers. Answers, in the form of questions, are quickly written on a team whiteboard (or regular paper). When time is called each group shares its response. Any team that is correct receives a point. In the end teams are usually very close in scores, but one team usually does emerge as a winner in this friendly, nonthreatening, Jeopardy-like competition. Here are some sample items from the past: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president of this country in 2005. (What is Iran?); The aggressive marketing of unhealthy fast foods and snacks is being blamed for the alarming increase of this disease. (What is Type II Diabetes?); This private military company is being held responsible for the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians. (What is Blackwater?) While this activity does not involve higher level thinking, students enjoy it and it can serve as an opening activity to stimulate real discussion about news. The public nature of the activity makes them accountable for the assignment to stay up on the news and without preparation we cannot have good discussion. Students also learn how a favorite game, Jeopardy, can be adapted to be a fun way for students to cooperatively review specific content knowledge. Evaluating Students on “Staying Up On the News” Assignment An assignment like “Staying Up On the News” is difficult to assess because students read from a variety of news sources and they are given a lot of leeway to explore the stories that interest them. I make notes about student participation (or lack of it), and then at the end of the semester, students self-assess their performance. Below is the rubric I ask them to complete. Self-Evaluation—Staying Up on the News Please honestly evaluate yourself with respect to your performance on this assignment. Your responses should reflect the integrity expected of a person preparing to be a role model for children. Indicate with an “X” the category below that most closely describes your efforts.

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Most everyday I sought to be aware of major news events occurring in the nation and world I paid good attention to the national and world news several days a week I caught up on the week’s world and national news before coming to class I lightly skimmed the news and mostly relied on other people to tell me what was happening I rarely took time to really explore and understand the news

_____ _____ _____ _____ _____

Overall, my weekly contributions to news activities completed in class were: ____ Excellent (I always contributed) ____ Strong (I usually contributed) ____ Fair (sometimes I contributed) ____ Needs Work (my contribution was generally weak) Please indicate below where you generally went to get your news. What Do Students Think About This Assignment? My social studies methods students give me very positive feedback on this particular activity. Most of the students like being required to follow the news. Some mentioned that they always wanted to read the news but with so many other assignments they didn’t feel like they could take the time to do so. This assignment required them to read the news and because it counted toward their final grade in the class, they could do so “guilt free.” It is important to note that I reduce other reading assignments, ones I required in previous semesters, to allow time for this new activity. Students seem to find the short in-class activities to be stimulating and relevant. One student mentioned that for the first time she felt she could “hold her own in spirited discussions” at the family dinner table. Several others have shared how they were now more likely to initiate discussions about current events in their respective social groups. I intend to keep using this assignment. Making the news an assignment is worth giving up other readings I have previously required. I feel that my students are truly becoming more informed citizens and I am able to address many social studies methods using current events. To walk into a methods classroom and to hear students discussing national and world events, with a few students still madly reading newspapers in order to be prepared, is a wonderful teaching experience. Teaching Resources The Australian (Australia). http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/ China Daily (China). http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/, http://metimes.com/ International Herald Tribune (France). http://www.iht.com/ Middle East Times (Egypt). http://www.iht.com

55 Teaching about Disasters Reported in the News Brian Lanahan

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), IX (Global Connections), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 5 (Learning Environments), 6 (Communication) Topics: civics, government, media literacy, current events, student-centered, controversial issues, leading discussion, emotional response, students’ lives and experiences, classroom community Large scale disasters will, unfortunately, continue to be part of modern life and social studies is uniquely equipped among all school subjects to address issues raised by large-scale disasters. Yet, most teachers are not trained to deal with teaching these issues (Berson, 2002; Lipscomb, 2002). September 11, 2001, Hurricane Katrina, the Burmese 2008 hurricanes, and the Virginian Tech shootings are all recent disasters that could be addressed with social studies instruction. All of these events shook America to its core and Americans were reminded that we and our global neighbors are not immune to large-scale disasters. When such disasters occur, teachers can be thrust into roles of therapist, news anchor, or police officer (Zimmerman, 2001) as they try to help students understand the current issues at hand. For example, 9/11 provided teachers with an unwanted, yet powerful, teachable moment. In the wake of 9/11, many students asked two complex questions: “Why do they hate us?” and “Who are these people?” (Lipscomb, 2002, p. 237). Addressing such questions requires the use of all of the tools of social studies: “If students are to understand how the social world operates, they cannot study history or geography or economics or any of the other components of social studies in isolation” (Barton, 2005, p. 23). Social studies instruction can provide various tools to assist in separating facts from hearsay while presenting and clarifying potentially unpopular views in historical and cultural contexts. Disasters fall into three distinct categories: “natural disasters, technological disasters, and mass violence” (Norris, Friedman, & Watson, 2002, p. 240), the latter two being caused by humans. Mass violence has an additional aspect—malicious intention—that makes coping with it so difficult. Research suggests that people who experienced mass violence are far more likely than other disaster victims “to be severely impaired or very severely impaired” (Norris et al., 2002, p. 240). Such intentional malice fueled by radical ideological and religious beliefs made understanding 9/11 difficult and required social studies instruction to help students make sense. What follows is an example of instruction to prepare preservice teachers to respond to disaster based on the 243

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events of 9/11. Similar instruction in the future should be based on disasters which are current and relevant. Methods Instruction to Respond to Disaster The class instruction focusing on disaster should open with a simple writing assignment completed before class. For 9/11, I asked: “Where were you when the world stopped turning? Write a twopage essay describing and explaining your experiences as a student on 9/11. How did you react? How did your school react? How did your teacher react?” This open-ended assignment allows students to explore these issues on their own terms, yet provides enough structure to establish a common ground for classroom discussion. While not all preservice teachers were students on 9/11, in general, most have first-person experiences as students on that date. Students then share their papers, revealing common experiences and sentiments. Meanwhile, the instructor should provide comments to maintain the focus of the discussion on preservice teachers’ experiences as students, and teachers’ and schools’ reactions. This process can be an extremely intense and emotional experience depending on the disaster you explore. Next, future teachers should be empowered by moving from thinking like school students on 9/11 to thinking like teachers in the midst of a similar disaster. Discussion focuses on two questions: What should be done on the day of such an event and what should be done in the days, weeks, and months following the event? Responses to both questions can discussed, clarified, and agreed upon before the class captures ideas on chart paper for future reference. Responses to the first question tend to focus on practical and immediate concerns, such as: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

control personal emotions and stay calm; assess and ensure safety; explain events in a comprehensible and developmentally appropriate manner; promote dialogue; sensitively respond to children’s feelings and reactions; be sensitive to students’ personal situations and direct family involvement; control access to graphic media images; and be aware of changes in the security situation.

Ideas about what to do in the time period after the event focus on using social studies instruction often include: 1. keep students up to date with ongoing related events; 2. explore related issues, such as nationalism, religion, geopolitical situation, and historical background of the conflict; 3. discuss stereotypes of groups involved; 4. invite class speakers in to discuss related issues; 5. arrange fundraisers and service projects for victims; and 6. have students create cards and letters for military personnel, emergency responders, and affected people. Basing instruction primarily on students’ own experiences may appear to ignore the scholarship that followed 9/11 regarding the need to better equip teachers to deal with similar future events (e.g., Berson, 2002; Bisland, 2006; Lipscomb, 2002; Webeck, Black, & Davis, 2002; Zimmerman,

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2001). However, simply asking students to read about the events denies them the powerful experience of revisiting their own experiences as a tool to lead them to thinking like teachers about similar future situations. Basing instruction on methods students’ own experiences while you, as the instructor, provide suggestions that they don’t derive, ensures the experience will be “meaningful,” because it relates directly to them, and “active” because they negotiate their understandings and plan their own responses (NCSS, 1994). When my students were asked how their teachers reacted to 9/11, many noted teachers’ emotional breakdowns and their dependence on television. “She broke into tears, and she really couldn’t speak either, and we just turned on the TV and watched it.” In the days and weeks following, some teachers did provide instruction by, “diving in and focusing in on 9/11 and how it would affect us.” However, this was not typically the case: “They really didn’t breach the topic again. It just wasn’t something that anybody wanted to talk about.” Such teachers’ reactions highly informed their own plans for responding to a future disaster. Following our class discussion, students felt a better sense of preparation for similar future events and described plans for a more intentional use of media, noting that the discussion gave them good ideas of what to do. They commented on the necessity of remaining calm and taking time to reflect on similar events in the future. Students discussed how the age of their students will affect their reaction and discussed the necessity of a developmentally appropriate reaction. For example, one said, “If I was teaching a third grade class, I would give them a little bit more detail about what was going on. If it was a kindergarten class I would just probably let them know that something bad did happen.” My preservice teachers also expressed a desire to utilize social studies instruction immediately, to forget other subjects for that day, and to use specific disciplines to help students understand difficult issues and confront fears. This enthusiasm shows again how social studies is uniquely equipped to address issues raised by large-scale disasters and social studies methods professors should take advantage of recent events to frame social studies instruction in a critical role, preparing preservice teachers to respond effectively to disaster. This lesson is one demonstration of how preservice teachers’ own experiences with disaster can serve as a meaningful and active catalyst, enabling them to form plans for reacting to future disasters. References Barton, K. (2005). I’m not saying these are going to be easy: Wise practice in an urban elementary school. In E. A. Yeager & O. L. Davis (Eds.), Wise social studies teaching in an age of high-stakes testing: Essays on classroom practices and possibilities (pp. 11–32). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Berson, M. (2002). A counter-response to terrorism: The hope and promise of our nation’s youth. Theory and Research in Social Education, 30(1), 142–144. Bisland, B. (2006). At the edge of danger: Elementary teachers in Queens, New York, September 11, 2001. Education and Urban Society, 38, 375–395. Lipscomb, G. (2002). Dealing with crisis: Teachable moments in the social studies classroom. The Social Studies, 93(5), 237–238. Norris, F., Friedman, M., & Watson, P. (2002). 60,000 disaster victims speak: Part II. Summary and implications of the disaster mental health research. Psychiatry, 65, 240–260. Webeck, M., Black, M., & Davis Jr., O. L. (2002). Both sides of the classroom door: After 9-11, the many facets of teaching. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 14(3), 6–9. Zimmerman, J. (2001). Talking about terrorism. Education Week, 21(5), 56.

Teaching Resources National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Expectation of excellence: Curriculum standards for social studies. Washington DC: Author.

56 Issues-Centered Social Studies Unit Sampler Kim E. Koeppen

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, 7-12 NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies) Topics: diversity, controversial issues, issues-oriented approach, students’ lives and experiences, creating teaching materials, primary sources, teacher reflection, curriculum planning Issues-centered social studies (ICSS) offers a foundation that supports multidimensional teaching and learning experiences. This approach to teaching affords students the opportunity to more fully engage as well as develop their higher order thinking skills as they explore persistent societal dilemmas. Even so, ICSS does not have a widespread presence in social studies classrooms. One reason ICSS remains the exception rather than the rule may relate to a lack of experience by students, teacher candidates, or teachers with such curriculum, and time devoted to critically examining a variety of teaching approaches. Most teacher candidates spend years in K-12 education encountering memorization of names, dates, and places; objective tests with right answers; and teachers and textbooks as primary resources. These experiences exhibit powerful socializing forces on teacher candidates, who in the end are likely to teach as they were taught (Lortie, 1975). In addition, social studies teacher education often follows a similar “traditional design with content as the dominant focus” (White, 1999, p. 16). Even when there is deviation from the norm, the power of one methods course to influence teacher candidates’ practices is questionable at best (Fehn & Koeppen, 1998). Is it any wonder novice teachers do not rush into classrooms and implement ICSS curriculum? My efforts to convince teacher candidates of the power of ICSS involves examining the theoretical foundation of this philosophy, comparing it to their prior knowledge and experiences, and exploring existing models of issues-centered curriculum. In addition, teacher candidates design an original Issues-Centered Social Studies (ICSS) Unit Sampler. The Teaching On the first day of class, teacher candidates complete a Prior Knowledge Survey. Included in this survey are questions such as: What do you believe is the purpose of the social studies in pre-K-12 education, and why do you want to be a social studies teacher? Invariably, a few teacher candidates support some form of interdisciplinary or issues-centered social studies instruction. For example, “…the purpose of social studies is to give students an introduction to issues and areas of life that will be important to understand as adults and citizens of the world…offers student valuable 246

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knowledge that can be applied to other disciplines” (NR) and “to get kids to think critically, be interested in the world around them, and be an informed citizen” (DS). Nine of our first 11 class meetings are devoted to reading articles from Evans and Saxe’s (1996) Handbook on Teaching Social Issues and a variety of methods texts, comparing and contrasting different rationales for teaching social studies. After reading and discussing those articles that address the definition and rationale for ICSS (pp. v–41), teacher candidates respond to the following question: “How does your understanding of an issues-centered social studies relate to/connect with your current attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, etc. about the role of social studies in education?” Combined with their prior knowledge, teacher candidates’ responses to this question provide grist for the mill as they come to understand and work with an issues-centered framework. My intent is to help them determine how and where new information, specifically regarding ICSS, fits into their existing schemata. With some theoretical grounding, I then provide teacher candidates with samples of curriculum that have an issues-centered focus. Examples used include: The Choices Program (e.g., Dilemmas of foreign aid: debating U.S. priorities, policies, and practice; the U.S. role in a changing world; responding to terrorism: Challenges for democracy; colonialism in the Congo: conquest, conflict, and commerce), National Issues Forum2 (e.g., racial and ethnic tensions: What should we do?; From welfare to work: Who should we help and how?) and Public Issues Series/Harvard Social Studies Project (e.g., The railroad era: Business competition and the public interest; The Civil War: crisis in federalism; The lawsuit: legal reasoning and civil procedure; The American Revolution: crisis of law and change). We spend two 90-minute class periods exploring these samples, talking about how they compare to a more traditional approach to social studies or their own classroom experiences, and other concerns that emerge. Then I introduce the ICSS Unit Sampler assignment and assessment rubric. The purpose of this assignment is for teacher candidates to design an original unit sampler over the course of a semester. While they consider their unit, I encourage them to think in broad terms with respect to issues instead of textbook chapters. An overarching goal of this project is for teacher candidates to receive enough practice both in designing and critiquing lessons to become confident and adept at planning powerful teaching and learning experiences regardless of a district’s adopted social studies curriculum. While contemplating a focus for their ICSS Unit Sampler, teacher candidates read those parts of Evans and Saxe (1996) that most closely align with their content area interests. For example, if interested in geography, a teacher candidate would read Issues-Centered Approaches To Teaching Geography Courses by A. David Hill and Salvatore J. Natoli (1996, pp. 167–176). Simultaneously, they generate a few potential issues with accompanying concepts, resources, strategies, and questions to bring to a 20-minute individual conference with me. Once teacher candidates settle on an issue, they engage in more detailed instructional planning processes, starting with a draft of their unit overview. This overview contains the following: (1) the issue phrased as a controversial question; (2) a rationale explaining the importance of the issue for students in both the short- and long-term; (3) selected National Council for the Social Studies standards (1994); (4) appropriate Minnesota state graduation standards for social studies;4 (5) a description of the introductory lesson; (6) a list of potential lesson ideas and resources; and (7) a description of the culminating activity or project for the unit. The unit overview is amended as teacher candidates design the individual lesson plans. At the end of the semester, a final draft of the unit overview that incorporates and annotates the resources and lesson plans actually used is submitted for my evaluation. The nature of ICSS requires that teachers be open to students’ insights and inputs, and flexible

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enough to incorporate these into a unit in meaningful ways. To this end, I ask teacher candidates to design seven discrete lesson plans that will support their unit’s central issue. Each lesson focuses on concepts or processes that are essential to the unit’s issue. In this way, teacher candidates will be prepared to launch the unit with future students, adapting and adopting existing lesson plans, as well as generating new ones to best meet their needs. There are three required strategies, discussion/questioning, concept attainment/development, and primary documents/sources, to incorporate into lesson plans. Teacher candidates are free to experiment with strategies of their choosing in the remaining lesson plans. Within the time constraints of the semester, we treat instructional planning as a recursive process; that is, teacher candidates construct drafts that are word-processed, complete, and ready to be shared and critiqued. During designated class periods, we engage in workshops whereby teacher candidates conduct self- and peer-assessment of the unit overview and subsequent lesson plans in light of the assessment criteria for each. The feedback given is intended to guide the revision process. Revised overviews and lesson plans are submitted for my evaluation and include a copy of the original draft(s) as well as the feedback given. In the end, teacher candidates’ work receives a formal evaluation (self- and teacher). I also ask them to voluntarily send me an electronic copy of their ISCC Unit Sampler to use as models with subsequent methods classes. Reflections Throughout the semester, I garner teacher candidates’ insights regarding the processes and products involved in instructional planning through class discussions, individual conferences, and quick writes. The quick writes are an especially effective way for me to monitor and mediate the affective angst that often accompanies adventures in uncharted waters (e.g., Developing an issues-centered unit plan is…“Harder than I thought!! Making me feel inadequate sometimes; frustrating; making me feel like I get it one minute and I don’t the next”—NR; and, “Complicated, challenging, ethical, enlightening, crazy, overwhelming, thought-provoking, meticulous, necessary in the social studies field to engage and teach skills to students”—RY). Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, www.choices.edu National Issues Forums Institute, www.nifi.org American Education Publications/Harvard University Minnesota Department of Education

References Fehn, B., & Koeppen, K. E. (1998). Intensive document-based instruction in a social studies methods course. Theory and Research in Social Education, 26(4), 461–484. Hill, A. D., & Natoli, S. J. ( 1996 ). Issues-centered approaches to teaching geography courses. In R. Evans & D. W. Saxe (Eds.), Handbook on teaching social issues: NCSS bulletin 9 (pp. 167–176). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. White, C. (1999). Transforming social studies education: A critical perspective. Springfield, IL: Thomas.

Teaching Resources Evans, R., & D. W. Saxe (Eds.). (1996). Handbook on teaching social issues (NCSS Bulletin No. 93). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Schneider, D., Adler, S. A., Beery, R., Ladson-Billings, G., Fernekes, W. R., Hartoonian, M., et al. (1994). Expectations of excellence: Curriculum standards for social studies. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies.

57 The “Daily Dilemma” Sharing Power with a Purpose Beth C. Rubin

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 5 (Learning Environments), 6 (Communication) Topics: critical thinking, inquiry, controversial issues, power/authority, collaboration, justice, classroom community, students’ lives and experiences Critical pedagogy is a theory and method of education rooted in an analysis of the role schools play in reproducing systems of oppression. Critical pedagogues argue that the organizational, curricular, and instructional practices of schools train students to passively comply with and accept larger social inequalities. In this view, transformative knowledge and liberation will only occur when students and teachers engage in democratic debate and critical inquiry about the social institutions and cultural dynamics that maintain injustice. For many reasons, a critical pedagogy approach appears ideal for democratic classrooms and, by extension, ideal for consideration and use within teacher education classes. The social studies, with its focus on the doings of people throughout time and place and its charge to instill democratic values, seems a natural location for fostering critically conscious citizens. Like most compelling ideas, however, implementing critical pedagogy in the classroom is more complex than it initially seems. Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) argues that critical pedagogy is highly abstract and utopian, and its key concepts (empowerment, student voice, dialogue) can be repressive when the only voice allowed is a critical one. Teachers’ power in the classroom isn’t fully acknowledged and the process of “critique” isn’t legitimate when a certain outcome is implicitly desired. The critical pedagogy literature, she argues, lacks careful attention to practice, to details about what a critical or radical pedagogy actually entails, and more commonly offers vague exhortations that teachers create radical change through their classroom practices. Ira Shor (1997), after attempting a critical pedagogy approach in his college English classroom, concluded that employing such an approach in a class of students who felt forced to be there had many challenges and contradictions, observations similar to those of Ellsworth. Yet, in terms of social studies teaching and training teachers for diverse classrooms, specific critiques can be made. While it might seem in line with the democratic purposes of social education to teach as though our classrooms are even playing fields within which teachers and students hold equal power, we must admit that as instructors we do have power over our students: we set assignments, evaluate work, and act as gatekeepers at key points in students’ academic careers (i.e., program admissions, recommendation for certification, awarding degrees). It is not that

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students are powerless; as Ira Shor points out, students do not just passively accept authority, but instead, they often actively construct their passivity in complicity with the teacher, even when the teacher is trying to “empower” them. To pretend that we as instructors do not hold authority over our students within the institutional setting is disingenuous. Moreover, in the preprofessional context of a teacher education program, our students are seeking specific knowledge—they are trusting us to teach them something about teaching. While I strive for democratic exchange, and hope that my students do further their analyses of social and educational inequalities in my social studies methods class, I have to acknowledge that these goals may not be at the forefront of what my students desire to take away from the class. Teacher education students often care most about entering student teaching and their first teaching assignment adequately prepared to cope with the demands of classroom teaching. They hope to be able to manage their classrooms effectively, develop positive relationships with students, and to teach their students something of value. As a teacher educator who sees effective teacher preparation as a vital link in the process of providing equitable educational experiences to all students, I hope for these things as well. In the lesson I describe, I try to address these practical needs. I also aim to heighten their criticality in a way that feels authentic to them and, I hope, avoids some of the pitfalls described above. The Teaching All of this brings me to the topic of this essay, the “daily dilemma” assignment I use each semester in my social studies methods classes. This assignment is one way that I attempt to create room for students to explore their own themes and interests, and to connect these to critical issues of power and injustice, while balancing the need to teach students what they have come to learn—how to teach. It allows students to practice the central act of teaching—the planning and delivery of a lesson. It also calls on them to bring issues of personal relevance into the classroom for analysis and consideration by their peers, issues which are often controversial and always current. Finally, it fosters community in the classroom as each student group takes its turn at explicitly shaping the classroom experience for the benefit of all. As the students become teachers and then become students again, a sense of collective purpose develops as each teaching group strives to use its moment of power to bring something useful and interesting to their peers. The “daily dilemma” assignment asks students, working in pairs or groups of three, to select a controversial issue that relates in some way to issues of power and justice they have encountered while observing in the public schools and develop and deliver an interactive lesson for their peers based on this topic. They are to use at least one of the methods they have learned in our methods class to structure their lesson, with maximum student engagement and interaction as key goals. The teaching team submits a lesson plan for feedback, revises the plan if necessary, and teaches the lesson. After the lesson, peers provide written feedback. I provide written feedback the following week, and a grade for the assignment. Reflection Over the past 6 years my students have taught lessons on a variety of topics. They have pursued critical issues in educational settings, such as tracking, racism, sexism, social justice, teaching in heterogeneous settings, and teaching special education students. They have taught on issues directly related to social studies teaching, such as teaching controversial issues, service-learning,

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and textbook bias. They have dealt with the nitty-gritty of teaching with lessons on classroom management, plagiarism, getting students to participate, teaching block periods, and working with parents. They have addressed important, nonacademic aspects of school life through such topics as student mental health, detecting eating disorders, violence, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. Sometimes these student-driven topics live on as part of our classroom discourse, beyond the bounds of the “daily dilemma.” One year, a student group created a lesson on tracking. The student leaders acted out the differences they had noticed during their classroom observations in how teachers instructed their honors versus their general track students. They involved the class in a discussion of these issues, bringing in relevant readings and inspiring heated discussion. This topic continued to be a focus of discussion throughout the semester, both in our class discussions and in the online, student-led discussion forum. The “daily dilemma” structure also allows for students to be responsive to salient current events; one week the group leading the “daily dilemma” engaged the class in a Socratic seminar focusing on the implications for high school teachers of the shootings at Virginia Tech that had just occurred. On course evaluations, students frequently mention that the “daily dilemma” assignment gets them thinking about important issues, gives them a chance to practice teaching, and makes each class session interesting. The “daily dilemma” walks the fine line between sharing and holding power. As the instructor, I set the guidelines, review the proposed lessons, and evaluate the students’ teaching. As student instructors, students select a topic that is personally meaningful, plan a lesson, guide their classmates through it, and receive their feedback. As students, every member of the class experiences and critiques a variety of lessons. The assignment navigates the daily dilemma I experience in trying to both teach my students what they have come to learn and provide meaningful concepts for democratic exchange and self-knowledge. By sharing power with a purpose, I hope to provide students with a model of how to navigate dilemmas of power in their own classrooms and encourage them to acknowledge power, structure democratic exchange, and foreground meaningful learning. References Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(4), 297–324. Shor, I. (1997). When students have power: Negotiating authority in a critical pedagogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Teaching Resources Adler, S. (1991). The education of social studies teachers. In J. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 197–209). New York: Macmillan. Engle, S. (1996). Foreword. In R. Evans & D. W. Saxe (Eds.), Handbook on teaching social issues (pp. v–viii). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Goodlad, J. (1983). Study of schoolings: Some findings and hypotheses. Phi Delta Kappan, 64(7), 465–470. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

58 Encouraging Transformative Understanding of Controversial Issues Bruna Irene Grimberg

Context: TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, University NCSS Standards: III (People, Places, and Environments), IV (Individual Development and Identity), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 5 (Learning Environments), 6 (Communication) Topics: critical thinking, ethical-political valuation, perspective consciousness, studentcentered, diversity, controversial issues, inequality, marginalization, multiple perspectives, role-play, literature, collaboration, racism, bias reduction, perspective consciousnesss This assignment attempts to shift social studies teaching practice from a traditional lecture-style instruction in which content is presented as facts, to a student-centered approach focused to develop reflective and participatory student-citizens by exploring diverse understandings of social issues. Indeed, social studies education has a critical role in deepening democracy in the United States because today’s students require “an education that provides both the knowledge and abilities that empower citizens to be thoughtful, assertive, and proactive as well as to be able to demonstrate the ability to function fully in an open society” (Ochoa-Becker, 2007, pp. 22–21). The assignment was developed in the frame of a course that provided students with opportunities for developing skills related to critical thinking and writing. The course itself was designed around three goal-categories: rhetorical, attitudinal, and content goals. Rhetorical goals are intended to improve students’ effective speech, preparation, and delivery of oral presentations, engagement in informed discussions, and academic writing. Encouragement of students’ ownership regarding their education through reflective learning, and understanding diverse viewpoints constituted the focus of the attitudinal goal; and the content goal focused on topics that support the previous two. Topics were explored through class discussions, and there were many learning opportunities that included workshops, essay writing, and peer and instructor feedback. The present chapter tapped into these contexts to develop an instructional strategy used to promote a deep understanding of the social issues depicted in the book and play Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 (Deavere Smith, 1994), suitable for a social studies teacher education program. The book and play Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 refers to the civil disturbances that took place in Los Angeles in April 1992. As a result of the April 29 verdict that acquitted the four white officers who brutally beat Rodney King, a Black man they had pursued for speeding, the community of South-Central Los Angeles reacted in three days of violent riots, burning, looting, and killing. Anna Deveare’s piece is based on interviews of individuals who were directly or indirectly involved

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in the riots, the characters’ dialogue is transcribed from the interview text. An advisory team, diverse in ethnicity and areas of expertise, assisted in the production of the play, and the focus of the piece was in terms of multicultural and socioeconomic issues. The Assignment After 10 weeks of class we began to read and analyze the book. By then the class had developed a culture characterized by trust and respect for others’ ideas in which students freely expressed their point of view through the analysis of the assigned readings following different discussion strategies. As an introduction to the book we watched a recorded version of the play, and continued with the analysis of the book during the following three classes splitting the reading into three parts. Students read the assigned part of the book, chose a character from that section, and wrote a justification of their choice prior to the class. Their character and justification was sent to the instructor via e-mail. During the first two discussion classes we analyzed the characters chosen by the students in the frame of the following discussion topics: (1) Tensions between and within ethnic groups (about ¾ of the victims of the riots were Black and Latinos); (2) Which “American dream?” (3) Riots and revolutions; and (4) What is justice? These topics emerged from students’ justifications and comments about the readings. At the end of these discussion classes we reflected about the value of “annoying” literature as a transformative social tool, and pointed out the value of ethnographies as a way of producing knowledge. Prior to the third discussion class the instructor assigned students to work in pairs based on their choice of a character (over the whole book). The students’ task was to create a dialogue between the characters of the pair pretending they were able to talk to each other, extending the monologs of the book into dialogues between the characters. The prompt for the dialogue was open-ended, but students needed to explain the criteria used for constructing their dialogue. During the third discussion class each pair presented their dialogue and rationale for it to the whole class. At the end of the role-plays we reflected on the content and nature of the dialogues. Why This Assignment? Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 documents the causes for social conflict, including economic disparities, different perceptions of law enforcement and other social codes, and ethnic tensions, by incorporating voices that usually are not heard. The criterion for the selection of the book’s interviews was to go beyond the oversimplification of a Black–White conflict, and to canvas a multiethnic interaction. My intention as an instructor was not only to demonstrate the wisdom and depth in nontraditional, and typically powerless, voices, but also to use the broad range of identities as a source for students’ self-identification. The richness in language, description of social classes, and characters’ thoughts provided many avenues for students’ connection with their own experience and understandings, as well as questioning traditional views of social codes. Students’ identification with the instructional material promotes learning (Nolen, 2003) because it not only facilitates understanding but also promotes retention of concepts (Fraser, 1994). Material that includes multiple points of view demands students’ accommodation of different, at times contradictory, schemas leading to critical thinking and conceptual change (Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982). This assignment incorporates multiple group dynamics that include individual choice of a

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character and rationale, whole-class discussion of the character’s identity and position, work in pairs planning a fictional dialogue, and whole-class reflection on issues of social justice. Changing the dynamics requires conceptual dispersion and different modes of expression by presenting the same ideas to different audiences using different rhetorical elements. Students are required to distinguish between the demands set by context and the focus of their ideas, leading to a metacognitive experience (Gunstone, 1992). Another aspect of this assignment is the increasing level of complexity of the cognitive operations required by each group dynamic. Based on Bloom’s taxonomy, the individual choice of a character demanded students to describe, examine, quote, understand, and summarize characters’ ideas, and associate to and differentiate from other characters’ positions. The whole-class discussion demanded that students distinguish patterns, organize, explain, and integrate characters’ viewpoints. Working in pairs stimulated students to combine and contrast characters’ positions. Finally, the role-play of the dialogues required that students solved problems using the knowledge of their character for dialogue construction. Each of these activities accessed a different aspect of Bloom’s taxonomy. Assignment’s Conclusions Two main criteria emerged from the students’ choice of their character and rationale. First, the emotional aspects, based on the reader’s perception of the character, and second, the factual aspects, based on what the character does, as described in the book. Most emotional choices alluded to self-identification attributes, such as “she reminded me of my mother,” or depicted a human characteristic “because he seemed real,” or “because he was funny.” The justification of the character’s choice added an extra dimension to the narrative of the book so that it was not only a chronicle of events, but also a document of human interactions and social processes. The choice of the role-play pairs by the instructor was based on how students’ perceived their characters, trying to have confronting and antagonist pairs. This criterion promoted students’ critical thinking, problem solving, and in some cases emancipation; it elicited role-play attributes, and led to a transformative understanding of identity, knowledge, and society. References Fraser, B. J. (1994). Research on classroom and school climate. In D. Gamble (Ed.), Handbook on research on science teaching and learning (pp. 493–541). New York: Macmillan. Gunstone, R. (1992). Some long-term effects of uninformed conceptual change. Science Education. 76(2), 175–198. Nolen, S. B. (2003). Learning environment, motivation, and achievement in high school science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 40(4), 347–368. Ochoa-Becker, A. (2007). Democratic education for social studies: An issues-centered decision making curriculum. Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Posner, G. J., Strike K. A., Hewson, P. W., & Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change. Science Education, 66(2), 211–227.

Teaching Resources Deavere-Smith, A. (1994). Twilight: Los Angeles 1992. New York: Anchor Books.

59 Social Studies Methods, Purpose, and the “Execution Class” Todd Dinkelman

Context: TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: controversial issues, teacher reflection, civics, critical thinking, ethical–political valuation, categorizing ideas, decision making, deliberation, emotional response My first encounter with the Gary Olson’s “Execution Class” came shortly after it was first published in 1988 in what was then known as Zeta Magazine (now Z Magazine). I’ve provided a link to the article below for your reference and you should read this short essay before you learn about how I teach with it. I was one of a team of teaching assistants working with Steve Tozer at the University of Illinois to teach a wonderfully progressive educational foundations course. I can thank my work with this group for not only introducing me to this short, dramatic 3-page article but also for giving me my first experience with the power of collaborative inquiry into the work of teacher education. Both persist as features of my practice almost two decades later, now as a social studies teacher educator and researcher. In this chapter, I describe why I am drawn to this article, how I use it in a methods class, and what I have learned about its use from many semesters of social studies methods students. “Execution Class” is not a typical teacher education piece in that it is probably nowhere to be found on most social studies methods course reading lists. The article is not about diversity or social studies education as a field, nor does it describe a method of teaching that likely would meet with acceptance in very many U.S. public school social studies classrooms. It does not address directly the call for “standards-based practice.” However, it does raise questions that I believe should be at the core of social studies teacher education. The reading offers many opportunities to raise vitally important questions about social studies theory and practice. Consistent with my own vision of what should be at the center of social studies teacher education, I use this piece to address the question of purpose. In the various programs in which I have worked, the development of a rationale for social studies teaching and learning has been a more or less consistent intellectual anchor. In my current position, our social studies teacher education program puts rationale building as one of its core themes. We challenge students to ground their instructional decision making in a rationale for social studies that addresses the goals of social studies as a field, the value of these goals in a democratic society, and issues of power, privilege, diversity, and multiculturalism. This emphasis on rationales, or purpose, is consistent with past (e.g., Shaver, 1977) and more 255

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recent (e.g., Barton & Levstik, 2004) recommendations for social studies teacher education, as well as for teacher education more generally (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Hammerness et al., 2005). A comprehensive social studies rationale is pitched as the intellectual foundation supporting deliberation about questions of content (What should I teach?), method (How should I teach?), and value (Why is this important?). The idea is not that every instructional decision is the product of a reasoned argument that begins with the rationale. Indeed, it is likely that the vast majority of decisions teachers make in their daily practice result from more immediate, in-themoment concerns such as maintaining the flow of a lesson, covering content, and establishing an orderly classroom environment (Kennedy, 2005). Yet even these decisions can be unpacked and related to the larger questions of purpose. Our program challenges students to examine the ways in which their (always) developing rationales speak to both the myriad day-to-day decisions they make as practicing teachers and the more broad-ranging, democratic purposes social studies serves in the modern school curriculum. Olson’s “Execution Class” puts the question of purpose front and center. I have used fairly conventional methods to foster engagement with the article—I ask students to read, think, and write about it. These “reaction papers” are a staple of my methods classes. Students bring them to class, and we discuss them. For this particular reading, I have used a number of prompts to spur deliberation about the teaching episode Olson describes. It seems to me that Olson has a definite rationale for his work as a teacher. I ask the students: Do you think his mission is too “biased” or “too radical”? What about your own rationale? Is this an instance of “good teaching”? Would you want to teach a lesson like this? What do you think of his attempt to explain the connection between the privileged lives many Americans lead and the suffering and oppression experienced by those in other, less affluent countries? To what extent is it your duty to teach secondary school students this analysis? Does this assignment help you rethink anything about what you’re doing in your classroom this semester? I have not conducted any formal or systematic study of the ideas, but this assignment prompts students to read scores of these reaction papers and participate in discussions of this text. This has highlighted patterns of response that serve to illuminate the challenge of rationale-based social studies teacher education. One surprisingly common response is to avoid questions relating to purpose altogether. Over the years, many methods students have side-stepped issues of purpose for a discussion of how soon a teacher would be fired for bringing a gun to a public school. Issues of weapons and zero-tolerance policies aside, the article taps into the very real fear many student teachers express that they put their jobs at risk should they stray from the official curriculum to address controversial issues, alternative historical narratives, or progressive perspectives on pressing social issues. Other methods students have avoided questions of purpose by pointing out that Olson is teaching college students, so the article does not really speak to preservice teachers who are preparing to teach secondary social studies. Other common reactions are more closely related to the issues posed by the emphasis on rationale-building in our program. The article has been successful in challenging many students to think about the lines separating what they see as legitimate, justifiable methods of teaching from those whose focus seems indoctrination or manipulation. A lot of discussion has centered on the emotional dimensions of learning in social studies education—troubling the notion that learning is simply a matter of knowledge acquisition or cognitive development. The issues of advocacy and neutrality also garner considerable attention, as some methods students initially react to the “bias” they see in Olson’s teaching, only then to think more deeply about what they see as less blatant, but still present forms of bias in the established social studies curriculum,

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driven as it is by popular textbooks and state social studies standards. I am often impressed by the humility of the methods students who admit that they really are not familiar with the “radical critique” Olson promotes. Some realize their history and social science classes have left them unfamiliar with alternative, critical intellectual frameworks for making sense of U.S. policy. Some have acknowledged they don’t yet know enough or are not skilled enough to pull off something like this in the classroom. The responses shared in class discussions have challenged me as a methods instructor. At times, I have found it difficult to direct these diverse reactions towards reflection on rationalebuilding in the context of our program. Recently, I have used inside/outside circles (Bennett & Rohlheiser, 2001, p. 160) in an attempt to personalize the issues raised by “Execution Class.” I pose fictional, composite student responses that reflect many of the themes raised in years of class discussions, and ask methods students to write and then share their thoughts. Examples of these fictional responses include: “The emphasis in this program on rationales, democracy, and social justice is the wrong stuff at the wrong time. Of course, I want to have reasons for what I do in the classroom and support democracy. And who could possibly be opposed to social justice? However, my student teaching experience has taught me that all of these concerns don’t really apply to those first learning to teach social studies.” “Though I can appreciate Olson’s ‘Execution Class’ for the glimpse it provides into the world of another teacher, it’s pretty clear that he has an ax to grind. He wants to politicize what is really a pretty straightforward activity—teaching social studies. His blatantly leftist treatment of power and privilege does more to obscure than clarify what matters when learning to teach social studies.” Even as the inside/outside protocol has helped to create conditions for what I consider meaningful discussion of Olson’s “Execution Class,” questions remain about what this one brief essay contributes to the developing perspectives methods students bring to bear on questions of why they are teaching social studies. I am certain there are more innovative ways of putting this article to use than I have tried. Reenactment of the mock execution in a methods course likely would risk, as Olson acknowledges, “cheapening it,” even as doing so might open spaces for exploring what discussion of controversial issues makes possible and constrains. Yet risks are unavoidable any time methods instructors and students depart from the safety of conventional teaching practices. Perhaps the event might be re-created in a methods class to model the sorts of bold teaching needed to destabilize the commonplace of social studies under the hold of bland content coverage. The “Execution Class” led Olson to trouble the assumption that once they learned critical perspectives about how the world works, his students would care about transforming the world. Surely the same lesson holds for teacher educators who invest so much time and effort in helping beginning teachers learn critical perspectives about how schools work. This chapter describes the ways I have tried to use a powerful reading to foster reflection among beginning teachers about the social studies rationales they take with them into schools. I understand now more than I did two decades ago about how my own efforts would be more powerful if they were part of a coherent program of “against the grain” teacher education, a program characterized by “collaborative resonance” among school- and university-based educators (Cochran-Smith, 1991), including university faculty outside of schools and colleges of education. Short of that ideal, what can progressive teacher educators do to make questions of rationale real to beginning teachers, many of whom are not convinced of the value of exploring relationships between theory and practice? How do we operate in our limited spheres of influence to interrupt the orthodoxy of the trivialized version of social studies so prevalent in many classrooms? Much like Olson, I wonder how methods instructors can link “concrete analysis of the world” with

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“capacities for empathy and compassion existing within our students.” These questions call for discussion and the collaborative inquiry I hope the contributions to this volume will spark. References Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Bennett, B., & Rolheiser, C. (2001). Beyond Monet: The artful science of instructional integration. Toronto: Bookation. Cochran-Smith, M. (1991). Learning to teach against the grain. Harvard Educational Review, 61(3), 279–310. Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford, J. (Eds.). (2005). Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hammerness, K., Darling-Hammond, L., Bransford, J., Berliner, D. C., Cochran-Smith, M., McDonald, M., et al. (2005). How teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 358–389). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Kennedy, M. M. (2005). Inside teaching: How classroom life undermines reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McDonald, J. P., Mohr, N., Dichter, A., & McDonald, E. C. (2003). The power of protocols: An educator’s guide to better practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Olson, G. (2007, March). Execution class. Z Magazine, 20(3), (Original work published 1988) Shaver, J. P. (1977). The task of rationale-building for citizenship education. In J. P. Shaver (Ed.), Building rationales for citizenship education (pp. 96–116). Arlington, VA: National Council for the Social Studies.

Teaching Resources Olson, G. (2007). Execution class. Z Magazine. http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/13961. (Original work published 1988)

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Using a Range of Resources Introduction Ramona Fruja Amthor and Elizabeth E. Heilman

The truism that powerful teaching and learning go beyond the transmission of knowledge through conventional textbooks and lectures has become especially relevant in more recent years, with the unprecedented place of media and technology in students’ lives. Focusing on education relevant to students’ experiences and using a wide range of materials and tools to aid in the learning process has long been central to powerful teaching, and recently the proliferation of new media and technologies has added new dimensions and challenges to meaningful pedagogy. There has been a virtual explosion of software, Web sites, music, films, and more. Yet worthy content, aims, and a solid pedagogy are centrally important to our students’ development as thinkers and actors in a democratic society, and educators must not be drawn to the latest novel resource just because it is trendy. To this end, the authors in this section carefully address and exemplify the issues involved in teaching with a variety of resources, literature, film, images, artifacts, primary resources, students’ realia, and the Internet. All these resources are essential to teaching in today’s classrooms in order to reach students, make the most of their learning styles, and offer them the multiple perspectives that these resources provide, as well as engage them in a critical interpretation of the world portrayed through various media. At first glance, incorporating a range of resources in the classroom is desirable for what might be considered obvious reasons—to capture or revive students’ interests in what they may consider boring or irrelevant. Obvious as it might be, this reason drives many of the great initiatives social educators take in their classrooms. As others in this volume have pointed out, it is sometimes challenging to draw students into the crucial “content” of social studies. However, once various resources are introduced—especially those encouraging visual and activity-based learning— students respond differently. While appealing media can help them learn, it can also reinforce the stereotypes and information they are consistently being exposed to in popular culture. Good pedagogy, therefore, is essential. In the first essay of this section, Gallavan and Kottler begin by trying to “make social studies come alive” as they use realia to connect curriculum, community, and culture in informative, nonthreatening and especially entertaining ways. One of the main advantages of using artifacts holistically in the classroom is to make the learning experience more memorable for students and to address a wide range of learning styles. In this lesson, as students consider the processes of curriculum development, they engage with culturally relevant children’s literature and a set of Ukrainian nesting dolls to generate ideas. They use graphic organizers to explore culture in the classroom and generate rich illustrations of how social studies incorporates important layers of meaning.

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Memorable involvement in learning also has the potential to stimulate civic engagement when students’ moral imaginations move them toward action. In her chapter, Eula Fresch demonstrates how she motivates students into inquiry and civic participation by using primary sources like letters and photos created by or about children—students’ historical peers. In this insightful approach, Fresch takes advantage of a basic, yet powerful principle: children and young people are interested in others of their age, regardless of when they lived. Introducing students to young soldiers through the letters they wrote and photographs taken of them, diaries of children traveling West, or images and testimonies of historical or current child oppression, offers a different, powerful perspective on historical and global events, that students themselves can relate to. In the following chapter, Orr and Warner add the important caveat that “although children are exposed to visual images from an early age, they seldom receive systematic instruction for interpreting visual messages.” This reality is the impetus for their visual literacy instructional training for teacher candidates, a structured opportunity to decode and interpret images and prepare to do this in their future classrooms. The problem of representation and its relationship with power in social education also emerges in Dodge’s and Segall’s respective chapters, with reflections about texts, while Marcus takes up the issue in his discussion of history teaching through museum field trips. Through her assignment, Dodge reminds educators that “careful, critical analysis of textbooks and the capacity to teach against or without textbooks is fundamental in preparing teachers and their future students to be able to question authoritative messages—a basic skill in democratic citizenship.” Her students respond positively to the intriguing new information they find as they compare textbook representations and scholarly essays on certain historical issues. Segall’s exercises on maps suggests that texts—print, visual, or aural—appear to be easier to critique than maps, which are still held up as “authorless, unproblematic depictions of the world they portray” and are excluded from critical scrutiny. To this end, Segall offers exercises that emphasize how maps are not merely witnesses but, as he puts it, “committed participants, driving the very acts of identifying, naming, bounding, and inventorying that which they pretend to no more than observe.” Taking up the problem of representations in another authoritative space—the museum—Marcus encourages incorporating field trips into the curriculum in ways that promote students’ historical and cultural understandings. To do this, preservice teachers need to actively participate in field work, analyzing museums from the perspective of both students and teachers. This requires students to examine a museum’s history and contexts that influence which historical narratives are included and which are left out. Museums offer opportunities to enhance and build upon the history taught in the classroom in addition to engaging students with content in ways classroom settings and textbook readings cannot provide. Marcus also emphasizes that educators must engage in in-depth dialogue with museum professionals to support either teachers’ curricular objectives or museum educators’ goals. Critical interpretation is crucial in social education, especially since teachers can use an increased variety of resources, many of them embedded in popular culture. The more seductive the media are, the higher the need for critical engagement. Students’ lives are inundated daily with an abundance of appealing messages from a growing number of sources—to demonize this process and decry the effects of media will not help students’ learning and growth. Instead, the focus in social education needs to acknowledge the pleasure of media while also helping students become critical readers of the plethora of “texts” from which they are now learning, whether in school or outside. A critical engagement with information and images is a basic cornerstone to maintaining a democracy. Yet, with the fast-changing nature of texts and media that our students

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are exposed to, the focus on teaching how to read, critique and learn with print materials alone will not suffice. The skills required to interpret various kinds of materials are not uniform— rather, they require adaptation and in some cases, they are entirely distinct to a particular type of media. To this end, Stoddard uses a Socratic seminar method for film interpretation, prompted by two primary goals—to help students think critically about the past and present and to help them become more media literate. While film is widely used in educational settings—especially in social studies and multicultural education—some skills in media literacy such as detecting bias through examining cinematography, do not necessarily translate into an ability to identify the larger issues and values about historical periods or about the social climate portrayed in the film, or making distinctions about the period during which the film was produced. The Socratic seminar, as described by Stoddard, can help teachers to engage students in films as both a medium and a content to be examined critically. In addition to promoting high levels of student interest, role-plays, like films, also create a distinctive environment for students to think deeply and critically about history and society. In fact, through their performative nature, they can push beyond what films have to offer, because they bring the world of conflict and controversy to interactions among the students themselves, involving their affective imaginations, and requiring that they take a stance and attempt to understand the political and social nature of various groups’ perspectives on any one event. In his teaching on the annexation of Hawaii, Wayne Au takes these premises to heart as he ambitiously has students themselves coauthor role-plays and examine how these might be used powerfully in their own classrooms for young people. This pedagogy moves through critical inquiry into making commitments and taking vital civic action. We support a simple yet important rationale for using various media in the classroom—simply put, the more pervasive media and varied resources become, the more appealing they will be to students in classrooms; the more engaging they are to students, the more critical examination they will require. However, there is a third equally important rationale, namely that these media and resources are essential because of the vast range of perspectives they can capture. Culture is expressed in different ways through different media and certain perspectives are likely to be encountered only in certain types of media and resources, while they may be mostly absent from others. For example, archival films and diaries as well as historical fiction provide insight into daily life in a way that expository text cannot. Therefore, in order to involve students in a more balanced interpretation of the past and the world, these thoughts and feelings need to be included through the media that best capture them. In their chapter, Park and Tyson demonstrate how multicultural children’s literature offers these kinds of multiple perspectives to the teaching for social justice. They argue that multicultural literature helps young children develop critical literacy for social justice when teachers are mindful of their students’ diversity and purposefully locate their experiences in the realistic stories they read. Like Park and Tyson, who argue for bringing multiple perspectives into the classroom through children’s literature, Wilson and Wright also emphasize the importance of including perspectives through narrative. They offer students the opportunity to disrupt the teacher–student flow of information in the teaching of history and social studies, by involving them in digital story-telling and thus invite them to conduct their own historical research. While story-telling is among the oldest and most common means of communication and teaching across cultures, the rise of the technological age has moved this age-old technique into a visual and digital mode, endowing it with new possibilities, not the least of which is an opportunity for teachers to scrutinize the use of technology in instruction along with their students. Once again, when the medium becomes

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too appealing, it needs to be critically analyzed and its uses adjusted in order to benefit students and their learning. As her chapter concludes this section on resources and media, Keeler does just that—she shows how in the midst of technology-infused lessons, there are important concepts that need special attention and that new technologies can indeed be used for enhancing learning and not only for the sake of their appeal. She describes how she involves her students in a well-planned, simulated WebQuest through which they identify social studies resources, learn strategies for identifying and recording those resources, and experience techniques for using WebQuest to teach content. Not only do students acquire these lasting skills, but they also produce a usable product for their own classrooms, a goal that many of the authors in this collection aim for in their teaching.

60 Modeling with Matryoshkas Connecting Curriculum, Community, and Culture in the Classroom Nancy P. Gallavan and Ellen Kottler

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: I (Culture), II (Time, Continuity, and Change), III (People, Places, and Environments) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategy), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: geography, anthropological content knowledge, cultures, artifacts, integrated curriculum, children’s literature, multicultural literature, graphic organizers, language/meaning, instructional strategies This chapter shows how curriculum development based on social studies concepts and processes is enhanced by incorporating children’s literature, engaging naturally with realia, and constructing culturally rich analogies by completing graphic organizers. Teacher candidates are enlightened to see how curriculum fits together in a meaningful fashion. This learning experience also models an effective teaching strategy that teacher candidates can adapt easily and share with learners of all ages in their future classrooms. Context The matryoshka (also spelled matrioshka) is a small wooden decoration or toy that originated in Russia around 1890. The first matryoshkas were hand-carved decorations ranging from a few inches to a few feet in height painted in bright colors to look like various Russian characters, such as peasants, merchants, and members of the nobility. Also called Russian nesting dolls or stacking dolls, the matryoshkas are unique in that the dolls are hollow and all but the smallest dolls twist open at the “waist.” Typically a set of matryoshkas consists of five dolls of diminishing sizes placed inside the biggest matryoshka so that each doll fits easily inside the next larger one. Sometimes the dolls all look alike; sometimes they differ from one another but are characterized by a common theme. Contemporary matryoshkas even represent political leaders, historical figures, literary personalities, and cartoon characters. Many people bring matryoshkas home with them after visiting Russia. Matryoshkas also can be purchased from gift shops and through online catalogs in the United States. Some people have acquired extensive collections of matryoshkas in assorted sizes, colors, and motifs. Dolls range in price from relatively inexpensive to healthy investments, depending on the age, artist, and depictions. A set of matryoshkas and the concept of their nesting together in one cohesive package

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serves as a metaphor illustrating how social studies incorporates many different important layers of people, places, and resources connecting the individual learner to our interdependent, global society. Additionally, the dolls demonstrate how one artifact can inspire curriculum development, engage learners, build community, and emphasize culture in the classroom. Children’s Literature—Motivation Start by reading aloud a delightful piece of children’s literature titled, The Littlest Matryoshka, by Corinne Demas Bliss (1999). This story takes place in a snowy village in Russia. A young girl, Jessie, sees a set of six matryoshkas for sale in a wood carver’s gift shop. However, Jessie’s mother will not buy the set for her daughter due to their high cost. Jessie accidentally knocks the smallest matryoshka, Nina, off the display table. Nina rolls out the doorway into the street and embarks on quite an adventure. First she is scooped up by the snow plow and thrown aside; then she is picked up by a heron, snatched by a squirrel, falls down a rain pipe, and finally, is found by Jessie and her cat. Jessie returns Nina to the set of matryoshkas that Jessie’s mother ultimately has purchased for her (as their price had been greatly reduced due to the missing doll). Now the matryoshkas are reunited and all of the dolls fit together once more. Special vocabulary for the lesson includes the words Russia, village, heron, and snow plow. Lower elementary school vocabulary includes layer, nest, and stack; English learners might need to learn inner and outer. After sharing the picture book with the class, present a set of matryoshkas. Now the story truly comes alive for teacher candidates. Many of them have never seen or heard of matryoshkas. Passing the book and the matryoshkas around for the candidates to see, touch, discuss, and experience first-hand enables the instructor to relate the history of matryoshkas and reference a world map for discussing Russian geography. Reading the text aloud captures the candidates’ interest and provides a reasonable basis for the content (McGowan, 1996) in a way that is informative, entertaining, and non-threatening or overwhelming. The introduction of genuine realia (Brophy, 1990) or authentic artifacts (Kalish, 1998) is one way of using primary sources (Korbin, 1996) to make social studies come alive. Thus, candidates see the instructor model well-grounded and effective social studies teaching. Following the reading, the instructor prompts the candidates to generate concepts, inquiries, and topics related to culture, history, geography, economics, and political science that are either directly or implicitly referenced in the text. For example: What political conflicts are represented through the dolls? What is the social structure in Russia? What was Russian peasant life like? How and why do dolls vary by region? The candidates’ investigation can add information gleaned from books, maps, textbooks, and the Internet. The candidates also consider how this example of children’s literature inspires multidisciplinary studies (Marz, 1999) that include math, science, sociology, psychology, law, philosophy, and other academic disciplines. For example, candidates relate the topic of matryoshkas to math by computing the number of years since matryoshkas began and the costs of the dolls; to science and technology by comparing and contrasting how the original dolls were hand-carved and now are factory made; and to the fine arts by examining the style of painting on wood. Different conversations highlighting various interests tend to occur as the constructivist approach is modeled. Candidates are encouraged to take ownership in the learning, find various forms of engagement and expression, and personalize the outcomes.

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Classroom, Community, and Culture—Context As candidates become enthusiastic about a genuine artifact, they realize the importance of using authentic realia and allowing their own future learners to touch artifacts to inspire learning. Playing authentic Russian music in the background and displaying posters of Russia enhance the experience. The Russian embassy will send free materials when contacted. From this modeling, candidates better understand the concept of powerful learning (National Council for the Social Studies, 1994). This lesson also models community building. Reading aloud to the entire class and sharing a piece of quality children’s literature bring the candidates and instructor together to explore unfamiliar vocabulary and travel unknown horizons. The instructor leads the candidates to make three important connections, text-to-text (i.e., How is this like other texts?), text-to-self (i.e., How do I respond?), and text-to-world (i.e., What does this tell us about the world?) (Keene & Zimmerman, 1997). Graphic Organizers—Template for Curriculum Development Using graphic organizers provides candidates with opportunities to record new knowledge briefly, quickly, and easily in a visual way. With this tool, the instructor models four of the nine instructional strategies Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock (2007) believe improve learner achievement. The strategies include: (1) identifying similarities and differences—grouping the same ideas together and removing ideas that do not align; (2) summarizing and note-taking—recording ideas using the fewest number of words possible and in ways to enhance long term memorization and application; (3) nonlinguistic representations—using physical models to document information; and (4) cues, questions, and advanced organizers—providing a visual tool to manage new ideas. The instructor should construct and distribute a computer generated graphic or advanced organizer (Gallavan & Kottler, 2007) consisting of 12 concentric oval shapes connected at the lower edge to show how curriculum is connected and fits together (similar to the idea of a matryoshka). The 12 layers of the organizer identify the concepts of social studies curriculum development beginning at the outside with (12) World/ International Global Society; (11) United States; (10) National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) thematic strands; (9) State Department of Education Mission; (8) State Department of Education Curricular Standards and Academic Outcomes; (7) School District Curriculum Scope and Sequence; (6) Community, City, Town; (5) Individual School; (4) Grade Level/Department; (3) Teacher and Classroom; (2) Family and Friends; and (1) the Learner. Provide candidates with a second copy of the graphic organizer and guide them in labeling the 12 concentric layers with personal and local information relevant to their field placements or classrooms. Finally, invite candidates to share their graphic organizers with one another to see many different settings and contexts for social studies curriculum. Reflection Key to this learning experience is the opportunity for teacher candidates to reflect on the concepts and processes of both constructivist and standards-based curriculum development. Instructors should be aware that the children’s literature, realia, maps, and music can overwhelm the critical importance of understanding how a range of curricular components fits together and the

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significance that each component plays in social studies. Through meaningful self-reflection, candidates learn to apply the social studies concepts in their individual schools and classrooms. In order for teacher candidates to fully comprehend not only what to teach and how to teach, instructors must guide the candidates in understanding the big picture for developing curriculum, addressing the concern of why to teach. Candidates benefit from hands-on learning experiences that make visible all parts of the curriculum that influence their teaching as described in this powerful learning experience. References Brophy, J. (1990). Teaching social studies for understanding and higher-order applications. The Elementary School Journal, 90(4), pp. 351–417. Gallavan, N. P., & Kottler, E. (2007, May/June). Eight types of graphic organizers for empowering social studies students and teachers. The Social Studies 98(3), 117–114. Kalish, C. (1998). Natural and artifactual kinds: Are children realists or relativists about categories? Developmental Psychology, 34, 376-391. Keene, E. O., & Zimmerman, S. (1997). Mosaic of thought. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Korbin, D. (1996). Beyond the textbook: Teaching history using documents and primary sources. (Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED396981) Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock. J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development. McGowan, T. M. (1996). With reason and rhetoric: Building the case for the literature–social studies connection. Social Education, 60, 203–207. National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Curriculum standards for social studies: Expectations of excellence. Washington, DC: Author.

Teaching Resources Bliss, C. D. (1999). The littlest matryoshka. New York: Hyperion Books for Children. Brooks, J. G., & Brooks, M. G. (2000). In search of understanding: The case for the constructivist classroom (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development. Goldenberg, L. B., & Talley, B. (2005). Fostering historical thinking with digitized primary sources. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 38(1), 1–21. Kottler, E., & Gallavan, N. P. (2008). Secrets to success for social studies teachers. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Mraz, M. (2004). Harold O. Rugg and the foundations of social studies. International Journal of Social Education, 19(1), 1–7.

61 Motivating for Inquiry and Civic Participation through Primary Sources about Historical Peers Eula Fresch

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 4 (Instructional Strategy), 5 (Motivation and Classroom Management) Topics: ethical–political valuation, perspective consciousness, student-centered, students’ lives and experiences, history, historical content knowledge, historical understanding, inquiry, civics, civic action, local/global communities, social action, primary resources, visual literacy, pictures/photographs, childrens literature, emotional response How to motivate students to engage in inquiry and civic participation is a major issue for me in my course. When the preservice teachers in my course go into the local classrooms to teach social studies for their field experience, they often encounter students who do not like social studies. They need to be prepared to motivate the students. The teachers in these schools also seek ways to motivate and actively engage students. Because of this challenge, I conducted research which evolved into a book I now use in my methods course, Connecting Children with Children, Past and Present: Motivating Students for Inquiry and Action (2004). Children and young people are interested in others their age, and this applies to their historical peers too. Students are fascinated to find out about others near their age who lived in other times and places and who have made contributions to history. They begin to realize that history is their story too. When we introduce students to young soldiers through the letters they wrote and photographs taken of them, or to diaries of children traveling West, they want to know more about them. They want to learn about the time period and places in which they lived and the events they were involved in. Preservice teachers using the primary sources report their students’ reactions to our methods class. “Was this really written in 1862 by someone my age?” a child might ask, when looking at a copy of an actual diary of a young girl traveling West with a wagon train. Students are intrigued when they see a photograph of Johnny Clem who joined the Union army as a drummer boy and became a lance corporal at age 11, or read about Sybil Ludington, age 16, who rode 30 miles at night during the American Revolution to tell soldiers to meet the British. They are inspired when they learn that 9 months before Rosa Parks’ famous refusal, Claudette Colvin, age 15, was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat, or that Phyllis Wheatley, a colonial poet and a slave, at age 14 became the first black poet to be published in America. The preservice teachers in my social studies methods course experience how to motivate 267

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students for inquiry and civic participation when they introduce their students to real children and young people from diverse backgrounds who lived during the times being studied and to those who today make contributions locally and globally. These include children like Iqbal Masih who became a dept-bonded laborer at age 4, found help to get free, and then at age 10 became engaged in a crusade to free others. Canadian Craig Keilburger, now 25, started the now vast organization Free the Children at age 12 when he heard about Iqbal and his death. The resources they use are primary sources created by or about these children and young people. Strategies for using these resources include analyzing photographs, interpreting diaries or letters, and role-playing from different perspectives. One of the ways I prepare preservice teachers to incorporate these resources in their lesson plans is to choose a topic and engage them in using primary sources for inquiry. For example, if I choose the topic of child labor, we read about this complex issue, including about causes such as families in poverty needing money to survive, industries seeking low costs, and other reasons. Then, the preservice teachers take a “trip back into the past” to meet some of their students’ historical peers through examining, for example, the photographs by Lewis Hine from the Jackdaw photo collection on child labor—the Jackdaw collections come with excellent questions and teaching material (Jackdaw, 1997). I hand out these and other questions and Post-it Notes. In pairs they walk around the room, choose a photograph, write responses to the questions on their Post-Its, and place them on the wall by the photograph. They look at other photographs, read what others have written, and respond to more questions. The questions are designed to encourage the viewer to see things from the historical children’s perspectives, make connections with them, develop empathy for them, and stimulate inquiry into their lives, time period, and situation. For example, questions might include: What would you ask the children? What might they say to you if you could step into the photograph? What might you have in common with these children? The next step is to examine actual primary accounts, such as those found in Growing Up in Coal Country (Bartoletti, 1996), We Were There, Too! (Hoose, 2001), or Children At Work (Deitch, 2000). To move into the area of taking action, we discuss whether these historical children did anything about their situation. Examples of children participating in or leading strikes found in Bartoletti’s (1999) Kids on Strike and other sources are examined. From there we move to child labor today and consider why this issue is so complex. We examine the economic aspects involved, the types of child labor including bonded labor (which is a form of slavery because the child has to work for a master in return for a loan to the family), and what is being done about the problem today. (Go to the International Labor Organization’s Web site at http://www.ilo.org and click on Themes and then Child Labor.) We view a video, Lost Futures (American Federation of Teachers, 1999), which deals with all of these areas of the topic. It also features children who have taken action, including Iqbal Masih and seventh grade students at Broad Meadows Middle School in Quincy, MA who earned money to build a school in Pakistan in Iqbal’s memory for children freed from labor (http://mirrorimage.com/iqbal/index.html). Suggestions are given for what students might do today to help, such as writing letters to the editor of their newspaper or their Senators and contacting Free the Children (http://www.freethechildren.org) for information on raising money for school kits for children recently freed. To give my future teachers the experience of conducting an in-depth inquiry we focus on the settlement of the West. Preservice teachers use diaries written by pioneer children traveling West in the mid-1800s and accounts and photographs of Native Americans who were forced to relocate or were sent to government schools. For example, diaries by Ada Millington from 1862 (Millington, 1977) and Sallie Hester in 1849 (Hester, 2000) are examined. Data from each is recorded on charts about difficulties traveling, weather, scenery, animals encountered, food, camp life, encounters

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with Native Americans, chores, and other experiences. The information collected is compared and analyzed to get a more complete picture of these pioneer children’s experiences. Our inquiry into the experiences of Native American children who were sent to government schools involves analyzing photographs in Jackdaw’s photo collection (Jackdaw, 2001) and reading the accounts of Chuka, a Hopi boy (Hoose, 2001). A comparison of photographs taken when children arrived at a school and again 14 months later provides evidence of how their culture and way of life was taken from them. The written accounts further illustrate the difficulties they experienced. The preservice teachers also use primary sources by and about historical children in their teaching in the local schools that fit into the specific units they are designing. To guide them in how to locate these sources and create ways to implement them in their classrooms, I bring to class a variety of these primary sources and catalogues listing primary sources. We look at Web sites such as the Library of Congress American Memory site (http://www.memory.loc.gov), and resources collected by historical societies, libraries, museums, and people in the local community. Finally, working in pairs, they select one of the primary sources, create questions for students’ inquiries using the source, and make connections related to participatory citizenship involving similar issues today. For example, a group choosing the book, Freedom’s Children (Levine, 1993) might suggest that students analyze and compare the accounts of children and young people involved in the Montgomery bus boycott to find out what they experienced and what motivated them to get involved. Connections could be made to situations of discrimination today and actions young people have taken or might take (see Hoose, 1993). Through these experiences, preservice teachers increase their knowledge about teaching history in meaningful ways and gain confidence in locating and using primary sources. They become skilled in helping students “be historians” through interpreting primary sources and constructing knowledge. They discover ways to empower students to engage in participatory citizenship. Finally, they are prepared to enable students to meet many of the National Council for the Social Studies standards, particularly the performance expectations for the themes “Time, Continuity, and Change” and “Civic Ideals and Practice. References Bartoletti, S.C. (1996). Growing up in coal country. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Bartoletti, S. C. (1999). Kids on strike! Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Deitch, J. (2000). Children at work: Researching American history. Carlisle, MA: Discovery. Hester, S. (2000). A covered wagon girl: The diary of Sallie Hester, 1845–1850. Mankaro, MN: Blue Earth Books. Hoose, P. (1993). It’s our world, too! Stories of young people who are making a difference. Boston: Little, Brown. Hoose, P. (2001). We were there, too! Young people in U.S. history. New York:Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Kielburger, C. (1998). Free the children: A young man fights against child labor and proves that children can change the world. New York: Harper Perennial. Kuklin, S. (1998). Iqbal Masih and the crusaders against child slavery. New York: Henry Holt. Levine, E. (1993). Freedom’s children: Young civil rights activists tell their own stories. New York: Puffin Books. Millington, A. (1977, Summer). Journal kept while crossing the plains, 1862. Southern California Quarterly, 59, 13–48.

Teaching Resources American Federation of Teachers. (1999). Lost futures: The problem of child labor. Washington, DC: Author. Broadmeadows Middle School. (n.d.). The kids campaign to build a school for Iqbal. http://mirrorimage.com/iqbal/ index.html Free the Children. (n.d.). http://www.freethechildren.org Fresch, E. (2004). Connecting children with children, past and present: Motivating students for inquiry and action. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Jackdaw. (1997). Child labor: The shame of the nation. Amawalk, NY: Author. Jackdaw. (2001). American Indians: Early boarding schools. Amawalk, NY: Author. Library of Congress. (n.d.). http://www.memory.loc.gov

62 Incorporating Visual Learning in the Classroom Brooke S. Orr and Signia Warner

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), VIII (Science, Technology, and Society), X (Civil Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 6 (Communication Skills) Topics: historical understanding, critical thinking, emotional response, civics, literacy, pictures/ photographs, primary sources, leading discussion, internet/technology, creating teaching materials America has become a much more visual culture than in earlier decades. The proliferation of images in American society, whether conveyed through television, Internet, film, magazines, newspapers, or advertisements, means that students are constantly confronted with images presented in varied visual formats that rage from the visually rich “still” images found within textbooks to real-time, Web-based visuals, and as a result, educators need to more explicitly encourage students to discern the multiple meanings and biases contained within varied and complex contexts and images. In order to enrich social studies instruction and learning, the traditional definition of “literacy” as the ability to read and write should be expanded to include visual literacy. Broadly defined, visual literacy involves the ability to interpret and construct meaning from an image. According to Suzanne Stokes (2002), visual literacy is “the ability to interpret images as well to generate images for communicating ideas and concepts.” Museum educators and art teachers have long recognized the need to integrate images and visual literacy activities in their classrooms. Art educator Kerry Freedman (2000) argues that images, such as television images, are “seductive, didactic, and powerful” (p. 325), so students should consider how their backgrounds or “social perspectives” and an image’s “context” (p. 318) affect the meaning and discourse used to communicate an image’s message. An image brought into a social studies classroom is not a static, flat object, but instead should be perceived by teachers and students alike as an active, malleable moment in time subject to change when interpretations change. Drawing upon museum and art education strategies and given that teachers already often supplement their lesson plans with fascinating and evocative still and “real time” images, teachers can deliberately motivate and guide students in discovering historical and contemporary meanings contained within visuals. By developing visual analysis skills through systematic instruction, social studies students can learn how to “read,” orient, interpret, and classify an image within its historical, cultural, political, economic, and social context. These learned critical-thinking skills are necessary for democratic citizenship, especially since “visual culture is expanding.” 270

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In class, after our general theoretical discussion of visual literacy, the workshop transitions into its practical segment. The teacher candidates are instructed to choose and analyze a powerful historical photograph from the library, online sources, textbooks, films, or the Jackdaw collections, Most teacher–candidate pairs find their visual images in the social studies books and teaching packets contained in the Education Resources Center. The teacher candidates choose their images thoughtfully as many anticipate using the historical photographs to promote visual literacy at their teaching practicum sites. In their analysis, they use a wide range of visual analysis questions that we provide: What is happening in the image? What are some key details, or pieces of evidence, you see? What narrative or story is told in and by the image? Who is/are the principal character(s)? What is/are the subject(s) of the image? What activity is (or activities are) depicted? Where and what is the location/landscape seen in the image? Who is the intended audience? Whose (or what) point of view is reflected? What values or points of view are reinforced or undermined? Why might the painter or photographer have chosen this subject and not others? What statement is the book, text, or online source trying to make by including and using the chosen image? What emotions, moods, or ideas does this image convey? Can you date this image? Can you place the image into a historical context? What was happening in society at that time? Do you “hear” or “smell” anything when looking at the image? Is there a caption, title, or anything written on the image? Without labels, is the image recognizable? Where did the image come from originally? What is the focal point of the image, and why? What personal meaning or contemporary significance do you find in and from the image? What is the cultural/historical significance of this image? What questions does this image raise in your mind? What have you learned from studying the image? Consider and describe your image analysis process. What skills, techniques, “intelligences,” etc. did you use when observing, studying, and analyzing the image? Teacher candidates refer to the questions provided above to guide their analysis and construct their own interpretations of their chosen visuals. After analyzing the photograph, students are asked to formulate a lesson plan based solely around their “powerful” image. We demonstrate effective search strategies for locating powerful images of historical events in the library and through the Internet. Working collaboratively with a partner provides opportunities to brainstorm and think out loud as teacher candidates study their images and exchange observations. We encourage the teacher candidates to take their time when carefully examining their visual images. Using their own background knowledge and experience to interpret the images, teacher candidates discover that the photographs themselves are engaging intellectual tools. The questions provided lead teacher candidates from a simple description of what is happening in the image to observe more nuanced detail in the photograph, acknowledging sensory and emotional impressions associated with the image, and interpreting relationships among objects and people in the picture. Through this comprehensive investigative process, teacher candidates consider the intended audience, ponder the cultural and historical significance of the image, and reflect on their own analytic processes. After intensive examination of their photographs, teacher candidates are encouraged to return to their computer workstations to gather relevant historical evidence to support any suppositions they made about the content and meaning of the image. Several teacher candidates observed that visual learning exercises involve a wide range of social studies skills, including hypotheses testing, document analysis, deductive reasoning, research, and categorizing skills essential to social studies learning. The class agreed that in order to effectively promote visual literacy in the classroom students must be given ample time to actually “study” an image as opposed to briefly identifying what is contained in an image. The class also concurred that students should be encouraged to take their time in answering the seemingly uncomplicated, basic-level questions of “what do you

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see,” so that they may discover how a single image can tell a complex story and create the basis for a lively class discussion. In the final portion of our visual literacy workshop, teacher candidates and their partners present their historical photographs to the class and discuss their findings. We ask each pair to describe their powerful image, explain how they would effectively use it in their own classrooms, and answer several broad questions. What have you learned from this in-depth analytical process? Would you use this analysis process in your own classrooms to encourage visual literacy? What is the value of visual learning exercises in teaching and learning about social studies? Teacher candidates’ answers and presentations are highly informative and illuminating. They make astute observations and construct relevant hypotheses about the context, purpose, and visual messages embedded in their images. Several teacher candidates commented on the potential value of using this type of well-planned, image-oriented visual literacy exercise in both middle school and high school classroom settings. It can be used in elementary classrooms as well. One pair of teacher candidates interested in American slavery selected an 1863 photograph of Wilson Chinn, from a Jackdaw (Wagner, 2005) Slavery in America portfolio located in our Education Resources Center. The photograph depicts Wilson Chinn, an American slave, dressed in a man’s suit, while simultaneously constrained by instruments of torture used to punish slaves and marked with the slave owner’s brand upon his forehead. During their presentation these teacher candidates were aware of their own metacognitive process as they studied the image. Initially they simply tried to identify Chinn and describe the objects in the photograph. As they continued to probe the circumstances and historical significance of the photograph and the message being communicated, their analysis became increasingly perceptive as they considered the intended abolitionist audience and pondered the image’s complex ironies. The image provoked strong emotions and a lively discussion with speculation about the life of Wilson Chinn and the historical issues represented. We urged presenters to think about the intended audience, the purpose of the image, the point of view of the photographer, and the nature of American slavery in general. While using visual imagery within classrooms has evident educational benefits, from fostering students’ “multiple intelligences” and critical thinking skills to preparing them with critical citizenship skills in this fast-paced multimedia society, visuals also make learning more enjoyable, memorable, personal, and emotional for students. Such desirable outcomes may have the additional benefit of fostering cooperative and positive classroom environments. James Loewen (1995) contends in his book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, that American high school students are often bored, uninspired, and intellectually apathetic in history classes. Based upon our teaching, we suggest that the appropriate use and application of visual images in curricula may well “inspire” students, promote higher-level learning, and foster greater student enjoyment and motivation within their classrooms. References Freedman, K. (2000). Social perspectives on art education in the U.S.: Teaching visual culture in a democracy. Studies in Art Education, 4(4), 314–329. Loewen, J. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster. Stokes, S. (2002). Visual literacy in teaching and learning: A literature perspective. Electronic Journal for the Integration of Technology in Education, 1(1), 10–19, http://ejite.isu.edu/Volume1No1/Stokes.html Wagner, P. (Compiler). (2005). Slavery in America album. Amawalk, NY: Jackdaw.

63 Textbook Analysis Using James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me in Teacher Education L. Mara Dodge

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: history, historical content knowledge, critical thinking, ethical-political valuation, multiple perspectives, perspective consciousness, bias reduction, prejudice, textbook analysis, power/authority, visual literacy, pictures/photographs Scholarly analyses of textbooks, from Michael Apple’s (1991) The Politics of the Textbook, Sleeter and Grant’s work on multicultural textbook analysis, to James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995), reveal that textbooks legitimize unequal power relations, minimize injustice, and marginalize both the ordinary people and the organized movements that have challenged injustice. Careful, critical analysis of textbooks and the capacity to teach against or without textbooks is fundamental in preparing teachers and their future students to be able to question authoritative messages—a basic skill in democratic citizenship. The assignment I describe was taught in a history methods class but it is suitable for public school students and for multicultural educators as well. Although my students are seniors and history majors when they take their history teaching methods course the semester before student teaching, few of them have: (1) conducted a systematic examination of middle or high school history textbooks or (2) been exposed to a critical analysis of those texts. Indeed, most have given absolutely no thought to the materials that they will use as future teachers; and many (if not most) have not looked at a high school history textbook since their own secondary school years. Thus, as part of their history methods class we read portions of James Loewen’s highly acclaimed Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong (1995). Loewen reviews 12 of the most commonly used American history textbooks, including The American Pageant (1991) by Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy and Triumph of the American Nation (1986) by Paul Lewis Todd and Merle Curti, and concludes that not one succeeds in making U.S. history memorable, interesting, or relevant. Most present history as a procession of “factoids”—nearly all controversy, ambiguity, passion, and competing perspectives are omitted. History becomes simply a bland, highly nationalistic, and Eurocentric retelling of purported “facts,” and often even these are marred by error. Important historical figures are “heroified” to

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such a degree that they become boring cardboard characters. To make history more compelling, Loewen urges authors, publishers, and teachers to highlight the drama inherent in history by presenting students with differing viewpoints and stressing that history is an ongoing process in which meaning and interpretation are always deeply contested. In vivid and passionate language that easily engages students, Loewen compares and contrasts textbook authors’ coverage of a dozen major topics and controversies. My students—all senior history majors—are often amazed (and dismayed) by how little of these historical debates and controversies they themselves knew about or had been exposed to. Through reading and analyzing Lies My Teacher Told Me students deepen their knowledge of U.S. history (always important for the ubiquitous teacher tests most states now require) and, more importantly, learn to think critically about how history is written. I emphasize that Loewen’s work is controversial and that they do not have to agree with his critiques (especially since the textbooks he reviews date from the mid- to late 1980s). Loewen is a highly polemical writer and a sociologist, not a historian. However, I believe that Lies My Teacher Told Me is an important work that all history teachers should be exposed to and about which they should be able to offer an informed opinion. Since its first publication in 1995, the book has sold over half a million copies and has won an American Book Award along with the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship. Regardless of whether my students accept his particular conclusions, my objective is for them to become critical and informed consumers of textbooks and teaching materials. Most students find the book enormously stimulating and it generates heated class discussion. At the end of the semester students are required to complete the following assignment. Paper Assignment: Textbook Analysis First students pick a topic relating to U.S. or world history, geography, or civics/American government. Then they are instructed to read three different textbooks that cover this topic, choosing high school or middle school textbooks from the same grade level. They also read an article or essay that offers a historiographical perspective on the subject so that they will be aware of competing interpretations within the historical scholarship. Another option I give them is to read two articles by prominent historians (or social scientists) that offer differing interpretations. I also suggest that they might find it helpful and illuminating to read a college textbook for another comparison. Then, in a 7- to 8-page paper, students compare, contrast, and critique how their topic is presented in the three different textbooks they reviewed. Their topics (which I must approve) are to be based on the state’s curriculum frameworks and the grade level (6th–12th) they hope to teach. For example, a student planning to teach middle school might consider a topic related to geography or ancient civilizations and select a particular civilization or people and analyze how it is portrayed. For geography, they could focus on a particular country. In U.S. or world history, their topic might be as narrow as the Harlem Renaissance, the Watergate scandal, the Woman’s suffrage movement, or a single presidency. Topics may also be much broader in scope, for example: the Crusades, the American Revolution, or the Civil Rights Movement. In order to better develop their own analysis, they are required to select a topic that is not covered by Loewen. In their analysis, I ask students to consider some of the following questions and issues: What are the strengths and weaknesses of how the topic is covered in each of the textbooks? How much coverage is provided (number of pages or paragraphs)? How balanced is the coverage? What is

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the dominant perspective presented? How do the textbook perspectives compare to those of major historians? How accurate is the material presented? What is omitted? Do any of Loewen’s criticisms apply? Is the material presented in a similar fashion in all three textbooks, or is there a large variation in content and perspectives? How well-written, engaging, or interesting is the presentation? They also evaluate the images and visuals (photos, illustrations, cartoons, charts, etc.) How useful, informative, and engaging are they? Do any reflect stereotypical views of different groups? How are women, people of color, different social classes, or different nationalities and religions portrayed? Do the authors present a multicultural and non-Eurocentric view of history? Are the contributions and roles of different groups included? Evaluate the language. Are there words or images that reinforce stereotypes or build negative images of people? (e.g., “savage hordes of Indians,” “Muslim terrorists”) Power and agency are key questions. Who exercises power? Are the agents of history clearly identified or is passive language often used? (e.g., “War broke out”; “Africans were enslaved”; “Native Americans were removed”). From whose perspective is the story being told? How are non-European civilizations depicted? Are Western societies and peoples portrayed as culturally “more advanced”? Are the voices of those who have been victimized or oppressed adequately represented? Are those responsible for committing acts of oppression clearly identified? If they are examining U.S. government/civics textbooks they are asked to consider whether these present a realistic or idealized view of how modern governments work. Are U.S. presidents or other historical figures presented in a glorified or “heroified” manner? Are their mistakes and failures identified? They also evaluate any teaching aids that accompany the text (e.g., the introduction, chapter summaries, homework questions, sidebar highlights, charts, maps, etc.) How useful or effective are they? How pedagogically sound or graphically appealing is the text? Finally, in the conclusion of their paper they are asked to address the following: Identify which textbook or alternative resources they would choose for teaching about their particular topic and explain why. What have they learned from this exercise? How will they incorporate the insights they have gained into their future teaching? Most students choose topics relating to more highly charged or political themes in U.S. history (for example, the women’s suffrage movement, slavery, westward expansion, the Vietnam War, the Ku Klux Klan). However, even students who pick more “mainstream” topics find the assignment equally revealing. For example, a student who had recently taken a course on the Crusades was shocked to discover numerous inaccuracies in textbook coverage. Likewise, students who chose Greece or Rome are often equally surprised by what is or is not included at the middle and high school levels. One student’s final reflection captured the conclusions of many: Overall I found the assignment to be invaluable. As a future teacher it has allowed me to realize that textbooks may not always be the best or most reliable source of information (something I had never considered before). By comparing the three texts, it made me more aware of how important it is to incorporate outside sources when teaching. The most important piece of information that I walked away from this assignment with is the fact that it is important to stress to students that history is not a bunch of facts; rather, it is an ongoing debate with many different views and perspectives.

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References Apple, M. (1991) The politics of the textbook.New York: Routledge. Bailey, T. A., & Kennedy, D. M. (1991). The American Pageant. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Loewen, J. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster. Sleeter, C., & Grant, C. (1991). Race, class, gender and disability in current textbooks. In M. W. Apple & L. K. ChristianSmith (Eds.), The politics of the textbook (pp. 78–110). London: Routledge. Todd, P. L., & Curti, M. (1986). Triumph of the American nation. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Teaching Resources Lindaman, D., & Ward, K. (2004). History lessons: How textbooks from around the world portray U.S. history. New York: New Press. Ward, K. (2006). History in the making: An absorbing look at how American history has changed in the telling over the last 200 years. New York: New Press. These two recent books could also be incorporated into this course or assignment. These works offer extensive excerpts from actual textbooks from other countries (translated) and from earlier periods of U.S. history. The commentary and analysis is brief.

64 Teaching with and about Maps Avner Segall

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), III (People, Places, and Environments), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Instructional Planning) Topics: geography, geographical content knowledge, critical thinking, multiple perspectives, power/authority, marginalization, primary sources, maps While most social studies student teachers come to their methods courses with some degree of understanding that the texts—print, visual, or aural—they read, and those they will invite their own students to read in their future classrooms, are constructed, promoting particular visions and versions of the world that invite readers to think in and about the world in particular ways, more often than not, they still hold to the belief that maps are authorless, unproblematic depictions of the world they portray. Consequently, although student teachers are often willing to initiate a critical exploration with their students about the assumptions, worldviews, and dispositions many of the texts encountered in the curriculum promote, maps tend to be excluded from such scrutiny. After all, if maps are authorless, how might students be invited to explore the intentions of an author who does not exist? Every map, however, tells a story that serves a purpose and advances an interest (Kaiser & Wood, 2001). While we tend to regard a map as a neutral depiction of the world—simply telling things as they are—a map is not merely a witness, silently recording what would otherwise take place without it. Instead, it is a committed participant, driving the very acts of identifying, naming, bounding, and inventorying that which it pretends to no more than observe (Wood, 1992). The traditional perception of a map as a mirror no longer holds (Harley, 1990, p. 3). Map makers must choose what to show and how to show it, and, by extension, what not to show. Indeed, a map is a show, a representation, and the map maker a creator rather than reflector (Wood, 1992). While what is shown is no doubt real, all maps, inevitably and unavoidably, embody their authors’ perspectives, assumptions, and biases, offering a selective view of reality (Monmonier, 1991). Getting students to consider such issues is often difficult because maps, by the nature of their mode of presentation, actively work to deny the existence of signification. Most prominent in enabling this “denial” is the map’s lack of an apparent author. Indeed, the map is powerful, Wook (1992) explains, precisely because its author remains absent. For it is only to the extent that the author escapes notice that the world the map brings into being can be taken for the world. Also assisting the unquestioning of maps is that icons used in maps fit so easily with the sign system of other cultural artifacts—road signs, logos, pictures on cereal boxes, and billboards—we have learned to accept from childhood. It is this congruency with the larger system of signs that un277

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derlies our culture that renders maps transparent and easy to read (Wood, 1992). But maps don’t only fit into our existing cultural understandings, they also reproduce them, promoting particular ethnocentric cultural assumptions and biases. Most map projections display a European and Western bias, splitting Asia in half in order to put Europe and the Americas front and center (Levstik, 1985). That Europe and the Americas should be at the center of the map, or that zero meridian should be the one running through Greenwich is not because they actually are but, rather, a reflection of the role of Europeans in the development of cartography and consequently their power to position themselves in the center and thus as central (Black, 1997; Levstik, 1985). By exploring maps in a manner that highlights their authored nature, students learn to consider how the world and the map are separated by selection and interpretation, both of which are shaped by the values, assumptions, and perspectives of a particular map maker. The Pedagogical Stance To help students think more deeply with and about maps, maps must be made problematic, for as long as maps are accepted as “real” they will remain unquestioned, beyond discussion. When maps are acknowledged as authored, as “made,” and their contingent and conditional nature is revealed, things represented become the subject of discussion and debate (Wood, 1992). Indeed, the educative value of studying maps is quite different if one begins with the conviction that maps give meaning to the world rather than find meaning in it. This allows students to use maps to ask different questions about knowledge, about our relationship to the world, as well as about the nature of map making as a way to narrate and appropriate it. Approaching maps in that manner neither denies nor diminishes the value of maps and their making; it simply returns both to the social and political contexts in which they have (and from which they derive their) meaning (Black, 1997). When we consider all maps as serving a purpose and promoting an interest, we no longer need to think of maps as true or false, accurate or inaccurate, objective or subjective (Harley, 1988). Rather, we can begin to explore maps for the messages they convey, for the assumptions they embody, and for the values they promote since all maps, by definition, are highly selective and necessarily biased (Monmonier, 1991). In order to interrogate maps in that fashion, it is necessary to provide students with a variety of maps, not only ones that are blatantly problematic, such as “propaganda maps” that anyone can see, and happily identify, as biased, or ones from the margins. To make such an engagement meaningful we must use a wide variety of maps (historical and contemporary, conventional and unconventional, from the center of our culture and the periphery) and map formats (political maps, physical maps, cartograms, pictorial maps). For it is only by comparing those maps, by letting the “strange” speak to and question the “ordinary” that the interests, perspectives, and worldviews underlying maps and our definition of some of them as “ordinary” and others as “strange” can come to light. As you engage students with maps, you might want to consider the following questions (borrowed from Werner, 2000): What does this map depict? What story is it attempting to tell? What and whose interests does it advance or marginalize? Does this map serve to perpetuate or challenge existing political or social goals, issues, and interests (and how does it do it)? What might this map imply about the assumptions, commitments, and values of its maker as well as those of its intended readers? What position (i.e., powerful or powerless, insider or outsider) does the map invite its reader to assume? How does the map accomplish that positioning (what textual devices or conventions does it recruit)? What is your reaction to this portrayal? What alterna-

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tive depictions might be possible? What (or who) could be included that is currently missing; or how could what is presented be displayed otherwise to make the map more acceptable (and to whom)? Make sure that as students respond, they also explain what in the map gave rise to their particular responses. Map Activities Below I highlight some of the activities I conduct with student teachers in my methods course in order to explore maps in light of the issues raised above, hoping that such an engagement will promote more meaningful considerations of maps not only in my own classroom but also in the classrooms my students will soon be entering as teachers (Maps can be obtained from links provided in the Teaching Resources section). Activity 1: Constructing Maps One way to illustrate not only that maps are constructed but also the various issues associated with that construction, is to have students construct a map. Divide the class into four to six groups, giving each group a similar large piece of paper (to be displayed later) and a similar set of six to eight colored pens. Ask all groups to map the classroom. When students have completed their maps (about 30 minutes) display the maps and invite students to identify and describe some of the differences among the maps (there will no doubt be differences as to what and how things are shown). Pose the following question: If every group mapped the same area, why are the maps different? Responses will inevitably lead to the conclusion that map makers must make choices and that choices are a reflection of what they deem important. To bring the discussion back to broader issues, choose a map you have already used with these students (from the textbook, one hanging on the wall) or one you intend using with them in the future. Ask students how this map could have been drawn otherwise or what else could have been included? The intent is for students to make connections between their own experience as map makers and those of the creator of the map they are examining. Making that connection will help students not only to recognize authorship in this map, but also in other maps they will engage in the future. Activity 2: What Constitutes a Map? Provide students, in groups, with the same set of six to eight maps (include a variety of maps, i.e., an historical and a contemporary map, a political map, a satellite image, a road map, a cartogram, a pictorial map, a 3D map) and have students rank them from most to least maplike. Ranking is only intended here as a means. What is important are the categories students will have to come up with in order to do their ranking. When students are done, ask each group to put their ranking on the board and explain why they ranked the maps the way they did. Inevitably, different groups will rank maps differently, which should lead to a discussion about the different categories students used and what we may learn from that (usually, that they are not universal but are rather culturally and temporarily determined, that they depend on the purpose for using a map, etc.). Activity 3: Projections of the World Select and print five world projection maps, preferably including a Mercator’s and Peter’s projections. Assign each of those maps a letter (A–E) on the left-hand corner. Identify the five following

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areas (Greenland, North America, South America, Australia, Africa, and Europe) by name on each of the five maps. Photocopy the maps and distribute one to each student (give maps A–E to the first five students and then repeat the pattern. Ask students to individually rank the identified five areas on their map according to size, from largest (1) to smallest (5). Create a chart on the board that incorporates the names of the five areas on one coordinate and the letters of the five maps chosen on the other. When students have finished their ranking, ask a student who had map A to put her ranking on the board. Do the same for each of the other four maps. When the chart is complete, it will become apparent that some areas appear much larger in some maps than in others. To complicate things, provide students with the actual size of each of those areas (in square miles): Africa, 17,250,000; North America, 9,400,000; South America, 6,900,000; Australia, 2,966,200; Greenland, 840,000. Ask students to explain how Greenland, which is so much smaller than South America and Australia, can appear larger than both in some maps. After discussing the inevitability that every projection must “lie” due to the impossibility of fitting a round world onto a square page, have students explore what “lies” each of the projections used tells (that is, what areas get privileged or marginalized by each projection). Then ask students with which of the provided projections they are most familiar. They will certainly mention the Mercator projection. Follow up with a discussion of what and who the Mercator projection privileges, and why is it that this particular map has become the “official” world map in classrooms, atlases, and media presentations in the West (I thank Alan Sears for this activity). Activity 4: The Power of “Up” and “Center.” Have students examine two political world maps: a Mercator projection with Europe and the Americas in the center (the map most often used in American classrooms) and a McArthur “corrective” projection or any other “upside down” projection which puts Australia top and center. Allow students some time to explore the maps, then ask what the McArthur map is trying to “correct” and why such a correction may be necessary for those living in Australia. What messages does each map send its readers about what and who are important in the world? How would Americans feel if a McArthur projection was used in U.S. classrooms? Answers to these questions will help students realize that areas are placed at the top and center of a map to convey their importance and centrality and that those who have the power to produce maps are also those with the power to “name” the world and “place” its people. (This is a good opportunity to discuss our tendencies to associate positively with the word up and negatively with down, and how that might play in our understanding of the world when some places are placed “up” while others remain “down”). Activity 5: Conceptions of the World In this activity, students will be introduced to a variety (6–8) of historical and contemporary maps of the world, with the idea of considering how conceptions of the world and map making have changed over time and place. In choosing your maps, make sure to include one of the earliest known maps (e.g., the Catal Hyuk map from 6,200 BC), a map from Ancient Greece, one from the early Islamic world, from the Middle Ages (where Jerusalem is at the center and east is “up”), and several maps from the 1400s on up to today. Do not include the date of publication on the maps. Give each group of students a set of those maps and (1) Ask students to rank them from

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earliest to most contemporary. When they are done, ask one or two groups to put their ranking on the board and explain what criteria they used to do their ranking. They will probably say that more of the world is represented as we move forward in time (a somewhat obvious but important aspect to consider). (2) Have students return to the maps and explain what they may learn from each map about how the world was viewed at that particular time (focus on territory shown, detail, format, orientation, etc.). (3) Have students examine how map making has changed through time. As maps will illustrate, changes are not only in the substance upon which maps are produced (e.g., stone to leather to paper), but also in its function, from functional in early times, to artistic in the early age of exploration, to scientific since the “age of reason.” The overt notion of map making as a creative, artistic endeavor that was prominent only a few centuries ago has now given way to a more scientific rendition of the world. Such a realization brings us full circle to the idea opening this paper: that the map’s scientific model hides its artistic elements, the very ones these and other similar activities try to make apparent so that maps can be read more critically by students. Note 1. For an earlier and more detailed version of this chapter, see Segall, A. (2003). Maps as stories about the world. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 16(1), 21–25.

References Black, J. (1997). Maps and politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harley, J. B. (1988). Maps, knowledge, and power. In D. Cosgrove & S. Daniels (Eds.), The iconography of landscapes: Essays on the symbolic representation, design, and use of past environments. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Harley, J. B. (1990). Text and contexts in the interpretation of early maps. In D. Buisseret (Ed.), From sea charts to satellite images: Interpreting North American history through maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kaiser, W., & Wood, D. (2001). Seeing through maps: The power of images to shape our world view. Amherst, MA: ODT. Levstik, L. (1985). Literary geography and mapping. Social Education, 49(1), 38–43. Monmonier, M. (1991). How to lie with maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Werner, W. (2000). Reading authorship into texts. Theory and Research in Social Education, 28(2), 193–219. Wood, D. (1992). The power of maps. New York: Guilford Press.

Teaching Resources Map Resources On the Web http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/map_sites/hist_sites.html The Perry Castaneda Library at University of Texas provides one of the best selections of both contemporary and historical maps. http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/ This site (Cartographic Images) provides hundreds of maps (often with extensive text explanation) ranging from 6,000 BC to 1880. The site’s division into Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance maps makes for easy access. http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/mapproj/mapproj.html Map Projections (Peter H. Dana, University of Texas at Austin and the Geographer’s Craft Project at the University of Colorado, Boulder) provides a variety of world projection maps. http://www.geometrie.tuwien.ac.at/karto/ Hans Havlicek’s site provides a large picture gallery of world map projections to choose from http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_maps_index.htm A selection of ancient maps http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbookmap.html For Medieval maps http://historymedren.about.com/library/weekly/aa071000a.htm A Medieval Atlas (period maps)

282 • Avner Segall http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gmdhome.html A large selection of historical maps from the Library of Congress (American memory project) http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Satellite images from NASA. http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/ A variety of upside-down maps (including the McArthur Projection). http://www.gisnet.com/notebook/unusual.htm#3 This site (Bill Thoen) provides a guide to unconventional maps on the Web. http://www.legolas.org/gallery/albums.php The “Legolas RPG maps” site has a selection of pictorial, fictional, historical, and many other unique maps. http://www.georgeglazer.com/maps/pictorialmap/pictorialmap.html A good selection of pictorial maps http://www-viz.tamu.edu/faculty/house/cartograms/index.html About cartograms and some examples (under Sample Results) (from Texas A& M University)

Print Resources Harley, J. B. & Woodward, D. (Eds.). (1987).The history of cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The ultimate volume on the history of cartography; includes a huge selections of maps. Holmes, N. (1991). Pictorial maps. New York: Watson-Guptill. This work has one of the largest and best selections (and ones widely appealing to students) of unconventional (pictorial) maps. Danzer, G. A (1991, September–1992, March). Seven consecutive articles on using maps in the classroom. Social Education, 55(5)–56(3). Whitfield, P. (1994). The image of the world: 20 centuries of world maps. San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks. A good selection of world maps from ancient to contemporary (includes explanations).

65 Reinventing the Field Trip Preservice Teachers Explore Museums and Historic Sites Alan S. Marcus

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary; 7-12 NCSS Standards: I (Culture), II (Time, Continuity, and Change), III (People, Places, and Environments), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: museum, field trip, historical understanding, history, community-based learning, creating teaching materials As an adolescent, I participated in school field trips to the United Nations in New York, Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, and The Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC, among others. These excursions were exciting and fun—a day off from rows of desks, a foray into the “real” world, and, in some cases, overnight slumber parties in hotel rooms. Although I do not remember much about the content of these trips, I do remember that there was little connection between what we did in class and the visits to these sites. I also recall being asked to do very little on these trips other than adhere to a code of acceptable behavior. Many years later, as a teacher educator, I find myself advocating for the incorporation of field trips into the curriculum, determined to provide teachers with the knowledge and skills to incorporate trips to museums and historic sites1 in ways that promote students’ historical and cultural understandings. I teach this in a social studies methods class, but many field trips are deeply important for developing multicultural understanding and thus this assignment is valuable for these classes as well. The Assignment A core element of my effort to promote historical understanding through museum visits is a field work assignment. The preservice teachers in my class are required to choose a museum to study and to analyze it from the perspectives of both students of history and teachers of history. The preservice teachers visit the museum, interview the education director or other museum professionals, take photographs to document their learning, and explore the museum’s Web site. They then submit a 5-page review of the site that is compiled with their classmates’ work into a “Resource Guide for Teachers.” The reviews must include: (1) a brief history of the museum that includes the political, social, and economic context in which it was created and is maintained; (2) a list of resources available at the museum (e.g., on the Web site); (3) an analysis and evaluation of

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how the museum represents the past through which students can critically analyze the narratives presented (and left out) and consider the site as a subjective, value-laden entity that constructs knowledge and is impacted by political, social, economic, and other influences; (4) recommendations (or not) for whether teachers should visit the museum with their students and suggestions for activities with students; and (5) digital photographs that show examples of the resources available, provide evidence to support their analysis and evaluation of the museum, and that are representative of the museum for someone who has never been there. The methods students must each choose a different museum to review and have their choice preapproved. Our location in southern New England with easy access to New York, Boston, and sites in between, provides students with a diverse choice of museums and is a particularly rich geographic center for museums related to colonial America, the Revolutionary War, industrialization, and immigration. Each year students study museums that represent a wide array of topics, purposes, sizes, and perspectives. Past choices include the New England Carousel Museum, the Mark Twain House, Plimoth Plantation, the American Clock and Watch Museum, the Norman Rockwell Museum, Minuteman National Historic Park, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to cite just a few. Prior to completing the museum visit and written assignment, students participate in three scaffolding activities. First, we hold a class “resource fair” during which each student shares curricular resources with other students in a museum gallery walk setting. These resources must include a one-page handout describing their museum (and other resources) and explaining how the museum might be useful to teachers. This process requires that students research their museum prior to visiting. Second, we spend one class session (150 minutes) engaged in activities that ask the students to think about how visits to museums can promote historical thinking. In addition to contemplating the content offered by the museums, we examine how a museum’s history and purpose and the pressures of the political and social contexts in which they exist influence a museum’s perspectives and, consequently, impact which historical narratives are included and which are left out. In class, museums are analyzed in much the same way we examine primary source documents earlier in the semester. Third, we take a class field trip to Mystic Seaport, a living-history museum in Mystic, CT, where students are asked to take on roles as both students of history and as teachers of history. The trip allows me to model the types of activities my preservice teachers might use with their secondary students. As students of history, they participate in a series of activities requiring them to understand the content (life on a whaling ship, the economic and social functions of a whaling village) and develop historical empathy by considering a variety of perspectives (children, fishermen, women, merchants, etc.). They must also critically analyze Mystic Seaport as a subjective entity that creates knowledge and is influenced by political, social, and economic factors. As teachers of history, students meet with the Education Director to discuss how Mystic Seaport supports school groups and the resources available for teachers. In addition, they meet with a museum curator and are treated to a “behind-the-scenes” tour of one of their exhibits as a way to understand how museum staff chose artifacts to display, determine how to display them, and are influenced by political and social contexts. Finally, the methods students conduct informal interviews with K-12 teachers and their students who are visiting Mystic Seaport that day to explore what kind of activities they are completing and how the K-12 students are making sense of the past at Mystic Seaport. All three of these other activities—the resource fair, classroom work, and field trip—provide excellent scaffolding for the museum assignment.

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Reflection The museum assignment and other related class activities are important on several levels. First, students will encounter the past at museums throughout their adult lives, yet may place too much trust in museums as authoritative. Second, museum visits have the potential to support students’ historical understanding. Third, professional development for teachers about how to productively incorporate field trips into their curriculum is scarce. Fourth, there appears to be little dialogue between teachers and museum educators. Lifelong Learning at Museums After our students leave behind their compulsory education, they will spend a lifetime visiting and interacting with museums, continuing to learn about the past (Boyd, 1993). Thus, facilitating students’ skills at interpreting and understanding museums is essential. Americans’ encounters with museums may lack any critical analysis of these sites. Museums are viewed by many as “reliable, authentic, and comprehensible” (Falk & Dierking, 2000, p. 2). They are seen as trustworthy sources of historical information, even more trustworthy than college history professors, high school teachers, and nonfiction books (Rosenzweig, 2000). It is imperative that teachers prepare students to pursue a lifetime of museum visits intelligently and analytically. Museums and Historical Understanding Museum visits potentially can expand students’ content knowledge, offer a more sensory learning experience, and develop their historical understanding, which includes increased historical empathy, exposure to multiple perspectives, and an examination of how evidence is used to create historical narratives. Museums offer opportunities to enhance and build upon the history taught in the classroom. The artifacts displayed, narratives told, and re-creations of the past exhibited potentially engage students with content in ways classroom settings and textbook readings are unable to provide. These sites may develop students’ historical empathy by giving students a way to “experience” history and make personal connections to people in the past. In addition, museums create opportunities for students to think critically about the past and about history as a discipline. Students can examine how history is constructed by museum curators, consider the role of evidence in historical interpretation, explore the historical narratives told by museums and historic sites, and understand the historical perspectives presented (and left out) by museums. Museums are themselves historical sources that need to be critically analyzed and evaluated (Trofanenko, 2006). We can encourage a more critical reflection of museums as interpreters of history and recognize the political, social, and economic factors that impact museums. Museums require especially careful analysis, because like movies and school textbooks, they often present history without the supporting documents and research conventions (footnotes, bibliography, etc.) of more traditional sources. Professional Development and Museums In addition, it is difficult to locate professional development for social studies teachers that focuses on the pedagogical issues unique to museum visits. Even professional development offered by museums is most often focused on learning content, not on pedagogical practices related to field

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trips. The assignment described here may encompass the singular opportunity to carefully consider why and how to incorporate these visits into the curriculum. Most of the preservice teachers with whom I work have not had the opportunity to carefully analyze museums as students of history. Several years ago I brought a group of students from my methods class to Battleship Cove in Fall River, MA. The students were “shocked” to learn that museum employees held conflicting views regarding the mission at Battleship Cove. Some museum staff advocated the site as a World War II and 9/11 Memorial, while others promoted it as an educational institution geared toward teaching and fostering multiple perspectives (it is the official World War II and 9/11 memorial for Massachusetts as well as a museum). Many students, even those with significant history coursework in college, have rarely considered museums as anything but trustworthy and objective institutions. The museum assignment encourages them to experience museums as students and as teachers while using the scholarly approach I am encouraging them to develop with their own K-12 students. Museum–Teacher Collaboration Finally, through conversations with dozens of museum educators and hundreds of preservice and veteran teachers, I have come to realize that there is little in-depth dialogue between teachers and museum professionals to support either teachers’ curricular objectives or museum educator’s goals (for more on museum–teacher collaboration see Marcus, 2008). The museum assignment encourages this dialogue, opening the door for teachers and museum educators to learn from each other and enhance the experiences of student visitors. Allowing preservice teachers to experience museums through the lens of both a student and of a teacher, the museum assignment facilitates their ability to incorporate visits to museums and historic sites into the curriculum in ways that enhance their students’ understanding of the past. Field trips should continue to be fun and exciting, but we should also aspire to incorporate rich intellectual goals. Note 1. For the purposes of this chapter, I use the term museum to cast a wide net that includes traditional history museums (e.g., the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History), historic sites (e.g., The Alamo), and living history museums (e.g., Colonial Williamsburg).

References Boyd, W. (1993). Museums as centers of learning. Teachers College Record, 94, 761–770. Falk, J. H., & Dierking, L. D. (2000). Learning from museums. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Marcus, A.S. (2008, Spring). Rethinking museums: Adult education for K-12 teachers. Journal of Museum Education, 33(1), 55–78. Rosenzweig, R. (2000). How Americans use and think about the past. In P. Stearns, P. Seixas, & S. Wineburg (Eds.), Knowing, teaching, and learning history (pp. 262–283). New York: New York University Press. Trofanenko, B. (2006). Interrupting the gaze: On reconsidering authority in the museum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38(1), 49–65.

Teaching Resources The following books, Web sites, and articles are useful resources for teachers.

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Web Sites/Organizations American Association of Museums www.aam-us.org/ Teaching with historic places: Lessons using properties listed in the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places National Parks Service. http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/ Smithsonian Institute http://www.si.edu/ Virtual tours of museums, exhibits, and points of interest http://www.virtualfreesites.com/museums.museums.html

Books Crane, S. A. (2000). Museums and memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Dubin, S. C. (1999). Displays of power: Memory and Amnesia in the American museum. New York: New York University Press. Handler, R., & Gable, E. (1997). The new history in an old museum: Creating the past at Colonial Williamsburg. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Loewen, J. W. (1999) Lies across America: What our historic sites get wrong. New York: New Press. Luke, T. W. (2002). Museum politics: Power plays at the exhibition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rosenzweig, R., & Thelen, D. (1998). The presence of the past: Popular uses of history in American life. New York: Columbia University Press.

Articles/Journals American Academy of Arts and Sciences. (1999, Summer). America’s museums. [Special issue museum scholarship] Daedalus. 128 (3). . Marcus, A. S. (2007, May/June). Representing the past and reflecting the present: Museums, memorials, and the secondary history classroom. The Social Studies, 98(3), 105–110. Museum Education Roundtable. (2006, Summer). Expanding conversations: How curriculum theory can inform museum education practice [Special issue]. Journal of Museum Education, 31(2). Organization of American Historians. (2002, Winter). Public history [Special issue]. Magazine of History, 16(2). Potter, L. A. (2003, November/December). Connecting with the past. Social Education, 67(7), 372–377.

66 Socratic Seminar A Model for Film Discussion in the Social Studies Jeremy D. Stoddard

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 6 (Communication Skills), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: film, media literacy, Socratic method, leading discussions, history, citizenship, civil rights, education, multiple perspectives, intstructional strategies Two primary goals in my teaching are to help students think critically about the past and present, especially through inquiry and discussion, and to help them become more media literate. Here I present the Socratic seminar as a potential model to work toward both goals. I use seminars in my methods course to provide preservice teachers with a model for structuring the discussion of important texts and for using film in their classes. I have found that using seminars to discuss film leads to the development of critical thinking skills in analyzing film as a text in a social and deliberative environment that also promotes democratic citizenship. The main goal of the Socratic seminar model is to help students better understand the “issues, ideas, and values” in a text (e.g., speech, diary, Supreme Court opinion, poem, song lyrics, film). The key to a good seminar is selecting a worthy text. According to Ball and Brewer (1996) a seminar text should: (1) be “filled with issues and ideas worthy of discussion”; (2) be open to multiple interpretations, and (3) have enough complexity and ambiguity to sustain discussion and “allow for exploration of concepts” (p. 33). In addition to selecting the film or text, the teacher needs to prepare for the seminar by identifying objectives, preparing preseminar and postseminar tasks, and constructing seminar questions (Ball & Brewer, 1996). Why Socratic Seminars and Film? While the seminar model has been used widely and successfully in social studies courses for decades, most seminars focus on a written text or transcript of a song or speech (Hess, 2002; Parker, 2002). Using a film as a seminar “text” presents some challenges for teachers, but helps students to better understand how they actively make meaning when viewing media such as film and the socially constructed nature of the media. Using an example from my own methods course, this essay describes how and why to use the seminar as a model for teaching with film in the social studies. Many social studies teachers utilize film frequently in their classes and believe it has the power

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to engage students (Stoddard & Marcus, 2006). Alan Marcus and I (2007) found that over 92% of the teachers we surveyed utilized all or part of a “Hollywood” film once a week or more and 82% used all or part of a documentary film once a week or more. Instead of focusing on the narrative or details of a film, the seminar provides a framework for examining the larger issues, ideas, and values a film may include, either about the historical period being represented in the film, the beliefs of the director or producer, or the social and political context of the period during which the film was produced. Using film to raise these larger issues and questions about the past, and then having students wrestle with the multiple meanings acquired from viewing the film, may be the most powerful way to use film in social studies classes (Davis, 2000; Rosenstone, 1995). The seminar, as described here, can help teachers to engage students in both the content of the film as well as help students think about the medium of film and how it represents the past and present. For students, the seminar allows them to gain a better understanding of how others perceived the film, which they have all viewed in common, and negotiate new understandings of the film and the issues it raises through discussion. In my course, I introduce the seminar format early on as the model for discussing an important foundational article, and then introduce it again in a second session as an instructional method, having students read about using seminars in the classroom and watch a video of John Zola teaching in a seminar format (see Teaching Resources) . For the third seminar-related class my students participate in, I use the film I Sit Where I Want: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education (2004) as a way to model how to facilitate seminars with film, and to raise issues of race, segregation, and the legacy of desegregation in schools. The film tells the story of a group of students in a Buffalo, New York high school who try to desegregate their classroom cafeteria as a class project; it was produced for The N network. I selected this film because of the setting, the structure of the film (some of the editing is overly dramatic and therefore easy to critique), and because it includes so many issues prevalent in current schools and society in general, such as racism, classism, privilege, and Whiteness. In selecting a film, the teacher should avoid an educational-style documentary or fiction film with a neutral style or simplistic storyline. Instead, the documentary or fiction film should have identifiable issues, voices, or messages and have enough complexity to warrant the time needed for the seminar format. In addition to I Sit, I have used or had students successfully use films such as All Quiet on the Western Front (Laemmle & Milestone, 1930), Grapes of Wrath (Zanuck & Ford, 1940), Barefoot Gen (Nakazawa & Masaki, 1983), and Roger and Me (Moore, Stanzler, & Moore, 1989). There will be differences in the ways in which the students will negotiate the meanings or “read” the film, so the discussion needs to be flexible and the teacher needs to be able to allow students to find their own meanings, while also structuring the discussion toward larger issues and concepts present in the film. The preseminar tasks should be structured to help students meet these objectives by preparing them for the discussion and establishing a common level of understanding so as to not privilege any students in the group who may have viewed the film previously. Seminar Ticket Prior to viewing the film, the teacher assigns a “ticket” which is a written assignment that assures all students have thoroughly “read” the text and have begun to scaffold meaning prior to the discussion. In a film seminar, students can’t have the text in front of them as they do in the usual seminar, so it is vital to structure the ticket aspect of the assignment in a way that helps students refer to evidence

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from the film in order to support their interpretations. I structure my tickets in a way that forces students to record the important events and issues from the film as well as their initial reactions, and they have this data available to refer to those scenes, themes, or reactions during the discussion. For I Sit, I have students fill in a chart to record what they saw, felt, and thought at various stages of the film (i.e., after particular scenes or elapsed time). I also provide pictures of the major cast members so that the students can easily refer to the cast by name. A teacher may also want to include a timeline of the events in the film or even the transcript of a short film. Seminar Questions The final preparation step is to create discussion questions for the seminar. I generally brainstorm a list of potential questions and then select one that will engage students at the outset and lead to the larger issues in the film, but will also be accessible enough so that many students in the group will be encouraged to join the discussion. For our I Sit seminar, I start by asking, “Was the students’ project a success? Why?” I then reserve follow-up questions for moments when the discussion may trail off or go on a tangent. My questions address the major content and concepts I want them to think about. If I have selected a good text and designed a good ticket, I rarely use many follow-up questions. With the seminar, it is important that the teacher allow the students to forge their own paths to understanding. When facilitating a film discussion, I often use follow-up questions to help students analyze the medium of film, such as: Why would the producer have included that scene? What do you think was left out? Who do you think the intended audience was? How does this reflect the time in which it [the film] was made? It may also be effective to pull a quote from the film for the students to interpret; for example, I ask the students “What did the student mean when he said, ‘You need to have the ability to relate to people from different backgrounds?’ Can you relate to others and have a segregated cafeteria?” The questions should force students to socially construct understanding while deconstructing and interpreting the film, with the teacher acting as facilitator. Developing Discussion Skills One of the goals of the seminar is to help students develop their discussion skills, so these skills are explicitly modeled as part of the pre- and postdiscussion activities. Before we start our discussion, we go through the seminar expectations, including: (1) the need to refer to evidence from the text (film) using your ticket to support your point; (2) don’t raise hands, work on taking turns and speaking when appropriate; (3) the text and interpretations can be challenged, but not people; and (4) work on discussion skills such as active listening, asking questions, and building off of other students’ comments in order to deepen the discussion. At the end of the seminar, we debrief the discussion by having students share what they thought the strengths and weaknesses of the discussion were and by setting goals for future seminars. Preparation is key for a successful Socratic film seminar. When students and teacher are well prepared to discuss the film, seminars can be powerful teaching moments. While facilitating the seminar, patience is needed to allow students to find their own way through the text, with some gentle prodding on the part of the teacher. Wait time is an essential skill to practice as it may take some time for students to tackle the difficult ideas and issues in the film. If done effectively, a good film seminar will have a similar effect on students as a good film has on its audience; it will leave them wanting more and talking about it as they leave the room.

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References Ball, W. H., & Brewer, P. F. (1996). Socratic seminars: Socratic questioning: Then and now. In R. L. Canady & M. D. Rettig (Eds.), Teaching in the block: Strategies for engaging active learners (pp. 29–64). Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education. Davis, N. Z. (2000). Slaves on screen: Film and historical vision. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hess, D. (2002). Discussing controversial public issues in secondary social studies classrooms: Learning from skilled teachers. Theory and Research in Social Education, 30(1), 10–41. Marcus, A., & Stoddard, J. (May, 2007). Tinsel town as teacher: Hollywood film in the high school history classroom. The History Teacher, 40(3), 303–330. Parker, W. (2002). Teaching democracy: Unity and diversity in public life. New York: Teachers College Press. Rosenstone, R. A. (1995). Visions of the past: The challenge of film to our idea of history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Stoddard, J., & Marcus, A. (2006). The burden of historical representation: Race, freedom and “educational” Hollywood film. Film & History, 36(1), 26–35.

Teaching Resources Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. (Producer). (1999). How to conduct successful Socratic seminars [Motion Picture]. (Available from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1703 North Beauregard Street, Alexandria, VA 22311-1714) Ball, W. H., & Brewer, P. F. (1996). Socratic seminars: Socratic questioning: Then and now. In R. L. Canady & M. D. Rettig (Eds.), Teaching in the block: Strategies for engaging active learners (pp. 29–64). Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education. Laemmle, C. (Producer), & Milestone, L. (1930). All quiet on the Western front [Motion Picture]. USA: Universal Pictures. Lee, T. (Producer), Dow, W. (Director), & Williams, M. (Director). (2004). I sit where I want: The legacy of Brown v. Board of Education [Motion Picture]. USA: Two-Tone. Moore, M. (Producer), Stanzler, W. (Producer), & Moore, M. (Director). (1989). Roger and Me [Motion Picture]. USA: Warner. Nakazawa, K. (Producer), & Masaki, M. (Director). (1983). Barefoot gen [Motion Picture]. Japan: Madhouse. Parker, W. (2002). Learning to lead discussions. Teaching democracy: Unity and diversity in public life (pp. 125–149). New York: Teachers College Press. Zanuck, D. F. (Producer), & Ford, J. (Director). (1940). The Grapes of Wrath [Motion Picture]. USA: 20th Century Fox.

67 Not Playing Around Teaching Role-Plays in Social Education Wayne Au

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, 7-12, Multicultural Education, University NCSS Standards: III (People, Places, and Environments), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 3 (Diverse Learners), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: role-play/simulation; perspective consciousness, multiple perspectives, issues-centered approach, history, government, ethical/political valuation, critical thinking, student centered, historical figures, power/authority, technology/internet It was the end of class, and seated around the room at their computer stations, students in my course at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, were clapping. We, as a cohort, in a single 3½ hour class period no less, had just conceived of, researched, and written a role-play on the 1898 United States annexation of the Hawaiian Kingdom. As a former high school teacher, I understand that role-plays can intimidate. They require an enormous amount of research on the part of the designer, and they call for the writing of historically based, but somewhat fictionalized and idealized roles. Writing a role-play thus relies on a level of artistic vision and creativity that not all teachers are comfortable with. Further, once put into actual practice, role-plays sometimes feel unstable: They rely on a level of chaos and emotion that can seem hard to contain. The pedagogic pay-off of role-plays, however, is tremendous. I’ve rarely felt more gratified as a teacher than when watching students rumble out into the hallways after the bell has rung, all the while arguing about an historical event we just role-played in class. Such high levels of student engagement demonstrate how role-plays also encourage students to think deeply and critically about history and society because they require students to attempt to understand the political and social nature of various groups’ perspectives on any one event. Further, because there is conflict and power embedded in all history (Zinn, 1995), as Bigelow (2007) explains, “Role-plays bring that world of conflict to life in the classroom and allow students to explore the underlying premises of arguments and to choose: Which side am I on?” (p. 32). It is for all of these complex difficulties and rewards that I value the challenge of teaching students in social studies methods and multicultural education courses how to develop role-plays for their own classrooms. I entered into the teaching of role-plays with three basic goals in mind. First, I wanted my cohort to experience and feel how a role-play works, and how one played the role of the facilitator even if the role-play was designed by someone else. My second goal was for my students to develop a

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critical, meta-understanding of how role-plays are constructed, which included knowing what the basic movements of a role-play might be and what functions these movements played in student learning. My final goal was for my class to collectively author a role-play themselves. In order to prep my methods students for our role-play creation I had them read the article, “Role-plays: Show Don’t Tell” (Bigelow, 2007). This article provides students with the pedagogic rationale for using role-plays in the classroom as well as a nuts and bolts discussion of how teachers can more successfully implement role-plays in their classrooms. On the role-play day of class, we began by doing a condensed version of a role-play entitled, “The NAFTA Role-Play” (Bigelow, 2006). In this role-play students are asked to play different constituencies involved in the debate surrounding the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). After spending about 45 minutes quickly working through the steps of “The NAFTA Role-play,” we read and discussed the role-plays, “The People vs. Columbus et al.” (Bigelow, 1998) and “Addressing Redress: Japanese Americans’ Reparations for Their Incarceration During World War II” (Au, 2006). Specifically I asked my students to key in on both the structures of the roleplays and how the roles are constructed. The role-plays I describe focused on history and in the Teaching Resources section at the end of the chapter you will find annotations of other role-plays on concepts like cross-cultural communication and globalization. After participating in the first role-play and reading and discussing the other two, we collectively brainstormed key components of role-play design, trying to develop a meta-understanding of how they work. We looked at the types of historical events these role-plays were built around and how the role-plays themselves were structured to impart specific historical information embedded within opportunities for students to share their role-based opinions as part of the activity. We also looked at how the roles were constructed to embody a variety of perspectives on the historical event and help students develop a rationale for why each role maintained the position they did (even as some roles felt conflicted). Finally, we also examined how the post-role-play debriefing was paramount to a role-play’s overall success because it allowed students to step outside of their roles to process the issue and interact with each other as “regular” students again, develop and express their own opinions on the issue, summarize the experience with the class, make connections to other work and other contexts, and provide space for the teacher to clarify what was real and what was fictionalized in the role-play. While the meta-analysis of the role-plays was lengthy and time consuming, such a detailed analysis proved crucial when we reconvened in a computer lab to design our own role-play in the second half of the class. Our first task as a group was to collectively decide on an historical event to build around. We went through two rounds of discussion and voting, and after considering such strong candidates as the Little Rock Nine or the Trail of Tears, students settled on the U.S. annexation of Hawaii. Split into groups, students then spent 10 minutes on the Internet researching the key events, interest groups, and individual persons involved in the annexation of Hawaii, although this was a topic that these future secondary social studies teachers were all familiar with. In their research I asked my students to clarify the competing perspectives on annexation by asking critical questions like: Who was involved? What were different parties’ interests/perspectives? Why did they have those interests? What interests/perspectives might be missing from the official historical record? We then brainstormed possible roles for the activity. After coming up with as many as 12 possible roles, we narrowed our list based on the following guidelines: 1. Choose an odd number (5–11) of roles depending on historical event and grade level.

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2. Roles should represent a wide range of perspectives. 3. Roles can be fictionalized to match your goals for the role-play or to match missing perspectives in the historical event, making sure that these fictionalizations have historical grounding. 4. Try to make the competing perspectives/interests nearly “even” so that the role-play is neither totally “anti” or “pro” something. 5. Create one to three “swing” groups which, within the context of the historical event, have conflicted feelings or perspectives. 6. Use real historical figures whenever possible, inserting as much factual data as possible. After discussing our options based on the above considerations, we ended up with the roles of: 1. Queen Liliuokalani, who was vehemently opposed to annexation; 2. a fictionalized U.S. businessman from Chicago who, although happy about the prospects of increased global trade, still upheld strong beliefs about democracy; 3. Mark Twain, who also opposed annexation on the grounds that American culture would corrupt native Hawaiians; 4. the infamous “Committee of Safety,” made up of a group of White businessmen who salivated at the U.S. takeover of the native Hawaiian Kingdom; 5. President Grover Cleveland, who at the time recognized that the Hawaiian Kingdom had been illegally overthrown but also realized the strategic military importance of the Hawaiian Islands to U.S. interests. My methods students returned to the Internet for more detailed research and to write up individual roles. I encouraged them to write the roles in ways that “tell” the reader who they are, how they feel, and what they believe, including as much historical data as possible (e.g., “You are Queen Liliuokalani. You are upset by the prospect of annexation because you see native Hawaiian sovereignty being taken away…”). Once the roles were written, we needed to decide on a role-play situation and structure and develop a set of questions for students in the role-play to answer. Some possibilities included a town hall where all community members voice their opinions vote on a policy; a court trial where the teacher is the judge, a group of students plays the jury, and all the other groups are on trial and must defend themselves against an indictment; a conference or convention where interested parties present their opinions to a panel or official government body. My methods students decided to shape the role-play as a governmental investigation akin to the court trial and convention models. In the structure the class decided upon, each group of students was to send a pair of travelers to each other group to figure out everyone else’s position on annexation and then develop an argument for or against annexation to present to James Blount, an actual advisor to President Cleveland who was sent to Hawaii to investigate the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani. Finally, my methods students developed a set of questions that would help students sort through their role-based opinions and their own personal perspectives on the annexation of Hawaii. With that final step, we had completed a role-play from conception to finish in a single class.

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Teaching Resources Au, W. (2006). Addressing redress: Japanese Americans’ reparations for their internment during World War II. In E. Chen & G. Omastu (Eds.), Teaching about Asian Pacific Americans (pp. 163–180). New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Bigelow, B. (1998). The people vs. Columbus et al. In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking Columbus: The next 500 years (2nd ed., pp. 87–94). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Bigelow, B. (2006). The line between us: Teaching about the border and Mexican immigration. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Bigelow, B. (2007). Role-plays: Show, don’t tell. In W. Au, B. Bigelow, & S. Karp (Eds.), Rethinking our classrooms: Teaching for equity and justice (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 130–132). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Zinn, H. (1995). A people’s history of the United States: 1492–present (Rev. ed.). New York: HarperPerennial.

Additional Simulations Bigelow, B. Transnational capital auction: A game of survival. In Rethinking globalization: Teaching for justice in an unjust world (pp. 108–114). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools Ltd. The auction helps students grasp important concepts about capital as a force in today’s world and, according to its author, “to see capital as a kind of living being that has certain needs and inclinations.” The main aim is to emphasize and draw reflection toward the social and ecological consequences of “the race to the bottom”—the process by which countries compete to draw the investment of foreign capital and, in doing so, they alter their standards and accommodate very detrimental requirements from the capital providers. Shirts, G. Star power. http://www.stsintl.com/schools-charities/star_power.html This is a simulation of a system in which leaders are gradually given unlimited powers to make and change the rules of the simulation, thus drawing attention to the principles of power use and its effect on social structure and active civic participation. Participants have the chance to progress from one level of society to another by acquiring wealth through trading with other participants. Once the society is established, the group with the most wealth is given the right to make the rules for the game. The power group generally makes rules that maintain or increase its power and are considered unfair by those being “governed.” This usually results in rebellion or apathy by the other participants (members of society) and afterwards lends itself to fruitful conversations about the nature of power and civic participation. TEAR Australia. Monsoon. http://www.tear.org.au/resources/items/monsoon This simulation, originally designed and developed by SEARCH of India to help train people working in these communities, focuses on the dynamics of poverty in an imaginary village near Mysore and addresses some of the forces that affect the lives of the farmers (whose roles the students play during the simulation): dependence on the monsoon, leadership and cooperation in the village, the polarization of rich and poor and the role of the moneylenders, the relevance of development programs and the roles of development funding and workers in the area; malnutrition; and the pressures of social conformity. This is an elaborate, very powerful simulation that engages students and leads to great reflection on the nexus of culture and capital in the global context. BaFa BaFa. http://www.stsintl.com/business/bafa.html The simulation aims at building awareness of cultural differences, interpretations, and communication and how they impact people’s understanding and collaboration. Participants have the opportunity to examine biases and stereotypes toward others, and explore the processes that lead to rising barriers among people. The simulation comes with clear instructions to create two cultures, Alpha and Beta that are debriefed separately and instructed in how to act in their culture: one is relationship oriented with clear hierarchical structures, while the other is a highly competitive culture based on assertiveness and trade. Participants in the two cultures “live” in separate spaces and after practicing living in the culture, observers and visitors are exchanged in an attempt to function properly in the other culture. Confusion and at times frustration inevitably ensues as each group tries to understand the other and figure out their culture, aims, and structure. The groups succeed to varied degrees, but the experience is always a powerful one, as students later are led in a discussion on the experience and what it teaches about cross-cultural experience and successful communication.

68 Using Multicultural Literature in Teaching for Social Justice Sung Choon Park and Cynthia A. Tyson

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education NCSS Standards: I (Culture), IV (Individual Development and Identity), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC: 3 (Diverse Learners), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning) Topics: justice, critical literacy, race, racism, multicultural literature, children’s literature, emotional response, bias reduction, ethical-political valuation, students’ lives and experiences, issues-oriented approach, graphic organizer, perspective consciousness, power/authority, government, civics Multicultural literature written for children and young adults can facilitate the development of pedagogical strategies in teaching for social justice. Teacher educators and teachers, both novice and experienced, often struggle to move confidently from theory to practice and back again to reflect on their practice in light of theory, especially when they are striving to teach for social justice. Many who try to apply theoretical frameworks to pedagogical practices reach an impasse at the intersection of theory and praxis (Freire, 1970/2003). This can be especially difficult for preservice teachers who are expected to demonstrate “Praxis III-classroom performance” showing their ability to organize content knowledge for student learning. This assignment helps students to both attend to their understanding of students’ lived experiences and effectively teach content subject matter, so that according to the Educational Testing Service (ETS) they can “decide on learning goals, design or select appropriate activities and instructional materials, sequence instruction in ways that will help students to meet short- and long-term curricular goals, and design or select informative evaluation strategies” (2001, p. 6). This assignment supports teaching and learning with a view to social justice in two ways. It (1) introduces pedagogical principles and teaching strategies based on social justice theoretical frameworks, and (2) provides examples of multicultural literature written for children and young adults to support teaching strategies. Teaching for Social Justice Using Multicultural Literature Using multicultural literature is an effective teaching method to help young children develop critical literacy for social justice and make textual and intertextual connections between the words students read and the world they live in (Tyson, 2002). Even before young children can read books, they start developing their sense of social justice not only by experiencing social injustice in their everyday lives, but also by empathizing with people who experience it. For example, young children discuss what and who is right or wrong when situations are witnessed in a playground or a 296

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cafeteria. Unsurprisingly, they bring those issues into classroom discussions. Therefore, teachers who teach for social justice make consistent and conscious efforts to locate children and young adults’ experiences in the realistic stories they read. Using literature in teaching for social justice goes beyond enhancing basic literacy skills. We consider using multicultural literature as a way to address social injustices, to enhance young people’s attitudes toward social justice, and to act for a socially just society (Tyson & Park, 2006). After completing readings on social justice theory, preservice teachers are asked to complete a list of what social justice educators do in the classroom. This list becomes our initial list of pedagogical strategies. They are then asked to reflect on developing criteria for selecting literature to support strategies for teaching for social justice. They can consider multiple sources as they establish their criteria. The Standards for Middle and High School Literacy Coaches developed by the International Reading Association in collaboration with the National Council for the Social Studies are particularly effective. It includes the ability to locate and use primary and secondary source documents, recognize and evaluate author perspective and bias, synthesize information from multiple sources, make connections across chronological eras, across geographical regions, or between civic and economic issues, [and] present findings in a variety of forms, including oral presentations or debates and written documents that may take the form of research papers, position papers, or writing from a specific role or perspective. (International Reading Association, 2006, p. 32) Future teachers should both (1) generate a conceptual frame organized as a list of social justice oriented pedagogical strategies and (2) locate children’s literature that explicitly addresses the criteria on their list. In what follows, we outline how social justice educators can use multicultural literature in teaching for social justice by showing a finished example of the project. The list that follows shows pedagogical strategies based on understandings synthesized from social justice theories. The chart can be reproduced and “emptied” for your students to complete. The complete example shows literature from the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People. Pedagogical Strategies for Social Justice Social justice educators bring everyday lived experiences into a classroom by: • helping students locate themselves in cultural contexts; • helping students locate themselves in historical contexts; • helping students understand their cultural and historical backgrounds within power structures. Social justice educators bring multiple perspectives into a classroom by: • focusing on those whose voices are not included in the traditional literature; • helping students understand there are two sides of oppression: the oppressed and the oppressors; • helping students understand how power structures place constraints on human dignity. Social justice educators address socially unjust realities and fight for a better world by: • helping students understand structural and institutional injustices;

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• helping students understand social justice both as process and goal in challenging social injustices; • acknowledging the falsehood of a individual hero changing the world and telling of the power of collective actions by ordinary people. Social justice educators highlight the victories over specific examples of oppression by: • helping students identify similar issues and triumphs in different contexts; • helping students understand social justice is an ongoing project; • acknowledging the falsehood of a individual hero changing the world and telling the power of collective actions by ordinary people. Social justice educators emphasize the importance of social activism by: • helping students realize their own social agency; • helping students identify what kinds of actions social activists take in the face of oppression; • helping students understand the importance of collective social actions. Social justice educators provide extra contextual information on social justice issues by: • helping students understand how mainstream culture has oppressed marginalized groups of people; • helping students develop historical and political understandings of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, etc. • helping students understand the complexity of multiple oppressions and multiple positionalities (e.g., being Black, female, and physically challenged). References Children’s Book Council (2009). Notable Social Studies trade books for young people. Retrieved April 21, 2009, from http:// www.socialstudies.org/resources/notable Freire, P. (2003). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. (Original work published 1970) Educational Testing Service. (2001). The PRAXIS III: Classroom performance assessments. Princeton, NJ: Author. International Reading Association. (2006). Standards for middle and high school literacy coaches. Newark, DE: Author. Tyson, C. A. (2002). “Get up offa that thing”: African American middle-school students respond to literature to develop a framework for understanding social action. Theory and Research in Social Education, 30(1), 42–65. Tyson, C. A., & Park, S. C. (2006). From theory to practice: Teaching for social justice. Social Studies and the Young Learners, 19(2), 23–25.

Using Multicultural Literature in Teaching for Social Justice • 299 Table 68.1 Teaching for Social Justice with Supporting Multicultural Literature Social justice educators bring everyday lived experiences into a classroom by: Helping students locate themselves in cultural contexts.

Helping students locate themselves in historical contexts.

Helping students understand their cultural and historical backgrounds within power structures.

Majong All Day Long (Lo,G., 2005) Walker and Company.

The Secret Seder (Rappaport, D., 2005) Hyperion Books for Children.

Amelia To Zora: Twenty-Six Women Who Changed The World (Chin-Lee, C., 2005) Charlesbridge Publishing.

Mississippi Morning (Zee, R. V., 2004) Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.

The Power Of One:Daisy Bates And The Little Rock Nine (Fradin, D. B., and Frandin, J. B., 2004) Clarion Books.

High As A Hawk: A Brave Girl’s Historic Climb (Barron, T. A., 2004) Philomel Books.

The Voice That Challenged A Nation: Marian Anderson And The Struggle For Equal Rights (Freedman, R., 2004) Calrion Books.

The Boy On Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel Grew Up To Become Dr. Seuss (Krull, K., 2004) Random House Children’s Books. Sequoya: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing (Rumford, J., 2004; Translated by Huckaby, A. S.) Houghton Mifflin Co.

Social justice educators bring multiple perspectives into a classroom by: Focusing on those whose voices are not included in the traditional literature.

Helping students understand there are two sides of oppression: the oppressed and the oppressors.

Helping students understand how power structure constrains human dignity.

Sixteen Years In Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story (Yoo, P., 2005) Lee and Low Books.

Freedom On The Menu (Weatherford, C. B., 2005) Dial books for Young Readers.

Dad, Jackie And Me (Uhlberg, M., 2005) Peachtree Publishers.

The Milestones Project: Celebrating Childhood Around The World (Steckel R., and Steckel, M., 2004) Tricycle Press.

Yankee Girl (Rodman, M. A., 2004) Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers.

Be My Neighbor (Ajmera, M., and Ivanko, J. D., 2004) Charlesbridge Publishing.

Say Something (Moss, P., 2004). Tilbury House Publishers.

Cesar: Si,Se Puede! Yes We Can (Bernier-Grand, C. T., 2004) Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books. Going North (Lagarrigue, J. N., 2004) Melanie Kroupa Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers.

Social justice educators address socially unjust realities and fight for a better world by: Helping students understand structural and institutional injustices.

Helping students understand social justice both as process and goal in challenging social injustices.

Acknowledging the falsehood of an individual hero changing the world and telling the power of collective actions by ordinary people.

I Could Do That: Esther Morris Gets Women The Vote (White, L. A., 2005) Strauss and Girouds/Melanie Kroupa Books.

Peace One Day: The Making Of World Peace Day (Gilley, J., 2005) G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Carl The Complainer (Knudsen, M., 2005) The Kane Press.

A Woman For President (Krull, K., 2004) Walker and Company. Circle Unbroken (Raven, M. T., 2004) Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books.

Henry And The Kite Dragon (Hall, B. E., 2004) Philomel Books. Hannah Is My Name (Yang, B., 2004) Candlewick Press.

Enemies Of Slavery (Adler, D. A., 2004) Holiday House. Martin Luther King Jr.: Dreaming Of Equality (Manheimer, A. S., 2004) Lerner Publishing Group. (continued)

300 • Sung Choon Park and Cynthia A. Tyson Table 68.1 Continued Social justice educators highlight the victories over specific examples of oppression by: Helping students identify similar issues and triumphs in different contexts.

Helping students understand social justice is an ongoing project.

Helping students develop civic courage and hope.

Celia Cruz, Queen Of Salsa (Chambers,V., 2005) Dial Books for Young Readers.

Back To Year Zero (Bacon, F., 2005) ETA/Cuisenaire.

The King Of Mulberry Street (Napoli, D. J., 2005) Wendy Lanb Books/ Random House Children’s Books.

Remember: The Journey Of School Integration (Morrison, T., 2004) Houghton Mifflin.

Abby Takes A Stand (McKissack, P. C., 2005) Viking Children’s Books.

The Cats In Krasinski Square (Hesse, K., 2004) Scholastic Press.

Home (Baker, J., 2004) Greenwillow Books.

Social justice educators emphasize the importance of social activism by: Helping students realize their own social agency.

Helping students identify what kinds of actions social activists take in the face of oppression.

Helping students understand the importance of collective social actions.

The Bus Ride That Changed History: The Story Of Rosa Parks (Edwards, P. D., 2005) Houghton Mifflin Company.

Americans Who Tell The Truth (Shetterly, R., 2005) Dutton Chdlren’s books.

Tsunami: Helping Each Other (Morris, A., and Larson, H., 2005) Millbrook Press/Learner Publishing Group.

Pete For President (Aberto, D., 2004) Kane Press. Jackson Jones And Mississippi Greentop (Quattlebaum, M., 2004) Delacorte Books for Young Readers/ Random House Children’s Books.

Candy Shop (Wahl, J., 2004) Charlesbridge Publishing. The Bully Blockers Club (Bateman, T., 2004) Albert Whitman and Company.

Powerful Words: More Than 200 Years Of Extraordinary Writing By African Americans (Wade, H., 2004) Scholastic Nonfiction/Scholastic Inc. With Courage And Cloth: Winning The Fight For A Woman’s Right To Vote (Bausum, A., 2004) National Geographic Children’s Books.

Social justice educators provide extra textual information on social justice issues by: Helping students understand how mainstream culture has oppressed marginalized groups of people.

Helping students develop historical and political understandings of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, etc.

Helping students understand the complexity of multiple oppressions and multiple positionalities (i.e. being Black, female, and physically challenged).

Let Them Play (Raven, M. T., 2005) Sleeping Bear Press.

Sweetgrass Basket. (Carvell, M., 2005) Dutton Children’s Books.

Knockin’ On Wood: Starring Peg Leg Bates (Barasch, L., 2004) Lee and Low Books.

Anne Frank (Poole, J., 2005) Knopf Books for Young Readers/Random House Children’s Books.

Private And Confidential: A Story About Braille (Ripley, M., 2004) Dial Books for Young Readers.

A Fine St. Patrick’s Day (Wojciechowski, S., 2004) Random House.

Remember, Grandma? (Langston, L., 2004) Viking Children’s Books.

Escape From Saigon: How A Vietnam War Orphan Became An American Boy (Warren, A., 2004) Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers.

69 Voices of Our Community Making Connections through Digital Stories Elizabeth K. Wilson and Vivian Wright

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), III (People, Places, and Environments), VIII (Science, Technology, and Society) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 6 (Communication Skills), 7 (Instructional Planning), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: technology/internet, media literacy, history, oral history, critical thinking, communitybased learning, historical figures, pictures/photographs, multiple perspectives, marginalization The project described here addresses Doolittle’s (2001) call for teacher educators to “disengage from the unidirectional telling of historical stories and begin to entrust teacher candidates with a discussion of the development of history” (p. 32). This project, implemented in a secondary social studies methods course, used digital video and audio and allowed teacher candidates to develop their own historical research through a form of digital storytelling. The teacher candidates were given an opportunity to develop their own interpretation of community voices while chronicling the history of an Alabama landmark or a historical event. The intent of the Voices of Community project is twofold: (1) to stimulate the teacher candidates to recognize historical people, events, and places of our state which are fundamental to citizenship, and (2) to provide teacher candidates with the ability to use a technology tool that develops meaningful social studies knowledge. Digital technologies and resources can “shift the locus of history and social studies instruction from a teacher-centered transmission model to a model that encourages student’s inquiry” (Lee, 2002, p. 30). The Center for Digital Storytelling in California urges people to listen to and tell stories through all means of storytelling. The telling of stories through pictures or photographs has been around for ages. However, in an evolving technological age, the trend in storytelling is toward the digital. In teacher education, digital video and audio can be used in many ways to promote self-reflection, increase technology integration, and develop meaningful knowledge. In a K-12 classroom, visual images that come alive through technological applications have the capability to help change the often teacher-centered, transmission dominated classroom. Technology can be a tool that facilitates critical thinking and student-centered learning which engages all students regardless of level (Crocco, 2001).

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The Teaching To develop this project, the teacher candidates learned how to use Microsoft’s Photo Story 3 in order to present historical concepts in multimedia. Photo Story 3 is a free software program that allows the user to add motion, text, and music to still images. This technology tool was selected for this digital storytelling project because there would be no cost associated with it for the teacher candidates when they are in their own classrooms. Further, this tool requires only a digital camera rather than the more expensive digital video cameras used in other digital movie programs. The teacher candidates were instructed in the use of Photo Story 3, through a tutorial http://www. bamaed.ua.edu/cse489/photostory.html, and through the support and instruction of the course methods instructor and graduate assistant who also integrated digital photo albums or stories into other aspects of the course. The teacher candidates were asked to research state landmarks or events that they believed provided students with a foundation to further develop a conceptual understanding of area history as it relates to the social studies they would teach. The instructor provided a list of possible topics and concepts; however, the teacher candidates were encouraged to add to the list by submitting other areas for inquiry with a brief rationale. To orient them to the project, we presented a previous digital fieldtrip developed by a recent graduate. To see it, go to http://www. bamaed.ua.edu/cse489/photostory.html, click Social Studies. We also provided an evaluation rubric with criteria including technical aspects (e.g., narration, music, and text) and content (e.g., social studies concepts addressed, importance of the landmark, creativity). In addition to the digital fieldtrip, the teacher candidates were required to submit a research paper that addressed historical perspectives, importance, and context, and pedagogical perspectives with connections to the NCSS and Alabama Course of Study standards identified. Following the completion of the assignment, presentations were made to the class and the fieldtrips were shared via the teacher candidates’ electronic portfolios. Reflections on the assignment were also posted in each teacher candidate’s portfolio. Reflections This digital storytelling project has taken many forms since its inception. The project, originally entitled Alabama Historical Fieldtrips, was developed to facilitate content and pedagogical understanding of state history. State history was the focus since the current K-12 course of study in Alabama no longer includes a separate Alabama history course at the secondary level and instead teachers are expected to integrate Alabama’s history throughout the social studies curriculum. A related goal of the project was that students need to see relevance and develop connections between their own community and the content they are teaching. Today, this has evolved into a project in which teacher candidates use digital tools to tell the stores and sire voice to those often underrepresented in our community and state histories. For example, while studying and developing a digital story about the murder of Emmett Till in nearby Mississippi, one student chose to pursue the study of other Civil Rights events that took place in our own community. During his student teaching placement he also required his students to use digital audio and video. He asked his students to study at local elections, and, using multimedia tools, develop campaign advertisements for the local candidates. The teacher candidates view the Voices of Community project as a valuable assignment, specifically because the project addressed a content need (e.g., increased awareness of local historical

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contributions) and incorporated many technology skills they could use effectively to address social studies teaching and learning. One student, Kristopher Rollins, summarized the impact of the Voices of Community project in his reflection: Of all the projects assigned this past semester this is by far my favorite. Traveling to a slave cemetery rumored to be one of the largest in the south was an emotional experience and one that I look forward to sharing with my future students. Although it was tough to find a large, adequate amount of information regarding the Prewitt Slave Cemetery, other Alabama historical pieces fell into place, helping to build a more meaningful representation of the assignment. Not only did I learn about Tuscaloosa’s racial beginnings but also the factors that led to its economic growth and stability. Driving on Old Byler Road, the oldest public road in the state’s history and standing in the cemetery overlooking the Black Warrior River was eerie knowing that many others took the same path. This assignment taught me many things about the community I currently reside in and provides deep insights into how I might better be able to reach students, getting them more involved in hands-on projects around the area. Even though many of my peers found this assignment challenging and difficult, I enjoyed the fact that I was able to put such a product together and am extremely proud of it. This project has evolved to merge content and technology education and encourage student inquiry understanding in increasingly effective ways. Voices of Community has also provided a meaningful pedagogy for our teacher candidates that is transferable to their future students in the social studies classroom and thus it enhances citizenship education for both our students and their pupils. References Crocco, M. S. (2001). Leveraging constructivist learning in the social studies classroom: A response to Mason, Berson, Diem, Hicks, Lee, and Dralle. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 1(3). http://www.citejournal. org/vol1/iss3/currentissues/socialstudies/article2.htm Doolittle, P. E. (2001). The need to leverage theory in the development of guidelines for using technology in social studies teacher preparation: A reply to Crocco, Mason, Berson, Diem, Hicks, Lee, and Dralle. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 1(4), 501–516. http://www.citejournal.org/vol1/iss3/currentissues/socialstudies/ article2.htm Lee, J. (2002). Digital history in the history/social studies classroom. The History Teacher, 35(4). http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/35.4/lee.html

70 Modeling Technology-Based Social Studies Instruction A Simulated WebQuest Christy G. Keeler

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: VIII (Science, Technology, and Society) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 7 (Instructional Planning), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: technology/internet, WebQuest, role play/simulation, collaboration, cooperative learning, creating teaching materials While social studies methods instructors should infuse technology-based pedagogical strategies throughout their instruction, there are some technological concepts that are either best taught in stand-alone lessons or are important enough to deserve dedicated class time. Recognizing this, I dedicate one class period to Web-based resources for the social studies classroom. During this class session, students use a simulated WebQuest. WebQuests, originated by Bernie Dodge (1995), are inquiry-driven lessons appearing online. They usually begin with a simulated scenario that sets forth a task for students to complete. They continue by offering suggested online (and sometimes off-line) resources for student research, and then guide students through the process of completing the assigned task. WebQuests end with an evaluation rubric. Using the WebQuest during this in-class activity meets three objectives, including: (1) identifying teaching materials; (2) locating WebQuests, virtual field trips, and other Web-based resources useful in teaching social studies; (3) evaluating these electronic resources for their usefulness. In addition to teaching social studies content and teaching about available instructional resources, this lesson requires that students engage with technology tools, an activity supported within the themes, content standards, and “powerful teaching” statements of the National Council for the Social Studies (1994). Other organizations, like the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2004) and the International Society of Technology Educators (ISTE), also support this call for integration. For example, within ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S) and Teachers (NETS-T), students should “use technology tools to enhance learning, increase productivity, and promote creativity” (2004a); while teachers should “facilitate technology-enhanced experiences that address content standards” (2004b). Given this convergence of thought from such a vast and respected array of organizations, it behooves social studies methods instructors to ensure they are preparing teachers to integrate technologies into their future instruction.

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Setting the Stage for Learning For the lesson on Web-based social studies resources, each student must have access to a computer with a high-speed Internet connection. This requires either laptops with wireless connections or meeting in a computer lab. The class session begins with students in groups of five opening a browser and going to the online lesson plan set up for the day. Using collaboration strategies taught in a previous class session, each group selects a “team captain,” preferably one who is skilled in the use of technologies. The lesson introduction describes a scenario in which a principal at a local school heard about the incredible abilities of the students currently enrolled in this methods course. As a result, she is requesting their assistance. Students link to the prepared WebQuest titled “Keeler Elementary School Goes One-to-One…Assistance Needed!” and use popcorn reading strategies (taught in the reading methods course) to review the “principal’s letter.” A popcorn reading strategy involves having one student read a passage and stop at an undefined point (always stopping between sentences). The reader then calls on another student who continues reading from that point. Student-readers self-select the amount of text they will read, but they never know when they will begin reading. The fictional principal writes that her school is moving to a one child per laptop initiative the following school year. In preparation, she hopes to gather lists of excellent resources for each content area. Her faculty can review these lists over the summer as they engage in long-range and unit planning. Unfortunately, her faculty lack time to engage in this task because they are completing the second year of a math and science grant project. The scenario illustrates the competing interests and time management conflicts typical in contemporary schools and foreshadows a later class lesson on special programs and grant writing. After reading the letter, I suggest canceling our regular daily lesson so “we can rise to the task of helping local schools!” I obtain the students’ permission to “skip class” to help the school instead, and we continue by clicking on the WebQuest’s “Task.” The “Task” Web page explains that each group must develop a listing of elementary-level social studies resources for the teachers at “Keeler Elementary School.” I explain that since the elementary school has a partner middle school sharing common facilities, and the middle school is also going to a one-to-one laptop initiative, students may include resources for both schools (grades K-8). This teaches students the typical grade configurations of schools in our local district while introducing the concept of partner schools. I remind students that it is critical to include a wide variety of resource types so the list can accommodate many teaching styles and student abilities and preferences. All sites must focus on social studies content and be appropriate for grades K-8 students and teachers. Content Delivery: What’s Available Online? Before they begin, I introduce Web-based resource types by demonstrating examples of different types. I introduce students to Web sites including Where’s George, Anne Frank: The Writer, Google Earth, and Geo-Caching, and provide possible lesson ideas and extensions for use with each site. The selected sites demonstrate the versatility, interactivity, and interdisciplinary connections of general social studies focused online resources. To introduce WebQuests, I briefly explain the history of WebQuests, provide elements of well-constructed WebQuests, and show example

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WebQuests including The Big Wide World and A Nation Divided. These examples show that the Web is capable of addressing needs of learners from all grade levels. I use Ball State’s Electronic Field Trip, the Historical Tour of the White House, and LifeQuest on Aging to demonstrate virtual field trips. These illustrate the power of Web-based inquiry. The WebQuest task requires each group to collect and record at least three WebQuests, three virtual field trips, and five general sites. To record sites, students enter their findings into a social bookmark page. Social bookmarking requires using an online tool to collect and store website addresses and details. It is similar to bookmarking within a browser, but the bookmarks are publicly available online. Bookmarks can also include “tags” that allow topical searching within and across bookmark pages. In preparation for this process, I introduce searching, posting, tagging, and using social bookmarking. Each student receives the password for the site, a password only available during this lesson (contact the author for full access to the page), and I instruct students to begin their WebQuest task, recording quality findings. Each recommended site must include a site name, the site URL, a rich site description, and applicable tags, including appropriate grade levels, related core social studies disciplines, other related subject areas, social studies themes, and website type. Students have approximately 20 minutes to work in their groups, and they must restrict their use of tags to those already existing on the social bookmark page. While students search for and record applicable sites, I assist with technical needs and encourage students to help each other. This peer support creates a sense of class community and reinforces professional collegiality. Once all students master the searching and posting processes, I focus on working with team captains to ensure all groups are adequately succeeding in their assigned task. I then work with individual students by challenging them to consider how they would use sites they find. Through this questioning, I challenge students to see websites as tools to use when planning lessons and units. Students also begin to consider best teaching approaches to use with specific web-based resources (considering, for example, if learning centers, small group collaborative research, or whole class guided instruction is best). During the work time, students communicate regularly by helping one another and sharing their findings. Their enthusiasm for the sites they identify permeates the room. Groups continue to work, adding sites beyond those required by the “Task,” until all groups meet the required expectations. At that point, the full class joins to discuss their experiences and findings. Lesson Debriefing In debriefing the lesson, students identify sites that most impress them in terms of their classroom usability. We then review some of these sites and brainstorm methods of using them to deliver or reinforce social studies content learning. For example, teacher candidates may suggest having students play games to reinforce basic skills (e.g., identifying the names of the states), engage in research for project-based learning, or use online tools to create social studies products, such as making a Revolutionary Era newspaper using the Liberty’s Kids website. We also discuss the power of social bookmarking by suggesting using social bookmarking as a tool for: sharing recommended websites and events with parents, sharing educational resources with other teachers, as well as having K-12 students use social bookmarking. In the latter case, students may use social bookmarking to identify historically accurate resources on assigned topics, create their own WebQuests, or work with collaborative teams to share information. We conclude the lesson debriefing by brainstorming methods for teaching Web-based lesson activities

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in classrooms with varying computer accessibility configurations. This can range from one-to-one access, to one-computer per classroom, to infrequent computer lab availability. Reflection This lesson models instructional techniques including simulation, collaboration, and technology integration. By learning via a simulated WebQuest, preservice teachers experience the ease with which they could use WebQuests with their future students; and, by using social bookmarking, students become comfortable using Web 2.0 tools and identify ways to extend the tools for educational use. Many students inform me that they created their own social bookmark pages following the lesson. This is important because research tells us that teachers who are comfortable using technological tools for personal use are better prepared to use them in their classrooms (Moersch, 1995). In addition to gaining technological skills and content integration techniques, students work together experiencing the benefits and pitfalls of group collaborative efforts. The successes and struggles they jointly face assists in forming a sense of community while the task they receive and the brief time period given provides them with a challenging, but achievable, goal. The goal keeps them focused while preparing them to work quickly and efficiently within educational contexts. These latter skills are essential in the daily work of practicing teachers. Students create a usable product. The social bookmark page resulting from this lesson is robust with social studies resources students can (and do) later access as needed (see http://delicious. com/social_studies). The tags allow them the flexibility to search for quality sites by grade level, content area, and theme and searches result in brief, but rich, descriptions for each site. During this lesson, students learn techniques, tools, strategies, and concepts they can directly use in their future social studies classrooms. References International Society of Technology in Education. (2004a). National educational technology standards for students. http:// cnets.iste.org/students/s_stands.html International Society of Technology in Education. (2004b). National educational technology standards for teachers. http:// cnets.iste.org/teachers/t_stands.html Moersch, C. (1995). Levels of technology implementation (LoTi): A framework for measuring classroom technology use. Learning and Leading with Technology, 23(3), 40–42. National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Expectations of excellence: Curriculum standards for the social studies (Bulletin No. 89). Washington, DC: Author. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2004). http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

Teaching Resources Anne Frank: The Writer. http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/af/htmlsite/ Ball State. Electronic Field Trip. http://www.bsu.edu/eft/ The Big Wide World. http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/bww/ Dodge, B. (1995). WebQuests: A technique for Internet-based learning. Distance Educator, 1(2), 10–13. Geo-Caching. http://www.geocaching.com Google Earth. http://earth.google.com Keeler Elementary School. http://www.chistykeeler.com/SSM/Materials/WebQuest/keelerESNeedsSSTechHelp.html LifeQuest on Aging. http://www.bluezones.com/ A Nation Divided. http://www.stonewall.fayette.k12.ky.us/wq/cwWebQuest/civilwar.htm Where’s George. http://www.wheresgeorge.com/ White House, Historical Tour. http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/whtour/

SECTION

9

Instruction and Curriculum Design Introduction Elizabeth E. Heilman and Mark Kissling

All teachers plan lessons and most teachers develop curriculum units as a regular part of their work. Standards provided by state departments of education and school systems are not detailed enough to inspire an enacted curriculum. The same is true for college classes, which often have only a paragraph of ideas or an old syllabus to guide an instructor. The extent to which teachers develop instructional strategies and curriculum varies. Many teachers rely on a textbook, or series of textbooks, which provides the heart of the curriculum. Some teachers use nontextbook curriculum designs, which have been created by other professionals. On the other hand, many teachers create curriculum for their own classes, grades, subject areas, or schools working alone or with others. Still others use a pastiche of these approaches. Most teachers as curriculum developers bring ideas, philosophies, and values into their teaching that they have not fully reflected upon. When an individual teacher is working alone, an individual implicit approach to curriculum need not be made explicit. However, improving curriculum requires teachers to be aware of their assumptions. Also, any time curriculum is evaluated or discussed, or goals and processes are shared, curriculum development processes and theories must become more explicit. The reflections accompanying these ideas are very helpful in this regard. When education professionals are aware of their curriculum theory, they are better able to improve their practice and put curriculum into writing to share with others in a manner that accurately reflects their intentions. They are also better prepared to work with others in designing curriculum and evaluating and critiquing curriculum. This section thus recognizes that the teacher is a decision maker who directly interprets the students and the meaning of curriculum and influences the presentation of subject matter. Since this section showcases distinctively different approaches as well as the reflections that inspire their use it doesn’t reinforce what William Doll (2005) thinks of as the assumption in educational methods courses “that knowledge itself can be ‘handed-on’” though, as he observes, “Students seem desirous of having such knowledge/methods handed to them and many a methods teacher is willing to comply” (p. 21). The chapters in this section develop in the multiple ways that instructional skill develops from focusing first on students’ needs and interests as a starting place, next reflecting on one’s aims and goals, learning by observing instruction, and then developing lessons and microteaching before full unit development, and finally reflecting on completed units. The progression helps readers explore frameworks, materials, and strategies that will help them translate their philosophy of social and multicultural education into effective educational practice with learners. In chapter 71, Keith Barton offers a lesson that seeks to help preservice teachers better understand the conceptions, misconceptions, prior knowledge, and abilities of their students before

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teaching. Barton argues that since many teachers (preservice included) think about students from the perspective of what students do not know, strategies are needed for accessing and understanding student thinking and even for coming to view students as inherently knowledgeable and thoughtful. Next, in chapter 72, Heilman presents two sets of questions that teachers can use in planning curriculum units and lessons. By answering “The Big Ten Goals Questions” and “The Big Six Resources Questions” in the process of planning a curriculum, teachers thoughtfully consider how their intended aims can be fulfilled with specific pedagogical strategies and activities that reflect the different ways in which students learn with goal-appropriate scaffolding. Once a teacher understands students, and has a sense of how to scaffold their main goals, they must begin planning methods for lessons. In chapter 73, Marino and Jacobs advocate for a modeling approach to methods instruction. Taking the stance that one’s student experiences inform later teaching practices, the authors argue that methods instructors need to model good teaching while teaching about good teaching. In this modeling approach, students simultaneously engage student and teacher perspectives while learning about the possibilities, both positive and negative, of particular instructional strategies and learning situations. In chapter 74, Halvorsen takes this further by exploring the importance of preservice teachers practicing instruction via microteaching. While she notes the need for preservice teachers to teach in field placements, she focuses on the need for them to teach on campus in their preservice teacher education courses where they can spend ample time collaborating with their peers in the lesson preparation process as well as critically reflecting on the teaching of the lesson through watching video of the lesson, writing about it, and discussing it. These chapters focus on learning through modeled and guided experience and emphasize cognitive and metacognitive skills, rather than mere physical skills and processes, and are similar to the cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989). Next, in this section we feature four distinctive approaches to curriculum development, including a constructivist curriculum development, backwards design, the inquiry method, and standards-based design. In chapter 75, Skilton-Sylvester details a constructivist approach to helping preservice teachers determine and plan curriculum. Calling for student investigation of “terrains” using “systems thinking,” he likens the teacher to a guide who leads students through a place of study with student curiosities about the place informing the way. The curriculum is rooted in the everyday experience of the student, yet the teacher has a comfortable knowledge of the terrain that allows for decisions about the course of learning. This is a Deweyan (Dewey, 1900/1902/1990) education that honors both the social and individual experience and implies that complex issues are fundamental starting points for curriculum. From this perspective, disciplines ought to explore what we do and why we do it and should not be taught out of context or abstracted from the social world in which they arise. In chapter 76, Gunn explains and argues for teaching a backwards design approach to preservice teachers. In their theory of “backward design,” Wiggins and McTighe (1998) explain that curriculum design must begin with clearly identified, big ideas and essential concepts, as well as a consideration of the evidence needed to demonstrate that the concepts have been learned. Gunn outlines how he teaches his students to think “backwards” in the curriculum planning process, from the unit to lesson and across units. This approach begins with detailing a broad, conceptual structure and then adding to it specific content while aiming to shift the focus of learning from coverage and transmission to understanding and transfer. Once a teacher understands students, and has a sense of how to scaffold their main goals, they must begin planning methods for lessons. Hartwick begins his exploration in chapter 77 by suggesting that the teacher educator think about inquiry as the means of planning. Using historical examples, he defines a framework for

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thinking about lesson planning that is heavily rooted in the traditions of historical inquiry, historical thinking, and disciplinary perspectives. He argues that by systematically approaching the social studies from this framework, students will be better equipped to ask and answer their own questions about social studies. Most teachers must also either justify their units with reference to state standard or use standards for inspiration. Boyd presents a lesson that brings students to consider the role of social studies standards in education and their teaching in chapter 78. Students compare state and national standards, in the process familiarizing them with the National Council for the Social Studies. As a result of this comparison, students come to understand the standards and also to question their validity. Good teaching requires not just planning and developing of course, but actual teaching. In chapter 79, Serota and Bennett emphasize the field experience as an important component of preservice teachers’ learning to teach. Structuring a tutoring opportunity in a local school, and then scaffolding it with reflective journaling assignments, allows preservice teachers to transition from the perspective of the student to the perspective of the teacher. Even more complex, in chapter 80, Rogers outlines an approach to teaching preservice teachers how to plan fully developed thematic curriculum units. This approach begins with construction of a unit justification that helps the teacher rationalize why and how it is being taught. Questions, then, make up the structure of the unit, prompting students to think deeply as opposed merely to collecting information. Finally, in chapter 81, Hickey exposes the need for teachers to learn how to reflect on their teaching. By taking a structured approach to investigating a previously taught unit, reconceptualizing it by building on its strengths and altering its weaknesses, and then reteaching it while reflecting, a teacher can strongly enhance the teaching and learning within the classroom. References Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1989). Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the craft of reading, writing and mathematics. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 453–494). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Dewey, J. (1990). The school and society and the child and the curriculum (P. W. Jackson, Ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original works published 1900 and 1902) Doll, W. (2005). The culture of method. In W. Doll, J. Fleener, J. St. Julien, & D. Trueit (Eds.), Chaos, complexity, curriculum and culture: A conversation (pp. 19–76). New York: Lang. Wiggins G., & McTige, J. (1988). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

71 Providing Elementary Teachers with Experience of Children’s Thinking in Social Studies Keith C. Barton

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6 NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: history, geography, civics, economics, student-centered, students’ lives and experiences, concept development, categorizing ideas, photographs/pictures, interviewing, historical understanding, teacher reflection One of the chief obstacles to improving social studies instruction is teachers’ disparaging view of students’ knowledge and understanding. In the early elementary grades, teachers often believe that students are incapable of understanding topics such as history, geography, citizenship, or economics. They may believe, for example, that children cannot comprehend remote time periods until they have experienced the passage of more time themselves, or that their understanding of time occurs in a developmental sequence that begins with clock or calendar time and only concludes much later, with the greater expanses of historical time. Early elementary teachers also sometimes claim that children cannot understand “abstract” concepts such as those in economics or government, or that distant cultures are too far from their experiences to be comprehensible. As a result, they may be reluctant to include historical content or to focus on the kind of “big ideas” that are important to understanding society. These beliefs, however, amount to little more than myths. Young children understand a great many things about history and society. Their ideas need much more elaboration and refinement, of course, but this development does not depend solely on some kind of neurological development. Instead, it depends on instruction that takes account of children’s prior understanding—building on their background knowledge when possible, addressing misconceptions where necessary, and helping them interpret their experiences of society in light of more sophisticated concepts. One of our tasks as teacher educators is to help students in our methods courses develop a more accurate understanding of children’s intellectual abilities—what they know and don’t know, what comes easily and what they have difficulty with, and how instruction can further develop their understanding. In particular, we have to provide experiences that challenge our students’ thinking so that they can develop new perspectives, grounded in evidence that they find convincing. As one way of providing this kind of experience, I have given my elementary methods students an assignment in which they interview children and write an essay based on their findings. 312

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This interviews are based on Linda Levstik’s and my research on children’s understanding of historical time (Barton & Levstik, 1996), but they also include questions about other aspects of social studies, derived in part from research on children’s ideas about politics and economics (see Figure 71.1). To begin the interviews, students show children two pictures from different times in history and have them decide which is older and which is “closer to now,” and ask them to explain how they know which order they go in. They then present six more pictures, one at a time, and ask whether they think each is from about the same time as one they’ve already placed, goes between two of the pictures, or is either older or newer than the entire set; at each point, children are again asked to explain how they know. At the end of the task, children are asked when they think each picture dates to (starting with the most recent), and then are asked additional questions about other aspects of social studies. I supply my students with sets of professionally reproduced photographs for the task, although in these days of laser printers I could just as easily give them digital versions to reproduce on their own. It’s important, though, either to provide them with the images or to give them a great deal of guidance in selecting their own, lest they choose images that simply include portraits of famous people rather than the variety of clues about social and material life necessary to activate children’s prior knowledge. I have my students interview six to eight children from their field placements, selected from a range of achievement levels, but keeping in mind that the participants should be talkative— otherwise there won’t be enough information for the students to write their essays. I encourage Explain to students that you want to find out what they think about social studies and what they are interested in. Explain that you will show them some pictures and ask them some questions about what they know. Tell them that some questions might be too easy or too hard, and that if there are any they don’t know the answer to, it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” Ask if they have any questions before you start. 1.

2. 3. 4.

Show students the first two pictures and ask them to put the picture from the longest time ago on their left and the one that’s closest to now on the right. Ask them to explain how they know which picture is oldest. Show them each of the other pictures one at a time, and have them put each where it belongs—with one of the other pictures, before or after them, or in between. For each picture, have them explain why they think it goes there. Ask: Did you think this was easy or hard to do (and why)? Which ones did you think were easiest (and why)? Which ones were hardest (and why)? Which pictures do you think are the most interesting (and why)? Pick one picture and ask: How do you think your life would have been different if you had been alive at this time? Point to each picture and ask: About when do you think this is?

Tell students that now you’re going to ask some more questions that aren’t just about the pictures. Emphasize again that some questions might be hard and some might be easy and that it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” 5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

Who is the president? What do you think the president does when he goes to work? How does someone get to be president? (If students say the president is elected, ask if they know of any other people who are elected.) Who do you think are some of the most famous people who have ever lived? What can you tell me about him/her/them? Can you think of any famous people from history who aren’t from the U.S.? Who’s the most important woman you’ve ever heard of? When you buy something in a store, who decides how much the price is? How do they decide how much to charge for it? Where does the store get the things it sells? What city do you live in? Can you tell me the names of some other cities? What state do you live in? Can you tell me the names of some other states? What country do you live in? Can you tell me the names of some other countries? Can you tell me anything about how life is different in other countries?

Figure 71.1 Interview Questions and Procedures

314 • Keith C. Barton

my students to work together with others in their methods class to complete this assignment, both so that one of them can take notes while the other talks to the children, and so that they can collaborate on interpreting their findings. And crucially, when I first introduce the assignment, I model exactly how to do the interviews: I select two students to come to the front of the room, we sit on the floor while the rest of the class watches, and I work through the task as though they were elementary school children. Sometimes students have trouble getting their supervising teachers to agree to the task (because they’re afraid it isn’t “developmentally appropriate”) but once we overcome this hurdle, my students find the task highly engaging. They always enjoy talking about it during the following class, and they are eager to share the most interesting comments made by their participants. Because they have had so few opportunities to engage directly with children’s understanding of important social studies content, they are fascinated and surprised by what children have to say. But then the hard part begins. I don’t want my students just to come up with a list of cute comments. I want them to identify patterns in children’s responses—to generalize about how they make sense of the social world—and these generalizations form the core of the essays they write. Preparation for this task requires more focused discussion in class, and students do not always enjoy the exercise. Their initial attempts to identify patterns often involve generalizations about what students don’t know rather than how they think—such as, “Children don’t know anything about economics.” Most frustrating for me is their tendency to conclude, based on children’s largely inaccurate use of dates, that they “don’t know anything about historical time”—despite the fact that they almost always place the pictures in the correct order, demonstrate knowledge of changes in material culture in doing so, and even use some aspects of dating correctly. It takes a great deal of discussion to reach more useful and specific conclusions. The easiest place to start is with children’s reasons for placing the pictures; their responses are so consistent that it’s usually not too difficult to get my students to identify patterns such as “Children used fashion as a way of arranging the pictures” or “Children thought that bigger buildings indicated newer pictures.” More difficult is getting them to move beyond factual knowledge and focus on how children conceptualize social roles and behavior—such as their tendency to interpret economic exchanges in terms of fairness rather than profit, or to think of the president’s responsibilities primarily in terms of symbolic public acts. And sometimes I have to be content with generalizations that seem obvious to me, but that are a revelation to my students; the most common is, “The children used reasoning skills during the interviews.” For some of my students, the very fact that young children could support their answers with logical reasons is surprising. In their essays, students identify three to four generalizations about children’s thinking and support each with evidence from their interviews. After class discussion, this becomes relatively easy for them, at least at a basic level. I usually require another element as well, and this can take either of two forms. Most often, I require that students identify the implications of each of their conclusions—by explaining, for example, what background knowledge or interests children have that a teacher could build on, what misconceptions she would need to address, or what concepts need greater elaboration or development. Other times—particularly in advanced courses for graduate students—I require that students compare their findings to those of previous research. Both activities move teachers toward contextualizing their findings within a larger framework of professional knowledge. Developing teachers’ understanding of students’ intellectual abilities is only one part of changing practice, and there are many issues of pedagogical authority, control, purpose, and knowledge that still have to be addressed in any methods course. But this exercise provides direct and compelling

Providing Elementary Teachers with Experience of Children’s Thinking in Social Studies • 315

exposure to some aspects of children’s thinking and, in doing so, may help come teachers overcome their tendency to underestimate their students’ abilities (Barton, McCully, & Marks, 2004). References Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (1996). “Back when God was around and everything”: The development of children’s understanding of historical time. American Educational Research Journal, 33, 419–454. Barton, K. C., McCully, A. W., & Marks, M. J. (2004). Reflecting on elementary children’s understanding of history and social studies: An inquiry project with beginning teachers in Northern Ireland and the United States. Journal of Teacher Education, 55, 70–90.

72 What to Teach, When, and Why The Thoughtful Construction of the Curriculum Unit Elizabeth E. Heilman

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary NCSS Standards: IV (Individual development and identity) INTASC Standards: 2 (Learning and Development), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Instructional Planning), 9 (Reflective Practice) Topics: history, geography, civics, economics, ethical–political valuation, critical thinking, purposes/goals, unit development, teacher reflection, creating teaching materials, instructional strategies, integrated curriculum, concept development As teachers begin to learn unit planning, they need to understand the processes of scaffolding multiple lessons toward the teaching of major unit concepts and they need to judge what types of strategies and resources are best suited to each stage and aim of a unit. Teachers require a deep sense of purpose and an understanding of the philosophical and conceptual frames that drive their teaching. This judgment serves as the foundation from which teachers then decide on the major concepts and units they will teach, the lessons that will help scaffold that understanding, and the assessments that will demonstrate that learning was achieved (see Table 72.1). Yet, scaffolding lessons into units is fairly complex and social education units can be especially challenging because they entail multiple distinctive pedagogical aims that suggest distinctive pedagogies and the use of distinctive texts and resources. Though teachers should be flexible and allow units to develop and change in response to students’ interests, good planning is paramount and so I ask student planning units for detailed written responses to what I call the big 10 goals questions and the big six resource questions. I ask for one to three paragraphs on each question or subsection and students can use their cut and paste function when describing the same idea in more than one place. The Big Ten Goals Questions What kinds of lessons will help you scaffold the distinctive pedagogical aims for social learning? Answer these 10 questions: 1. What do I want the student to know (facts, information, processes, skills)? What knowledgeoriented curriculum standards apply? 2. What do I want the student to understand (big ideas, concepts, principles, generalizations)? What understandings oriented curriculum standards apply? 316

What to Teach, When, and Why • 317 Table 72.1 A Typical Scaffolding of Unit Texts and Intentions Type of Text

Educational Intention

For example

Attention getter(s)

Conceptual-technical Imaginative-personal

Role play or simulation

Explanatory text

Conceptual-technical

Text book reading Lecture

Imaginative and emotional

Imaginative-personal Ethical-political valuation

Film, narrative

Authoritative text

Conceptual-technical

Disciplinary articles

Counter text primary resource

Integrative criticality

Analysis of articles, opposite stance disciplinary articles

Imaginative and emotional Conceptual-technical texts Imaginative-personal Ethical-political valuation Integrative criticality Collaborative-relational

Shared opinion and experiences Guest speaker Field trip Comparison of all of above

Local

Taking action creating new work

Conceptual-technical Imaginative-personal Ethical-political valuation Integrative criticality Collaborative-relational Active-creative capacity

3. What do I want the student to be able to do as a result of this learning experience? What performance oriented curriculum standards apply? 4. How will I develop knowledge, understanding and performance? Write down lesson ideas for each of the stages of Bloom’s taxonomy (1956), and for each of the stages of unit scaffolding. Write down ideas for as many of Gardner’s (1983) multiple intelligences as seem relevant. 5. What forms of diversity are there in my classroom and how will I adapt instruction for individual students? 6. How will I develop imaginative and personal activities related to knowledge, understanding and performance (1, 2, and 3)? 7. How will I develop ethical and political valuation and reasoning activities? 8. Integrative criticality. How will I develop opportunities for multiple forms of critical evaluation? 9. Collaborative–relational experiences. How will I develop opportunities for students to work together? 10. Develop active and creative capacities. How will I develop opportunities to solve problems or make something new? Conceptual–Technical Understanding: How Do You Understand It? Teachers aim to provide students with a framework to understand a unit’s procedural and technical content, main ideas, and distinct concepts, arguments or controversies. There are a lot of theories that can help teachers think about this process, the most famous of which is Bloom’s taxonomy of six increasingly sophisticated forms of engagement. These include Knowledge—recall;

318 • Elizabeth E. Heilman

Comprehension—understand; Application—use and practice; Analysis—dissect, compare, and generalize; Synthesis—create and combine; and Evaluation—appraise, critique, and value. Though not all of Gardner’s multiple intelligences will be relevant, I ask for students to consider them. Imaginative–Personal Response: How Do You Imagine and Respond to It? Across a range of definitions, social education asks for personal development and for students to imagine others’ views and experiences. Students understand first their own thoughts, being, feelings, values, fears, and imaginings and are able to imagine and respond to other ways of thinking, being, feeling, and valuing. This includes differences such as those rooted in ethnicity, age, gender, ability, religion, social class, geographic region, political ideology, historical milieu and more. Through social education, students are invited to imagine lives and perspectives other than their own. Students are meant to explore diverse realities in local communities, the nation, and across nations. and imagine situations such as: What does it mean to grow up in Baghdad, in Mexico City, or on the south side of Chicago—in a different time, place, culture, or status situation? What would go into perceiving and seeing if you were the “other?” How do such others understand? And, if you were them, how would you understand? Ethical–Political Valuation: How Do You Value It? Social education clearly aims at developing citizens. It is progressive in the old-fashioned sense of the word, meaning an approach to education that leads to progress and a better world. Typical ethical aims include developing a sense of human connection and acting according to collective responsibility. Students explore questions of the good, the valuable, and the just. They ask fundamental questions about politics such as what is liberty and justice? What is the nature and justification of various forms of political authority? What are the obligations and responsibilities that citizens and societies owe to one another? Relevant ethical and political questions will vary by unit topic. Integrative Criticality: How Do You Evaluate It? Social education often aims for criticality. Students explore, evaluate, compare, and critique the inevitably multiple ways in which any social studies theme, concept, or issue is imagined, felt, understood, and enacted. Students encounter multiple sources and perspectives, including texts, people, experiences, literatures, technologies, and the visual arts and see connections and disconnections, and try to imagine contexts. They develop the capacity to question power, and to use persuasion and authoritative messages across media. They understand the relationships among arguments, media, and disciplines. Criticality requires an integration of ethical, conceptual, and imaginative understanding, an engagement of mind and heart. Collaborative–Relational Ability: How Do You Evaluate It With Others? Social education often aims to enhance students’ capacity to work with and learn from others. They develop a sense of human connection and come to understand that individuals create and fulfill themselves in constant interaction with communities, and thus identity and meaning are inherently fluid and collective. Acting in the public good requires citizens to critically evaluate

What to Teach, When, and Why • 319

what is unjust and what is good for ourselves but also for and with others. We listen and negotiate multiple viewpoints to make choices not in self-interest alone but with regard to human rights and public interest. Students have the ability to do all of the above with other people and groups. Their learning, problem solving, and growth is in fact, and is understood to be, both personally and socially developed and for personal and public good. Active–Creative Capacity: What Will You Do? Conceptual, ethical, and critical understanding, imaginative and emotional response, and collaborative relational abilities are integrated in order to solve problems, make something new, or address issues. Students are intended to be able to develop and enact ideas and plans as responsible citizens and workers who make informed judgments and work to advance the common good. The ultimate aim of social studies education is for students to be able to create and use knowledge in social context and act with civic responsibility. The Big Six Resource Questions Everyone asks preservice teachers who develop units to list resources. Many instructors ask for multiple genres. Teachers also need to be able to connect resources to aims such as those that provide imaginative and emotional responses to social lives and challenges. I ask students to list and distinguish these six types of resources. 1. Explanatory and Leveled Resources. This type of material presents often complex materials in ways that are engaging and accessible to students. This includes textbooks as well as material that has been written explicitly to fit children’s developmental levels and reading capacity such as news magazines for children and most children’s nonfiction texts. 2. Authoritative Resources. These feature the ideas of leading scholars and authorities. They are not written for students. 3. Critical Resources. These are sets of texts in which explicitly different points of view are presented. “Different” can mean different opinions or it can mean the views of different types of people. 4. Imaginative and Emotional Resources. This type of material helps students to enter into social realities through their emotional and sensual dimensions. Often these are films, narratives, novels, music, and art. 5. Primary Resources. These include diaries, letters, personal journals, interviews, oral histories, newspaper accounts, maps, and photographs. 6. Local and Personal Resources and Experiences. These help students explore the personal, local, or lived realities of the issue in an immediate way. What does this mean for me, for here, and for now? What do I do with this? Who in my community knows something about this? How can I experience this? References Applebee, A. N., & Langer, J. (1983). Instructional scaffolding: Reading and writing as natural language activities. Language Arts, 60(2), 168–175. Bloom B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: Handbook 1. The cognitive domain. New York: McKay. Bruner, J. S. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

73 The Modeling Approach to Social Studies Teacher Education Michael P. Marino and Benjamin M. Jacobs

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 2 (Student Learning), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 5 (Learning Environment), 7 (Planning Instruction), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: teacher reflection, instructional strategies, curriculum planning, collaboration, cooperative learning, media literacy, critical thinking, role play/simulation It is fairly simple to compile a list of topics that students should “cover” in a typical methods course. What is not altogether clear is how best to address these varied topics in pedagogical terms. Lecturing or conducting a seminar discussion (the predominant methods of content delivery at the college level), the use of online discussion tools as a means of keeping wayward students engaged, or the wonders of cooperative learning, seem incongruous and ineffectual, for teaching is mostly a hands-on, practical endeavor that requires applied knowledge as much as subject matter expertise. It is our contention, therefore, that one of the best ways for student teachers to acquire the nascent skills of a professional teacher is for methods instructors to demonstrate the best practices that can be found in the types of school settings in which their student teachers will ultimately be teaching (e.g., secondary schools) and to experience what occurs in the classroom as students and teachers in that classroom would experience it. In this way, student teachers can be sensitized to the experiences of students learning in this type of instructional environment while also coming to understand the methods a teacher might use in facilitating a given type of instructional activity. We refer to this as the “modeling approach” to teacher education, whereby teacher educators model instructional techniques that their student teachers eventually may adapt for their own instructional purposes. The modeling approach turns what has sometimes been referred to as an impediment in teacher education—“the apprenticeship of observation” (Lortie, 1975), where teachers tend to teach the way they were taught over their schooling careers—into a strength. It assumes that teachers are indeed likely to teach the way they were taught; so, by experiencing various high quality classroom activities, scenarios, and situations in the methods classroom as they might in a schoolroom, student teachers can approximate the conditions of a real classroom setting from the perspective of both students and teachers. In so doing, they can see the impact of various teaching and learning activities from the viewpoint of both teacher and learner and gain keen insight into how to tweak instructional strategies in ways that might be most useful for their own classroom settings. It also permits students to see how an intended activity or assignment is actually imple320

The Modeling Approach to Social Studies Teacher Education • 321

mented by teachers and received by students, and thereby gain insight into the possibilities and potential pratfalls that accompany any pedagogic endeavor, from placing students into groups, to conducting research on the Internet, to moderating a particularly intense debate. Experiencing these challenges as students will allow mistakes to be minimized or avoided as teachers. There is also a moral dimension involved in the modeling approach, for teachers may learn to empathize with their students’ experiences, for better or worse, as they engage in intellectually and socially challenging classroom activities such as simulations, group work, and oral presentations. Many contributors to this book use the modeling approach. We describe one lesson in detail here; the next chapter provides a broad overview of general instructional strategies. A more detailed set of instructional strategies can be found in Appendix 2, “Building a Repertoire of Basic Instructional Strategies.” One specific example of an activity that we have modeled successfully in our social studies methods courses is what we call “The Sort List.” The sort list is a lengthy list of famous or significant figures in American history, ranging from legendary politicians, to notorious criminals, to sports heroes, to obscure inventors. For the activity, students are placed in groups and are given the task of coming up with a consensus as to what names on the list represent the 10 most important individuals in American history. They are given the opportunity to do research on the individuals on the Internet, if necessary, so that they can devise informed judgments on the relative significance of the individuals. Typically, the group discussions grow rather heated; significant differences of opinion arise, and many compromises must be reached among group members (the room also grows rather noisy as the volume of discussions intensifies). The methods instructor, as facilitator, is responsible for responding to questions regarding learning procedures or about the personalities themselves, as well as ensuring that groups remain on task. Once the selections are made, each group reports back to the class as to whom they selected and why the selection was made. While this exercise seems rather simplistic in design and execution it nonetheless serves several useful purposes in a methods class. For one, it introduces student teachers to the inherent difficulties of having students work together in groups to try to reach a consensus on a controversial issue. For another, it demonstrates that working in groups can be loud and chaotic, and group work will often be less regimented than classroom exercises in which students passively absorb information, such as a lecture. The activity also helps to introduce some of the basic principles of inquiry learning, in that the students are faced with generating their own opinions and conclusions based on research, and also cooperative learning, in that the students are in essence creating a final product as a result of their interactions and deliberations. Lastly, in the debriefing portion of the lesson, the methods instructor asks students how they felt about the noise and discordance in the classroom and the challenges they encountered trying to compile their lists, as well as the overall usefulness of the activity, its place in the curriculum, and ways that it could be improved in the future. In the end, student teachers are able to experience a worthwhile activity as students, reflect on it as teachers, and consider ways to adapt what they experienced for their own teaching purposes. The modeling approach can be challenging for a methods instructor to implement, insofar as it is inherently more complicated to design a class that features a variety of imaginative pedagogical strategies than it is to primarily lecture or facilitate discussion. The approach also requires more active engagement on the part of students, along with a willingness on their part to buy into the contrived schoolroom setup. In a similar vein, instructors and students both must achieve a sensible balance between modeling secondary school teaching techniques and learning activities and maintaining an environment appropriate and sophisticated enough for instruction on the

322 • Michael P. Marino and Benjamin M. Jacobs

undergraduate or graduate level. Too much modeling has the potential to be perceived by students as infantilizing and intellectually stultifying rather than edifying and satisfying. Despite these potential obstacles, we nonetheless feel that the modeling approach deserves a prominent place in any methods course because it is a most effective way to allow student teachers to appreciate classroom experiences from the perspective of student and teacher alike. Five Useful Modeling Experiences for a Social Studies Methods Class These modeling experiences include: the “bad lesson,” lesson planning, “do-now,” simulations/ experiential learning, and assessment. The “Bad Lesson” In this exercise, intended for the first class session, the methods instructor tells the students that they will now act as high school students in a fictional classroom and should behave accordingly. The methods instructor in turn will act as a high school teacher and “teach” a lesson. Before beginning the lesson, however, the instructor should tell the students that even as they are participating in the class as high school students, they should also observe and be aware of various mistakes made by the teacher and make note of them. Over the course of teaching this lesson, the instructor should intentionally make numerous and varied errors related to questioning technique, board writing, content, demeanor, discipline, and pacing. After teaching the lesson in this way, the class critiques the instruction and the instructor uses the mistakes they identify to demonstrate to students the fact that teaching takes skill, practice, and experience to master. Lesson Planning The methods instructor should prepare a lesson plan for each class session. While this lesson plan will not directly mirror a high school lesson, it should nonetheless indicate the various activities being addressed in that session, demonstrate how these activities transition from one to the other, and include the time allotted for each activity. This practice demonstrates to students the importance of planning and how a teacher thinks about and conceives of a class session as a series of discrete activities that inform and build up one another. It also shows students that even as they are repeatedly told by their instructor that lesson planning is central to the act of teaching, so too does the methods instructor hold him- or herself to the same standard. Do-Now Every methods session should begin with a “do-now” activity which can introduce the main topic of that particular day. Just as a high school teacher would motivate a class in such a way, so too can the methods instructor. The do-now for the methods class session on historical thinking provides students with a series of introductory paragraphs from various historical monographs and asks the students to consider why or why not these examples constitute effective history writing as well as what characteristics a proficient writer and reader of history possesses. This activity in turn allows for a smooth transition into discussion about the nature of historical literacy and cognition.

The Modeling Approach to Social Studies Teacher Education • 323

Simulations/Experiential Learning Most methods courses stress the need for high school teachers to make their classes exciting and lively, so that lecture and recitation do not dominate. As such, it is important for methods instructors to model such teaching in their own classes and not simply pay lip-service to the need to create a varied and stimulating learning environment. One especially good technique to use in a methods class is to model historical simulations which call on students to play various roles in a historical scenario. Such simulations can be very simple—for example, the teacher plays a historical figure and directs students to act as reporters and ask questions of the teacher in the guise of this figure (e.g., Woodrow Wilson after the Versailles Conference or Harry Truman after the dropping of the atomic bomb). More elaborate simulations such as debates, mock trials, or newscasts can also be modeled. In this case, the students are assigned various roles and play out the scenario in front of the class; the teacher should also be a prominent participant. After the simulation is completed, the methods instructor discusses with students the challenges and benefits of implementing such an activity in an actual classroom, the steps that need to be taken to prepare students for a simulation, and the criteria a teacher should use for assigning roles and projects. For more on simulations and role plays see chapter 67 “Not Playing Aournd: Teaching Role Plays in Social Education.” Assessment In the class session on assessment, two modeling techniques are useful. One simple introductory activity asks students to take a multiple choice test about assessment. The questions are intentionally left vague, they contain several possible correct answers, and they use complicated vocabulary. This exercise allows methods students to experience some of the frustrations their own students feel about tests; illustrates the inadequacy of this type of assessment as a true test of knowledge; and helps initiate a useful discussion about the nature of assessment in American schools today. In the second part of the class, students are put in groups and given various authentic assessments which call on them complete a final product (e.g., a report, evaluation, or simple visual display) and present their product to their colleagues. Once these presentations are completed, the class discusses the efficacy and utility of this form of assessment when compared with a simple multiple choice test. References Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

74 Instructional Planning and Practice through Microteaching Anne-Lise Halvorsen

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), III (People, Places, and Environments), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance), VII (Production, Distribution, and Consumption) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning Instruction), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: history, geography, civics, economics, collaboration, cooperative learning, teacher reflection, creating teaching materials, instructional strategies, integrated curriculum, learning centers, issues-centered approach, role-play/simulation, concept development, curriculum planning Learning the practice of teaching is a fundamental part of teacher preparation programs. Typically, however, it is only in their field placements that preservice teachers have an active opportunity to improve their teaching skills. In those settings, their opportunities and experiences with practice vary widely and generally provide insufficient preparation in instructional strategies. Moreover, while some cooperating teachers offer extensive feedback to preservice teachers, many others offer only minimal feedback and this is often focused mainly on classroom management. As a result, preservice teachers generally need more opportunities to practice actual teaching than are provided by most teacher preparation programs. Complementing the call for more research on the instructional dynamic, which focuses on the multiple interactions among teachers, students, and the subject matter (Ball & Forzani, 2007), I think there is also a need for preservice teachers to simply spend more time with this instructional dynamic. Within teacher preparation programs, these future teachers would benefit from more opportunities to try out and refine teaching strategies, to test and evaluate lessons, and to turn theory into practice. In order to provide preservice teachers with such opportunities, the Michigan State University elementary social studies team designed and assigned preservice teachers to create two separate lessons, activities, centers, or projects (LACPS) for the elementary level social studies methods course. One LACP was for the university setting (which is the focus of this chapter) and one was for their field placement. Planning and enacting these LACPS requires preservice teachers to concentrate intensively on the individual steps a teacher takes in preparing and teaching a lesson, what we call lesson procedure, or “the instructional sequence.” The LACP in the university setting was called “a microteaching experience.” Microteaching is a group project for five or six students who teach one instructional strategy to their classmates. This assignment was created as a variation of an assignment developed by my colleague Elizabeth Heilman. For additional ideas

324

Instructional Planning and Practice through Microteaching • 325

about instructional methods for microteaching please look at Appendix 2, “Building a Repertoire of Basic Instructional Strategies.” Purposes and Implementation of the Assignment The microteaching assignment has five purposes. First, the assignment provides additional practice in designing standards-based instruction intended to meet the needs of all learners. This experience is useful preparation for preservice teachers as they write their field-based LACP assignment. Second, the assignment introduces preservice teachers to various social studies instructional strategies as they are used in practice, since groups will model a range of strategies. Third, the assignment allows the preservice teachers to engage in actual instruction, training them for teaching the field-based LACPs. Fourth, the assignment encourages preservice teachers to reflect on their practice, including viewing video recordings of their teaching. Lastly, in the work of planning, teaching, and reflection required by the assignment, preservice teachers experience the challenges and rewards of group collaboration. Microteaching is the focus of the 3rd hour of a 3-hour class in five sessions of the course, toward the end of the semester. To prepare for this activity, preservice teachers form groups of four to five early in the semester. We have a workshop time early in the semester to plan the LACP they will enact and they also meet outside of class to do a trial run of their activity. My students try five instructional strategies: simulation, concept formation, social scientific inquiry, case-based methodology, and guided discussion. They can choose a recommended topic from my instructor’s list or select their own topic. In my experience, most groups chose a recommended topic, although two groups (one for inquiry and one for discussion) picked their own topics. As a result, the topics of some lessons had a long and rich history in the social studies curriculum, whereas others were less well known. The following paragraphs summarize the five strategies as they were used in the groups in the course. During the enactment of the microteaching, the teaching group begins by framing the activity— explaining the instructional strategy, its affordments and constraints, and the implementation guidelines to be followed in the classroom. The group then teaches the 45- to 50-minute lesson before their classmates who act as students but do not pretend to be children. Some lessons are directed to the elementary level while others are for high school or even college level. Following the lesson, the nonteaching students complete a microteaching feedback form where they evaluate the lesson. In my approach to microteaching, the entire lesson is videotaped (using a camera and tripod for the full group discussion and a hand-held camera for the group work). After class, the teaching groups then meet to review the video and to discuss highs and lows, and to note places where they would change the lesson. After this discussion, preservice teachers write their individual reflections on their presentations. The simulation groups presented a lesson simulating inequality by drawing upon Bill Bigelow’s (2002) activity in Rethinking Globalization (pp. 68–70). In this lesson, students in groups, who receive different amounts of resources needed to build a house, learn about the unequal distribution of the world’s resources. The discussion that followed focused on the difficulties that result because of such inequitable distribution of resources. In the lesson, students gain an experience, but it is not the same as experiencing real poverty, and they do not have a better understanding of why there are different world standards of living unless it is explicitly taught. This shows the strengths and weaknesses of the simulation.

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The concept formation groups presented a lesson on civil disobedience that I had designed and used in a previous methods class with David Harris. We also consulted Walter Parker’s (2006) textbook for social studies methods (pp. 312–324). Working from examples of the concept, preservice teachers determined the critical attributes of the concept, the concept label, and its definition. They then classified additional examples and nonexamples of the concept, some textbased and others video, and created their own examples and nonexamples. A richer discussion of such a lesson can be found in chapter 9 of this book. In one class section, the social scientific inquiry group chose the topic of U.S. presidential elections. They posed seven questions about regional voting patterns, popular vote vs. electoral vote, and the origins of the political party system. In this lesson, preservice teachers used “clickers” (a classroom response system) as a preassessment tool. Using clickers, they responded to questions by clicking answers that were recorded electronically (in graph form). The rest of the class also responded to the inquiry questions using the clickers and preservice teachers could then see the class’s hypotheses. After they studied the data and consulted resources, they again responded to the questions using the clickers—this time with a more informed answer. They then compared the initial hypotheses with the final answers. The inquiry group in another section of the course presented a lesson on “the shot heard round the world,” the first shot in the Battle of Lexington Green. This group offered students various accounts of the events of the battle and asked them to hypothesize about who fired the first shot, study the evidence (the competing accounts), and then draw a conclusion based on the data (VanSledright, 2002). Finally, students engaged in a full group discussion on which sources were more credible and why. The case-based methodology groups presented the lesson, “No Vehicles in the Park” (American Bar Association, 2007) in which students acted as prosecutors, defendants, and judges in a series of cases involving an alleged violation of the law. The prosecutors and defendants drew upon one or more core democratic values to justify their arguments. Students learned explicitly about the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law, and concluded the assignment by rewriting the law to be more specific. The guided discussion group in one section based their presentation on Richard Wright’s short story “Stealing North” about his participation in a ticket scam to steal money so he could escape from the Jim Crow South (Lockwood & Harris, 1985, pp. 92–103). In small discussion groups, the students answered questions about personal experiences of racism or prejudice and the ethical ambiguity of lying. Then the full group discussed the question “Should Richard Wright have participated in the ticket scam?” The discussion group in the second section had the students debate the issue of whether condoms should be distributed in high schools. They assigned students to either the “pro” or the “con” side and used a “fishbowl” discussion in which six students debated the issue. Preservice Teachers’ Reflections The written reflections that they prepared revealed how seriously they took the assignment, how critical they were of their own planning and teaching, and how they felt they could improve in particular areas of instruction. Although all were quite nervous about watching their performance on video, most reported how beneficial it was to see their actual teaching. Preservice teachers identified various challenges they experienced in the planning, implementing, and writing up of these lessons. Many challenges were those commonly associated with group work, including finding times to meet, collaborating effectively on completing the assignment (the

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strongest assignments were ones in which all sections of the assignment were written jointly rather than separately by group members), and the work was divided equally amongst the participants. They also said they were uncertain about what to do when the students were working in smallgroup activities. One preservice teacher worried: “I feel as if the group work lasted a bit too long. We were walking around to make sure that everyone was still working, and they were, but it was just a lot of time in which my group and I didn’t know what to do. The camera even caught [other students] and me standing around discussing what to do next because we were at a loss.” The reflections revealed other, more substantive areas where the preservice teachers thought they could improve their skills. The most prominent area concerned leading discussions, particularly the quality of the follow-up questions from the students. The preservice teachers reported that they either asked questions that were too challenging, or they had trouble posing appropriate follow-up questions. For example, one said: “I estimate that the reason for this disengagement may have been that the questions I was asking were too deep and the students didn’t understand them, or they were just uninterested.” Another commented: “I feel as if I should have asked more questions to probe class discussion. I tried to think of some to ask, but they just weren’t coming to me…. Also, to cultivate a good discussion, you have to anticipate student’s thoughts, asking questions that go along with those.” Still, another preservice teacher said: “I noticed our group lacked encouraging words following student responses, and simply moving on to the next student. Though at the time I did not even think of that as an issue, it looked really bad in the video. The class was providing some great feedback and was not being rewarded for that.” Thus, this assignment helped preservice teachers learn the challenges associated with facilitating discussion in social studies lessons. Instructor’s Assessment In general, the preservice teachers completed the microteaching assignment quite skillfully and successfully, and its goals were achieved. However, based on this first experience, I believe there are several ways in which the assignment could be improved. First, each group of preservice teachers should submit its lesson plans in advance of presentation to ensure that the group is well prepared. If needed, groups should also meet with the instructor to discuss and resolve any problems. Second, each group should select a video excerpt of its microteaching to show the class, followed by a short discussion of the topic. Since the preservice teachers’ reflections showed they were quite thoughtful (often critical) about their teaching, a full group discussion would highlight the strengths of the five instructional strategies, as well as of the challenges encountered. Third, the microteaching should be more closely coordinated with other assignments in the course in order to facilitate cross-learning between the course requirements. For example, I would strongly encourage preservice teachers to enact the same instructional strategy in their field placements (if possible) so they have more opportunities for practice. Conclusions The microteaching assignment is valuable in providing preservice teachers with much needed practice in the logistical, managerial, and substantive aspects of instruction. The preservice teachers learn how to hold students’ attention, give whole class directions, monitor small-group work, ask probing questions (vs. correcting students or feeding them responses), and prepare clearly written worksheets and assignments that challenge students. Microteaching is not a substitute

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for actual classroom teaching in the elementary school setting. Yet, when the teaching skills that a microteaching assignment advances, which are fundamental to the practice of good teaching, are developed in a supportive classroom environment, preservice teachers are better prepared for their field placements and their future elementary school placements. References American Bar Association. (2007). No vehicles in the park. Retrieved October 2, 2006, from http://www.abanet.org/ publiced/volunteer/novehicles.html Ball, D. L., & Forzani, F. (2007). What makes education research “educational?” Educational Researcher, 36(9), 529–540. Bigelow, B. (2002). Building miniature houses—Simulating inequality. In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking globalization: Teaching for justice in an unjust world (pp. 68–70). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools Press. Lockwood, A. L., & Harris. D. E. (1985). Stealing north: Richard Wright. In A. L. Lockwood & D. E. Harris (Eds.), Reasoning with democratic values: Ethical problems in United States history: Vol. 2. 1877 to the present (pp. 92–103). New York: Teachers College Press. Parker, W. C. (2004). Three great teaching strategies. In W. C. Parker (Ed.), Social studies in elementary education (pp. 310–341). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice-Hall. VanSledright, B. A. (2002). Fifth graders investigating history in the classroom: Results from a researcher–practitioner design experiment. The Elementary School Journal 103(2), 131–160.

75 Approaching Curriculum Units as Terrains and Systems to Explore1 Paul Skilton-Sylvester

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6, 7-12 NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: history, geography, civics, economics, integrated curriculum, student-centered, students’ lives and experiences, unit development, issues-centered approach, instructional strategies, community-based learning, local/global communities, purposes/goals, curriculum, planning In this chapter I describe my approach to the problem of how one determines the unit of study. I recommend starting with a terrain and a clear and holistic focus for one’s study and then consider all the lines of influence that seem relevant. My experience as an elementary school teacher leads me to study “terrains” rather than issues or items; to study “the empty lot” rather than “litter,” to study “the fortune cookie factory” rather than to study immigration; to study “boarded up factory” rather than the industrial revolution, and to use systems thinking, which is about the relationships of the parts. It is about feedback loops, how one thing leads to another, and that one feeds back to the first. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as “thinking in circles” rather than “thinking in lines” (Morgan, 1986, p. 249). Thinking in circles recognizes that cause and effect are not mutually exclusive categories—that we all affect others and are affected ourselves; we are both influencers and influenced (Senge, 1990, p. 74). I gained my preference for studying terrains and for thinking about systems when I student taught at the Bank Street School for Children in New York City, where they do semester-long studies like “The Bridge” in which third graders spent a semester studying the nearby George Washington Bridge, or “The Park” in which second graders studied Central Park. What works when studying a terrain with elementary students is that you, as a teacher, need not think up any connections at all—if you study a park or a bridge or a boarded up factory or a fortune cookie factory or an empty lot, social studies and science and literature and math are all still connected. Instead of connecting the textbook or standards to the curriculum, you can find the standards and subjects in children’s communities. Dewey was keenly aware of the disjuncture between school texts and communities that students often experienced and so he emphasized the need to explore lived experience with its inevitable contradictions rather than sanitize life with a curriculum devoid of immediacy and meaning. He told a story of how children in Moline, Illinois didn’t connect the Mississippi River in their geography book with the one in their town (Dewey, 1900/1902/1990, p. 75). 329

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Dewey’s example reminds us both that the experiential world is filled with teachable contents and that the most useful beginning for meaningful study is in communities. But I am a teacher educator—as I’m sure many of you are. How does one begin to teach student teachers (1) to do systems thinking? (2) find systems in local places and terrains; and (3) help student teachers teach K-12 students to do systems thinking? At the University of Pennsylvania we do this by having student teachers select and study a specific terrain—the neighborhood of the school where they are about to begin student teaching. During the summer term before their student teaching, students have one main assignment that cuts across two courses—a social foundations course called “School and Society” and their social studies methods course. The assignment is to work in teams to study the neighborhood of the school where they will be student teaching and write a rationale for a social studies curriculum based on the assets and challenges that they find there. How Does Such a Unit Develop? It involves 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

choosing a terrain of interest to you and the students; considering social problems or issues related to the terrain; looking “upstream” for possible causes feeding into this problem; looking “downstream” for possible effects that this problem feeds; looking to see if any of the “effects” actually feed the causes.

So, for example, let’s take an empty, trash-filled lot in West Philadelphia as a subject of a social studies curriculum. If we look upstream, what are some of the possible causes feeding into this problem? The causes might include deindustrialization, lack of jobs, declining real-estate values, population decline, concentration effects of poverty due to the flight of the middle class, use of empty properties for drug houses, arson, and demolition. Note that what were once viewed as “effects”—in a systems view—are revealed as also being causes. The simple world of causes and effects disappears. Curriculum Planning is like Preparing for a Hike in a Terrain The guiding metaphor here is that of preparing for a hike. As a teacher, I think of myself as a wilderness leader, I need to know the terrain in the area we’re exploring—the well-beaten path, the little side paths that might turn out to be overgrown, and even bushwack, and there very well may be a pond over that hill with lessons to be learned about the food chain and the succession of plants, and all sorts of stuff that we’ll want them to learn in a few years anyway (but then we will end up having to use scratch-and-sniff stickers to motivate them). As a teacher, I need to know about that pond so that if students are interested in climbing that hill, I will have knowledge about whether that is a fruitful route, or whether I need to insist on staying our course. When we are not with them, students are, of course, doing their own exploring. Every morning, around the globe, there is a march that occurs as children walk to school, performing countless investigations of the physical and social world: experiments of physics, and biology, and sociology, and anthropology; investigations into the holes in the pavement, the dead animals in the empty lots, the odd ways of different kinds of storekeepers, and so on, day after day. An important way that we, as teachers can “join the march” is by framing curricula around these holistic terrains rather than around abstract terms or disconnected subjects.

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The first step that I recommend teachers take in preparing to teach a curriculum—and for me this happens sometime around mid-July when I’m starting to get nervous about the upcoming year—is to decide what, in the broadest terms, we’re going to study. Are we going to study the neighborhood, or the pond in the local park, or the skyscraper that is being constructed downtown? And here my metaphor for curriculum planning merges with real life: In the tradition of the school where I was trained as an intern teacher, the Bank Street School for Children, I really do tend to pick a terrain—a place where issues of science and social studies and math and reading are whole and live and real, in a way that is so suited to the way children learn that not one of them in their right mind would dream of opting out of the first field trip. What child doesn’t want to see how they put up a skyscraper? Getting to Objectives as We Explore Our Terrain I used a checklist of mandated standards and objectives to allow us to follow student interests as much as possible while keeping track of what mandated objectives we had come upon so far. In the preceding summer, I make a list of these nonnegotiable objectives on my computer, listing the source after each one. Then I add my own objectives to this list. This list of objectives became my list of intellectual “sights” that I want to make sure that my students “get to” on our hike, preferably for a number of visits. I keep this list at the front of my plan book, and record the date each time we “get to it.” Many of these mandated objectives come up naturally, but others I have to raise myself. The Role of the Teacher in Leading the Hike The students are not exploring this terrain without a guide, but the guide, the teacher, is willing and able to help students along many pathways, depending on where the children want to go. The teacher guides with knowledge of the students, their curiosities, the subject matter, standards and this particular terrain, including some of the places, such as those related to mandated objectives, that the students ought to experience. Thus, there is a paradox that teachers face when we think about letting students’ interests influence the direction of this curriculum. The paradox is that we need to know where we want to go with the curriculum, but we also need to be prepared to go somewhere else; to choose to follow the interests of the students and go on a real adventure. How do you prepare to go one place and keep open the possibility of going somewhere else? In brief, the answer that has worked for me is that I, as the teacher, need to know the terrain well enough to make an informed decision about whether that somewhere else is going to be at least as educative for my students as the course I imagined—factoring into this decision that their choices have the added educational merit of fostering empowerment, critical decision-making skills, and deepened learning through improved motivation. In such a unit, lesson plans are written, and subjects and standards are covered, but the deeply meaningful real worlds and curiosities of students are at the heart of the curriculum. Note 1. Parts of this article draw on my previously published article: P. Skilton-Sylvester (1999). Teaching without charisma: Involving third-graders in investigating their inner-city urban neighborhood. In C. Edelsky (Ed.), Making justice our project: Teachers working toward critical whole language. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

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References Dewey, J. (1990). The school and society and the child and the curriculum (P. W. Jackson, Ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original works published 1900 and 1902) Morgan, G. ( 1986). Images of organization. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday.

76 Teaching Teachers to Teach for Understanding in Social Studies Methods Classes John Gunn

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, K-6, 7-12 NCSS Standards: Will vary but are inclusive INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning Instruction), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: history, geography, civics, economics, citizenship, concept development, integrated curriculum, teacher reflection, student-centered, issues-centered, film, equity, purposes/ goals, curriculum planning Early in my high school teaching career, I found myself saying the words the Mayan economy to a student in an urban high school populated by mostly lower income and minority students. Her pained response made me believe that I had three teaching tasks before me: I had to help her understand what an economy might be, what it could mean to be a Mayan, and that these concepts were useful. Although not a novice teacher, I had not anticipated that the conversation I wanted to have presupposed words and concepts I was familiar with and, apparently, she was not. I remember thinking that a student from a more affluent community might come to school already equipped with these tools and thus save a teacher the time and effort of having to teach them. I also thought that a middle class student might not require as much persuasion that these concepts were worth knowing. I would have to rethink what I was doing. I felt frustrated and overwhelmed by the task. When Grant Wiggins came to my school to introduce his (and Jay McTighe’s) “backwards design” approach to curriculum writing I immediately appreciated its point that the proper end of curriculum planning was the measurable student learning of targeted understandings. I thought this clarity would empower teachers to be more effective. Later I realized that it could also help me to identify and teach tacit conceptual tools that could empower students’ thinking and mitigate the frustration my student and I shared in that moment. The term backwards design is used to describe well known approaches to curriculum writing which are often, but not universally, associated with progressive education reforms. Two of the foremost contemporary exemplars of this approach are the Teaching for Understanding framework developed at the Harvard Zero Project in the 1990s (see Wiske, 1998) and Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design framework, developed during the same period (see Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Both approaches strive mightily to delineate and operationalize the well-pedigreed concepts of understanding and transfer. Although not identical, they share three essential features: First, both 333

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require as the first act of curriculum planning the thoughtful selection of “understanding goals” to be taught across multiple-lesson units. These goals must be central to disciplinary knowledge, be capable of being perceived by students as useful, and be interesting. Second, both require the creation of unit assessments that enable students to demonstrate their understanding of targeted concepts (e.g., “performance assessments”) by applying them to real concerns (i.e., “authentic assessments”). Third, both require teachers to choose the source materials, activities, and to sequence them so that students will need to develop their understandings and to complete their performance-based assessments. Because teachers are seen as normally beginning unit planning by writing individual lesson plans, without consciously or adequately choosing unit understanding goals, these approaches are considered “backwards”; that is, starting with end point understandings and figuring out the necessary steps to enable them. In most New York City schools, one still finds the same kind of social studies teaching that is reported nationwide: teachers attempting to rapidly transmit the state-mandated curricula with little opportunity for student questioning or dialogue, little attention to real world problems, and little opportunity for students to demonstrate their knowledge of social studies. Almost all my students have been taught social studies this way and view this kind of teaching as normal. One consequence of this socialization was brought to my attention when I asked a class of graduate students, mostly young in-service teachers, to develop a list of historically significant events. In our subsequent discussion one student observed that students’ lists often mirrored the state curriculum. I wondered if any of them had ever been asked before to consider questions of historical significance. One great benefit of backwards design is that it asks teachers to participate in the larger conversation as to the conceptual goals of education. It enables teachers to be thoughtful gatekeepers, balance depth and breadth, and as such is an antidote to coverage and transmission models of teaching. It seems self-evident that backwards design can reduce teacher alienation. Ironically such empowerment is often resisted, perhaps reasonably so, by pre- and in-service teachers. To step away from coverage of the state curriculum is a significant cognitive challenge, a weighty civic responsibility, and given current teaching practices (including high-stakes testing), a professional risk. Preservice teachers are often surprised and overwhelmed to discover that there is so much work to be done. Nevertheless, I believe for the above-mentioned reasons that it is important for student teachers to be introduced to backwards design. Much of my current interest in teacher education is in exploring how to successfully navigate the off-putting conceptual challenges it poses for teachers. Introducing the Frame I use the Teaching for Understanding Guide because of its streamlined introduction to the core concepts of backwards design and because I like its emphasis on the selection of curricular goals that are likely to be engaging and meaningful to students and teachers alike. We read the Guide over two class sessions. The first half of it is devoted to the nature of understanding and the selection of understanding goals. The second half is devoted to assessment and planning. I ask students to write reflections indicating what they like about the text, what they think the authors are trying to say, and what they don’t like about it. I read and respond in writing to their reflections and, when appropriate, I introduce their ideas into the class discussion of the framework. I try to model the recognition of students’ emerging understanding that is called for by backwards design. I assign a 2-week curriculum unit and encourage them to teach it during student teaching. (Because of prevailing practices in many schools, field-testing units is

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not always possible.) Essential backwards design unit attributes are delineated in a rubric and included with the course syllabus. Connecting Backwards Design to the Real World I try to illustrate the qualitative difference between thoughtful engagement with ideas and the normal coverage approach to social studies teaching. I show videos of students thoughtfully engaged with or applying social studies concepts in class discussions, portfolio presentations, or of final class projects. These examples are of urban public schools and in elite private schools. I want to dispel the idea that urban students are not capable or ready for thoughtful conceptual development. I try to persuade students to observe and student teach in classes and alternative schools where backwards design or similar curricular projects are in use. I also try to place students in schools that have received waivers from state exams and are more likely to develop curricular projects focused on developing student understanding (e.g., see http://www.performanceassessment.org). Students share their impressions of learning in these “alternative settings.” Being persuaded of the importance of essay writing for student empowerment (Finn, 1999) and to show examples of elaborated student thinking, I introduce social studies essays written by New York City public high school students. Students will comment that public high school social studies essays are rare and we connect their absence to the predominant methods of instruction and assessment. In addition, I bring in essays that show students’ engagement with ideas but also display low-level writing skills. These essays elicit discussion about the relationship between idea development and writing skills. Many pre- and in-service teachers will suggest that urban students are not capable of or well served by essay writing. I also bring in essays that are infused with social studies concepts and content but suggest a lack of student understanding of curricular concepts. We assess the essays together and discuss our evaluative criteria. Developing Understanding Goals Following suggestions outlined by Harvard Zero Project researchers (Wiske, Hammerness, & Wilson, 1998), to begin writing their own understanding goals, I ask students to write about a topic in social studies they are interested in and consider of great significance. My next step is to get them to reflect upon the concepts that they think are valuable in the disciplinary knowledge enumerated in the National Council on the Social Studies Ten Thematic strands. They are asked to defend their choices with reasons or evidence. To become familiar with reflecting upon the meaning of historical events, a conceptual task that students seem to resist, students are asked to identify a contemporary social issue that they consider to be of great importance and to defend their choice. They are then asked to create a list of historical events that demonstrate the importance of their social issues. We discuss whether the social issues they have chosen would be of interest and importance for urban students, whether they are included in the state curriculum, whether they would be worthy of exploring with students, and finally, whether students are capable of developing these desired understandings. Around the middle of the semester students will hand in the first draft of their unit understanding goals. Many will be targeted to understanding specific historical episodes (e.g., World War I) but lack linkages to necessary concepts required to understand the events (e.g., nation-state system, militarism, balance of power). Others will foreground conceptual knowledge (e.g., the study of imperialism) and omit linkages to specific historical events or case studies. These two

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types of understanding goals have their roots in differences between inductive and deductive approaches to producing knowledge. In the case of inductive-type unit understanding goals that seek to understand specific historical cases, the frameworks emphasize scaffolding of disciplinary concepts as heuristic resources of understanding. In the deductive-type understanding goals, it advocates that students’ learning take the form of an inquiry guided by “essential questions”; that is, questions that point to the targeted deep understandings and calls for the planning of activities which will allow students’ discovery of the targeted understandings. Students revise their understanding goals after receiving feedback from myself and other students. Both frameworks enlist the tension between induction and deduction by advocating the construction of multiple unit curricula that build students’ understandings of abstract concepts by comparison of topics across units. For example, Wiggins and McTighe (2005) suggest as an “overarching understanding” the idea, “A president is not above the law” and as a specific instance of that idea, the “topical understanding” “Watergate was a major constitutional crisis…” (p. 131). Presumably one would need to study other notable displays of presidential power for students to be able to arrive at this overarching understanding. This multiunit structure provides a mechanism for the consideration of the tensions inherent in understanding unique events as exemplars of historical patterns or recurrent social issues. It also allows teachers to scaffold social science concepts as heuristic devices, facilitating interdisciplinary conceptual pragmatism. In spite of its essential importance for curriculum design, because of its complexity, multiunit coordination is a feature that ought to be introduced in the second semester of a methods course. Novices have enough difficulty aligning understanding goals with appropriate performance tasks, a focus of first semester learning. Tensions A significant tension with backwards design will be the danger of dogmatism. As is evident from the example of an overarching understanding, one fears understanding goals will be presented as objective truths, rather than axes of contention. To engage students and allow for authentic learning rather than mere transmission, understanding goals must allow for consideration of both sides of a story. One fears that schools will use the frame to impose understanding goals, rather than to encourage reflection and debate. The developers of backwards design deserve enormous credit for creating frames that enable teachers to incorporate into their pedagogy understanding and transfer. In so doing they have provided a means to eliminate some of the “endemic uncertainty” which has plagued the teaching profession (Lortie, 1975). They have also developed a means of improving pedagogy that does not rely upon the deskilling or teacher proofing, but instead calls for just the opposite. References Blythe, T. (1997) The teaching for understanding guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Finn, P. J. (1999) Literacy with an attitude. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Lortie, D. C. (1975) Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005) Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Wiske, M. S. (Ed.). (1998) Teaching for understanding. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Wiske, M. S., Hammerness, K., & Wilson, D. G. (1998). How do teachers learn to teach for understanding. In M. S. Wiske (Ed.), Teaching for understanding (pp. 87–121). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

77 Teaching Students to Use the Inquiry Method James M. Hartwick

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, 7-12 NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change), IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 2 (Student Learning), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning Instruction) Topics: inquiry, instructional strategies, critical thinking, primary sources, historical thinking, curriculum planning, pictures/photographs, citizenship, current events, integrated curriculum, graphic organizers Like many of the authors in section 1 of this book, my social studies methods course begins with an examination of various approaches to teaching and learning social studies, including the citizenship/cultural transmission, social science (Barr, Barth, & Shermis, 1977), social issues (Evans, Newmann, & Saxe, 1996), and transformative multicultural (Banks, 1995) approaches. Throughout the course, I expose my students to each of these social studies traditions and offer them experiences with lessons derived from each. In this chapter, I present a particular form of the inquiry method1 that I use to immerse my methods students in the social science tradition. According to Barr, Barth, and Shermis, “…the purpose of the Social Science Tradition is the acquisition of the knowledge-gathering skills of social scientists, the ultimate end of which is enhanced citizenship” (1977, p. 62). By engaging in inquiry and developing an extensive inquiry lesson, my students learn how to actively engage their high school or middle school students in the disciplinary process (e.g., the historical method), inherent to whatever social science discipline they might teach. Throughout my course, I consciously attempt to (1) combat the apprenticeship of observation (Kennedy, 1997; Lortie, 1975); (2) cultivate a richer disciplinary understanding among my methods students (Yeager & Wilson, 1997); and (3) promote progressive, actively engaging, and content-rich instruction (National Council for the Social Studies, n.d.; Yeager & Wilson, 1997). One means of accomplishing these goals is for me to demonstrate an inquiry lesson to my students and require them to develop their own extensive inquiry lesson plans. I typically spend approximately 3 to 5 hours of class time introducing the concept of inquiry, engaging students in the demonstration lesson, debriefing it, and explaining the assignment. My methods students, who are generally seniors in college or already hold a degree, typically report that they have never experienced anything like the inquiry method. In keeping with constructivist theory (Piaget, 1970; Vygotsky, 1962), I begin by having students identify what they already know about inquiry and help them build on this knowledge. With a little encouragement, 337

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students usually realize that the term inquiry means a systematic search for truth, to examine, to explore, to research, or to investigate a topic or question. After students have articulated a basic understanding of the concept of inquiry, I ask them to recall how scientists systematically investigate a topic. With some prompting, my students define the scientific method, and with some further assistance they are usually able to recall the steps involved. I then help them realize that each discipline uses some form of this systematic rational process. For example, while the process is similar to inquiry in the sciences, when engaging in historical inquiry, rather than conducting extensive observations and experiments, one evaluates and interprets primary and secondary sources. Ultimately, historians, or students engaged in discerning an answer to a legitimate historical question, inquire into the “human story” (Turner & Akin, 1997). In preparation for class, students read about the theory and review exemplary lessons. Students read Historical Inquiry (Turner & Akin, 1997) and Teaching the Inquiry Process and Making the Inquiry Process Vivid, a handout created by Walter Parker. In addition, students review a series of articles addressing the Inquiry Method (Hartwick et al., 2007a, 2007b, 2007c). One of these articles features an exemplary inquiry lesson plan focusing on the question: “Why Did the United States Invade Iraq in 2003?” (Hartwick et al., 2007c). Students also examine a number of model inquiry lessons developed by former methods students. These may be downloaded from http://academics.uww.edu/cni/ inquiry/index.html. Now that students are familiar with the general concept of inquiry, I model an inquiry lesson for my students. This lesson gives students first-hand experience with the model, helping them to empathize with what their own students might encounter when they use inquiry in the classroom. While one could use a variety of lessons from each of the social studies disciplines to demonstrate the inquiry model, one lesson that my students seem to enjoy explores the historical question: Why did the Titanic tragedy occur?2 Before beginning the demonstration lesson, I ask my students to (1) pretend that they are high school or middle school students and that I am their teacher, and (2) complete a T-chart during the lesson, noting what I do as the teacher on one side of the chart and recording what they are asked to do as a class on the other. During the ensuing debrief of the lesson, the T-chart helps students identify the instructional steps inherent in the model and to notice the means by which the teacher facilitates student learning. These steps and teacher facilitation moves will be elaborated further in “The Inquiry Lesson Assignment” section below. Throughout the lesson, I occasionally step out of the role of high school or middle school teacher to highlight a choice or a procedure, thus, helping students understand the complexity and nuance of facilitating the inquiry method. Though generally somewhat skeptical when I begin, after a short time, students lose themselves in the lesson, and by the end of the debrief, most are excited by the educational possibilities of the inquiry method. Following the demonstration lesson and prior to assigning students to develop an inquiry lesson of their own, I conduct a detailed debrief of the inquiry method. We first deconstruct the lesson, considering carefully the steps involved in implementing the model. Second, I ask my methods students to review and reflect on the specific actions unique to the teacher’s role during inquiry lesson. Depending on the class, I might prompt students to think more deeply about how the teacher facilitates the inquiry method by asking the following questions. How did I introduce the model? What resources did I use? Why? How did I carry out each of the steps in the inquiry method? How were transitions managed? What did I do to encourage students to participate and to facilitate discussion? How did I encourage students to interpret the data, and

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highlight, if not promote, disagreement? How did I close the lesson? And, how could the teacher assess student learning? After students are comfortable with the basic inquiry procedures and the teacher’s role in facilitating the lesson, I ask them, “What knowledge, skills, and dispositions does the inquiry approach promote that make it appropriate for cultivating competent and engaged democratic citizens for a diverse and interdependent world?” Most of my students are insightful about how the inquiry method supports this primary mission of social studies. Over the years, students have commented on things such as how the inquiry method (1) cultivates information literacy skills such as recognizing perspective, and questioning and interpreting primary and secondary sources; (2) gives students practice in systematically examining, exploring, and investigating disciplinary questions; (3) teaches thoughtful deliberation and a systematic approach to problem solving; (4) cultivates a critical perspective and promotes higher order thinking; (5) prepares students to avoid jumping to conclusions by evaluating evidence; and (6) fosters a willingness to change their minds in light of new information. Following the inquiry demonstration lesson and debrief, my methods students develop a detailed inquiry lesson plan. It is not uncommon for these lessons to be in excess of 20 pages in length. Students wrestle with generating an important disciplinary question for their lessons. They struggle to find an appropriate variety of data sets, consisting of both primary and secondary sources, written and visual/auditory sources, and data that will promote meaningful classroom discussions. Students regularly express their surprise at how difficult and time consuming it is to develop an inquiry lesson. At the same time, they generally express how proud they are of their inquiry lessons, how much they learned about the content and the nature of their discipline, and how excited they are to use this content-rich, student-centered approach with their students. The Inquiry Lesson Assignment Below I describe the process that I use with my own students to teach them to prepare for their future classrooms. Since in effect, inquiry involves immersing students in the process of the social science discipline (e.g., history, political science, geography, economics, psychology, sociology, etc.), the following disciplinary questions should undergird, inform, and guide any inquiry lesson: (1) What kinds of questions do researchers in the discipline investigate? (2) What process would they use to conduct the investigation? (3) What kinds of evidence would they find compelling? When they are planning an inquiry lesson, I encourage my methods students to consider the following points. • Generate a focus question for your inquiry lesson. • List several possible hypotheses or educated guesses that are potential responses to the focus question. • What will your students know and be able to do as a result of engaging in this inquiry lesson? • Which academic standards (e.g., various state or national academic standards for social studies) will the lesson address? • What kinds of data (i.e., primary and secondary sources) will help students to evaluate the hypotheses identified above (consider confirming and disconfirming evidence)? • How much class time can you devote to an inquiry topic? An inquiry lesson generally takes at least 3 to 5 hours of class time to complete.

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Begin with a Hook to Inspire, Engage, and Prepare Students for the Inquiry An important early decision in developing an inquiry lesson is choosing a brief (5 to 15 minute) “hook” activity. The hook consists of some brief, engaging learning activity designed to interest and inspire students. In the inquiry method, the hook should also provide relevant information from which students can develop reasonable hypotheses. A typical hook may include such things as a photograph, a short video clip, an excerpt from a speech, an interesting quote, or a brief simulation. If necessary, present a limited amount of background information just prior to or immediately following the “hook” to help orient students to the issue, so that they are prepared to begin their exploration. Students should have enough general knowledge of the topic to generate an educated guess regarding the focus question. The teacher should be careful not to overwhelm students with content delivery, because few things will undermine the spirit of inquiry more than an inordinate amount of “background information.” Develop and Present the Disciplinary Focus Question The focus question should be listed publicly so that students can refer to it throughout the lesson. The entire lesson is organized around a legitimate disciplinary question, in which multiple possible answers exist that could be debated by experts in the field. A good question requires the examination and interpretation of primary and secondary sources. While there is no magic formula for these inquiry questions, typically they are causal in nature. For instance: Why did the United States Civil War occur? is an appropriate causal question. While many textbooks present the causes of the Civil War as if they have been completely determined, in reality historians continue to debate them. A more current and controversial inquiry question is: Why did the United States Invade Iraq in 2003? This question remains contentious in the public square, and therefore, an inquiry lesson addressing this issue serves as a wonderful opportunity to engage students in an examination of an important current event. Another good vein for inquiry questions is counterintuitive events. For example: Why did slavery survive the American Revolution? Why did it take so long for women to receive the right to vote? These events are surprising since given the sentiments expressed in the Declaration of Independence one could reasonably expect that slavery would be outlawed following the Revolution and women would receive the right to vote much earlier in American history, or at least that they would receive it prior to former slaves. However, as we all know, the tragedy of slavery continued for many more years and nationally, women did not receive the right to vote until 1919. Why? One of the exciting things about the study of history is that it is filled with examples of the unlikely and the unexpected. Generate Hypotheses Following the “hook,” the posting of the inquiry question, and if necessary additional basic background knowledge, direct students to write down one or more hypotheses or educated guesses of their own regarding the inquiry question. Often it is advisable to provide students with a worksheet to guide the process of hypothesis generation and evaluation. Such a hypothesis/evidence tracking sheet could be divided into three columns, listing the hypotheses in one column, a narrow column for a plus or minus sign in the next column, and with generous space left for both supporting or undermining evidence in the third column.

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While an inquiry lesson could be accomplished by having students work individually and then periodically holding class discussions of individual students’ ideas, I recommend that teachers place students in small groups of three to six to generate and share new hypotheses. Allowing students to share and prepare in smaller groups prior to the full class discussion not only allows groups to eliminate redundant hypotheses before sharing them with the class, but also tends to increase the pervasiveness of student participation and enhances the quality of their responses. After groups have had time to generate new hypotheses and combine similar hypotheses, each group shares their hypotheses with the class while the teacher or a student volunteer publicly records them. Meanwhile, the students in the class should record the class hypotheses for later evaluation. Throughout the lesson, students are always welcome to add new hypotheses to their list and to the class list. Evaluating Hypotheses with Data The teacher locates and provides students with pertinent evidence, or data sets, to enable students to evaluate the merits of various hypotheses. I generally teach my methods students search strategies and how to use the Internet to find appropriate primary and secondary sources to use as data. The data sets should provide students with a variety of perspectives and should address the most likely hypotheses that students will generate. Periodically the teacher reminds students to carefully and methodically analyze, interpret, and evaluate each data set. Data sets should consist of primary and secondary sources, which the teacher may need to edit or abbreviate. In general, written data sets should be approximately a page in length, taking no more than a few minutes to read. It is preferable to have multiple forms of data, including written, visual, and/or auditory sources. Inconsistencies in the evidence from various data sets encourage students to evaluate the perspectives and the sources. Depending on the inquiry question, the lesson objectives, and the time available for the lesson, the number of discrete data sets may vary, but generally, five to eight data sets should suffice. In addition, occasionally the teacher may ask students to conduct further individual or group research on the issue. Initially, only one data set should be given to groups. These may be read or viewed by the class as a whole or simply provided to each group to evaluate. As students get more familiar with the data and the hypothesis evaluation processes, larger chunks of data may be provided for each round of analysis. However, be careful not to overwhelm students with too much data, as the ensuing discussion and evaluation will likely lose focus. After the data set has been carefully examined, each group discusses which hypotheses the evidence supports and which it undermines. When the groups are ready, the teacher facilitates a class discussion. The instructor should: (1) ask students to elaborate on exactly how the data supports or undermines a particular hypothesis; (2) encourage discussion and disagreement; and (3) highlight divergent interpretations of the data. The teacher seeks opportunities to help students understand that disagreements often stem from valuing one source or perspective over another or from different interpretations of the evidence. These teachable moments speak to the nature of evidence and lie at the heart of disciplinary thinking. The teacher or a student volunteer maintains a public record—perhaps on an overhead—of the hypothesis/evidence tracking sheet, the evaluation of each hypothesis. Students should individually make a similar record. After completing this round of hypothesis evaluations, the teacher asks for and records any new hypotheses. This process is repeated for each new round of data set and hypothesis evaluation.

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Conclusion and Debriefing Following all the data and hypotheses evaluations and class discussions, each student uses evidence to generate a well-supported, carefully argued, yet tentative, conclusion. Often I ask students to write a short essay addressing the inquiry question, arguing for one or more of the hypotheses. It is important to impress on students that in observance of the ongoing discovery of new knowledge and new data, they should view their conclusions as tentative. In fact, often instructors choose to provide students with an additional disconfirming data set after students have communicated their well-supported tentative conclusions. This new data set challenges students to think more deeply about the issues, and encourages them to continue to ponder the issue, cultivating a spirit of openness or continued inquiry. Finally, the teacher facilitates an informal debrief of the lesson, examining how well students engaged in the model, as well as what students learned about the inquiry topic and the nature of the discipline. Assessment Student learning may be assessed in many ways. Often the teacher will assign and evaluate student essays addressing the inquiry question by looking at the (1) logic and clarity of the argument; (2) selection and use of evidence in support of the argument; and (3) effectiveness of the language use. In other words, is the argument forceful and convincing? In addition, if the teacher provides individual hypothesis/evidence tracking sheets, he or she may include them in the overall appraisal of student work. Depending on whether or not students are expected to conduct supplementary research, the quality and quantity of their research may also be judged. Finally, the teacher may assess, either formally or informally, student participation. The inquiry approach has the potential to rekindle the joy of learning, and for that matter, teaching. Just before concluding the portion of my methods course devoted to the inquiry method, I facilitate a discussion of how to empower high school and middle school students to address their own questions; thereby, preparing them to be lifelong learners. Furthermore, we discuss how inquiry is much more than merely a method of teaching; it is an educational philosophy, where teachers use questions and focused explorations to cultivate their students’ innate sense of curiosity and wonder. Note 1. There are a variety of approaches to inquiry. This chapter will build on and elaborate on one approach described by Parker & Jarolimek (1997). Some of the other approaches to inquiry are detailed in Instruction: A Models Approach (Gunter, Estes, & Mintz, 2007). These include: The Shuman Inquiry Model, the WebQuest Model of Inquiry, and the Problem Based Learning Model. 2. This lesson is based on a lesson created by Jack Sheridan, Bob Howard, and Walter Parker. I originally observed Dr. Diana Hess of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a master social studies educator, teach a variant of this Titanic Inquiry lesson. A similar, elementary level Titanic Inquiry lesson can be found in: Social Studies in Elementary Education (10th ed.) by W. C. Parker and J. Jarolimek (1997, pp. 205–206).

References Banks, J. A. (1995). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions, and practice. In J. A. Banks & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 3–49). New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan. Barr, R. D., Barth, J. L., & Shermis, S. S. (1977). Defining the social studies (Bulletin No. 51). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies.

Teaching Students to Use the Inquiry Method • 343 Evans, R., Neuman, F., & Saxe, D. W. (1996). Defining issues-centered education. In R. Evans & D. W. Saxe (Eds.), Handbook on teaching social issues (pp. 2–5). Washington, DC: National Council for Social Studies. Kennedy, M. M. (1997). Defining an ideal teacher education program. http://www.msu.edu/user/mkennedy/publications/ValueTE.html Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. National Council for the Social Studies. (n.d.). A vision of powerful teaching and learning in the Social Studies: Building social understanding and civic efficacy. Retrieved July 14, 2008, from http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/ powerful/ Piaget, J. (1970). Science of education and the psychology of the child (D. Coltman, Trans.). New York: Orion. Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Yeager, E. A., & Wilson, E. K. (1997). Teaching historical thinking in the social studies methods course: A case study. The Social Studies, 88(3), 121–126.

Teaching Resources Gunter, M. A., Estes, T. H., & Mintz, S. L. (2007). Instruction: A models approach (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. Hartwick, J., Austin, L., Clark, C., Clowes, J., Gamble, M., Harris, M., et al. (2007a). Introduction to the inquiry method for the teaching and learning of social studies. The Journal, 7(1), 1. Hartwick, J., Austin, L., Clark, C., Clowes, J., Gamble, M., Harris, M., et al. (2007b). Procedure for conducting inquiry in social studies. The Journal, 7(1), 2–3. Hartwick, J., Austin, L., Clark, C., Clowes, J., Gamble, M., Harris, M., et al. (2007c). Why did the United States invade Iraq in 2003? An exemplary inquiry lesson plan. The Journal, 7(1), 4–18. Parker, W. (n.d.). Teaching the inquiry process and making the inquiry process vivid. (handout) Parker, W. C., & Jarolimek, J. (1997). Social studies in elementary education (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: PrenticeHall. Turner, M. I., & Akin, M. (1997). Historical inquiry. In A. Costa & R. Liebmann (Eds.), Envisioning process as content: Toward a renaissance curriculum (pp. 185–198). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

78 Comparing Visions Do Our State Standards Align with the National Standards? Barbara Foulks Boyd

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary NCSS Standards: 1 through 10 inclusive INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: history, geography, economics, civics, standards, student-centered, critical thinking, collaboration, controversial issues, graphic organizers, technology/Internet, cooperative learning, cultural context This lesson or learning activity provides an opportunity for preservice teachers to critically examine their state curriculum requirements against the national curriculum standards. I use this assignment with elementary and early childhood preservice teachers at a midsize state university, but it can be used in secondary and higher education multicultural courses with James Banks or other multicultural curriculum books. In addition, according to the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS, 2002), there are five principles all teachers should know and be able to teach that are the “essential characteristics of powerful social studies” (p. 12). Throughout this chapter, these principles are quoted and referenced. Preservice teachers are usually familiar with their state’s curriculum guidelines because they are developing lesson plans aligned with those guidelines, which are required to be listed on each lesson plan. However, when preservice teachers are so focused on state curriculum, it is difficult for them to recognize the importance of the NCSS and the standards published by this national professional organization. Therefore, I have the preservice teachers take what they know (their state standards) and compare them to the thematic framework developed by the NCSS. The NCSS identifies 10 themes that provide the framework for an effective social studies program: • • • • • • • • • •

Culture Time, Continuity, and Change People, Places, and Environment Individual Development and Identity Individuals, Groups, and Institutions Power, Authority, and Governance Production, Distribution, and Consumption Science, Technology, and Society Global Connections Civic Ideals and Practices 344

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This lesson allows preservice teachers to associate their grade-level state social studies standards and essential knowledge and skills—VA history, geography, economics, and civics (Virginia Department of Education, 2007) understanding and experience, with their new knowledge of the NCSS thematic strands. I attempt to use constructivist strategies in my teaching as much as possible. This is a constructivist lesson which uses an intellectual process, whereby preservice teachers learn by fitting new ideas together with ideas they have already known from previous experience. Each individual learns in his or her own unique ways. Each preservice teacher’s previous understanding is unique and the intellectual process he or she uses to make the connections is unique as well, so the construction is personally unique to each individual. My teaching style is relaxed, and I allow preservice teachers to bring up other related educational issues, which I willingly take time in class to address. I believe this begins to provide a safe environment to raise and discuss controversial issues. “Few would dispute the notion that all students have the right to attend school in an environment where they feel safe, supported, and able to learn to their full potential” (Sadowski, 2006, p. 3). Most issues discussed have no one right answer. I try to help preservice teachers see other perspectives in order to broaden their points of view. It is helpful to identify and provide a framework for thinking about critical issues and situations related to the topic being studied. Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are meaningful. Instruction emphasizes depth of development of important ideas within appropriate breadth of topic coverage and focuses on teaching these important ideas for understanding…and application. Meaningful learning activities and assessment strategies focus students’ attention on the most important ideas embedded in what they are learning. (National Council for the Social Studies, 2002, p. 12) For this lesson, I provide a structured form with the NCSS themes across the top, and a place for the state grade level standards to be placed along the vertical axis. This provides the content focus for the first part of the lesson, when the preservice teachers work in pairs, according to the grade level of their internship placement. The goal or purpose of the lesson is for preservice teachers to analyze the degree of alignment between their state social studies curriculum and the national social studies thematic strands. With this in-class assignment, I provide the preservice teachers with a main question, behavioral objectives, a grade-level alignment matrix to be completed by groups of two or three, and Web sites for information. The small groups then complete a master matrix visible to the whole class, and the large group has a guided discussion on analyses of the findings, the degree of their vertical and horizontal alignment, and the educational implications of state or national social studies standards. Both horizontal and vertical alignment “are equally important…to align instruction and expectations vertically across grade levels, thereby providing a continuum of learning” (Sadowski, 2006, p. 6). The Teaching I begin with posing this question to preservice teachers (I also write the question on the board so they may refer to it throughout the duration of the lesson):

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To what degree do our state history/social science standards align with the national curriculum standard for social studies thematic strands? Each lesson I prepare at the university level is written out in lesson plan format, with all parts, to model for our preservice teachers. The three cognitive behavioral objectives of this lesson are: 1. Preservice teachers will state three ways that their state curriculum is similar to the national curriculum. 2. Preservice teachers will state three ways that their state curriculum is different from the national curriculum. 3. Preservice teachers will state one reason why they think focus/emphasis in the social studies curriculum of some states may differ from the national curriculum. Behavioral objectives provide a guide for the lesson and direct the teacher/instructor how to assess if learning has occurred. In this era of high-stakes accountability, behavioral objectives and learning assessment are critical for successful educators. I then ask the preservice teachers to partner with someone interning at the same grade level, and locate their state social science/history curriculum standards (Virginia Standards of Learning, 2007) including the expanded scope and sequence (additional information provided by our state to guide teachers’ instruction). They may have this information either on paper, disk, computer, or online. I ask if anyone has heard of NCSS. Since I work with elementary (K-6) and pre-K-3 preservice teachers, and seldom has anyone in class heard of the organization. Therefore, I proceed to tell them, NCSS (I even write it on the board) is the same type of organization as the National Association for Young Children and the Association for Childhood Education International (preservice teachers are already familiar with these two professional organizations). The National Council for the Social Studies is the professional organization that leads the nation for social studies education. They are requested to go to the NCSS Web site: http://www.socialstudies.org and click on Standards and Position Statements on the toolbar at the top. When they scroll down they find “10 Thematic Strands in the Curriculum Standards for the Social Studies,” beginning with Culture and ending with Civic Ideals and Practices. We take time to read the overviews and briefly discuss each of the 10 thematic strands. I pass a blank form to each grade level group that looks like the one below, except not filled out, and ask each group to fill it out according to their internship grade level (as these are the state standards they are very familiar with). After reading and analyzing the National Social Studies Ten Thematic Strands, each partner group fills in the chart commenting on the alignment between their grade level state curriculum standards (Virginia, Standards of Learning, 2007) and the NCSS National Standards in each box (cell). This integrative task makes effective use of technology. I remind them to think about Virginia’s “essential knowledge and skills” in the expanded scope and sequence for each Standard of Learning, as these specifically identify the state determined knowledge and skills to be taught. They are to write one of the following in each box as to the degree of alignment (I also write the scale on the board): none

little

some (about half)

most

full

Notice on the recording form, one or two terms are listed. Those familiar with Virginia’s Standards of Learning (2007), for example, know that the “Contributions of Americans” specify which

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categories of Americans are to be studied, and which particular facts about them are considered important for Virginia state tests. Currently, the Virginia social studies curriculum is probably one of the more prescribed curricula among the states, with many facts to be memorized. This is an additional reason that Virginia preservice teachers, and those in some other states, many of whom learned history and social studies as a series of facts, need to understand and appreciate the National Council for the Social Studies and the “National Social Studies Ten Thematic Strands” as resources for a more conceptual approach. During this small-group work on the grade level matrices, I walk around and listen in on the discussions and decisions as they fill in their grade level charts. This gives me information on participation, how the preservice teachers are approaching the task, and their depth of analyses. As these preservice teachers will be pre-K-3 and elementary generalists, I also find out who would like to continue with discussion, who is excited about the NCSS, and those whose interests lie elsewhere. When all groups are done, we have each group report, beginning with pre-K and moving up the grades. As we progress, we develop a class chart on the board, noting the degree of correlation at different grade levels and on various subtopics—history, geography, economics, and civics, and their subtopics. This chart provides a visual of a five-grade continuum (pre-K-3) of both a horizontal and vertical alignment of our state social studies standards compared against the national social studies standards. Sadowski (2006) points out the importance of both vertical and horizontal alignment, and the NCSS (2002) states, “Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are integrative” (p. 12). This visual chart allows the preservice teachers to examine the interconnectedness of the knowledge, skills, beliefs, values, and attitudes imparted by their state compared to those imparted by the NCSS. The alignments, discrepancies, gaps, and confusions the preservice teachers have determined through their analyses are noted. We then have a class discussion as to: 1. What the five-grade continuum shows in terms of inconsistencies, gaps, or discrepancies. 2. Why their state standards and emphases differ so significantly from the NCSS thematic strands. 3. What impact the above two points have on children’s learning of the social sciences. The continuing class discussion, initiated by preservice teachers, inevitably evolves into how different states have different curriculum standards. Some preservice teachers want to teach in other states, and have been investigating other state standards, or know someone who is teaching in another state, and raise the issue of differing curriculum standards. Throughout our class analyses and discussions, preservice teachers bring up the following issues and how they may affect social studies curriculum standards at the national or state level: • • • • •

global/broad versus local/narrow focus, focus on information/facts or major concepts, political climate and power, impact of local control on state standards, and state control versus federal control.

It is apparent this discussion develops significance for the preservice teachers. “Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are values-based. Social studies content invariably involves the examination and understanding of values—one’s own and those of others—as values

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are expressed in points of view, beliefs, policies, actions, or inactions” (National Council for the Social Studies, 2002, p. 13). Preservice teachers are actively learning, analyzing, synthesizing, judging, reflecting, and developing new perspectives. Assessment of preservice teacher learning is critical in this age of high-stakes accountability. “Assessments are appropriate for the standards they are meant to address; the instruments assess meaningful elements of content, cognitive demands, and skill requirements at challenging levels for candidates” (Elliott, 2004, p. ii). The assessment for this lesson is embedded in the learning activity; requires critical analysis skills; and collaboration among peers. “The phrase ‘if it isn’t tested, it isn’t taught’ resonates in the American educational community, with significant implications for educational practices and outcomes” (National Council for the Social Studies, 2007). At a minimum, each behavioral objective must be met. I obtain a lot of assessment information/ data while walking around and listening in during small-group work. I usually hear comments from individual preservice teachers on ways the state curriculum is similar to and different from the national curriculum standards. Additional assessment data is obtained during the large group discussion, when the vertical and horizontal alignments across seven grade levels are discussed; and the issues regarding different states and different standards are raised. As the preservice teachers engage in these discussions and the evolved subtopics, their perspectives broaden, and they engage in critical pedagogy (Shor, 1992). In an open, democratic environment, the preservice teachers are free to use their “voice” to analyze and question learning, to engage in critical thinking, and to examine issues of political educational dominance through dialogue. I am able to moderate the discussion by keeping it impersonal, encouraging all to participate, and keeping it moving to different subtopics. For the closure of the lesson, I refer back to our original question: To what degree do our state history/social science standards align with the national curriculum standards for social studies thematic strands? I then ask preservice teachers to provide a brief summary. If preservice teachers do not review the important points, I ask questions to help them remember horizontal and vertical alignment, the different perspectives on the nature and purposes of social studies, the influences on social studies, and how states differ. At the end, I bring our focus back to NCSS and its standards because it is the national professional organization and an excellent resource for those who are teaching social studies. I encourage the preservice teachers to think about how NCSS standards can both help them understand the nature of the social studies and its crucial concepts such as interdependence, power, and authority. We discuss how teachers should use these concepts along with more information-oriented state standards to scaffold children’s learning in lessons and in units. The details in Virginia and other state standards are often more suitable for lessons or teaching units, while the broader ideas in NCSS standards can help frame the bigger units or concepts. For a discussion of how to approach major social studies concepts, see chapter 9 in this volume. It is also important for preservice teachers to think about these standards in relationship to how they enable or restrict their personal philosophies of social studies teaching. For an elaboration on these philosophies see part I of this volume. Reflections This lesson is more effective when done in the classroom as a learning activity with a partner, than it is when done alone. When I initially asked for it to be done as a homework assignment, most preservice teachers completed it with superficial reading of National Curriculum Standards for

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Social Studies Thematic Strands and the state social studies/history curriculum standards. The preservice teachers would quickly fill in the chart, without giving it much thought. In the classroom, however, when completed as a small-group activity, preservice teachers discuss the issues with each other, encountering differing opinions and perspectives until they come to a consensus regarding each box (cell) in the table. “Social studies teaching and learning are powerful when they are challenging. Students are expected to strive to accomplish the instructional goals, both as individuals and group members” (National Council for the Social Studies, 2002, p. 13). The small-group research and discussion process on the same concepts necessitates a more thorough critical and in-depth analysis of national and state curriculum standards, thereby enhancing cognitive skills and critical analysis skills. It is during the large-group discussion that preservice teachers begin to really think about and question the validity of standards. The “interactive discourse facilitates the construction of meaning required to develop important social understanding” (NCSS, 2002, p. 13) and facilitates preservice teachers’ active construction of new understandings. Sometimes, the organization and validity of standards for other content disciplines arises. Also the consideration of interdisciplinary teaching and learning comes up along with discussion of how to accomplish that with prescribed curriculum. Preservice teachers struggle to mesh and merge what they know about child development, best practices, high-stakes testing, state and national social studies standards, and what they are experiencing in their internships. They have not yet learned that these varied elements do not always mesh and merge. References Elliott, E. (2004). Assessing education candidate performance: A look at changing practices. Washington, DC: National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. National Council for the Social Studies. (2002). National standards for social studies teachers (Rev. ed.). Silver Spring, MD: Author. National Council for the Social Studies. (2007). Social studies in the era of no child left behind. Silver Spring, MD: Author. Sadowski, M. (2006). Core knowledge for PK-3 teaching: Ten components of effective instruction. New York: Foundation for Child Development. Shor, I. (1992) Empowering education: Critical teaching for social change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Virginia Department of Education. (2007). Standards of learning. Richmond, VA: Author.

Teaching Resources Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. Vol. 2. Thematic strands. (2008). http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/ strands/ Virginia Department of Education. (2006). History and social science standards of learning: Curriculum framework— Essential knowledge, skills, and understandings. Richmond, VA: Author. Virginia Department of Education. (2007). Virginia’s foundation blocks for early learning: Standards for literacy, mathematics, science, and history and social science, physical and motor development, personal and social development. Richmond, VA: Author.

79 Reflections on Learners and Learning in Early Field Experiences for Secondary Social Studies Susan B. Serota and Linda Bennett

Context: TE Secondary, University NCSS Standards: IV (Individual Development and Identity), V (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 2 (Student Learning), 3 (Diverse Learners), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: history, geography, civics, economics, community-based learning, service-learning, instructional strategies, teacher reflection, pictures/photographs, curriculum planning It can be said that teacher education students often refer to their field practices, or “practicum” experiences, as where they learn the nuts and bolts of their future profession (Segall, 2002). It is indeed these onsite practices (Britzman, 1991; Ginsburg, 1988) that many future educators deem the central ingredient in preparing them for the realities of the world of classroom instruction. Teacher candidates try out teaching strategies and make the transition from theory to practice during experiences where they learn the practice of teaching (Halvorsen, 2006). The early field experiences for teacher candidates can link knowledge about adolescent development and social studies content to the role of the social studies teacher. For example, through practical experiences in the field, teacher candidates connect knowledge about adolescents and make practical applications in one-on-one tutoring to meet the diverse needs of the learner. In addition, teacher candidates can share their expertise in social studies with students who may be struggling with the content. A combination of both theory and practice is an essential ingredient in early field-based opportunities for teacher candidates in social studies education at the University of MissouriColumbia. Preservice teachers enroll in a field experience during the first semester of their junior year, 2 hours per week for a total of 6 weeks. The field experience is the learning laboratory of a local high school, which is intended to help reduce the school’s dropout rates. By tutoring at-risk high school students, teacher candidates learn strategies to meet the needs of diverse populations and students who may not have an interest or desire to learn social studies. The teacher candidates provide students with study skill strategies, help them to organize their classes, and work with social studies teachers and teachers in the learning laboratory to ensure that these atrisk students make progress. The field experience assignments are designed to help the teacher candidate understand low academically motivated students and develop specific instructional strategies to meet their needs. 350

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Purposes and Implementation of the Assignment In this program, the teacher candidates write one reflective journal per week about the early field experience. The journaling format allows students a one-on-one opportunity with the universitybased instructor to reveal their learning processes from work in the field (Serota, 2004). Reflective practitioners who process their thoughts through this avenue also benefit when the method of reflection is highly individualized (Reed & Bergemann, 2005). The teacher candidates are required to use at least three different journaling formats. The teacher candidates are encouraged to write about instructional strategies for social studies and how to motivate the learner. Preservice teachers are expected to submit six journal responses for 15 points each for a total of 90 points in this component of the course evaluation. The following is the suggested list of format options for the reflective journal assignment: 1. Submit a one-page journal entry (narrative). 2. Create a newsletter using your choice of publishing software for the parents of the students you are working with. 3. Create a poem (include graphics) detailing your experiences. 4. Create a concept web using Inspiration software about the content your students are studying. Example: design a concept web to reflect a lesson on the Great Depression from a U.S. history class unit the students are working on. 5. Write a letter to your future students describing how your preservice teaching experience went this week or your thoughts about teaching social studies. Example: Do you picture yourself teaching a sociology course, an economics course? Do you feel you would be ready to teach the geography course you witnessed this week? 6. Design and send a series of postcards to our class via e-mail describing your teaching experiences. 7. Use a paint program or physically doodle, scribble, draw, do graffiti, or cut and paste from online newspapers/magazines a message that relates to your experience. 8. Design a collage (e.g., digital images or by hand) to describe what is occurring in your classroom setting. Example: Create a collage using headlines from current magazine or newspapers that depict various pop culture influences on teenagers in today’s society. The teacher candidates receive the following questions to guide their reflections while teaching/observing. The questions help teacher candidates focus on meeting the needs of the diverse learners. Some possible questions include: What went well today? What surprised you? Did you vary from your plan based on your student(s) reactions/performance? What did you learn about your students’ ability? What social studies subjects to you enjoy the most? What subjects do you struggle with? What did you learn about diversity today? What are the learning styles you witnessed today? What approach did you take when you worked with student(s)? What was your student’s motivational level this week? How does the teaching environment support/hinder learning in this setting? Teacher Candidates’ Reflections Teacher candidates express unique insight into their setting through journaling opportunities

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such as those described above. These sample reflective journal entries represent how the teacher candidates grew to understand the learner and also grew into the role of professional. Lucy describes how she made notes to understand better why students get so frustrated. She relates back to her own frustrations as a student and past ineffective ways of dealing with students during tutorials. Lucy adjusts accordingly: “she shows him the correct answers. ‘How do you get to this point?’ She doesn’t just show him the answers, she guides him” (Serota, 2004, Field Notes, November 3). One teacher candidate, who is working with academically at-risk students, uses journaling to discuss motivating students in this manner: Near the completion of his field work, David relays through journaling that the experience reinforced his positive attributes in working with students at the setting, and he has also come to the realization that finding connections to the material with this population of students is key in motivating them to complete their work. He says that he feels strongly that the material, especially in social studies disciplines, should relate to the students’ own lives if there is to be success in the learning process. (Serota, 2004, p. 87) Another teacher candidate describes a revelation she had during the course of the 6-week field experience. This involved what she learned about student attitudes, in general, with regard to their coursework. According to Janette—who emphasizes that she especially loves history, geography, and sociology—many students didn’t seem to care at all how they did in school, let alone feel passionately about the subject matter. “I think I always thought that everyone had a desire to do well in school. However, some of these students maybe think there is no way they can do well so they just give up” (Serota, 2004, p. 66). Finally, each teacher candidate expresses that they had learned alongside the students. For example, through his poetry, Chad shares how he learned from the students as much as they learned from him. You did it again, You taught me a lesson. Aren’t you the ones Doing the learning? (Serota & Bennett, 2007, Journal, December 3) Instructor’s Assessment There are numerous reasons this field experience model is successful. First, the gradual socialization of teacher candidates, from student to teacher, builds as the teacher candidate interacts with individual students and is guided by the university course instructor. Next, the one-on-one tutorial instruction sets the stage for teacher candidates to expand their field experiences in subsequent semesters as far as designing social studies instructional methods. Also, in an academic at-risk setting, there are students from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, students on individualized educational plans (IEPs), and English as second language (ESL) students, so teacher candidates learn about the broad spectrum of the classroom population. Similarly, in the tutorial role, the teacher candidates learn how their responses and actions impact students and how to select alternative instructional strategies. Finally, through online discussion board and verbal interactions, the

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teacher candidate learns from peers, the university instructor, and the classroom teacher alternative strategies for understanding each student’s unique needs for achieving academic success. Concluding Remarks This early field experience for secondary social studies teacher candidates provides an opportunity to connect social studies content knowledge and adolescent development to meeting the needs of the learner in the secondary social studies classroom. Teacher candidates develop strategies to motive the learner and articulate knowledge within the discipline to the learner who may not have a desire or ability to learn the information as it has been previously taught. The reflective journals were a record of the progress the teacher candidates made in focusing on the learner and learning as a social studies teacher. References Britzman, D. (1991). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Ginsburg, M. B. (1988). Contradictions in teacher education and society: A critical analysis. London: Falmer Press. Halvorsen, A. (2006). Missouri standards for teacher education programs. Retrieved May 15, 2007, from http://www.dese. mo.gov/schoollaw/rulesregs/Inc_By_Ref_Mat/MoSTEP%20(finalrevisedversion-OrderRulmkng)%2010-06.pdf Reed, A. J. S., & Bergemann, V. E. (2005). A guide to observation, participation, and reflection in the classroom. (5th ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill. Segall, A. (2002). Disturbing practice: Reading teacher education as text. New York: Lang. Serota, S. (2004). Socialization of teacher education students through early field experiences that engage them with secondary students at-risk for academic success (Doctoral dissertation, University of Missouri—Columbia, 2004). Dissertation Abstracts International (AAT 31357748). Serota, S. B., & Bennett, L. (2007). Pre-service teacher socialization in early field experiences. Research in the Schools, 14, 64–77.

80 Creating Units to Create Meaning Out of Social Studies Content Audrey Green Rogers

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary NCSS Standards: Will vary but are inclusive INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter), 4 (Instructional Strategies), 7 (Planning Instruction), 8 (Assessment) Topics: history, geography, civics, economics, unit development, integrated curriculum, inquiry, literacy strategies, teacher reflection, purposes/goals, technology/Internet, curriculum planning Unit plans are the stepping stones of a year’s curriculum. They help connect and organize lessons so that the content is manageable and flows in a logical course. Without this organizational tool lessons can be disjointed, lack cohesion, and be rendered powerless to effect deep understanding in students. Learning how to construct a thematic unit enables my preservice teachers to focus on the thinking that they want students to do and not to get bogged down in the content. Preservice elementary teachers in particular need instruction in the organizing power of social studies content as a means of integrating multiple subject areas and using class time effectively. The focus of my students’ units puts social studies at the center, with explicit ties to other content areas such as English, language arts, science, or math. The underlying principle for organizing content around units comes from my larger emphasis on having my preservice elementary teachers develop a rationale to support their own teaching. Units help my students to articulate a purpose behind all lessons and activities. It helps them make meaning of the myriad themes and concepts found throughout the social studies. It helps to answer the inevitable question from students, “Why are we studying this?” Teachers need an in-depth knowledge of the material plus a vision of the big picture to answer. To help them develop a rationale for their teaching, my students begin the semester thinking about why social studies is important to teach. Students investigate state and national definitions of this core area and use that to shape their own beliefs about the role of history, geography, behavioral sciences, economics, and importantly, citizenship in their prospective classrooms. In the No Child Left Behind era, this is a crucial step in ensuring that my future teachers feel passionate about including this area of study in a classroom dominated by adequate yearly progress (AYP) concerns. In my classroom of preservice educators, the creation of a unit is the centerpiece of the course. I have my students create a unit plan that they will undoubtedly modify and use during their student teaching. All of the semester’s readings, debates, homework assignments, and online discussion threads are designed to aid in the construction of a vital, vibrant unit that my future 354

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teachers are eager to teach in the “real” classroom. We spend a number of weeks building up to the actual assignment by investigating state standards and the importance of connecting classroom instruction to the goals and proficiencies outlined by the New Hampshire State Department of Education. We take time to reflect on the pros and cons of teaching under standards and the teacher’s role and responsibility. In having my students create a unit, the approach I take follows Wiggins and McTigh’s Understanding by Design model where I ask students to explicitly state the “Enduring Understandings” and “Essential Questions” that they believe students should answer for a given topic. For example, one of my students wants her future class to understand that groups have profoundly affected our country’s history, culture, politics, and economy. She feels that certain groups have been marginalized in our history texts and curricula. To achieve the understanding that groups have shaped the course and development of this country, she chose to focus the content of her unit on Native Americans. She asks her New Hampshire students, “In what ways did the Abenaki influence European settlers’ language, clothing, art, music, literature, religion, and farming techniques?” Recognizing the power of a policy-based central issue as articulated by Onosko and Swenson, another question she asks is, “To what extent did the Constitution of the United States both uphold and fail the American Indian nations?” Thematic units that pose questions to guide students through the discovery process are an effective way for them to gain a fuller understanding of social studies. When my students return to me after student teaching or their first job they tell me how creating units encourages their students to think. They feel confident that their young students are making connections and constructing knowledge that will last. Continuing in the Understanding by Design model, my students identify how their students will demonstrate understanding of the goals they have set forth for the unit. I distribute the Wiggins and McTighe rubric on “understanding” (2004, pp. 76–77), which prompts the class to investigate the many levels and depths of understanding that students may exhibit in the classroom. Students realize the role of traditional as well as performance based assessments and must apply that understanding in the creation of their units. In the end, my class realizes that I am using the unit as a measure for whether or not my students understand myriad aspects of the course; this models for them their need to determine student understanding through an authentic assessment tool. During the semester, in the midst of their unit development, I make a point to stop and ask the class to reflect not only on the process they are going through, but also on the content as well. I challenge them to consider whether or not this is a unit that they would want to experience as a student. I try to personalize the assignment as much as possible by talking with students about their topic selection, giving them time to submit ideas and mull over what direction they want to take (New Hampshire Department of Education, Follow the Child, 2008). The class does a topic web and drafts multiple outlines. I encourage them to find an area of social studies that “lights a fire” in them, that they are passionate about sharing with students. A useful reading about this point is the first chapter in Bill Ayers’s book To Teach (2001). This always provokes interesting responses in students that sometimes taps deep into their own school experiences and sometimes can be life changing. For example, one student had picked a geography topic, but was struggling with lesson ideas. Then a few weeks into the unit writing process, he happened to watch a PBS documentary on the Civil Rights movement which strongly resonated with him. He got all excited about this new information he had learned and said he could not stop reading about it. He asked if he should switch his unit topic; my response was “Absolutely!” From that point on, his lesson ideas flowed freely. He was enthusiastic and was able to well articulate his rationale, essential questions, and learning experiences to move students to a level of understanding on the subject.

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When the unit overview and lessons are complete students teach a portion of their unit to their peers. This is the ultimate demonstration of understanding when students can take their work, teach it, and display the components of exemplary teaching that they have learned throughout the semester. In sum, the unit becomes a culmination of all that they have learned about best practices in curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Over the years of teaching social studies methods, I have found this approach to organizing content far more effective and meaningful than plodding through coverage of one time period to the next. Getting students to experience the power of a rationale and “big idea” underpinning their teaching helps to make social studies come alive in meaningful and lasting ways. This approach forces students to think as they answer questions, rather than remain passive recipients of teachers’ knowledge. Throughout the creation of their units and certainly by the end of the semester, my students clearly see the difference between presenting content and having students engage in cohesive units of inquiry based on lessons that are centered on questions. Ten Key Components of the Unit Plan The following salient parts of my unit plan are designed to connect students to best practices. It is not an exhaustive list of the assignment’s requirements, but captures the essential parts for understanding how creating units help create meaning. The first important piece involves creating the justification for the unit. I ask my preservice teachers to articulate a rationale that explains why they are teaching this unit. They also must describe how these lessons reveal a coherent, connected theme that will promote student understanding. Integral in this rationale is the connection to state and national social studies standards. Students must indicate which specific standards are being addressed and the interdisciplinary nature of the lesson. This goes beyond explaining which areas of the social studies, students must describe the connection with other disciplines such as English language arts, music, science, and so forth. The third key component of the unit is the enduring understandings and their subsequent essential questions that provide the organizing framework of the unit. Quality, thought provoking questions result in a process of discovery for students as they learn to construct answers to and thus the meaning of some of the larger questions in the discipline. Questions are a powerful tool and an essential element to an effective thematic unit. Beginning with the end in mind helps both teachers and students arrive at the intended outcomes of the unit. A fourth significant element of the unit is clear goals and objectives that are closely tied to the chosen assessment tools. Both formative and summative assessments help measure students’ progress. Authentic and performance based assessments measure students’ understanding. Students learn about rubric development and how they are used in the classroom. Then they must develop and use a rubric in their unit. In conjunction, each goal and objective should correlate to a level of Bloom’s taxonomy. This exercise is usually very instructive for students when they see where their lesson objectives fall on Bloom’s scale. Some students prefer to emphasize more recall objectives on early lessons and build up to synthesis and application by the unit’s end. Other preservice teachers feel it is important to have a blend from the beginning to keep all students challenged from the outset. Sixth, a creative “hook” or anticipatory set needs to be in place to capture students’ attention, activate prior knowledge, and set the stage for the procedure. This helps preservice educators make the connection between student engagement and motivation and their success in the lesson. Within the lesson’s procedure, an important feature is the recognition of Howard Gardner’s

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multiple intelligences theory. This is the section of the unit where preservice teachers learn to vary their pedagogy. The procedure should include a varied approach to the content. This is in addition to any individualized education plan (IEP) or gifted modifications. An eighth key component in the unit is to engage students in literacy strategies when there is content area reading assigned. Research has shown the importance of frontloading a lesson plan to include effective prereading strategies. Students’ comprehension increases when teachers take the time to familiarize students with the text, activate prior knowledge, and set the purpose. A ninth essential component is the integration of technology in the unit whenever possible and appropriate. Finding ways to engage younger learners through a medium with which they are very familiar recognizes their real world experiences. Last but not least, an essential aspect of the unit requires reflection about how well the learning is progressing. Asking questions such as: Are there student interests in the class that could bring the unit in a certain direction? How would you teach this differently next time? This final piece brings my preservice teachers full circle by asking them to think deeply just as they are asking their students to imagine and consider their answers to social studies related questions. References Ayers, W. (2001). To teach: The journey of a teacher. New York: Teachers College Press. Bloom, B. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman. Gardner, H. (1993). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books. New Hampshire Department of Education. (2008). Follow the child initiative. Retrieved July 10, 2008, from http://www. ed.state.nh.us/education/FTC/FTC_Index.htm Onosko, J., & Swenson, L. (1996). Designing issue-based unit plans. Handbook on teaching social issues, (NCSS Bulletin No. 93, chapter 11). Washington, DC: NCSS. Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Teacher Resources Duplass, J. (2008). Teaching elementary social studies (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Ellis, A. (1998). Teaching and learning elementary social studies (6th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Fritzer, P. (2002). Social studies content for elementary and middle school teachers. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Lindquist, T., & Selwyn, D. (2000). Social studies at the center: Integrating kids, content, and literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Obenchain, K., & Morris, R. (2007). 50 social studies strategies for K-8 classrooms (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Savage, T., & Armstrong, D. (2008). Effective teaching in elementary social studies (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

81 Using Narrative to Reflect on the Process of Curriculum Enactment M. Gail Hickey

Context: TE Elementary, TE Secondary, University NCSS Standards: II (Time, Continuity, and Change) INTASC Standards: 2 (Student Learning), 7 (Planning Instruction), 9 (Reflection and Professional Development) Topics: history, geography, civics, economics, unit development, teacher reflection, instructional strategies, curriculum planning Students enrolled in my graduate social studies methods course redesign an existing social studies instructional unit; teach all or part of the redesigned unit while keeping field notes and student work samples; prepare a narrative paper responding to a set of reflective teaching questions (Hickey, 1993); and make an oral presentation to classmates outlining what they have learned from the experience. Educational researchers support the need for teacher reflection (Dana & Yendol-Silva, 2003; Darling-Hammond, 1990; Zeichner & Liston, 1996). Documented narrative produced during and after the fact of instruction has the potential to inform researchers about how teachers “construed and constructed” the instructional environments in which they experience their professional lives (Huberman, 1995). Preparing to Reflect and Revise This chapter describes a first grade teacher’s experiences with the reflective teaching assignment, and considers the place of reflective teaching in a social studies methods course. The process is based in part on Erickson’s (2001) ideas on constructivism, and patterned after Tom Turner’s and my research on reflective teaching (Hickey, 1993; Hickey & Turner, 1990). To begin the assignment, students identify a social studies instructional unit they have taught in the past that they would like to improve. Each graduate student examines his or her old instructional unit, considering such things as attention to National Council for the Social Studies curriculum themes; state curriculum standards; whether the unit is based on a conceptual theme (or is simply topic-driven); if or how the unit is introduced; defensibility of included instructional goals and objectives; presence or absence of active student involvement; whether assessment is directly related to goals/ objectives; and teachability (i.e., are other teachers likely to view the unit activities as practical and doable?). My students are instructed to redesign the identified instructional unit, retaining and capitalizing on its strengths and remediating its weaknesses. Then students teach the unit while observing 358

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the reflective teaching process: keep field notes describing what happens in the classroom; collect examples of K-8 students’ work (such as writings, drawings, photos, or other illustrative examples of nonwritten work); compare and contrast the original instructional unit with the revised unit. After my students follow the process outlined above, they assemble the collected data in preparation for writing their reflective teaching narrative. To guide them during this step, I provide a set of Reflective Teaching Questions (Hickey, 1993). They use their field notes, examples of students’ work, and any other relevant materials or resources to answer the following questions: What did I want the children to learn: goal(s), objectives, or learner outcomes? How did I go about teaching what I wanted them to learn (strategies and instructional resources used)? What happened? Did the students respond as I expected? If not, what did they do? Why did the students respond in this way? How did the curriculum resources (unit, lesson(s), activity or activities) used affect children’s learning? What do I—and other teachers who intend to use this curriculum resource in the future—need to know about how it affects teaching and learning? When I teach this unit again, what might I do differently? Why? My Reflections I used to believe there was a hierarchy of teacher reflection, and that one’s level of reflection is tied to one’s years of teaching experience. Now I understand that’s not what happens at all. Teacher reflection is identified by type rather than level (Zeichner & Liston, 1996). When the reflection process is unmediated, teachers’ reflections usually go no further than the technical: “I should have allowed them more time to finish that assignment,” or “Next time, I’ll save the art project until the end of the unit.” Essentially, teachers need to be taught how to reflect on their own teaching. Without specific instruction about the reflection process, teachers’ social studies instruction tends to be textbookdriven and relies on surface representations of student learning (such as comprehension type question/answer format, completed worksheets, and—particularly in primary grades—drawings). Without specific instruction about the reflective process, teachers’ reflections on their social studies instruction tend to be technical rather than critical. For example, during our discussions of the reflective process, virtually none of my students have voluntarily considered the possible impact of their students’ socioeconomic or ethnic backgrounds on their understandings of social studies issues. Similarly, in 20 years as a teacher educator I’ve never encountered a teacher who voluntarily keeps field notes while planning and implementing social studies instruction. The social studies teachers I work with begin to think differently about instruction when they learn how each of these strategies contributes to their own efficacy as teachers and, ultimately, to their students’ efficacy as learners. Over time, I have refined and revised my own instruction through reflective teaching. For example, early on my instructions to students to “keep field notes and retain copies of student work” either were ignored by students or did not appear in their written narratives. After reflecting on what I wanted them to learn by keeping field notes and retaining student work, and on how I had gone about teaching this part of the reflective process, I realized I needed to make some important changes. First, I modeled what I meant by “field notes.” Then I displayed some examples of K-8 student work and considered aloud if/how these examples demonstrated student learning based on identified state standards (once referred to as objectives). Finally, I wondered aloud what I should do differently to improve K-8 students’ learning based on my field notes and student work samples. While my students appreciated this demonstration that illustrated my

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expectations for them, predictably, some of them said they would find keeping field notes time consuming, inconvenient, and not at all worth the trouble. “For the most part,” I admitted, you’re right—keeping field notes is time consuming and inconvenient. It also feels unnatural, because you’re not used to the process. Here’s what I learned when I first started keeping field notes: Keep a composition book or something similar with you all the time. While you’re redesigning your unit, make notes about what you’re thinking and why you like certain resources. As you walk among your students during the unit, jot down a few notes about each lesson or activity. During lunch or planning period, jot down some more things you recall or impressions you have. Take the notebook home with you and place it on your bedside table. Just before falling asleep and again when you wake up, make some more notes. While you have your coffee, jot down something else. My students were relieved when they realized they need not spend hours each day keeping field notes. The next thing I learned was to accept copies of K-8 student work and digital versions of nonwritten student work. Being a former classroom teacher, I preferred to see young students’ original work. I quickly learned, however, that the K-8 teachers I work with are unlikely to retain student work. Two semesters of comments during oral presentations, such as “I don’t have any student work to display” or “I always send my students’ work home with them” convinced me (1) to be satisfied with two to three copies of student work per oral presentation and, (2) to rewrite my syllabus making “two to three quality copies of related K-8 student work” a requirement for satisfactory completion of the assignment. Another change I made in the assignment over time was to require that my students identify the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) curriculum theme(s) related to their original unit as well as identifying one or more NCSS themes for their redesigned unit. This change forced my students to think about whether and how their original social studies unit reflected best practices in instruction. It also encouraged them to reflect more seriously about how the redesigned unit would/could effectively communicate essential social studies understandings. I found that, after I implemented this particular change, the quality of my students’ social studies units improved dramatically. Let’s look now at one teacher’s journey through the reflective teaching process. Kathy’s Unit Kathy’s reflective narrative indicates her first grade Thanksgiving unit included a primarily transmission, or teacher directed, approach: “On the first day, I would introduce the topic to my class, using the book The Pilgrims’ First Thanksgiving by Ann McGovern. We would list vocabulary, discuss the words, and maybe do a word search. Generally, we would then watch a Thanksgiving video.” Kathy and her colleagues had been to an educational workshop on designing effective instruction, but she admits her concept of instructional change sometimes took the form of “decorations”: “[W]e would do some math (with turkeys on the page somewhere!), and then begin an art project.” Kathy’s “old” Thanksgiving unit lasted only 2 days, when she shared two related trade books with her students. Then they prepared a turkey casserole using ingredients they had brought from

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home. Students helped with the measuring and mixing, and completed an art project while the casserole cooked. “The culmination of our Thanksgiving unit,” Kathy notes, “was a class feast.” Kathy believed students’ high interest level, her own enjoyment in the topic, the culminating feast, and the use of children’s literature were positive characteristics of the old instructional unit. She decided to develop a thematic web to help her think about how to improve. As she searched for materials and resources to implement the connections between and among content areas, Kathy was pleasantly surprised to find an abundance of supporting material nearby—within her own school, the local library, and on the Internet. “In fact,” she writes, “the volume of materials was almost overwhelming!” Once relevant resources were available, she created new activities or modifications of existing activities to support the theme. “As this occurred,” she recalls, “I placed the activity on the appropriate spot on my [thematic] web.” Kathy decided a main focus of the new unit would be helping her students understand more about everyday life in 1620, and comprehend why U.S. citizens celebrate Thanksgiving now. Certain components from the old unit were omitted right away, such as worksheets. Goals for the old unit included a general intent of “learning about Thanksgiving and enjoying a feast we create ourselves.” Student learning was assessed by how many worksheets students completed correctly, and whether they participated in the feast. Kathy’s new unit was planned around learner outcomes (below), and students were assessed through individual conferences. • Students will compare and contrast life in 1620 and the present. • Students will gain knowledge of the history of the Thanksgiving holiday. • Students will demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. Kathy predicted the new unit would last for 3 days, rather than the original 2 days. When she taught the new unit, however, 3 days just was not enough time to cover all students wanted to learn. Next time, Kathy plans to allow six full days for the Thanksgiving unit “with the option of more if interest merits.” Keeping field notes as the new unit was being taught helped Kathy keep track of activities and student responses, but this process also helped Kathy begin to reflect on her past preference for the transmission approach, and how the transmission approach differs from the social constructivist approach. For example, one day she wrote: “Some of the best lessons evolved spontaneously… while some well planned lessons fizzled…. Students helped make some choices about what we would be studying, when, and for how long. I believe in this way I was able to reach more students with different learning styles.” When she teaches this unit again, Kathy plans to make two major changes: allow more time to teach conceptually, and provide students with more choices. Collegial discussion during Kathy’s oral presentation also helped her understand the need to construct more specific, measurable student objectives when she uses the unit again. Kathy began her teaching career within the past 6 years. She was rewarded in some way for adopting or adhering to a traditional transmission approach to teaching. She became interested in trying out a different approach to instruction through school-sponsored professional development, yet did not feel confident enough to try this new approach without additional guidance or training. She ultimately realized a constructivist approach to social studies instruction requires large blocks of time, considerable planning, and coordination but students benefit from social studies taught as social constructivist experiences.

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References Dana, N. F., & Yendol-Silva, D. (2003). The reflective educator’s guide to classroom research: Learning to teach and teaching to learn through practitioner inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Darling-Hammond, L. (1990). Teachers and teaching: Signs of a changing profession. In W. R. Houston (Ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 267–290). New York: Macmillan. Erickson, H. L. (2001). Stirring the head, heart, and soul: Redefining curriculum and instruction(2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Hickey, M. G. (1993). Developing reflective teachers: A comparative study of two field-based programs. San Diego, CA: American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education Research Strand. Hickey, M. G., & Turner, T. N. (1990). Bringing focus and cohesion to a field-based program. The Teacher Educator, 25(3), 8–12. Huberman, M. (1995). Working with life history narratives. In H. McEwan & K. Egan (Eds), Narrative in teaching, learning, and research (pp. 127–165). New York: Teachers College Press. Zeichner, K. M., & Liston, D. P. (1996). Reflective teaching: An introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Conclusion: The Present and Future of Teaching Methods in Social Studies and Diversity Education1 A Critical Review Won-Pyo Hong and Susan A. Adler

In this book you have read about many powerful ideas for teaching and perhaps gained some insight into the ways in which these teacher scholars think about the problems and possibilities of social education. This chapter summarizes recent research on social studies education methods courses and examines how teacher educators prepare the next generation of social studies teachers, what their purposes are, how, why, and what they do in their methods courses, and what effects they have on prospective teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, and capacities as future teachers. In doing this, we conducted an extensive review of research literature published in last 10 years. Accordingly, even though we may include some earlier research and works on general teacher education or social studies, the major object of review in this paper is studies in the elementary and secondary social studies methods course since the late 1990s. We used a variety of strategies to search relevant literature for our analysis; we searched ERIC documents; we did a hand search of peer-reviewed journals such as Theory and Research in Social Education, The Social Education, or Journal of Teaching and Teacher Education; we referred to other reviews of related literature such as Adler (1991, 2008), Armento (1996), Clift and Brady (2005), and Cochran-Smith and Zeichner (2005). In reviewing the collected works, we considered such aspects as whether a work provides enough description of the author(s)’ purpose, theoretical framework, instructional strategies, rationale and pedagogy; whether there is a mention of the nature and process of data collection; and whether it addresses the effects a methods course has on students’ knowledge and capacities as social studies teachers. In presenting our analysis, we generally follow the chapter construction of this book. However, we put two categories on history, “Evidence, Sources, and Interpretation in History, and “History in Social Context,” into one section, since the number of studies on history components of methods courses is not big enough to divide into two sections, even though it is bigger compared to other components. Also, some categories such as “Purposes, Beliefs, and Contexts for Social Education” were not treated as independent sections because few works dealt with this theme.

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Democratic Values and Government Social educators generally agree that social studies is essential to the preparation of young people in the knowledge, skills, and values necessary for active participation in society (e.g. Barr, Barth, & Shermis, 1977; Ochoa-Becker, 2007; Shaver, 1997; Stanley, 1985). The literature on social studies education has tended to emphasize social studies as having a major role to play in preparing people to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good. It is no surprise, then, that several social studies educators have examined their efforts to facilitate the development of teaching attitudes and strategies consistent with preparing young people to assume their role as citizens in a democracy. Adler and Confer (1998) found that explicit teaching that is focused on a rationale for social studies has an effect on participants’ articulations of citizenship and citizenship goals. This 2-year study was based on qualitative data generated from student work during a secondary methods course. It also included observations and interviews with the students and cooperating teachers during the following student teaching. Major findings show that students entered the methods course without an articulated rationale for social studies and without an explicit focus on citizenship or multiculturalism. However, through discussions of the topics related to the concept and role of citizenship in the context of social studies education, many students developed ideas about and apparent commitments to prepare their pupils to be informed citizens in a diverse society. These changes, however, turned out to be inconsistent with their teaching practices. During student teaching, most preservice teachers from the methods class were afraid of losing classroom control. They also sought to satisfy the cooperating teachers’ expectations, rather than implement pedagogy they claimed to believe was consistent with citizenship/multicultural goals of social studies. In conclusion, Adler and Confer argue that the influence of a methods course on students’ beliefs and pedagogical practices is partial and differential. Even though preservice teachers were able to articulate a rationale for teaching citizenship and using diverse pedagogical strategies to reach diverse students, implementing their beliefs in real settings was a more difficult challenge. Arguing that civic education is essentially moral education, Misco (2005) demonstrates that an elementary social studies methods course can be a location of preparing students to implement moral education in their classrooms. According to Misco, substantial parts of civic education are related to addressing moral issues and making moral decisions. Issues and topics which might be conceived as important to civic education, such as civic engagement, fair distribution of power and resources, democratic processes, and multiple perspectives, are also, Misco argues, moral issues. This connection between civic and moral education supports his position that moral education can be placed within the context of civic capacities and engagement instead of remaining hidden or prescriptive in social studies education. Focused on this connection, Misco delineates moral elements of civic education in terms of dispositions, skills, and perspectives, and provides examples from a methods course that he observed. Instructional examples included a simulation in which students represented the population of each continent and candy indicated the available food resources. In another session, to enhance civic investigation and deliberation, the observed instructor asked pairs of students to decide what to do with 1, 000 rare ostrich eggs, but each pair had different instructions; one valued the shell and the other the yolk. Misco argues that, through these activities and instruction, elementary methods students came to develop moral dispositions and civic knowledge. Boyle-Baise (2003) describes her effort to conceptualize the notion of democracy and integrate it into an elementary social studies methods course. Based on her review of various concepts of

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democracy, she concludes that to teach democracy, not just as a topic to be taught but as an experience to be lived, she needs to combine the concepts of a participatory and a justice-oriented citizen. This combination, according to Boyle-Baise, tries to connect participatory perspective with an affirmation of cultural, gender, and social differences with an analysis of social justice and equity. She then portrays a few instructional examples that she uses in her methods course to enhance participatory and change-oriented notion of democracy. For example, she introduced a week-long intensive service learning experience and a series of communication investigations, asking students to explore how injustices impact their communities and how they can act to change the problems. Despite her efforts, she acknowledges that these elements of her methods course need to be further developed to do authentic democracy, since she found students still tended to define good citizens in terms of individual responsibility rather than as members of a concerted social action. Through this reflection, Boyle-Baise explores how she can make her methods course a place in which students can practice participatory and social justice oriented citizenship. Jongewaard (2000) sought to identify characteristics of universal citizenship and to use this as one core of his combined elementary and secondary social studies methods course. From a review of the literature on cross-cultural communication and citizenship characteristics, Jongewaard derives six “cultural universals.” His study reports on his effort to “engage students in pedagogical approaches to concept development that are likely to facilitate the learning and application of the characteristics of universal citizenship” (p. 5), which he had derived through the use of structured activities and assignments. Using pre-test and post-test scores from two measures of universal citizenship as well as follow-up questionnaires, Jongewaard concluded that characteristics of universal citizenship can be defined, taught, and measured in the social studies methods class. Context, Evidence, and Interpretation in History Among the disciplines that are included in the social studies, history seems to have received the greatest attention from teacher educators concerned with the social studies methods course. Common questions investigated focused on the development of historical thinking and understanding and the application of these understandings to curriculum design and teaching. Yeager and Wilson (1997) reported that the secondary methods course can build on previous historical knowledge and serve as a foundation for planning lessons that emphasize historical thinking. The preservice teachers, however, interpreted the idea of historical thinking in different ways, from reading sources for information to evaluating, analyzing and synthesizing sources. During student teaching, some of the participants in the study made efforts to incorporate their conception of historical thinking into their lessons, although those who did so felt they were taking a risk. Given their different conceptions of historical thinking, it is no surprise that they incorporated the concept in differing ways. For some, historical thinking in practice meant reading documents for comprehension, while others adopted a more didactic approach as more “efficient.” This study suggests that in addition to exposure to and understanding of historical thinking, student teachers’ perceptions of the maturity levels of their pupils influenced their decisions to incorporate document-based activities. In a rare work that was based on observations of a colleague methods instructor, Slekar (2006) portrays a practice of one social studies methods professor. Using observation data of methods classes, interviews with the professor, and field notes, he explores what the professor’s view on history and history education was, and how this view influenced his curriculum and instruction in his teaching of the methods course. Based on this case study, Slekar argues that we need more

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studies on the social studies professoriate: who they are, why they are engaged in social studies education, and why and how they teach as they do. Fehn and Koeppen (1998) describe their efforts at teaching a history-intensive social studies methods course with an emphasis on document based instruction. Data from interviews, lesson plans, and the written reflections of their 11 students suggest that focused experiences in methods classes can have an impact on the beliefs of preservice teachers, but not necessarily on their practice. Interviews indicated that all 11 teacher candidates left methods class with positive regard for document-based instruction. On the other hand, this enthusiasm appeared to be diminished during student teaching by the socializing process at their field sites. Positive attitudes remained, but tempered by the “realities” of needing to “cover” a body of material and to fit in with predetermined plans. Thus, despite the impact of the methods class on preservice teachers’ desires to teach with documents, their efforts in student teaching were tempered by what they perceived as the realities of teaching. Responding to the growing necessity of infusing technology into history education, some have attempted to use electronic resources and online instruction in their methods courses. For example, Lee (2000) shares his effort to use digital historical resources to develop social studies methods students’ subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. He used Valley of the Shadow, an online collection of materials relating to two communities in the American Civil War. This Web site was developed by the Virginia Center for Digital History, and the collection includes letters, diaries, newspaper, images, maps, census data, and military records. To assess the transformation of students’ pedagogical content knowledge, an activity was developed in which participants had to learn about some content using digital resources and then develop an instructional idea related to that content. Findings show that even though students’ subject matter knowledge was advanced, they exhibited a wide variance in the development of their pedagogical content knowledge. Good, O’Connor, Greene, and Luce (2005) demonstrate that a telecollaborative experience helped methods students develop historical knowledge and instructional ideas. Through collaboration and discussions, the instructors designed each course to have four teleconferences throughout the semester. Topics were: (1) discussing personal history artifacts; (2) thinking like a historian; (3) sharing family history projects; and (4) comparing the two university geographical regions by the means of local and state history. In addition to the videoconferences, students were encouraged to keep communicating with each other through discussion boards and e-mails. Using open-ended questionnaires data right after telecollaboration, course survey, and field notes, they found that students’ learning was enhanced through telecollaborative experiences both in terms of content knowledge and pedagogy. Working on history projects with students in remote areas, students replied that they came to better know about the two states. Also, students responded that technology could enhance social studies instruction in elementary schools and they felt more comfortable in integrating technology. It appears that preservice teachers in a methods course can begin to conceptualize the use of historical documents in their teaching. The methods course, however, is probably not the place where preservice teachers can most effectively develop historical understanding and thinking. Even in a course specifically focused on the methods and philosophy of history. Mayer (2003) found that there was limited impact on the development of the historical understanding of preservice teachers, although it did broaden their conceptualization of teaching practices. However, Seixas (1998) found that preservice teachers who developed lessons around the use of primary

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source documents encountered a number of problems, from choosing appropriate documents that made the issues or themes significant to learners today, to developing pedagogically meaningful exercises for hypothetical students. Yet, as Seixas points out, the preservice teachers in his study were unlikely to have other structured experiences in which they can focus on learning to teach with documents. Perspective Consciousness about Identity, Power, and Culture In today’s multicultural society, social studies teachers should be aware that there are diverse positions, that their perspective is not universally shared, and that they can advantage or disadvantage their students because of their race, class, and gender without even noticing it. This requires that social studies teachers have a critical understanding of social reality, unequal power structure, and their position within the power relationship. Consequently, methods instructors have strived to help preservice teachers develop perspective consciousness and critical reflection about their beliefs and social reality. Wade and Raba (2003) show that service learning can have an effect on students’ understanding of inner cities, urban schools, and their students. In this study, the methods students, many of whom came from rural areas, participated in a week-long internship in Chicago. The intention was to engage preservice teachers in “border crossings” in order to unlearn racism and develop some insight into urban teaching. However, they found that students were unable to probe conditions on a deeper level. The authors concluded that a week is too short to move beyond the telling of interesting stories. Based on their reflections, Wade and Raba suggested that the development of critical cultural awareness entails a more comprehensive approach, including having teacher educators examine their own beliefs and attitudes, as well as providing experiences and selfreflection opportunities for preservice teachers. A number of studies address the extent to which teacher beliefs can be influenced by experiences in the methods class. However, the construct of teacher beliefs is a messy one (Pajares, 1992). Much of the research reviewed failed to carefully define the construct being examined. Few of these studies actually explore the ways in which teacher beliefs are played out in practice, when the broad set of beliefs and knowledge would come into play. Nonetheless, studies suggest that it is possible to influence teacher beliefs in the methods course; however, whether this will carry into the classroom is less clear. By the 1980s teacher education programs had become increasingly focused on “educating the reflective practitioner.” Originally grounded in the work of Donald Schön (1983, 1987) this approach emphasizes teachers as decision makers. Given this concern, teacher educators began to ask what experiences would promote reflective inquiry among preservice teachers. Problembased learning (Hughes, 1997; Hughes, Sears, & Clarke, 1998), the use of online journals (Bennett, 2001; Mason, 2000), and focusing a methods course on critical reflection and discussions of democracy and curriculum building (Dinkelman, 1999a, 1999b; Segall & Gaudelli, 2007) are shown to promote some reflection. It is notable that reflection, like the construct of beliefs, is used differently by different scholars. For example, Dinkelman (1999a, 1999b), in his case study research of three students in his social studies methods class, built upon the work of VanManen (1977) and Liston and Zeichner (1991). He focused on critical reflection defined as “deliberation about the moral and ethical dimensions of education” (1999b, p. 331). Hughes, Sears, and Clark, on the other hand (1998), built upon the

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work of Newmann (1990, 1991) to focus on thoughtfulness and the characteristics Newmann developed to define a thoughtful classroom. Lastly, Segall and Gaudelli (2007) focus on the collective and critical aspect of reflection compared to inward, individual reflection. Through the development of case studies, Dinkelman (1999a, 1999b) investigated the nature and development of critical refection among three preservice teachers in a secondary social studies methods class. These case studies demonstrate that critical reflection can be promoted in the methods class, however, he also found that having a predisposition toward thoughtfulness or reflection is important. In fact, he found no discernable transformation of the students’ views; rather, the course gave the students a vocabulary and a focus for their reflection. Hughes’ (1997) students were given a survey in which they were asked to rate the problembased course, other education courses, and courses outside education. Results show that the participants perceived the problem-based learning methods course as providing a significantly more thoughtful learning environment than other courses, thus encouraging critical reflection among preservice teachers. Segall and Gaudelli (2007) describe their rationale for and efforts to facilitate public and collective reflection in two social studies methods courses they taught. They argue that inward and individual refection is different from collective and critical reflection, since the former encourages teachers to reflect by themselves about their own teaching and thus see their problems as their own, unrelated to those of other teachers. In contrast, collective and critical reflection helps prospective teachers implicate practice in broader political and social structures underlying schooling and the process of teaching and learning that takes place in them. To enhance collective and critical reflection, both divide their exit-level secondary methods class concurrent with students’ practicum in schools into two parts. In the first part, they do not bring any preplanned curriculum to allow this time to be used for sharing of field experiences and developing generative themes about which students are interested. As such, as designers of their own curriculum, students devote themselves to collective and critical discussions about topics raised by their journals and reflection on their field experiences. In both cases, the authors report that the social and collective reflection in their methods course changes students’ understandings as teachers. They argue that, as the course progressed, students’ abilities to explore ideas critically both in class reflections and in their assignments were deepened. Several studies that examine the use of technology in the methods class (to be discussed below) also examined the extent to which the strategies being investigated promoted reflection among preservice teachers. Bennett (2001), for example, looked at reflection through a running log of thoughts and reactions. She found that the use of then new technologies promoted reflection on the nature of teaching. Riley and Stern (1997) looked at reflection as the ability to understand and apply the link between theory and practice. They found that Web-based discussion promoted greater collaboration and thoughtfulness. These studies do suggest that university course experiences can have some impact on the thoughtfulness and reflection of students, although the concept itself remains ambiguous (McAninch, 2004). Given the commitment of so many teacher educators to “educating the reflective practitioner,” it seems important to clarify what is meant by reflective teaching in social studies. Furthermore, no studies we reviewed investigated whether experiencing thoughtful classrooms, reflecting on experience, or being engaged in critical inquiry makes a difference in the practice of these students as beginning teachers. It would be significant to know whether teacher education programs really help beginning teachers be more reflective in practice. Finally, does reflection help them as teachers and make a difference to student learning?

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Local and Global Communities and Economies As the world is becoming more rapidly interconnected and the local economy is increasingly intertwined with the global movement of people, culture, and ideas, how to prepare students to be responsible members of global society becomes an important task of social education (Heilman, 2006; Kirkwood, 2001; Merryfield, 2001). However, developing a global perspective and investigating global politics and economies still seems to be almost invisible in social studies methods courses according to the research literature. In a rare study focusing on global perspectives, Wilson (2001) reports that experiences in the methods class and during student teaching can contribute to a deeper understanding of a global perspective. She argues that previous experiences and beliefs do make a difference. Preservice teachers with international experience learned how to apply the beliefs they already held. Experiences in the methods class, such as acquiring and using knowledge about other countries and peoples, and interactions with a Ghanaian doctoral student, did lead to growth toward teaching with a global perspective in all students as demonstrated in their writing, observation, and teaching. Students reported that their coursework and methods in particular had influenced the way they thought about teaching from a global perspective. Investigating the moral nature of civic education, Misco (2005) reports an elementary methods instructor who was doing a simulation and a role-play to address the unequal distribution of global resources and international trade. In the simulation, students represented the population of continents and candy indicated the available food resources. Through this, students were able to grasp the disparate distribution of resources and alternative structures of global living. In the role-play, students examined free trade through role-playing the perspective of different institutions, participants, and stake-holders involved in trade. Through this activity, Misco shows that students came to think about how one side’s advantage could result in another side’s disadvantage and to what degree free trade should be allowed. Other than these, there seem to be no substantial efforts to write about the development of global capacities and perspectives in methods courses and share those efforts and research with other instructors. Current Events and Controversial Issues As Hess emphasizes (2001), if the central task of social studies education is to help young learners develop “the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world” (National Council for the Social Studies, 1994, p. 3), social studies teachers need to learn how to engage students in controversial public issues. As such, there have been efforts to create an engaging and democratic environment where preservice teachers can participate in discussing public issues and be prepared to lead those discussions in their future classrooms. Hess (2001) provides helpful ideas and strategies for those who intend to incorporate discussion over current issues into social studies methods courses. She describes her effort to integrate the discussion of controversial public issues (CPI) in a secondary methods course. She defines CPI as “unresolved questions about public policy that spark significant disagreement” (p. 87). According to Hess, capacities among young students to participate in CPI discussions are a key element for a healthy democratic society. Within this context, she and the methods students identify necessary skills to lead discussion and enact various formats and modes of CPI discussions developed by Hess. Regarding potential challenges in the teaching of CPI discussions, she points

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out the preservice teachers’ lack of skills in participating in and facilitating CPI discussions. She also notes that the preservice teachers often forget the relationship between CPI discussions and democracy. They are likely to lose sight of the fact that democracy is the basic rationale of doing CPI discussion. Parker (2001) has also focused attention on teaching teachers to lead discussions in order that they might help their own students to develop problem-solving and decision-making skills. Arguing that discussion is a shared inquiry which relies on the expression of diverse views and collaboration among group members, he emphasizes that discussion is an important tool to learn a democratic way of living. In his methods course, Parker incorporates both a seminar approach and a deliberative approach to discussion. The first, the seminar, is a discussion, the purpose of which is for students to participate in a collaborative quest for understanding; whereas the second, deliberation, aims at deciding what should be done about an issue or problem. This study provides detailed information about incorporating the two kinds of discussions in social studies methods courses and how to prepare preservice teachers to lead discussions in the future. Parker and Hess (2001) continue their work in another study on developing the skills needed to facilitate discussion. In addition to seminar and deliberation, in this work, they add conversation as another typology of discussion. If seminar is for understanding and deliberation is for action, conversation is for envisioning what is good. In other words, the point of conversation is to think together about the more fundamental nature of people and society; what kind of people we want to be and what sort of community we want to create collectively. The authors stress that seminars and deliberations are in fact based on our underlying beliefs about the kind of society we want to live in and the kind of people we want to be. From a different angle, people have paid attention to using electronic devices and online connections to facilitate engaging discussions among learners. They also aim at preparing students to integrate technology with social studies teaching. White (2000) examines the possibility of using online discussion in social studies education to create a community of learners among students. He created online discussion groups called hypergroups using a Web-based discussion tool provided by a university. Participants in this discussion included students enrolled in elementary social studies methods, secondary social studies methods course, current literature in social studies, and integrating technology in social studies. At first, the instructor posted topics such as, “What are the most vital issues and concerns in social studies education today?” However, as the semester progressed, students were encouraged to post their own topics, themes, and issues, which resulted in engaging and meaningful conversation among the participants. As a result, he reports that students were very positive regarding the use of hypergroups and the actual discussions in the hypergroups. In particular, he notes that the merging of online discussion and methods courses can encourage otherwise silent students to participate, facilitate discussion on issues and themes that are unlikely to be approached effectively in classrooms, and thus facilitate the development of a collaborative learning community. Mason and Berson (2000) explore the benefits and results of using computer mediated communication (CMC) in social studies methods courses in two remote universities. In the beginning, the instructors prompted questions to a Web board and students in each university exchanged their replies and responses to the questions. But, as the semester went on, students began to take more responsibility and created questions and responses for themselves. Using students’ narrative responses to a questionnaire at the end of the semester, Mason and Berson found that students were apprehensive at first, but highly motivated by the Web-based discussion group to engage in

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dialogue with peers at a remote location. Students were reflective in their responses and discussion, and engaging in the CMC enriched their understanding of social studies teaching and learning. They also found that students were highly motivated to engage in the online discussion when the instructor connected their online comments to classroom discussion. Using a Range of Resources Another body of literature shows that instructors have attempted to prepare preservice teachers to use technology in finding resources, and developing and implementing their instruction. In an attempt to integrate technology and methods course, Ehman (2001) developed Web-based modules on key elements of a methods course such as engaged learning, lesson planning, curriculum standards, and instructional resources. He cotaught these modules with the other instructor as part of secondary social studies methods course. Through samples of student unit plans and prepost survey, he found that most of the students in the course included web-based resources, even though it was not required in their lesson plans. Also, the survey result showed that students became more confident in applying technology to increase the quality of learning in social studies and designing lessons that integrated technology into instruction and learning. Based on these findings, he argues that infusion of technology into a regular social studies methods course is more effective than stand-alone technology courses separated from content or methods courses. Arguing that modeling appropriate and engaging uses of computer technology is necessary for social studies teacher educators, Beisser (1999) describes her effort to merge technology into an elementary methods course. In addition to electronic communication and class presentations using technology, students were required to select and analyze interactive, engaging software for a grade level of their choice. Also, they searched Web sites relevant to social studies and analyzed attributes of the Web site and the potential to invite higher level thinking. In doing these tasks, students were asked to build their work on one or more of the NCSS standards. As a result, she reports that students gave positive responses to her effort to integrate technology in the methods course. She found that students felt more comfortable in using technology content specifically and commitment to the use of technology continued in their student teaching practice. Despite the efforts to develop meaningful and intellectual lesson plans, several studies report the extent to which beginning teachers’ lesson plans and instructional beliefs may be overwhelmed by actual teaching experiences. The participants in the study by Milson and King (2001) reported in their methods class that they valued dealing with science–technology–society issues. In practice, however, they were overwhelmed by concerns of coverage and management. Similarly, beliefs about the potential of using technology to change the nature of social studies teaching and learning are often overwhelmed by concerns about the technology itself, the time available for implementing new approaches, and concerns about management of diverse students (Keiper, Harwood, & Larson, 2000; Keiper, Myhre, & Phil, 2000–2001; Lipscomb & Doppen, 2002). Adler and Confer (1998), found that their focus on the purpose of social studies did influence the expressed beliefs of the participants, but this did not consistently carry over into student teaching. Instruction and Curriculum Design Developing meaningful, engaging, and intellectual curriculum is a core capacity that social studies teachers should have. It turns out that substantial amounts of time and effort are given to help

372 • Won-Pyo Hong and Susan A. Adler

preservice teachers develop instructional ideas and lesson plans. Social studies methods instructors seem to make use of curriculum design for a couple of simultaneous purposes. That is, they ask students to design lesson plans to have them deliberate about how to apply what they have learned in a methods course to a K-12 classroom where they will actually work. Some methods instructors seem to ensure if students have internalized the big ideas and key concepts in their methods courses by assigning students to develop lesson plans. Also, if a methods course is concurrent with student teaching or the last course that students take before their student teaching, students can develop usable lesson plans through the methods course. After practicing discussions over controversial public issues, Hess (2001) asks her students to develop a CPI lesson plan that fits the school and course context in which students are teaching and try to use it with their students. She has the students work in a small group so that they can share their ideas and revise lesson plans. To help preservice teachers connect pedagogical ideas with their content knowledge in history, Fehn and Koeppen (1998) assign students to develop lesson plans that would engage K-12 students in the interpretation of primary resources. In addition to planning lessons in a self-contained methods course, a couple of studies examined experiences of both creating interdisciplinary curriculum and of coteaching the methods course. In response to the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act, which called for connecting and integrating experiences in schools, Combs and White (2000) worked with their secondary methods classes for English, foreign language, and social studies majors to facilitate the development of interdisciplinary instruction. The preservice teachers received carefully planned instruction on the creation of interdisciplinary units, along with guidance as the units were developed. An analysis of the units produced showed that the students were able to link “targeted content across disciplines in natural ways that are interesting and, therefore, motivational” (p. 4). Another important finding, based on student self-report, was that these preservice teachers developed an enhanced appreciation of professional relationships from the team experience of curriculum development. In an action-research study with elementary preservice teachers, Milson and King (2001) report on their efforts at engaging preservice teachers in a science–technology–society project in both their social studies and science methods courses. The teacher candidates not only learned about the theme of science-technology-society (STS) which is part of both the NCSS standards and science standards, but they participated in an STS project as well. Using class discussion, final exams, and self-evaluations as data, Milson and King concluded that their students had accepted the rationale for STS and saw the value of integrative approaches in elementary school curriculum. However, few of these preservice teachers actually chose to create lessons based on STS themes. One explanation for this was that STS topics were often deemed too controversial and the preservice teachers were more comfortable sticking with traditional topics (such as “Native American Cultures”) seen as safe. Furthermore, many of the preservice teachers had difficulty with the processes of scientific inquiry and civic decision-making. Their findings reinforce the notion that it is not enough for teachers to understand something (such as the rationale for STS); they also need the skills to implement a different approach within real-life contexts. Conclusions Research on social studies methods classes is based almost entirely on self-study and action research projects of teacher educators. These approaches add to our knowledge of teacher educators and to a set of ideas for teaching methods classes. However, nearly exclusive reliance on self-study leaves us with a thin research base from which to draw generalizations about the social

Conclusion • 373

studies methods course. Only a few studies present case studies developed by a scholar observing a methods class (Misco, 2005; Slekar, 2006). Another repeated issue we encountered in doing this literature review was the imbalance between theoretical framework, rationale, pedagogy, and the actual effects that social studies methods courses have on students. Some works do not provide enough theoretical background and rationale for what instructors intend to do in their methods course. Many studies do not provide enough description of what and how they are doing in their class to achieve what they aimed. Also, much research does not use empirical data to investigate how methods courses affect students’ belief, knowledge, dispositions, and capacities as future social studies teachers. This lack of enough information and data may hamper dissemination and sharing powerful and effective instruction in social studies methods courses. With regard to content areas, we found that the predominant number of works deal with democratic values, citizenship education, and history. Also, we observed a growing number of studies that investigate effective ways of infusing technology and electronic resources in social studies teacher education. However, efforts to internationalize methods courses and to help students develop global perspectives and understandings still seem to be largely invisible. This seems to be problematic, considering the increasing entanglement between the local and the global and the importance of global citizenship. Another component that seems to be missing is an effort to investigate the local, the national, and the global through a critical perspective on power relationships—who are advantaged, who are disadvantaged, and where the students are located in this asymmetrical power relationship. This seems to result in the lack of efforts to engage students with diverse realities such as urban environments and multicultural locations beyond the campus. Social studies teacher educators are rightly concerned with studying the social studies methods course since this course lies at the heart of any program aimed at preparing social studies teachers. Given this concern, we recommend that those of us who study the methods class and our own teaching of that class, form linkages allowing us to investigate questions across various groups. A common set of questions and approaches to methods teaching, investigated by a group of scholarpractitioners, may help us improve our own teaching and to develop greater understanding of the social studies methods course. The ideas in this book overall and the research reviewed in this chapter can provide a starting point for many new kinds of research and we end this chapter with suggestions about next steps. We addressed many areas in need of future research in our commentaries in this chapter. For example, the NCSS standards emphasize active inquiry-oriented citizenship and social studies teaching, yet our review of the literature tells us very little about teachers’ understandings of inquiry, how they teach inquiry, or what they understand citizenship to entail. • What is the state of the field? • What are common and contested ways of teaching about social studies and diversity in teacher education? • In what sorts of ways can teaching ideas be classified? What heuristics are suggested? • What are the key influences? • What ideas should be replicated and studied? • What are the possible future directions for social studies and diversity teacher education? • What unanswered questions do these chapters and this review inspire? • What if any methods for evaluating students and courses might be suggested by the ideas in this book?

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• • • • •

Which issues should be studied through larger-scale and replication studies? What topics would be best explored through longitudinal studies? How can studies be more attentive to describing multiple outcomes? How similar are the effective methods across content areas? To what extent are successful methods transferable across K-6 and 7-12 and higher education?

One of the most pressing challenges for social studies and diversity teacher educators is to identify the main ideas, thinkers, concepts, issues, strategies, and practices that serve as the basis of professional knowledge. Of course, in seeking commonalties in professional knowledge and successful methods we would face a substantial challenge. The topics in this book are all of interest to teacher educators and teachers alike. There are, nevertheless, topics of particular interest to teacher educators, and there are also many approaches and stances that are deeply contested within and across these communities. The chapters in this book serve as a form of “data,” a kind of snapshot of the field. Researchers can explore these chapters with an analytical lens in order to consider questions like these and many more. Please do! Note 1. This chapter draws on the previously published Adler, S. (2008). Social studies teacher education. In L. Levstik & C. Tyson (Eds.), The handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning, 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan.

References Adler, S. A. (1991). The education of social studies teachers. In J. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 197–209). New York: Macmillan. Adler, S. A. (2008) Social studies teacher education. In L. Levstik & C. Tyson (Eds.), Handbook of research on socials studies teaching and learning (2nd ed.). New York: Macmillan. Adler, S. A., & Confer, B. J. (1998, February 28–30). A practical inquiry: Influencing preservice teachers’ beliefs toward diversity and democracy. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, New Orleans, LA. Armento, B. J. (1996). The professional development of social studies educators. In J. Sikula (Ed), Handbook of research on teacher education (2nd ed., pp. 485–502). New York: Macmillan. Barr, R., Barth, J., & Shermis, S. (1977). Defining the social studies (Bulletin No. 51). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Beisser, S. (1999). Infusing technology in elementary social studies methods. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education. San Antonio, TX. Bennett, L. (2000–2001). Technology standards for the preparation of teachers. International Journal of Social Education, 15(2), 1–11. Bennett, L. (2001). Online journals to promote reflection teaching in an elementary social studies course. The International Social Studies Forum, 1(1), 17–31. Boyle-Baise, M. (2003). Doing democracy in social studies methods. Theory and Research in Social Education, 31(1), 51–71. Clift, R. T., & Brady, P. (2005). Research on methods courses and field experiences. In M. Cochran-Smith & K. M. Zeichner (Eds.), Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education (pp. 309–434). Washington, DC: AERA. Cochran-Smith, M., & Zeichner, K. M. (Eds.). (2005). Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education. Washington, DC: AERA. Combs, D., & White, R. (2000). There’s madness in these methods: Teaching secondary methods students to develop interdisciplinary units. The Clearing House, 73(5), 282–286. Dinkelman, T. (1999a). An inquiry into the development of critical reflection in secondary student teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16(2), 195–222. Dinkelman, T. (1999b). Critical reflection in a social studies methods seminar. Theory and Research in Social Education, 27(3), 329–357. Ehman, L. (2001). Technology infusion in the secondary social studies course with web-based, standalone, modules. Journal of Research on Computers in Education, 34(1), 39–50.

Conclusion • 375 Fehn, B., & Koeppen, K. E. (1998). Intensive document-based instruction in a social studies methods course and student teachers’ attitudes and practices in subsequent filed experiences. Theory and Research in Social Education, 26(4), 461–84. Good, A. J., O’Connor, K. A., Greene, H. C., & Luce, E. F. (2005). Collaborating across the miles: Telecollaboration in a social studies methods course. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 5(3–4), 300–317. Heilman, E. (2006). Critical, liberal, and poststructural challenges for global education. In A. Segall, E. Heilman, & C. H. Cherryholmes (Eds.), Social studies—The next generation: Researching in the postmodernism (pp. 189–208). New York: Lang. Hess, D. (2001). Teaching to public controversy in democracy. In J. J. Patrick & R. S. Leming (Eds.), Principles and practices in democracy in the education of social studies teachers; Civic learning in teacher education (pp. 87–110). (ERIC Document 460064). Hohenbrink, J., Johnston, M., & Westhoven, L. (1997) Collaborative teaching of a social studies methods course: Intimidation and change. Journal of Teacher Education 48(4), 293–300. Hughes, A. S. (1997). Toward a more thoughtful professional education for social studies teachers: Can problem-based learning contribute. Theory and Research in Social Education, 25(4), 431–445. Hughes, A. S., Sears, A. M., & Clarke, G. M. (1998). Adapting problem-based learning to social studies teacher education. Theory and Research in Social Education, 26(4), 531–548. Jongewaard, S. (2000). The six characteristics of universal citizenship: Their development and measurement in preservice teachers. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies, San Antonio, TX. Keiper, T., Harwood, A., & Larson, B. (2000). Preservice teachers’ perceptions of infusing computer technology into social studies instruction. Theory and Research in Social Education, 28(4), 566–579. Keiper, T., Myhre, O., & Pihl, P. (2000–2001). Enhancing school-university collaboration through technology. International Journal of Social Education, 15(2), 62–75. Kirkwood, T. F. (2001). Our global age requires global education: Clarifying definitional ambiguities. The Social Studies, 92(1), 10–15. Lee, J. (2000). Assessing pre-service students’ knowledge in a social studies methods course using digital resources. In C. White (Ed.), Social studies (pp. 1997–2002). Paper presented at Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference. (ERIC Document 444562) Lipscomb, G. B., & Doppen, F. H. (2002, November 21). Climbing the STAIRS: Social studies teachers’ perceptions of technology integrations. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies, Phoenix, AZ. Liston, D. P., & Zeichner, K. M. (1991). Teacher education and the social conditions of schooling. New York: Routledge Press. Mason, C. L. (2000). Online teacher education: An analysis of student teachers’ use of commuter-mediated communication. International Journal of Social Education, 15(1), 19–38. Mason, C. L., & Berson, M. J. (2000). Computer mediated communication in elementary social studies methods: An examination of students’ perceptions and perspectives. Theory and Research in Social Education, 28(4), 527–545. Mayer, R. H. (2003, April 21–25.). Learning to think historically: The impact of a philosophy and methods of history course on three preservice teachers. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago. McAninch, A. C. (2004). Reflection in social studies teacher education. In S. Adler (Ed.), Critical issues in social studies teacher education (pp. 59–74). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Merryfield, M. M. (2001). Moving the center of global education: From imperial world views that divide the world to double consciousness, contrapuntal pedagogy, hybridity, and cross cultural competence. In W. B. Stanley (Ed.), Critical issues in social studies research for the 21st century (pp. 179–208). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Milson, A. J., & King, K. P. (2001). Investigating science–technology–society issues with prospective elementary school teachers. The International Social Studies Forum, 1(2), 77–87. Misco, T. (2005). The moral nature of elementary social studies methods. Theory and Research in Social Education, 33(4), 532–547. National Council for the Social Studies (1994). Expectations of excellence: Curriculum standards for social studies. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Newmann, F. M. (1990). Qualities of thoughtful social studies classes: An empirical profile. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 22(3), 253–275. Newmann, F. M. (1991). Promoting higher order thinking in social studies: overview of a study of sixteen high school departments. Theory and Research in Social Education, 19, 324–340. Ochoa-Becker, A. S. (2007). Democratic education for social studies: An issues-centered decision making curriculum. Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Pajares, M. F. (1992). Teacher beliefs and educational research: Cleaning up a messy construct. Review of Educational Research, 62(3), 307–322. Parker, W. (2001). Teaching teachers to lead discussion: Democratic education in content and method. In J. J. Patrick & R. S. Leming (Eds.), Principles and practices in democracy in the education of social studies teachers; Civic learning in teacher education (pp. 111–133). (ERIC Document 460064)

376 • Won-Pyo Hong and Susan A. Adler Parker, W., & Hess, D. (2001). Teaching with and for discussion. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17, 273–289. Riley, K. L. & Stern, S. S. (1997, October 16–18). Understanding cultural influence: Using authentic assessment and qualitative methodology to bridge theory and practice. Paper presented at the Fourth Annual AATC Conference, Indianapolis, IN. Riley, K. L., & Stern, B. S. (2001, November 14–17). Problems and possibilities of Web-based instruction: Transforming social studies methods and practice. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council for the Social Studies, Washington, DC. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a design for teaching and learning in the professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Segall, A., & Gaudelli, W. (2007). Reflecting socially on social issues in a social studies methods course. Teaching Education, 18(1), 77–92. Seixas, P. (1998). Student teachers thinking historically. Theory and Research in Social Education, 26(3), 310–341. Shaver, J. P. (1997). The past and future of social studies as citizenship education and of research on social studies. Theory and Research in Social Education, 25(2), 210–215. Slekar, T. D. (2006). Preaching history in a social studies methods course: A portrait of practice. Theory and Research in Social Education, 34(2), 241–258. Stanley, W. B. (1985). Recent research in the foundations of social education: 1976–1983. In W. B. Stanley (Ed.), Review of research in social studies education (pp. 65–121) Washington, DC: National Council of the Social Studies. VanManen, M. (1977). Linking ways of knowing with ways of being practical. Curriculum Inquiry, 6(3), 205–228. Wade, R., & Raba, S. (2003). The Chicago experience: Border crossing for social studies preservice teachers. Theory and Research in Social Education, 31(2), 153–173 White, C. (2000). Hypergroups for social studies teachers: A critical issues dialog for technology integration. In C. White (Ed.), Social studies (pp. 2021–2027). Paper presented at Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference. (Eric Document 444562) Wilson, A. (2001). Growing toward teaching from a global perspective. The International Social Studies Forum, 1(2), 127–143. Yeager, E. A., & Wilson, E. K. (1997). Teaching historical thinking in the social studies methods course: A case study. The Social Studies, 88(3), 121–125.

APPENDIX

1

Planning Instruction with Learning Disabilities in Mind Elizabeth E. Heilman

Developing lessons and units requires teachers to design instruction not simply for whole classes but also to adapt lessons in response to individual differences among students. The most commonly needed type of adaptation is for students with learning disabilities. Teachers also adapt instruction for children with physical and emotional disabilities, mental retardation, autism, deafness, blindness, behavioral disorders,and with different language capacities, learning styles, and even temperaments such as shyness or comfort in group work. These are not learning disabilities. Adaptations tend to be of two major types. There are adaptations that remediate or help build a skill related to a disability and there are adaptations that avoid the difference or disability by providing instruction through an alternative method or modality. For example, underlining key words and providing advance organizers can help build skills that remediate a reading disability, while having a child listen to a book on tape can avoid a reading disability. The term learning disability according to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is defined as a “disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using spoken or written language, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or to do mathematical calculations.” According to the National Institutes of Health, they affect 15% of America’s school children. Though approximately 15% of students in any given class will have learning disabilities, not all will be identified. Most learning disabilities occur on a spectrum from mild to severe and it is not unusual for students to have more than one. Educational psychologists complete comprehensive evaluations in order to diagnose learning disabilities; however, classroom teachers are often the ones to suggest such assessments based on their observations. Children with learning disabilities are not “dumb” or “lazy.” In fact, they typically have average or above average intelligence. Their brains just process information differently (NICHCY, 2009), with basic reading and language skills being the most common learning disabilities. As many as 80% of students with learning disabilities have reading problems, many of which are caused by dyslexia. This appendix provides a brief review of the most common disabilities in order to help teachers adapt instruction. The appendix has been compiled from multiple sources, although it draws most heavily on the New Brunswick Department of Education (2003) “Resource for the Identification and Teaching of Students with Specific Learning Disability,” which is available in its entirety online. Other excellent resources include the National Dissemination Center for Learning Disabilities, LD online, and the Misunderstood Minds (Richards, 1999) companion Web site to their PBS special on learning differences and disabilities (PBS, 2008). Charles Schwab, who heads the nation’s first and largest discount brokerage, overseeing more than $500 billion in assets, was a 377

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dyslexic high school dropout, and his Schwab Foundation for Learning also provides an excellent Web site for parents. The Most Common Learning Disabilities Dyslexia and Decoding Problems Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin and is characterized by difficulties with accurate or fluent word recognition, and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from deficits in visual memory and in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected given other cognitive abilities. Reading problems are by far the most common form of disability and as many as one in five students have some degree of dyslexia. The common myths about dyslexia are that dyslexics read backwards and reverse words and letters. These characteristics may be part of the problem with some individuals, but they are not the most common or most important attributes. One of the more recurrent patterns seen in the life of dyslexics is the tendency, sometimes, for the “easy” things to be hard and the “hard” things to be easy. Dyslexics are often very good at higher order complex thinking, spatial understanding, big picture thinking; they can be highly creative, artistic, and in tune with visual surroundings. Mere rote memorization is a struggle. How to tell if a student is dyslexic: • The student has difficulty learning sounds and sound patterns (phonemic awareness, phonics). • The student is unable to retain sounds or recall images of words long enough to make meaning from them. • The student is unable to discriminate between similar sounding words (e.g., shut and shot). • The student has difficulty with rhyming, segmenting, and blending. • The student has difficulty distinguishing sounds in words or in isolated letters. • The student has a tendency to insert or delete a sound in a word. • The student has trouble memorizing short, highly common words. • The student shows poor decoding skills (reversals, omissions, substitutions, additions, phoneme confusion). • The student uses capitals to distinguish b’s and d’s. • The student deletes and adds letters. • Persistent misspellings of common nonphonetic words such as they or where. • The student has normal comprehension once decoding is managed. • The student is often bright and articulate. • The student has good speaking, listening, and vocabulary but their level of oral vocabulary is not evident in writing. • The student often has very good abstract reasoning and spatial skills.

What to Do for Students with Dyslexia and Decoding Problems There are a number of interventions that are helpful with dyslexia and decoding problems. These strategies can be useful even in the secondary classroom since understanding syllable types, rules and morphology

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can greatly aid students in correctly reading and writing complex vocabulary. Many states even mandate phonics instruction in content area classrooms.

Learning Style and Disability Awareness First, dyslexic students need to know that the decoding part of reading is not a higher order capacity and they are not unintelligent. Explain that they need endurance and logic to break the codes of English, which includes many rules and “irrational” spellings. Phonemic Awareness Teach the student how to listen to a single word or syllable and break it into individual phonemes. They also have to take individual sounds and blend them into a word, change sounds, delete sounds, and compare sounds—all in their head. These skills are easiest to learn before working with printed letters. Phoneme/Grapheme Correspondence Next, teach which sounds are represented by which letter(s), and how to blend those letters into single-syllable words. • Carefully scaffold introduction of new phonics skills from simple to more complex letter– sound correspondences. • Provide ample practice opportunities that directly align with the phonics instruction. • Link phonics instruction to word recognition and spelling activities. • Explicitly address patterns in irregular words and provide ample practice to build sight word recognition of irregular words. • Relate phonetic elements to all types of text. • Establish instructional routines for development of phonetic decoding efficiency.

The Six Types of Syllables The six types of syllables that compose English words are taught next. If students know what type of syllable they’re looking at, they’ll know what sound the vowel will make. Conversely, when they hear a vowel sound, they’ll know how the syllable must be spelled to make that sound. 1. Closed syllables: end with consonants and the vowel is usually short—bum tan hit cut seldom cir-cus 2. Open syllables: end with a vowel and the vowel usually says its name (however, I and Y, can say short or long “I”)—my he ba-con mu-sic si-lent fa-mous re-peat 3. R-controlled syllables: the “r” changes a vowel and makes a new phonogram, so teach this sentence, “Her first nurse works early.” E-R says /er/, I-R says /er/, U-R says /er/, W-O-R says /wer/, E-A-R says /er/. 4. E-controlled syllables: the “final silent e” forces the vowel before it to say its name—bake time cute cope 5. e-le syllables: cas-tle bat-tle lit-tle (e is necessary as every English syllable must have a vowel) 6. Vowel-Pair syllables: pain sea-son boil toy suit

Probabilities and Rules The English language often provides several ways to spell the same sounds. For example, the sound /SHUN/ can be spelled either TION, SION, or CION. The sound of /J/ at the end of a word can be spelled GE or DGE. Dyslexic students need to be taught these rules and probabilities.

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Roots Affixes, and Morphology These are taught to expand a student’s vocabulary and ability to comprehend (and spell) unfamiliar words. For instance, once a student has been taught that the Latin root tract means pull, and a student knows the various Latin affixes, the student can figure out that retract means pull again, contract means pull together, subtract means pull away (or pull under), while tractor means a machine that pulls. Simultaneous Multisensory Instruction Research has shown that dyslexic people who use all of their senses when they learn (visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic) are better able to store and retrieve the information. So a beginning dyslexic student might see the letter A, say its name and sound, and write it in the air—all at the same time. They recall words by tapping the letters down their arms from shoulder to wrist. Older students do the same with full words. This really helps. Intense Instruction with Ample Practice Instruction for dyslexic students must be much more intense, and offer much more practice, than for regular readers. Direct, Explicit Instruction Dyslexic students do not easily memorize anything about written language. So, you must teach them, directly and explicitly, with little reliance on sight alone, each and every rule that governs our written words. And you must teach one rule at a time, and practice it until it is stable in both reading and spelling, before introducing a new rule. Systematic and Cumulative By the time most dyslexic students are identified, they are usually quite confused about written language, so teachers aids or parents must go back to the very beginning and create a solid foundation by presenting one rule at a time and practicing it until the student can automatically and fluently apply that rule both when reading and spelling. Teachers continue to weave previously learned rules into current lessons to keep them fresh and solid. Synthetic and Analytic Dyslexic students must be taught both how to take the individual letters or sounds and put them together to form a word (synthetic), as well as how to look at a long word and break it into smaller pieces (analytic). Diagnostic Teaching Teachers must continuously assess their student’s understanding of, and ability to apply, the rules. The teacher must ensure the student isn’t simply recognizing a pattern and blindly applying it. And when confusion of a previously taught rule is discovered, it must be retaught. Secondary teachers will most commonly do diagnostic teaching. Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) An attention deficit occurs when the brain cannot maintain focus on important information. It cannot filter out unimportant auditory, visual, or kinesthetic information in order to focus and maintain attention to the task at hand. A normal attention span is 3 to 5 minutes per year of a child’s age. A 3-year-old should be able to concentrate on a particular task for at least 9 minutes, and a child entering kindergarten should be able to concentrate for at least 15 minutes, a 14-yearold for 42 minutes. This does not apply to TV or games but to educational activities like reading with an adult or learning a new skill.

Planning Instruction with Learning Disabilities in Mind • 381

How to tell if a student has attention deficit: • • • • • • • • • •

The student has difficulty focusing and paying attention. The student daydreams or seems to be in another world. The student focuses on many things at once. The student gets sidetracked by what is going on around him or her. The student is slow to respond to questions or seems not to hear them. The student has difficulty listening. The student fails to give close attention to detail. The student seems disorganized. The student has trouble with tasks that require sustained focus. The student is forgetful.

Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity disorder is characterized by a persistent pattern of impulsiveness and attention deficit with hyperactivity. How to tell if a student has ADHD: • • • • • • • • •

The student is physically restless. The student tends to move around the classroom at inappropriate times. The student runs or climbs or is generally overactive in inappropriate situations. The student interrupts and talks excessively. The student has difficulty playing or working quietly. The student is always on the go. The student tends to blurt out answers. The student has trouble waiting for his or her turn. The student is impulsive, acting quickly without thinking first.

What to Do for ADD and ADHD Activity-based lessons with lots of movement work well for this of child. Try to schedule breaks into the day. Asking these children to sit still for any length of time is an unreasonable request and most likely not possible for them. Never restrict recess as punishment. These children need physical activity to help them be ready to learn. Allow children to move about to the extent that it doesn’t bother other learners. Help to build self-esteem by displaying work or projects that emphasize the child’s abilities. • • • • • • • • •

Put the child in a more structured seating plan with his or her back to classmates. Seat the child away from high traffic areas. Inform the child when possible, prior to all scheduled changes in routine. Give only one direction at a time. Check with the child to see if directions have been understood. Use an agreed upon “focus” signal to sound to draw the child’s attention back. Provide multimodal/multisensory instruction. Talk with animation and varying inflections. Check in, even if very briefly, throughout assignments and activities to help or redirect the child

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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Face student(s) and make direct eye contact when teaching them. Redirect physical energy, or ignore it. Assign a classroom or study “buddy” to the child. Provide an outline and ensure that the child understands the exact requirements for assignments. Provide the child with a copy of the reading material with the main ideas highlighted. Use calming music when working on a task, testing, or during transition times. Adjust the length of tests, but not the level of difficulty. Measure knowledge, not endurance or focus. Arrange for a quiet area for the child to work during testing or overly stimulating activities. A calm, positive manner is best with this type of child. Plan organization strategies into this child’s lessons. Reduce the amount of homework given, but not the level of difficulty of the task. Send home an extra set of textbooks to circumvent memory lapses with regard to bringing books home or to school. Be patient, as these children become more frustrated and tire more easily than others. Establish daily contact, if possible, with the parents, e.g. notes in a homework book, or brief daily reports to be signed by the parents. Use classroom tokens for reward when appropriate. Use encouraging statements to elicit appropriate behaviors. Praise appropriate behavior and ignore inappropriate behavior.

Auditory-Processing Disorders Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), also referred to as Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) is the inability to interpret, organize, analyze, or synthesize an auditory message in the absence of a hearing impairment and is related to how the central nervous system (CNS) uses auditory information; that is, how the brain perceives and processes what the ear hears. The five main problem areas that can affect both home and school activities in children with CAPD (Kids Health, 2009). 1. Auditory Figure–Ground Problems: The child cannot pay attention when there is noise in the background. Noisy, low-ceilinged classrooms could be very frustrating to this child. 2. Auditory Memory Problems: The child has difficulty remembering information such as oral directions, lists, or study materials. It can exist on an immediate basis (“I can’t remember it now”) or a deferred basis (“I can’t remember it when I need it for later”). 3. Auditory Discrimination Problems: The child has difficulty hearing the difference between sounds or words that are similar (COAT/BOAT or CH/SH). This problem can affect following directions, reading, spelling, and writing skills, among others. 4. Auditory Attention Problems: The child cannot maintain focus for listening long enough to complete a task or requirement (listening to a lecture in school). Although health, motivation, and attitude may also affect attention, among other factors, a child with CAPD cannot (not will not) maintain attention. 5. Auditory Cohesion Problems: Higher level listening tasks are difficult. Auditory cohesion skills—drawing inferences from conversations, understanding riddles, or comprehending

Planning Instruction with Learning Disabilities in Mind • 383

verbal math problems—require heightened auditory processing and language levels. They develop best when all the other skills (levels 1 through 4 above) are intact. How to tell if a student as Auditory Processing Disorder: • The student has difficulty in a noisy environment (may be viewed as a daydreamer). • The student listens but processes the information heard inaccurately or out of proper sequence. • The student seems to be listening very slowly • The student is unable to follow oral directions, especially those given quickly. • The student frequently asks for information to be repeated (often uses question words such as huh? and what?). • Behavior and performance improve in quieter settings • The student can have difficulty following not just classroom direction but also normal conversations. • The student has difficulty distinguishing between similar sounds. • The student has difficulty retaining material presented orally. • The student experiences difficulty with dictated notes. • The student experiences difficulty with short and fast quizzes. • The student experiences difficulty making notes from what the teacher has said. • The student has difficulty sorting out background noises. • The student has difficulty focusing on one sound among many. • The student has difficulty answering oral questions and repeating sentences.

What to Do for Students with Auditory Processing Disorders Teachers can change the learning, listening, or communication environment; they can develop the students’ higher-order skills to help compensate for the disorder; and they can help remediate the auditory deficit itself although remediation is most effective with one-on-one training with a therapist or through specialized computer-assisted learning programs. • Place the student near the front of the room or near the teacher, away from the door or window that may provide a source of auditory distraction. • Offer the student a study carrel to work in if one is available. • Use electronic devices that assist with listening. • Place the student in a structured rather than an open classroom if possible. • Have most oral lessons in written form or in outline form for this student. • Place less emphasis on decoding words. Encourage the use of context and picture cues. • Intervene with phonemic awareness activities or programs. • Make sure the student has eye contact with the teacher when instructions are given, and • Ensure that the student is attending to what is being said. • Speak in a slow and distinct manner, using simple vocabulary. • Use gesture to reinforce what is being said. • Emphasize key words and word endings when speaking or writing, especially when presenting new information. Paraphrase instructions and information in simpler language rather than only repeating. • Encourage the student to ask questions when confused. • Make instructional transitions clear. • Avoid asking the student to listen and write notes at the same time.

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• Provide copied notes when necessary. • Show patience with these children as they sometimes tire easily. • Monitor the student’s understanding of directions by asking the student to repeat the direction given. • Pair the student with a peer helper who can assist the student when he or she has not grasped the auditory message. • Do not call out directions or questions in daily work or test situations. • Give the student short directions, explanations, and instructions to follow. • Provide written directions and instructions to supplement verbal directions and instructions. • Identify a list of word endings, key words, etc. that the student will practice listening for when someone is speaking. • Have the student silently repeat or subvocalize information just heard. • Deliver directions to the child individually and slowly. • Provide visual aids or written directions whenever possible. Visual-Processing Deficit A visual-processing deficit is the inability to interpret, organize, analyze, or synthesize a visual message in the absence of a visual impairment. There is a range of ways in which the brain processes visual information and thus there is a range of distinctive problems. This is an umbrella term for any kind of visual processing problem. How to tell if a student has visual-processing disorder: • The student is inattentive to visual tasks and can be easily distracted by too much visual stimulus (e.g., brightly colored posters or too much clutter in the classroom). • The student is restless during videos or visual presentations. • The student has difficulty copying from the board, test paper, calculator, or textbook to the student’s own paper. • The student’s written copy may show missing figures or words, reversals, inversions, additions, deletions, or transpositions in letters or numbers. • The student does not remember what he or she has read silently. • The student rubs his or her eyes or complains about them. The eyes may be bothered because of the intensity needed to decipher the visual material. • The students’ eye drifts, trembles, or shakes when she tries to focus. • The student’s reading level is below average. • The student’s oral reading comprehension is better than his or her silent reading comprehension. • The student is a poor written speller, but is an adequate oral speller. • The student does not observe visual changes or stimuli that other children notice (e.g., bulletin board displays, posted notices in obvious places). • The student’s directionality is weak, and the student gets lost in unknown places, often copies numbers reversed, inverted, or transposed from the original. • The student’s reading level is below average. • The student’s work shows persistent spelling errors.

Planning Instruction with Learning Disabilities in Mind • 385

What to Do for Students with Visual-Processing Disorders (This will depend on which type, but these are general suggestions.) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Reduce the amount of visual information on a page. Have the student read with a sliding mask, focus guide, or index card. Have the student use graph paper to assist him or her in lining up the numbers properly. Highlight or underline important phrases in the student’s assigned reading. Assign fewer questions, but retain the level of difficulty given to an assignment. Have older students consistently use a word processor for written work. Reduce distracting visual stimuli in the classroom. Allow for extra time for written tasks. Provide copied notes. Allow the use of a calculator for math-related activities. Be aware of the difficulty associated with visual tasks such as matching. Provide oral testing. Provide a scribe for testing. Give extra time. Be aware of the visual difficulty of a particular assignment. Provide a model or example if possible.

Visual-Spatial Deficit A visual spatial deficit is the inability to interpret, organize, analyze or synthesize the spatial components of a visual message in the absence of a visual impairment. (Children who see primarily with one eye have poor or absent depth perception but that’s visual problem.) How to tell if a student has visual-spatial deficit: • The student has poor handwriting or artwork. • The student loses his or her place when reading; skips important details/figures on a page. • The student’s reading level is below average. • The student’s mapping or graphing abilities are weak. • The student consistently uses a finger to keep his or her place when reading or finding a word in a composition (poor tracking). • The student has poor skills when attempting to accurately match letters and figures in correct spaces (e.g. letter and number matching activities in columns). • The student has difficulty locating specific words in dictionaries or texts. • The student’s papers are poorly organized, and information is scattered. • The student has difficulty with depth perception and measurement. • The student bumps into things. • The student’s written work appears sloppy. • The student has difficulty perceiving spaces between words and recognizing punctuation in written language. • The student often pushes the wrong numbers on a calculator or phone. • The student has difficulty with time concepts or with the passage of time.

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What to Do For Students with Visual Spatial Deficit • • • • • • • • • • • •

• • •

Have the student use outline format or visual organizers. Encourage the use of a word processor. Have the student use colored overlays when reading. Encourage cursive writing rather than manuscript to reduce reversals, inversions, etc. Provide strategies for organization. Have the student consistently use an agenda or calendar to assist in preplanning. A peer helper, volunteer, or parent may assist with this task. Use concrete, hands-on examples whenever possible when introducing a new concept. Have the student use graph paper to assist in lining up numbers on a page. Reduce the amount of visual information the student has to absorb at one time. Reduce the number of assigned questions, but retain the level of difficulty. Use clay or other kinesthetic means when introducing letters in the early years. Allow blank visual organizers to be brought to a testing situation, and evaluate these organizers if not enough time is available for the student to translate the organizer to written form. Allow the use of a calculator for math activities. Limit the amount of visual information presented on a test page. Allow extra time.

Organizational Deficit An organizational deficit is the inability to internally structure for the purposes of planning, monitoring, and evaluating information. How to tell if a student has organizational deficit: • The student’s personal appearance, books, locker, desk, assignments, and thoughts are disorganized. • The student speaks in a rambling, disorganized manner. • The student is forgetful (e.g., forgets to take assignments home, write out lessons, or bring back completed work). • The student is often late or absent. • The student is immature or impulsive. • The student has difficulty making choices or decisions. • The student shows inconsistent behaviors. • The student strays from the topic quickly. • The student procrastinates when faced with a highly structured task.

What to Do For a Student With an Organizational Deficit • Have the child summarize notes or text reading, using visual organizers. • Provide easy to follow mnemonic devices when available, for remembering or organizing concepts; e.g., COPS—Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation, Spelling—as a mnemonic for proofreading and editing.

Planning Instruction with Learning Disabilities in Mind • 387

• For middle level, post or provide mark value for course components at the beginning of each unit. • Involve parents in monitoring the student’s homework and projects. • Assign a classroom buddy who will check that homework is written and that the correct books are packed. • Avoid giving homework verbally without written backup. • Use co-operative learning techniques when possible to utilize the organizational skills of others. • Keep an extra folder of handout sheets to replace those “lost” by the student. • Take a new student on a tour of the school and explicitly point out specific locations such as the gym and art room, as well as taking the student through a day’s schedule prior to starting school. • Allow the student to experience the consequences of disorganization when appropriate. • Intervene when the student is disorganized. • Praise and reward the student for good organization. • Encourage the use of outlines, maps or visual organizers for tests. • When designing tests, make use of question types that do not require as much organization; for example, fill in the blank, true or false, multiple choice. • Give extra time for testing. • Present assignments in small chunks. • Provide a model or example in test items. References Kids Health. (2009). Auditory processing disorder. kidshealth.org/parent/medical/ears/central_auditory.html National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY). (2009). Learning disabilities. (n.d.). http:// www.nichcy.org/Disabilities/Specific/Pages/LD.aspx New Brunswick Department of Education. (2003). Resource for the identification and teaching of students with specific learning disability. http://www.nald.ca/library/learning/ritssld/ritssld/ritssld.pdf Public Broadcasting, Boston. (2008). Misunderstood minds. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds Richards, R. G. (1999, May). Strategies for dealing with dysgraphia. LD Online. http://www.ldonline.org/article/Strategies_for_Dealing_with_Dysgraphia Shaywitz S. (2003). Overcoming dyslexia: A new and complete science-based program for reading problems at any level. New York: Knopf. Sicker, T. (Executive Producer). (2002, March 27). Misunderstood minds [Television broadcast]. Boston, MA: Public Broadcasting Service.

APPENDIX

2

Building a Repertoire of Basic Instructional Strategies Elizabeth E. Heilman

All teachers need a solid repertoire of basic instructional strategies and this appendix includes both general methods and methods that are specific to skills and knowledge of social studies and diversity education. Most of these are well known and a few are strategies I devised myself. Direct Instruction This teacher-centered strategy focuses on incremental steps toward helping students develop a specific skill. A new skill is modeled, then students practice, and are given feedback. This is followed by independent practice and periodic reviews. Lecture A lecture requires students to be passive and so a lecture must be engaging enough to hold students’ attention. Begin with an attention getting fact, quote, or anecdote and then frame the main point of the lecture. Next, develop the main branches of your supporting points and use examples. The Center for Teaching and Learning at Stanford University offers these tips: Provide Students with a Framework For Each Lecture • Aim for three to five main points in each lecture. • Begin the lecture with a high-level question that the upcoming information can answer. • Prepare a handout of the lecture’s main points. • During the lecture, be explicit about what students should focus on. Don’t Overload Students • Give students short breaks throughout the lecture to review their notes and ask questions. • Include a formal activity or assignment after every 15 to 20 minutes of presentation. • Don’t use too many different types of presentation materials at once. • Don’t give students two conflicting things to attend to at the same time.

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Building a Repertoire of Instructional Strategies • 389

Students Are Also More Likely To Remember Information that Relates to Ideas Or Experiences They Are Already Familiar With • Use examples from student life, current events, or popular culture. • Ask students to generate their own examples from personal experience. • Tell students how new information relates to previous lectures in your course. • Show students how specific skills can be applied to real-world problems. • Create activities and assignments that ask students to fit new information into the overall themes of the course. Discussion Strategies The purpose of discussion is to involve students in the exploring and better understanding topics, concepts, and feelings. There are many variations and several are described below. Response Cards First Discussion On index cards students write their response to a question and the cards are passed around as everyone reads them before discussion. Similarly, students can write down meaningful or provocative passages from a text before a full class discussion. When the cards stop, teachers ask students to read any card in their hand or share their own ideas. Brainstorming Students contribute ideas in response to a topic or question. Everything is accepted and the teacher or the students write down the words, ideas, or key phrases on a board until no new ideas are offered. Cognitive Mapping After brainstorming, these responses are then grouped, compared, analyzed. Concept circles or Venn diagrams can be used, or software such as Inspiration, Kidspiration, or MindMapper. K-W-L Teachers activate students’ prior knowledge by leading class in recording what students Know; what they Want to learn; and, after instruction ranging from a lesson to full unit, students reflect on what they have Learned. Guided Discussion to Teach Concepts This method is an interactive dialogue between teacher and students that aims at an increasingly complete and complex review of ideas and often begins with brainstorming and cognitive mapping. The teacher guides students; she does not lecture. Teachers and students brainstorm, summarize, and restate; they ask questions and decide what is more and less important or true, and they compare and contrast toward the end of clarifying concepts.

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Listening and Building Discussion Each student must repeat or summarize what the prior student said before building on it or refuting it with his or her own statement. Audience Response: Yes, No, New, Discussion Students indicate that they want to share an opinion agreeing with or elaborating on what has been said so far by raising their hands with thumbs up. To indicate a disagreement they have thumbs down, and to show an interest in moving discussion in a new direction they put their thumbs sideways. To share a personal story they point to themselves with the other. This helps the teacher more effectively structure discussions and quickly shows the sentiment in the room. Audience Response Systems (ARS) There is also technology for interactive audience responses in which each student gives feedback with a remote control that communicates with a computer and the teacher can display results to aid in discussion. Story then Discussion Teachers begin discussions by first reading or telling stories to orient students to a topic or issue, or to synthesize and illustrate what they have learned. Many kinds of genres such as diaries, newspaper stories, historical fiction, mystery, nonfiction, and even poetry can be used. Teachers can use individual stories or build growing narratives over time, and the stories can be individually or collaboratively generated. Debate and Deliberation Every social studies and diversity education teacher includes discussion in his or her teaching repertoire. But sometimes discussion degenerates into unreasoned debate, where opinions are more important than viewpoints based on thought and research. There are several discussion/ debate models, which can help make this strategy more effective, especially as a way to model thinking and critical problem solving, such as Structured Academic Controversy (SAL) and the Socratic Discussion Model. Cooperative Learning Strategies Four Corners Each student moves to a corner of the room representing a teacher-determined alternative. Students discuss within corners, listen to ideas from other corners, and try to get classmates to change corners. Inside-Outside Circles Students stand in pairs in two concentric circles with the inside circle facing out, and the outside circle facing in. Students respond to teacher questions as they rotate to each new partner.

Building a Repertoire of Instructional Strategies • 391

Roundrobin Each student in turn reads or shares while others listen. Small-Group Response Everyone in a small group discusses a question and makes sure all understand it before one group member summarizes it to the full class. Also called Numbered Heads Together. Think-Pair-Share Students think and sometimes write by themselves about a question, then they pair up with one or more others to discuss it before participating in full class sharing or discussion. Jigsaw When a topic has multiple dimensions groups are formed to learn about the specific parts and review and improve their understanding until they are “experts.” Groups then re-form so that each new group has one subtopic expert, and each member then teaches her or his expertise to the whole group. Teaching Resource Center for Teaching and Learning at Stanford University. (2005). How to create meaningful lectures. Speaking of Teaching 14(1), 1–5.

APPENDIX

3

Reading Comprehension Teaching Methods Elizabeth E. Heilman

Annolighting Highlighting key words and phrases in a text and annotating those highlights with marginal notes. Anticipation Guides These are typically used as a prereading strategy and help to engage students in thought and discussion about ideas and concepts that they will encounter in the text. Checking Out the Framework Give suggestions based on content or genre for previewing texts so that students can read strategically based on their purposes for reading the text. Collaborative Annotation Students co-construct their interpretations of a text through collaborative annotation. Conversations Across Time Help students to develop deeper insights by making connections between and across texts from different time periods in response to a common topic, theme, or essential question. Dense Questioning Help students pose increasingly dense questions as they make text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world connections. Facts and Opinions Students identify these and then explain how they can tell the difference. Frame of Reference Teaches students how to create a mental context for reading a book or a passage. Helps them to become aware of what they imagine and know before they read. Inferential Reading Ask students to keep a list of the various types of inferences that readers make while reading even seemingly straightforward text; recognizing that there are different types of inferences helps students to analyze text more consciously and strategically. Interactive Notebook Here students use a two-column note-taking strategy. In the right column, they take notes to synthesize essential ideas and information from a text, presentation, or film; in the left-hand column, they interact with the content in any way they choose (personal connections, illustrations, etc.). Key Concept Synthesis Students identify the most important ideas in a text, put those ideas into their own words, and then make connections among these important ideas.

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Reading Comprehension Teaching Methods • 393

Listening to Voice Students analyze and interpret writer’s voice and make notes on dictions, tone, syntax, unity, coherence, and audience. New Perspective Choose a passage from a text and rewrite it from a different perspective. Prediction Students consider the last section of the text and based on everything that’s happened so far, reflect on what will happen next. Questions Only The questions only strategy teaches students how to pose questions about the texts they are reading and encourages them to read actively as they work to answer the questions they have posed. RAFT Based on suggestions provided by the teacher or generated by the class, students choose a Role (reporter, critic, observer, etc.) an Audience (our class, teacher, community, congress, etc.) a Format (letter, article, report, poem, etc.) and a Topic (teacher gives a list of subjects) on which to write in response to their reading. Sociograms Students create a visual representation of the relationships among people in a text. Students can make use of pictures, symbols, shapes, colors, and line styles to illustrate these relationships, to understand the traits of each character, and to analyze the emerging primary and secondary conflicts. Text-to-self Personal connections are made between reading material and the reader’s own experiences or life. • • • • • •

What does this remind me of in my life? What is this similar to in my life? How is this different from my life? Has something like this ever happened to me? How does this relate to my life? What were my feelings when I read this?

Text-to-Text Personal connections are made between different texts. • • • •

What does this remind me of in another book I’ve read? How is this text similar to other things I’ve read? How is this different from other books I’ve read? Have I read about something like this before?

Text-to-world Connections are made between reading material and the reader’s ideas about how the world works. • • • •

What does this remind me of in the real world? How is this text similar to things that happen in the real world? How is this different from things that happen in the real world? How did that part relate to the world around me?

Contributors

Susan A. Adler University of Missouri-Kansas City

Todd Dinkelman University of Georgia

Janet Alleman Michigan State University

L. Mara Dodge Westfield State College

Ramona Fruja Amthor Michigan State University

Frans H. Doppen Ohio University, Athens

Wayne Au California State University, Fullerton

Ronald W. Evans San Diego State University

Keith C. Barton Indiana University

Thomas Fallace University of Mary Washington

Linda Bennett University of Missouri

Michael Fantauzzo Rush-Henrietta Senior High School, Rochester, NY

Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones Arizona State University

Eula Fresch Salve Regina University

Aaron Bodle Michigan State University

Nancy P. Gallavan University of Central Arkansas

Barbara Foulks Boyd Radford University, Virginia

William Gaudelli Teachers College, Columbia University

Deborah Byrnes Utah State University

David Gerwin Queens College of the City University of New York

Marilyn Cochran-Smith Boston College

Rich Gibson Southwestern College

Hilary G. Conklin University of Georgia

Katie Gjerpen Michigan State University

Margaret Smith Crocco Teachers College, Columbia University

Adam J. Greteman Michigan State University

Scott W. Dewitt University of Cincinnati

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Contributors • 395

Bruna Irene Grimberg Montana State University

Edric C. Johnson The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

John Gunn Queens College of the City University of New York

Benjamin Justice Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Anne-Lise Halvorsen Michigan State University James M. Hartwick University of Wisconisn–Whitewater Todd S. Hawley Kent State University Elizabeth E. Heilman Michigan State University Diana E. Hess University of Wisconsin-Madison M. Gail Hickey Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne David Hicks Virginia Tech Mark Hofer College of William and Mary John D. Hoge University of Georgia Won-Pyo Hong Seoul National University, Korea David Hursh University of Rochester Diane S. Illig University of Maryland, College Park Benjamin M. Jacobs University of Minnesota Jennifer Hauver James Kent State University

Christy G. Keeler Todd W. Kenreich Towson University Kathi Kern University of Kentucky Toni Fuss Kirkwood-Tucker Florida Atlantic University, Florida State University Mark Kissling Michigan State University Kim E. Koeppen Hamline University Ellen Kottler California State University, Fullerton Brian Lanahan College of Charleston Hilary Landorf Florida International University Thomas H. Levine University of Connecticut Melissa Lisanti Virginia Tech Ethan Lowenstein Eastern Michigan University Alan S. Marcus University of Connecticut Michael P. Marino Fordham University Camille Martina University of Rochester, School of Medicine and Dentistry

396 • Contributors

Glenabah Martinez University of New Mexico

Tracy Rock University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Terrence C. Mason Indiana University, Bloomington

Audrey Green Rogers Southern New Hampshire University

Theresa M. McCormick Auburn University

Alexandra C. Rolfsmeyer Michigan State University

Nancye E. McCrary University of Kentucky

E. Wayne Ross University of British Columbia

Merry M. Merryfield The Ohio State University

Beth C. Rubin Rutgers University

Scott Alan Metzger Penn State University

Heather Sadlier University of New England

Matthew T. Missias Michigan State University

Sandra Schmidt University of South Carolina

Peter Moran University of Wyoming

Avner Segall Michigan State University

John Myers University of Pittsburgh

Özlem Sensoy Simon Fraser University

Brooke S. Orr Westfield State College

Susan B. Serota Westminster College, Fulton, MO

Morgan Ott Michigan State University

Brian Sevier University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Judith L. Pace University of San Francisco

Paul Skilton-Sylvester Wissahickon Charter School, Philadelphia

Sung Choon Park University of Arkansas

Timothy D. Slekar Penn State Altoona

Jeff Passe Towson University

Barbara Slater Stern James Madison University

Jennifer M. Ponder California State University, Fullerton

Jeremy D. Stoddard The College of William and Mary

Dave Powell Gettysburg College

Binaya Subedi The Ohio State University

Paul Robinson University of Arizona

Kathleen Owings Swan University of Kentucky

Contributors • 397

Brenda Trofanenko University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Kenneth E. Vogler University of South Carolina

Tammy A. Turner-Vorbeck Wabash College

Signia Warner Westfield State College

Cynthia A. Tyson The Ohio State University

Elizabeth K. Wilson The University of Alabama

Stephanie Van Hover University of Virginia

Vivian Wright The University of Alabama

David H. Vawter Winthrop University

Index

A African race, 182–184 representation, 182–184 voice, 182–184 American Revolution, historical narrative construction, 123–125 Anthropological content knowledge critical global perspective, 164–166 marginalization, 164–166 matryoshka, 263–266 power/authority, 164–166 staying up on the news, 239–242 Archives 93–95 Artifacts artifact bag, 109–112 identity, 149–150 inference, 109–112 interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 matryoshka, 263–266 primary sources, 90–92 public history, 113–115 Asia, content resources, 105–108 Assessment, 10 authority, 59–60 Attention deficit disorder, 380–382 Attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder, 381–382 Auditory processing disorder, 382–384 Authority, 8, 48, 57–61, See also Power/authority

textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 Categorizing ideas, 30–32 children’s thinking, 312–315 “Execution Class,” 255–258 global economy, 199–201 social studies purpose, 255–258 student teachers, 226–229 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 Causality, 96–99 Central auditory processing disorder, 382–384 Change, 7 Children’s literature civic content knowledge, 63–65 civic education, 78–79 Columbus, Christopher, 137–140 critical social theory, 63–65 critical thinking, 63–65 ethical-political valuation, 63–65 government, 63–65 historical peers, 267–269 human rights, 63–65 justice, 63–65 master/slave metaphor, 64 matryoshka, 263–266 motivation, 264 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 power/authority, 63–65 primary sources, 267–269 reflection, 64–65 social justice education, 71–73 Children’s thinking, 312–315 Citizenship authority, 57–61 controversial issues, 230–233 current events, 215–217 environment toxins, 219–222 health, 219–222 inquiry method, 337–343 procedural democracy, 74–76 public places, 159–162 simulated Congressional hearing, 77–80 social spaces, 159–162 Socratic seminar, 288–290 staying up on the news, 239–242 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 Civic action constructing connections, 179–181 historical peers, 267–269 primary sources, 267–269 procedural democracy, 74–76

B Backwards design, 310–311, 333–336 Baltimore and the World Project, 211–213 Bias reduction constructing connections, 179–181 family structures, 170–175 history teaching, 185–188 indigenous peoples, 176–178 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 sports mascots, 176–178 student teachers, 226–229 textbook analysis, 273–275 transformative understanding, 252–254 Boston Massacre, historical narrative construction, 123–125 C Capitalism global economy, 199–201 globalization, 202–206 privilege, 202–206 Taylorism, 33–37

399

400 • Index Civic action (continued) service learning field placements, 81–85 staying up on the news, 239–242 Civic content knowledge, 50–52 children’s literature, 63–65 democratic concepts, 53–56 global education, 207–209 human rights, 66–69 simulated Congressional hearing, 77–80 Civic ideals, 9 Civic literacy, 47 Civic practices, 9 Civic responsibility, health, 219–222 Civics, 47, 50–52, 77 children’s literature, 78–79 children’s thinking, 312–315 constructing connections, 179–181 controversial issues, 230–233 curriculum development, 316–319 curriculum units, 329–331, 354–357 democratic concepts, 53–56 disasters, 243–245 environment toxins, 219–222 “Execution Class,” 255–258 field experiences, 350–353 global education, 207–209 good discussion, 235–237 health, 219–222 historical peers, 267–269 human rights, 66–69 interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 microteaching, 324–328 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 narrative, 358–361 preservice teachers, 47 primary sources, 267–269 simulated Congressional hearing, 77–80 social studies purpose, 255–258 standards, 344–349 staying up on the news, 239–242 student teachers, 226–229 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 verbal questioning skills, 235–237 visual learning, 270–272 Civil content knowledge interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 procedural democracy, 74–76 Civil rights interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 social justice education, 71–73 Socratic seminar, 288–290 Classroom authority, See Authority Classroom community, 38–42, 149–151 authority, 57–61 disasters, 243–245 sharing power with purpose, 249–251 Classroom management, 10, 48 Clockwork (Breitbart, 1981), 33–37 Coercion, 20–21 Collaboration archives, 93–95 Columbus, Christopher, 141–143 content resources, 105–108

critical social reflection, 15–18 interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 microteaching, 324–328 modeling approach to social studies teacher education, 320–323 procedural democracy, 74–76 service learning field placements, 81–85 sharing power with purpose, 249–251 simulated Congressional hearing, 77–80 standards, 344–349 staying up on the news, 239–242 technology-based social studies instruction, 304–307 transformative understanding, 252–254 WebQuest, 304–307 Collective experience, 12 Columbus, Christopher, 137–140, 141-143 Commonality and difference, 149–151 global education, 207–209 Common good, 43–49 Community-based learning, 192–195 curriculum units, 329–331 digital stories, 301–303 field experiences, 350–353 field trips, 283–286 interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 oral histories, 301–303 public history, 113–115 service learning field placements, 81–85 Complexity, 145 Concept, acronym DEAN, 51 Concept development, 30–32, 50–52 children’s thinking, 312–315 curriculum development, 316–319 democratic concepts, 53–56 microteaching, 324–328 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 Conceptual reasoning, 133–136 Congress, simulated hearing, 77–80 Consciousness raising cultural demographics, 152–154 indigenous peoples, 176–178 public places, 159–162 social spaces, 159–162 sports mascots, 176–178 Consent, 58 Constructing connections, 179–181 Constructivism social studies, 23–25 students’ preconceptions, 20 Consumption, 8 Continuity, 7 Controversial issues citizenship, 230–233 civics, 230–233 content resources, 105–108 critical review of teaching methods, 369–371 critical thinking, 230–233 current events, 223–225 decision making, 230–233 deliberation, 230–233 disasters, 243–245 ethical-political valuation, 230–233

Index • 401 “Execution Class,” 255–258 four corner debate, 230–233 identity, 230–233 indigenous peoples, 176–178 inference, 109–112 issues-centered social studies, 246–248 leading discussions, 230–233 power/authority, 230–233 public history, 113–115 sharing power with purpose, 249–251 social studies purpose, 255–258 sports mascots, 176–178 standards, 344–349 student teachers, 226–229 teacher reflection, 230–233 transformative understanding, 252–254 Cooperative learning microteaching, 324–328 modeling approach to social studies teacher education, 320–323 procedural democracy, 74–76 standards, 344–349 strategies, 390–391 technology-based social studies instruction, 304–307 WebQuest, 304–307 Creating teaching materials, 30–32 Columbus, Christopher, 137–140, 141–143 conceptual reasoning, 133–136 curriculum development, 316–319 family structures, 170–175 field trips, 283–286 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 issues-centered social studies, 246–248 microteaching, 324–328 scaffolding, 133–136 technology-based social studies instruction, 304–307 visual learning, 270–272 WebQuest, 304–307 Critical global perspective, 164–166 Critical literacy multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 public places, 159–162 social spaces, 159–162 Critical social reflection, 15–18 Critical social theory children’s literature, 63–65 history teaching, 185–188 Critical thinking, 38–42, 50–52 authority, 57–61 causality, 96–99 children’s literature, 63–65 Columbus, Christopher, 141–143 common good, 43–46 conceptual reasoning, 133–136 constructing connections, 179–181 content resources, 105–108 controversial issues, 230–233 critical social reflection, 15–18 curriculum development, 316–319 democratic concepts, 53–56 digital stories, 301–303 diversity education, 101–104

evidence, 120–122 “Execution Class,” 255–258 family finance, 196–198 good discussion, 235–237 historical narrative construction, 123–125 Historical Scene Investigation project (http://www.hsionline.org), 96–99 human rights, 66–69 indigenous peoples, 176–178 inference, 109–112 inquiry method, 337–343 interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 interpretation, 120–122 maps, 277–281 media, 260–261 modeling approach to social studies teacher education, 320–323 oral histories, 301–303 primary sources, 90–92 public history, 113–115 public places, 159–162 race, 182–184 representation, 182–184 scaffolding, 133–136 service learning field placements, 81–85 sharing power with purpose, 249–251 simulated Congressional hearing, 77–80 social education, 292–294 social spaces, 159–162 social studies, 23–25 purpose, 255–258 sports mascots, 176–178 standards, 344–349 staying up on the news, 239–242 student teachers, 226–229 Taylorism, 33–37 textbook analysis, 273–275 transformative understanding, 252–254 verbal questioning skills, 235–237 visual learning, 270–272 visual prompts, 101–104 voice, 182–184 writing from visual prompts, 101–104 Cultural artifacts, 149–151 Cultural context, 38–42 critical social reflection, 15–18 family history project, 167–169 names, 155–158 standards, 344–349 Cultural demographics, 152–154 Cultural knowledge, 12 Cultural representations, 146–147 Cultures, 7, 149–151 critical review of teaching methods, 367–368 cultural demographics, 152–154 current events, 215–217 inference, 109–112 matryoshka, 263–266 perspective consciousness, 145–147 primary sources, 90–92 Current events citizenship, 215–217

402 • Index Current events (continued) constructing connections, 179–181 controversial issues, 223–225 critical review of teaching methods, 369–371 cultures, 215–217 disasters, 243–245 divergent viewpoints, 223–225 ethnocentrism, 215–217 film, 215–217 geographical content knowledge, 215–217 geography, 215–217 global education, 215–217 global perspective, 215–217 inquiry method, 337–343 local/global communities, 215–217 multiple perspectives, 215–217 perspective consciousness, 215–217 preservice teachers, 223 simulated Congressional hearing, 77–80 staying up on the news, 239–242 Curriculum, See also Specific type authority, 59–60 content, 43–46 hidden conceptual tools for deconstructing, 160 deconstructing place, 161–162 human rights, 68 pedagogy, 43–46 purpose, 43–46 Curriculum courses, 43–46 Curriculum design, 309–311 critical review of teaching methods, 371–372 Curriculum development backwards design, 310–311, 333–336 big six resource questions, 319 big ten goals questions, 316–319 civics, 316–319 concept development, 316–319 constructivist curriculum development, 310 creating teaching materials, 316–319 critical thinking, 316–319 economics, 316–319 ethical-political valuation, 316–319 geography, 316–319 graphic organizers, 265 history, 316–319 instructional strategies, 316–319 integrated curriculum, 316–319 learning disabilities, 377–387 purposes/goals, 316–319 scaffolding, 316–317, 317 teacher reflection, 316–319 unit development, 316–319 Curriculum enactment, narrative, 358–361 Curriculum planning conceptual reasoning, 133–136 curriculum units, 354–357 environment toxins, 219–222 field experiences, 350–353 global education, 207–209 health, 219–222 inquiry method, 337–343 issues-centered social studies, 246–248

microteaching, 324–328 modeling approach to social studies teacher education, 320–323 narrative, 358–361 scaffolding, 133–136 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 Curriculum reform, global education, 211–213 Curriculum units civics, 329–331, 354–357 community-based learning, 329–331 to create meaning out of social studies content, 350–353 curriculum, 329–331 curriculum planning, 354–357 economics, 329–331, 354–357 geography, 329–331, 354–357 history, 329–331, 354–357 inquiry, 354–357 instructional strategies, 329–331 integrated curriculum, 329–331, 354–357 issues-centered approach, 329–331 literacy strategies, 354–357 local/global communities, 329–331 purposes/goals, 329–331, 354–357 student-centered, 329–331 students’ lives and experiences, 329–331 teacher reflection, 354–357 technology/Internet, 354–357 unit development, 329–331, 354–357 D Decision making content resources, 105–108 controversial issues, 230–233 “Execution Class,” 255–258 procedural democracy, 74–76 social studies purpose, 255–258 student teachers, 226–229 Decoding problems, 378–380 Deindustrialization, global education, 207–209 Deliberation authority, 57–61 content resources, 105–108 controversial issues, 230–233 democratic concepts, 53–56 “Execution Class,” 255–258 procedural democracy, 74–76 simulated Congressional hearing, 77–80 social studies purpose, 255–258 student teachers, 226–229 Democratic concepts, 48, 50–52, 53–56 analysis of uses, 54–56 civic content knowledge, 53–56 civics, 53–56 concept development, 53–56 constructs, 48 core philosophical values, 48 critical thinking, 53–56 deliberation, 53–56 demands of, 223–225 democracy, 53–56 ethical-political valuation, 53–56 government, 53–56

Index • 403 inquiry, 53–56 justice, 53–56 learning about, 53–54 power/authority, 53–56 procedural democracy, 74–76 public places, 159–162 social spaces, 159–162 textbook analysis, 53–56 U.S. Constitution, 53–56 Democratic decision making, 49 Democratic education, 149–151 authority, 57–61 cultural demographics, 152–154 procedural democracy, 74–76 Taylorism, 33–37 Democratic values, critical review of teaching methods, 364–365 Development, 9 Digital stories, 301–303 Direct instruction, 388–389 Disabilities, 378–380 Disasters, 243–245 Disciplinary expertise, 11 Disciplinary strands, social studies, 23–25 Disciplinary understanding, 2 Discourse, 160 Distribution, 8 Diversity, 1–2, 3–4 conceptual reasoning, 133–136 cultural demographics, 152–154 diverse learners, 9 epistemological frames, 2 family history project, 167–169 family structures, 170–175 indigenous peoples, 176–178 inference, 109–112 issues-centered social studies, 246–248 oral histories, 126–128 primary sources, 90–92 public history, 113–115 scaffolding, 133–136 sports mascots, 176–178 transformative understanding, 252–254 Diversity education critical review of teaching methods, 363–374 critical thinking, 101–104 historical understanding, 101–104 history, 101–104 multiple perspectives, 101–104 perspective consciousness, 101–104 photographs/pictures, 101–104 preservice teachers, 3–4 primary sources, 101–104 Documentary film, 33–37 Domination, 65 Drunk driving, service learning field placements, 83–84 Dyslexia, 378–380 E Economic content knowledge family finance, 196–198 global economy, 199–201 globalization, 202–206

privilege, 202–206 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 Economics, 30–32 children’s thinking, 312–315 constructing connections, 179–181 curriculum development, 316–319 curriculum units, 329–331, 354–357 family finance, 196–198 field experiences, 350–353 global communities, critical review of teaching methods, 369 global economy, 199–201 globalization, 202–206 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 local communities, critical review of teaching methods, 369 microteaching, 324–328 narrative, 358–361 privilege, 202–206 standards, 344–349 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 Economies global communities, 189–191 local communities, 189–191 Education classical models, 19 goals, 47 Socratic seminar, 288–290 Emancipatory knowledge, 12 Emotional response constructing connections, 179–181 disasters, 243–245 “Execution Class,” 255–258 global education, 207–209 historical peers, 267–269 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 primary sources, 267–269 social justice education, 71–73 social studies purpose, 255–258 visual learning, 270–272 Environment, 7 health, 219–222 Environmental toxins, 219-222 Equity constructing connections, 179–181 democratic concepts, 53–56 family finance, 196–198 social justice education, 71–73 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 Ethical-political valuation, 38–42 authority, 57–61 children’s literature, 63–65 constructing connections, 179–181 content resources, 105–108 controversial issues, 230–233 critical global perspective, 164–166 curriculum development, 316–319 democratic concepts, 53–56 environment toxins, 219–222 “Execution Class,” 255–258

404 • Index Ethical-political valuation (continued) family structures, 170–175 global education, 207–209 good discussion, 235–237 health, 219–222 historical peers, 267–269 history teaching, 185–188 human rights, 66–69 indigenous peoples, 176–178 interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 marginalization, 164–166 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 power/authority, 164–166 primary sources, 267–269 public places, 159–162 social education, 292–294 social justice education, 71–73 social spaces, 159–162 social studies purpose, 255–258 sports mascots, 176–178 staying up on the news, 239–242 student teachers, 226–229 Taylorism, 33–37 textbook analysis, 273–275 transformative understanding, 252–254 verbal questioning skills, 235–237 Ethnocentrism content resources, 105–108 current events, 215–217 indigenous peoples, 176–178 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 sports mascots, 176–178 staying up on the news, 239–242 Evidence, 120–122 “Execution Class” 255–258 F Family, 149–151 diversity, journaling, 172–173 global education, 207–209 Family Diversity Curriculum Unit, 170–175 Family finance, 196–198 Family history project, 167–169 Family structures, 170–175 Feelings Exploration model, social studies education, 71–73 teacher reflection, 350–353 Field trips, 283-289 Film, 30–32 authority, 57–61, 58 content resources, 105–108 critical global perspective, 164–166 current events, 215–217 evidence, 120–122 family structures, 170–175 global economy, 199–201 globalization, 202–206 indigenous peoples, 176–178 interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 interpretation, 120–122 marginalization, 164–166 power/authority, 164–166 privilege, 202–206

sports mascots, 176–178 Taylorism, 33–37 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 First day, 149–151 cultural demographics, 152–154 inference, 109–112 names, 155–158 Free association exercise, authority, 57–58 G Geography, 30–32, 192–195 children’s thinking, 312–315 content knowledge current events, 215–217 global economy, 199–201 global education, 207–209 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 maps, 277–281 staying up on the news, 239–242 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 current events, 215–217 curriculum development, 316–319 curriculum units, 329–331, 354–357 environment toxins, 219–222 family history project, 167–169 field experiences, 350–353 global economy, 199–201 global education, 207–209 health, 219–222 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 maps, 277–281 matryoshka, 263–266 microteaching, 324–328 narrative, 358–361 standards, 344–349 staying up on the news, 239–242 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 Global communities economics, critical review of teaching methods, 369 Global economy, 189–191 capitalism, 199–201 categorizing ideas, 199–201 economic content knowledge, 199–201 economics, 199–201 film, 199–201 geographic content knowledge, 199–201 geography, 199–201 globalization, 199–201, 202–206 industry, 199–201 inequality, 199–201 issues-oriented approach, 199–201 local/global connections, 199–201 maps, 199–201 perspective consciousness, 199–201 privilege, 202–206 race to the bottom, 199–201 textile manufacturing, 199–201

Index • 405 working conditions, 199–201 Globalization capitalism, 202–206 economic content knowledge, 202–206 economics, 202–206 film, 202–206 global economy, 199–201, 202–206 global education, 207–209 government, 202–206 human rights, 66–69, 67 inequality, 202–206 issues-oriented approach, 202–206 justice, 202–206 local/global connections, 202–206 perspective consciousness, 202–206 photographs/pictures, 202–206 power/authority, 202–206 privilege, 202–206 role play/simulation, 202–206 teacher reflection, 202–206 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 Goals/purposes, 30–32 Good discussion, 235–237 Governance, 8 Government, 50–52 children’s literature, 63–65 content resources, 105–108 critical review of teaching methods, 364–365 democratic concepts, 53–56 disasters, 243–245 environment toxins, 219–222 globalization, 202–206 health, 219–222 historical narrative construction, 123–125 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 privilege, 202–206 procedural democracy, 74–76 social education, 292–294 Graphic organizers, 30–32 curriculum development, 265 global education, 207–209 inquiry method, 337–343 matryoshka, 263–266 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 primary sources, 90–92 standards, 344–349 Groups, 8 H Health, 219–222 Hegemonic representation, 160 Hegemony, 160 Hierarchy, 65 Historians, metaphors, 21 Historical fiction, 63 Historical figures Columbus, Christopher, 137–140, 141–143 digital stories, 301–303 oral histories, 301–303 primary sources, 90–92 social education, 292–294 Historical narrative construction, 123–125

Historical peers, 267–269 Historical Scene Investigation project, 96–99 Historical thinking historical narrative construction, 123–125 inquiry method, 337–343 Historical understanding, 149–151 archives, 93–95 causality, 96–99 children’s thinking, 312–315 Columbus, Christopher, 137–140, 141–143 conceptual reasoning, 133–136 content resources, 105–108 diversity education, 101–104 evidence, 120–122 field trips, 283–286 historical peers, 267–269 Historical Scene Investigation project (http://www.hsionline.org), 96–99 inference, 109–112 interpretation, 120–122 oral histories, 126–128 primary sources, 90–92, 267–269 public history, 113–115 race, 182–184 representation, 182–184 scaffolding, 133–136 visual learning, 270–272 visual prompts, 101–104 voice, 182–184 writing from visual prompts, 101–104 Historic sites, field trips, 283–286 archives, 93–95 causality, 96–99 children’s thinking, 312–315 Columbus, Christopher, 137–140, 141–143 conceptual reasoning, 133–136 constructing connections, 179–181 Homelessness, service learning field placements, 83–84 Human-environment interactions, 7 Human rights, 48, 66–69 children’s literature, 63–65 civic content knowledge, 66–69 civics, 66–69 critical thinking, 66–69 curriculum, 68 ethical-political valuation, 66–69 global education, 66–69 globalization, 66–69, 67 history, 66–69 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 perspective consciousness, 66–69 primary resources, 66–69 rationale, 66–67 reflection, 69 universal human rights, 66–69 U.S. literacy gap, 67 I Identity, 7–8, 149–151 artifact investigation, 149–150 controversial issues, 230–233 critical review of teaching methods, 367–368 cultural demographics, 152–154

406 • Index Identity (continued) family history project, 167–169 family structures, 170–175 inference, 109–112 interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 interviews, 150–151 introductions, 150–151 names, 155–158 perspective consciousness, 145–147 primary sources, 90–92 Indigenous peoples, 146–147, 164–166, 176-178 Individual development, 7–8 Industry global economy, 199–201 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 Inequality constructing connections, 179–181 family finance, 196–198 global economy, 199–201 globalization, 202–206 privilege, 202–206 textile manufacturing, 199–201 transformative understanding, 252–254 working conditions, 199–201 Inequity, 147 Inference, 109–112 Inquiry, 38–42, 192–195 archives, 93–95 causality, 96–99 curriculum units, 354–357 democratic concepts, 53–56 family history project, 167–169 historical peers, 267–269 Historical Scene Investigation project (http://www.hsionline.org), 96–99 inference, 109–112 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 primary sources, 90–92, 267–269 sharing power with purpose, 249–251 Inquiry method, 337–343 Institutional racism, 146–147 Institutions, 8 Instructional planning, 10 Instructional strategies, 10, 30–32, 388–394, See also Specific type critical review of teaching methods, 371–372 curriculum development, 316–319 curriculum units, 329–331 field experiences, 350–353 inquiry method, 337–343 matryoshka, 263–266 microteaching, 324–328 modeling approach to social studies teacher education, 320–323 narrative, 358–361 Socratic seminar, 288–290 Integrated curriculum curriculum development, 316–319 curriculum units, 329–331, 354–357 inquiry method, 337–343 matryoshka, 263–266 microteaching, 324–328

social justice education, 71–73 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 Interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 Internet, See Technology/Internet Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium standards, 9–10 Interviews children’s thinking, 312–315 family history project, 167–169 identity, 150–151 oral histories, 126–128 Introductions, identity, 150–151 Issues-centered approach conceptual reasoning, 133–136 content resources, 105–108 critical global perspective, 164–166 curriculum units, 329–331 family finance, 196–198 global economy, 199–201 global education, 207–209 globalization, 202–206 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 issues-centered social studies, 246–248 marginalization, 164–166 microteaching, 324–328 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 names, 155–158 pedagogic creed, 26–28 power/authority, 164–166 privilege, 202–206 public history, 113–115 scaffolding, 133–136 social education, 292–294 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 Issues-centered social studies controversial issues, 246–248 creating teaching materials, 246–248 curriculum planning, 246–248 diversity, 246–248 issues-oriented approach, 246–248 primary sources, 246–248 students’ lives and experiences, 246–248 teacher reflection, 246–248 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 unit sampler, 246–248 J Jig-saw book-review groups, Columbus, Christopher, 138–140 Journaling, family diversity, 172–173 Justice, 38–42 authority, 57–61 children’s literature, 63–65 democratic concepts, 53–56 globalization, 202–206 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 privilege, 202–206 sharing power with purpose, 249–251 L Language/meaning, 19–22, 50–52 matryoshka, 263–266

Index • 407 Leading discussions controversial issues, 230–233 disasters, 243–245 good discussion, 235–237 Socratic seminar, 288–290 verbal questioning skills, 235–237 visual learning, 270–272 Learning centers interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 microteaching, 324–328 Learning disabilities, See also Specific type curriculum development, 377–387 Lecture, 388 Legitimacy, 58 Liberty, concept, 50–52 Lies My Teacher Told Me (J. Loewen), textbook analysis, 273–275 Literacy, visual learning, 270–272 Literacy strategies, curriculum units, 354–357 Literature, see also Children’s literature critical global perspective, 164–166 marginalization, 164–166 power/authority, 164–166 race, 182–184 representation, 182–184 transformative understanding, 252–254 voice, 182–184 Local communities economics, critical review of teaching methods, 369 economies, 189–191 Local/global communities archives, 93–95 current events, 215–217 curriculum units, 329–331 global education, 207–209 historical peers, 267–269 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 primary sources, 267–269 Local/global connections global economy, 199–201 globalization, 202–206 privilege, 202–206 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 M Maps critical thinking, 277–281 geographical content knowledge, 277–281 geography, 277–281 global economy, 199–201 marginalization, 277–281 multiple perspectives, 277–281 power/authority, 277–281 primary sources, 277–281 staying up on the news, 239–242 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 Marginalization, 147 anthropological content knowledge, 164–166 constructing connections, 179–181 critical global perspective, 164–166 digital stories, 301–303

ethical-political valuation, 164–166 evidence, 120–122 family finance, 196–198 family structures, 170–175 film, 164–166 historical content knowledge, 164–166 indigenous peoples, 164–166, 176–178 interpretation, 120–122 issues-oriented approach, 164–166 literature, 164–166 maps, 277–281 oral histories, 301–303 perspective consciousness, 164–166 power/authority, 164–166 sociological content knowledge, 164–166 sports mascots, 176–178 transformative understanding, 252–254 Mass production, 34–37 Master/slave metaphor, children’s literature, 64 Matryoshka, 263-266 Media critical engagement, 260–261 rationale for using various, 261 Media literacy digital stories, 301–303 disasters, 243–245 modeling approach to social studies teacher education, 320–323 oral histories, 301–303 staying up on the news, 239–242 Metaphors, 12, 19–22 historians, 21 Methods instruction, modeling approach, 310 Microteaching, 324–328 Moral order, 58 Motivation, 10 Multicultural education, see Diversity education Multiple perspectives Columbus, Christopher, 137–140 common good, 43–46 content resources, 105–108 current events, 215–217 digital stories, 301–303 diversity education, 101–104 evidence, 120–122 global education, 207–209 historical narrative construction, 123–125 history teaching, 185–188 inference, 109–112 interpretation, 120–122 maps, 277–281 oral histories, 126–128, 301–303 pedagogic creed, 26–28 primary sources, 90–92 race, 182–184 representation, 182–184 social education, 292–294 social studies, 23–25 Socratic seminar, 288–290 staying up on the news, 239–242 textbook analysis, 273–275 transformative understanding, 252–254 visual prompts, 101–104

408 • Index Multiple perspectives (continued) voice, 182–184 writing from visual prompts, 101–104 Museum of Me, 110–112 Museums field trips, 283–286 interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 public history, 113–115 representation, 260 N Names, 155–58 National Civic Literacy survey, 47 National Council for the Social Studies standards, 7–9 National curriculum, global education, 207–209 National standards, state standards alignment, 344–349 comparing visions, 344–349 Native Americans, See Indigenous peoples News student staying up on, 239–242 teaching about disasters in, 243–245 O Oral history act of consciousness, 127–128 community-based learning, 301–303 critical thinking, 301–303 digital stories, 301–303 diversity, 126–128 engagement, 127–128 family history project, 167–169 historical content knowledge, 126–128 historical figures, 301–303 historical understanding, 126–128 history, 126–128, 301–303 interviewing, 126–128 marginalization, 301–303 media literacy, 301–303 multiple perspectives, 126–128, 301–303 perspective consciousness, 126–128 photographs/pictures, 301–303 role play/simulation, 126–128 technology/Internet, 301–303 World War II, 126–128 Organizational deficit, 386–387 P Pedagogic creed assignment, 16–18 critical social reflection, 15–18 metacognitive statement, 17 as foundation, 26–28 issues-oriented approach, 26–28 multiple perspectives, 26–28 purposes/goals, 26–28 teacher reflection, 26–28 teaching philosophy, 26–28 Pedagogy authority, 59–60 content, 43–46 content knowledge, 2 curriculum, 43–46

purpose, 43–46 Personal choice, family finance, 196–198 Perspective consciousness constructing connections, 179–181 critical global perspective, 164–166 critical review of teaching methods, 367–368 cultural demographics, 152–154 culture, 145–147 current events, 215–217 defined, 182 diversity education, 101–104 evidence, 120–122 family finance, 196–198 family structures, 170–175 global economy, 199–201 global education, 207–209 globalization, 202–206 historical peers, 267–269 human rights, 66–69 identity, 145–147 indigenous peoples, 176–178 interpretation, 120–122 marginalization, 164–166 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 names, 155–158 oral histories, 126–128 power/authority, 145–147, 164–166 primary sources, 267–269 privilege, 202–206 race, 182–184 representation, 182–184 social education, 292–294 social justice education, 71–73 sports mascots, 176–178 textbook analysis, 273–275 textile manufacturing, 199–201 transformative understanding, 252–254 visual prompts, 101–104 voice, 182–184 working conditions, 199–201 writing from visual prompts, 101–104 Photographs/pictures, 30–32, 192–195 archives, 93–95 causality, 96–99 children’s thinking, 312–315 digital stories, 301–303 diversity education, 101–104 field experiences, 350–353 globalization, 202–206 historical narrative construction, 123–125 historical peers, 267–269 Historical Scene Investigation project (http://www.hsionline.org), 96–99 indigenous peoples, 176–178 inquiry method, 337–343 oral histories, 301–303 primary sources, 267–269 privilege, 202–206 public places, 159–162 social spaces, 159–162 sports mascots, 176–178 textbook analysis, 273–275 visual learning, 270–272

Index • 409 visual prompts, 101–104 writing from visual prompts, 101–104 Pictures, See Photographs Place, 7, see also Public places characterized, 161 Political philosophy social studies, 53–56 student teachers, 226–229 Political theory, 48 Power, 8 anthropological content knowledge, 164–166 authority, 57–61 children’s literature, 63–65 content resources, 105–108 controversial issues, 230–233 critical review of teaching methods, 367–368 democratic concepts, 53–56 ethical-political valuation, 164–166 family history project, 167–169 film, 164–166 globalization, 202–206 historical content knowledge, 164–166 historical narrative construction, 123–125 indigenous peoples, 164–166, 176–178 issues-oriented approach, 164–166 literature, 164–166 maps, 277–281 marginalization, 164–166 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 perspective consciousness, 145–147, 164–166 privilege, 202–206 public places, 159–162 representation, 260 sharing power with purpose, 249–251 social education, 292–294 social spaces, 159–162 sociological content knowledge, 164–166 sports mascots, 176–178 textbook analysis, 273–275 Prejudice constructing connections, 179–181 family structures, 170–175 history teaching, 185–188 indigenous peoples, 176–178 public places, 159–162 social spaces, 159–162 sports mascots, 176–178 textbook analysis, 273–275 Primary resources, 30–32 environment toxins, 219–222 health, 219–222 human rights, 66–69 Primary sources archives, 93–95 artifacts, 90–92 causality, 96–99 children’s literature, 267–269 civic action, 267–269 civics, 267–269 critical thinking, 90–92 culture, 90–92 diversity, 90–92 diversity education, 101–104

emotional response, 267–269 ethical-political valuation, 267–269 family history project, 167–169 graphic organizers, 90–92 historical content knowledge, 267–269 historical figures, 90–92 historical peers, 267–269 Historical Scene Investigation project (http://www.hsionline.org), 96–99 historical understanding, 90–92, 267–269 history, 90–92, 267–269 identity, 90–92 inference, 109–112 inquiry, 90–92, 267–269 inquiry method, 337–343 issues-centered social studies, 246–248 local/global communities, 267–269 maps, 277–281 multiple perspectives, 90–92 perspective consciousness, 267–269 photographs/pictures, 267–269 Primary Sources Teaching Packet assignment, 90–92 race, 182–184 reflection, 92 representation, 182–184 social action, 267–269 student-centered, 267–269 students’ lives and experiences, 267–269 visual learning, 270–272 visual literacy, 267–269 visual prompts, 101–104 voice, 182–184 writing from visual prompts, 101–104 Privilege capitalism, 202–206 economic content knowledge, 202–206 economics, 202–206 film, 202–206 global economy, 202–206 globalization, 202–206 government, 202–206 inequality, 202–206 issues-oriented approach, 202–206 justice, 202–206 local/global connections, 202–206 perspective consciousness, 202–206 photographs/pictures, 202–206 power/authority, 202–206 role play/simulation, 202–206 teacher reflection, 202–206 Procedural democracy citizenship, 74–76 civic action, 74–76 civil content knowledge, 74–76 collaboration, 74–76 cooperative learning, 74–76 decision making, 74–76 deliberation, 74–76 democracy, 74–76 democratic education, 74–76 government, 74–76 rules of order, 74–76

410 • Index Progressive strands, social studies, 23–25 Public history artifacts, 113–115 community-based learning, 113–115 controversial issues, 113–115 critical thinking, 113–115 diversity, 113–115 historical understanding, 113–115 history, 113–115 issues-oriented approach, 113–115 museums, 113–115 pedagogical purposes, 113–115 teacher reflection, 113–115 Public places citizenship, 159–162 consciousness raising, 159–162 critical literacy, 159–162 critical thinking, 159–162 democracy, 159–162 ethical-political valuation, 159–162 photographs/pictures, 159–162 power/authority, 159–162 prejudice, 159–162 racism, 159–162 student-centered, 159–162 Purposes/goals, 19–22, 38–42 common good, 43–46 content, 43–46 curriculum, 43–46 curriculum development, 316–319 curriculum units, 329–331, 354–357 pedagogic creed, 26–28 pedagogy, 43–46 social studies, 23–25 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 R Race Africa, 182–184 African history, 182–184 constructing connections, 179–181 critical thinking, 182–184 family finance, 196–198 family history project, 167–169 global education, 182–184 historical understanding, 182–184 history, 182–184 history teaching, 185–188 indigenous peoples, 182–184 literature, 182–184 multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 multiple perspectives, 182–184 perspective consciousness, 182–184 primary sources, 182–184 racism, 182–184 social justice education, 71–73 Race to the bottom global economy, 199–201 textile manufacturing, 199–201 working conditions, 199–201 Racism history teaching, 185–188 indigenous peoples, 176–178

multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 public places, 159–162 race, 182–184 representation, 182–184 social justice education, 71–73 social spaces, 159–162 sports mascots, 176–178 transformative understanding, 252–254 voice, 182–184 Rationale development, methods courses, 45–46 Reading comprehension teaching methods, 392–393 Readings, 3 Reflection archives, 94 children’s literature, 64–65 human rights, 69 primary sources, 92 service learning field placements, 84–85 Reflective narratives, 1 Reflective practice, 10 Reflective teaching, 4–5 characterized, 4 dimensions of reflection, 4–5 eight themes of reflection, 5 Regional curriculum, global education, 207–209 Representation Africa, 182–184 African history, 182–184 critical thinking, 182–184 global education, 182–184 historical understanding, 182–184 history, 182–184 indigenous peoples, 176–178, 182–184 literature, 182–184 multiple perspectives, 182–184 museum, 260 perspective consciousness, 182–184 power/authority, 260 primary sources, 182–184 racism, 182–184 Research, generating future, 5–6 Resources, see also Specific type critical review of teaching methods, 371 range, 259–262 Role play/simulation, 23–25, 38–42, 261 authority, 57–61 constructing connections, 179–181 family finance, 196–198 globalization, 202–206 historical narrative construction, 123–125 microteaching, 324–328 modeling approach to social studies teacher education, 320–323 oral histories, 126–128 privilege, 202–206 social education, 292–294 technology-based social studies instruction, 304–307 transformative understanding, 252–254 WebQuest, 304–307 Rules of order, procedural democracy, 74–76 S Scaffolding, 133–136

Index • 411 School culture, authority, 60 School funding, constructing connections, 179–181 Science, society and, 8–9 Scientific management aims, 35 approach, 35–36 effects, 36 separation of thinking from doing, 36 Taylorism, 33–37 Secondary social studies education complexities, 41 context, 39–40 course sequence, 39–42 goals, 38–39 introductory course, 38–42 methods, 39–42 presenting possibilities, purposes, and practices, 40–41 reflections, 41–42 revisions, 41–42 Self-study, 4–5 characterized, 4 dimensions of reflection, 4–5 Service learning field experiences, 350–353 interactive learning center museum design, 129–132 Service learning field placements 81-85 Signifying practices, 146–147 Simulated Congressional hearing 77-80 Simulated WebQuest, 304–307 Simulation, See also Role play/simulation Social action constructing connections, 179–181 environment toxins, 219–222 global education, 207–209 health, 219–222 historical peers, 267–269 intersection of local and global issues, 211–213 primary sources, 267–269 Social context, history, 117–119 Social justice multicultural literature, 296–298, 299–300 pedagogical strategies, 297–298 teacher education, 49 Social justice education, 71–73 Social production, 65 Social reproduction, 65 Social spaces Social studies teacher education, 3 Social Studies Topical Index, 30–32 Society science, 8–9 technology, 8–9 Sociological content knowledge critical global perspective, 164–166 family finance, 196–198 marginalization, 164–166 power/authority, 164–166 staying up on the news, 239–242 Socratic seminar, 288–290 Space, characterized, 161 Sports mascots, 176-178 Standardization, Taylorism, 33–37 Standards

civics, 344–349 collaboration, 344–349 controversial issues, 344–349 cooperative learning, 344–349 critical thinking, 344–349 cultural context, 344–349 economics, 344–349 geography, 344–349 global education, 207–209 graphic organizers, 344–349 history, 344–349 national vs. state alignment, 344–349 comparing visions, 344–349 student-centered, 344–349 technology/Internet, 344–349 State sovereignty, 66–67 State standards, national standards alignment, 344–349 comparing visions, 344–349 Stereotyping indigenous peoples, 176–178 sports mascots, 176–178 Structured inequality, family finance, 196–198 Student-centered, 149–151, 312–315, 43–46, 15–18, 152–154, 329–331, 243–245, 219–222, 219–222, 267–269, 185–188, 109–112, 267–269, 159–162, 292–294, 159–162, 23–25, 344–349, 333–336, 252–254 Students, as constructivists, 13 Students’ lives and experiences, 149–151, 192–195, 312– 315, 43–46, 15–18, 152–154, 329–331, 243–245, 170–175, 267–269, 109–112, 246–248, 296–298, 299–300, 155–158, 267–269, 81–85, 250–251, 23–25 Subjectivity, Columbus, Christopher, 141–143 Subject matter expertise, 9 Supplementary readings, 3 T Taylorism, 33-37 Teacher beliefs common good, 43–46 critical social reflection, 15–18 goals, 11–12 social studies, 23–25 Teacher education importance, 1 knowing, transformations, 15–16 social justice, 49 Teacher reflection, 19–22, 30–32, 38–42, 192–195 authority, 57–61 children’s thinking, 312–315 Columbus, Christopher, 141–143 common good, 43–46 controversial issues, 230–233 critical social reflection, 15–18 curriculum development, 316–319 curriculum units, 354–357 “Execution Class,” 255–258 field experiences, 350–353 globalization, 202–206 history teaching, 185–188

412 • Index Teacher reflection (continued) issues-centered social studies, 246–248 microteaching, 324–328 modeling approach to social studies teacher education, 320–323 narrative, 358–361 pedagogic creed, 26–28 privilege, 202–206 public history, 113–115 social studies, 23–25 purpose, 255–258 student teachers, 226–229 teaching teachers to teach for understanding, 333–336 Teaching, metaphors, 19–21 Teaching philosophy, 19–22, 38–42 common good, 43–46 critical social reflection, 15–18 pedagogic creed, 26–28 social studies, 23–25 Technology, society and, 8–9 Technology-based social studies instruction collaboration, 304–307 cooperative learning, 304–307 creating teaching materials, 304–307 role play/simulation, 304–307 technology/Internet, 304–307 Technology/Internet causality, 96–99 curriculum units, 354–357 digital stories, 301–303 environment toxins, 219–222 family history project, 167–169 health, 219–222 Historical Scene Investigation project (http://www.hsionline.org), 96–99 oral histories, 301–303 social education, 292–294 standards, 344–349 staying up on the news, 239–242 technology-based social studies instruction, 304–307 visual learning, 270–272 WebQuest, 304–307 Teen-aged drunk driving, service learning field placements, 83–84 Testing, Taylorism, 33–37 Textbook analysis bias reduction, 273–275 critical thinking, 273–275 democratic concepts, 53–56 ethical-political valuation, 273–275 historical content knowledge, 273–275 history, 273–275 Lies My Teacher Told Me (J. Loewen), 273–275 multiple perspectives, 273–275 perspective consciousness, 273–275 photographs/pictures, 273–275 power/authority, 273–275 prejudice, 273–275 visual literacy, 273–275 Textile manufacturing, 199–201 Theory, generating future, 5–6

Time, 7 Tracking, 59 Traditional strands, social studies, 23–25 Transformative understanding bias reduction, 252–254 collaboration, 252–254 controversial issues, 252–254 critical thinking, 252–254 diversity, 252–254 ethical-political valuation, 252–254 inequality, 252–254 literature, 252–254 marginalization, 252–254 multiple perspectives, 252–254 perspective consciousness, 252–254 racism, 252–254 role play/simulation, 252–254 student-centered, 252–254 U Unit development archives, 93–95 conceptual reasoning, 133–136 curriculum development, 316–319 curriculum units, 329–331, 354–357 environment toxins, 219–222 health, 219–222 narrative, 358–361 scaffolding, 133–136 Universal human rights, 66–69 U.S. Constitution, 50–52 democratic concepts, 53–56 Preamble purpose, 50, 51 simulated Congressional hearing, 77–80 V Verbal questioning skills civics, 235–237 critical thinking, 235–237 ethical-political valuation, 235–237 leading discussions, 235–237 Visual learning, 270–272 Visual literacy historical peers, 267–269 primary sources, 267–269 textbook analysis, 273–275 Visual-processing deficit, 384–385 Visual prompts, 101–104 Visual spatial deficit, 385–386 Voice, 182–184 W WebQuest, 304–307 Work control, 33–37 World War II content resources, 105–108 oral histories, 126–128 Writing from visual prompts, 101–104 Y Youth homelessness, service learning field placements, 83–84