[Note:
This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses
what a civics teacher preparation program should include. If not read, the reader is encouraged to check
out the previous postings in this series that began with the posting on September
28, 2021, entitled “Prime Reason.”]
Presently, this blog is reviewing five elements
of what this blogger believes a teacher preparation program – especially the
preparation of social studies and more specifically, civics teachers – should
include. The blog has shared the first
two elements and has presented a word or two concerning element three. That element is:
Element
Three: A program that imparts the
teaching skills that allow those perspective teachers to conduct curriculum
strategies that instruct children and adolescents in the civic knowledge and
skills suitable to their developmental level and to the civic challenges of
their community, state, and nation.
Here, the emphasis is that teachers should be
armed with the ability to utilize various instructional strategies.
Those
strategies can be gauged according to two dimensions. The first is in regard to philosophic
positions that one detects in the literature – from behavioral to artistic
positions – and the second about how differing approaches assume levels of
maturation. The presentation will now
finish its comments on this second factor.
With
maturation, especially as this factor affects challenged, immature segments of
the student population, one overarching claim seems to capture one’s attention. Without effective parental demands, curiosity
about academic concerns, or access to unusually skillful teachers (the supply
is limited), only relevancy seems to be left.
Therefore, a start with student-based issues (a source identified by
Ralph Tyler[1]) seems
to offer a reliable source of motivating material. For example, such a strategy is depicted in
the feature film, Dangerous Minds.[2]
As
with philosophic views concerning instruction, this factor of maturation lends itself
to a continuum. At one end, there is an
egocentric source and at the other end there are universal sources. Within the continuum, one has the student,
then the society, and finally the subject matter or the discipline. Underlying this ordered listing one can add
the descriptive term, “potential development of the spiritual.” That is, as one goes to the universal, this
potential of spirituality increases (more on this below).
In
the previous posting, this blog suggested that one should approach these options
with the disposition to seek a balance.
While a balance means that all three sources for curriculum and
instruction are employed to some degree, no matter what level of maturity the
student has, most curriculum projects – with their suggested instructional
processes – and their materials including textbooks have betrayed a definite
bias to seek input from the disciplines.
At
FSU,[3]
the methods courses addressed this and instructed their perspective teachers to
produce lessons that rectify this deficiency that textbooks represent. Of course, such an approach calls on teachers
to do a lot more work. The simpler route
is to simply lecture on the content in the order that the textbook presents it
and use the auxiliary materials that the textbook publishers provide.
Again,
as with the philosophic options, maturation levels and the sources they suggest
can be visualized as a graphic continuum.
This venue does not allow a presentation here, but the reader can use a
bit of imagination to see, running left to right, the three sources listed from
an egocentric end to a universal end. On
such a graphic, one can detect below it a reference to the potential of
increased spirituality.
Again, this last component simply refers to the
possibility that as students develop toward the universal, they could
increasingly formulate an appreciation of a life force, either religiously or
secularly defined. This sense of kindred
spirit adds a motivational foundation for a civic approach to learning. This relates not only to the content
associated with civics education, but also to the content across the whole
curriculum.
This seems to be a good place to end this
posting – giving a chance for one to consider what it implies for all of
education – and approach the next posting ready to take up element four. That element takes a definite moral turn, an
aspect of education that easily gets lost as one considers all the various
aspects of that institution.
[1] Ralph W. Tyler, Basic
Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1949).
[2] Dangerous Minds is a 1995 American dramatic
film. In an online summary of the film,
one finds the following:
Former Marine Louanne Johnson (Michelle Pfeiffer) lands a gig
teaching in a pilot program for bright but underachieving teens at a notorious
inner-city high school. After having a terrible first day, she decides she must
throw decorum to the wind. When Johnson returns to the classroom, she does so
armed with a no-nonsense attitude informed by her military training and a
fearless determination to better the lives of her students -- no matter what
the cost.
John N.
Smith (director), Dangerous Minds (Hollywood, CA: Hollywood Pictures Don Simpson/Jerry
Bruckeimer Films, 1995). For more of an
overview, see “Dangerous Minds,” Google (n.d.), accessed October 20, 2021, https://www.google.com/search?q=the+feature+film%2C+dangerous+minds&rlz=1C1RXMK_enUS966US966&oq=the+feature+film%2C+dangerous+minds&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i299.10231j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 .
[3] The previous posting introduced the example of FSU’s
teacher preparation program.
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