A Crucial Element of Democracy

This is a blog by Robert Gutierrez ...
While often taken for granted, civics education plays a crucial role in a democracy like ours. This Blog is dedicated to enticing its readers into taking an active role in the formulation of the civics curriculum found in their local schools. In order to do this, the Blog is offering a newer way to look at civics education, a newer construct - liberated federalism or federation theory. Daniel Elazar defines federalism as "the mode of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system by distributing power among general and constituent governments in a manner designed to protect the existence and authority of both." It depends on its citizens acting in certain ways which Elazar calls federalism's processes. Federation theory, as applied to civics curriculum, has a set of aims. They are:
*Teach a view of government as a supra federated institution of society in which collective interests of the commonwealth are protected and advanced.
*Teach the philosophical basis of government's role as guardian of the grand partnership of citizens at both levels of individuals and associations of political and social intercourse.
*Convey the need of government to engender levels of support promoting a general sense of obligation and duty toward agreed upon goals and processes aimed at advancing the common betterment.
*Establish and justify a political morality which includes a process to assess whether that morality meets the needs of changing times while holding true to federalist values.
*Emphasize the integrity of the individual both in terms of liberty and equity in which each citizen is a member of a compacted arrangement and whose role is legally, politically, and socially congruent with the spirit of the Bill of Rights.
*Find a balance between a respect for national expertise and an encouragement of local, unsophisticated participation in policy decision-making and implementation.
Your input, as to the content of this Blog, is encouraged through this Blog directly or the Blog's email address: gravitascivics@gmail.com .
NOTE: This blog has led to the publication of a book. The title of that book is TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION: IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL CIVICS STANDARDS and it is available through Amazon in both ebook and paperback versions.

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

HOW TO DEFINE AND EVALUATE THEORIES


[Note:  At the end of the last posting the reader was advised that this posting would continue this blog’s report on the development of a civics unit of study.  Due to certain requests, this will happen next posting.  As for this posting, the following is an overview of what a political construct is; what is the function of a political construct; and how to evaluate a construct.]
Theories, models, and often constructs are explanations of some set of phenomena.  One such example in the field of political science is cybernetics which is an off-shoot of systems theory.  It deals with communication and control.  It does not pretend to explain all political phenomena, but through its lens it does shed light on most aspects of political behavior.  In turn, this explanation can be the source of political research, analysis, and even attempts at predicting a relevant future.
          In terms of research, a theory, through its explanatory quality, suggests or directly provides hypothetical relationships between or among factors.  Usually, in terms of supporting an explanation, the aim is at establishing cause and effect relationships; factor A causes factor B to happen.  While this is fine within the context of a model – its hypothetical nature does not oversell its view of reality as necessarily being reality – a study that gathers relevant information usually attempts to establish a correlation or, more technically, to disprove (falsify) a relationship.[1] 
Of course, protocol provisions in such studies are developed to strive to account for all nuances; i.e., exceptions or the identification of other factors that lead to both A and B are hopefully detected.  Of course, such study or research is prone to problems, as all human endeavors are.  One problem is the function theories, as they were described, play is that political scientists with such a view favor the positivist approach.  Political scientists who use positivist protocols adopt, to the extent possible, the methods used by natural scientists such biologists and physicists. 
A term used to describe this approach is reductionist studies.  They reduce the effort to focusing on those factors the scientist is testing.  A historical note:  political science was not always so “scientific.”  Before the behaviorist revolution in the mid-twentieth century, political science was more historical.  And this fact is relevant to what is being emphasized with this blog’s call for the utilization of federation theory.
For example, not all political questions can be reduced.  Why?  A way to view this shortcoming is offered by the political scientist, Daniel J. Elazar.  He claims that political science is not only interested in answering the questions:  how and why does political phenomena operate as they do, but, also, how should governance and politics be conducted?  Often, these “should” questions, while, at times, assisted by asking reductionist questions, cannot be fully answered by them.[2]
So, scholars that utilize the non-reductionist, federalist model to guide their research, such political scientists as Elazar, Donald Lutz, Martin Diamond, and Stephen L. Schechter, tend to be more historical in their approaches as they ask federalist questions of the past.  But as is the case, the federalist model is one of many models and, given the purposes of a consumer of such models might have, such as the case of a civics teacher, what questions should he/she ask of a political science model?
Eugene J. Meehan[3] offers such a criteria:
·        Comprehension:  Does the explanation explain as many phenomena as possible which are related to the area of concern?
·        Power:  Does the explanation control the explanatory effort by being valid and complete in its component parts and in the relations between those parts?
·        Precision:  Does the explanation specifically and precisely treat its concepts, making them clear in their use?
·        Consistency or Reliability:  Does the explanation explain its components and their relations the same way time after time?
·        Isomorphism:  Does the explanation contain a one to one correspondence with that portion of reality it is trying to explain?
·        Compatibility:  Does the explanation align with other responsible explanations of the same phenomena?
·        Predictability:  Does the explanation predict conditions associated with the phenomena in question?
·        Control:  Does the construct imply ways of controlling the phenomena in question?
These criteria are geared to assist social scientists in terms of them evaluating the various explanations their discipline hold or propose given the areas of concern the discipline studies.  But given the above concern of Elazar, might there be one more criterion?  Here is what it could be:
·        Normative determination:  Does the construct indicate what normative/moral political behavior is and how the subject of the model’s use – the polity and its participants – measure up to that standard?
Different consumers, given their reasons for utilizing these criteria will have different needs.  Not all the criteria above will have the same salience for all consumers.  As a list, this seems to be fairly complete, but users of the list might find some criterion to be unimportant or the entire list might be seen as lacking some concern.  The judgement here is that each of the above concerns should be of some relevance to a teacher.
But civics teachers don’t conduct political science research.  Instead, they can rely on these models to assist them in making sense of what they teach.  They do want to be responsible in the substantive information he/she is imparting or otherwise implementing in their lesson plans.  So, the above criteria can be helpful.  As a matter of fact, his/her concerns do not end with this list.  One can add two more criteria:
·        Abstraction Level:  Does the construct’s abstraction level allow students to comprehend it?
·        Motivation:  Does the construct’s content sufficiently motivate students to study it?
Each of these standards might deserve a separate section to further explain it and to go into the implications each might have on the social sciences or, more importantly here, civics education.  As it is being used here, the idea is for a teacher to have a handle on how to critically judge what a federation approach has to offer since it is offering a construct.  That is, this blog explains what federation theory is and how it is useful in meeting the challenges civics education is facing in today’s classrooms. 
So, a teacher or curriculum developer becomes aware of a political theory or model – an explanation or construct – what then?  This now turns to be a curriculum and instruction concern.  In the curriculum literature, there are a variety of curriculum developmental models.  One that has received a bit criticism – as being too constrained – is suitable for establishing the connection between the demands of offering meaningful content material and the demands of teaching it.  That is the developmental model offered by Ralph Tyler.[4]
The Tyler model identifies three sources of curriculum:  the relevant attributes of the society/community in which the curriculum is to be utilized, the distinguishing, relevant attributes of the students to be served, and the subject matter’s elements that are to be taught.  Of most relevancy here is the last of these three – the subject matter.  It is in this way that Meehan/Elazar/ (and this writer humbly adds) Gutierrez’s criteria can be helpful.
But Tyler’s model goes on; it assumes that if one is reflecting on these three sources of curriculum, a teacher or curriculum developer will be likely to arrive at an overwhelming number of instructional objectives.  Therefore, to be more focused and direct, this number of objectives needs to be whittled down.  To do this, Tyler inserted two “screens” by which to evaluate each objective:  social philosophy (in terms of scope) and psychology (in terms of sequence).  Of course, for the purposes here, social philosophy is more important.
By social philosophy, Tyler refers to a school’s sense of its mission.  Each school – and this is generally required by accreditation bodies – has a school philosophy.  The school is to abide by the philosophy’s espoused values in the various operations or activities it either performs or sanctions.  So, if a school (usually a decision made by state or district authorities) is committed to abide by the C3 Framework,[5] this or, at least, the framework’s substantive prescriptions, would be a set of elements within a school’s philosophy.
What about schools that have not made such a formal commitment?  Chances are such schools can still implement the prescriptions of the framework since what districts, states, and even schools have in place are so vague.  All that needs to be done is interpret the wordage of district or state standards – or school philosophies – to include federalist ideas and ideals.  This is not being dishonest.  The authorities have purposefully been this vague in order not to squelch school initiatives.
          Hopefully, this overview of the functions of a political model, criteria by which to judge the usefulness of political models, and the role political models play in civics curriculum, the reader can apply these ideas in considering and, perhaps, implementing the tenets of federation theory.


[1] Or as Karl Popper states it:  falsify a hypothesis.  See “Falsifiability,” WhatIs.com, n. d., accessed July 14, 2018, https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/falsifiability .

[2] Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa, AL:  The University of Alabama Press, 1987).

[3] Eugene J. Meehan, Explanations in Social Science: A System Paradigm (Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press, 1969).

[4] Ralph W. Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press, 1969/1949).

[5] National Council for the Social Studies, “Preparing Students for College, Career, and Civic Life,” (Washington, D. C.:  NCSS, 2013), accessed April 16, 2018, https://www.socialstudies.org/c3.  This framework is offered as part of the Common Core project by the US Department of Education.

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