This blogger’s book, Toward a Federated Nation,[1]
argues for an instructional approach he calls historical dialogue to action
(HD-to-A). Basically, that approach
calls upon students to investigate historical documents and other historical
sources (including the work of historians) to gather information relevant to
some contemporary problem area. While grounded
in historical material, it is not exclusively so.
These problem areas are so designated because
they, to some degree, offend federalist values.
And the aim is for students to develop their individual positions
regarding these issues and be prepared to defend their positions in
discussions, arguments, and debates. Teachers
are to employ a process that has students develop the knowledge and skills by
which they can perform these various steps including taking some action at a
local site in which the problem is being manifested.
While this whole process is very much dependent
on historical material, this blogger finds the application of the
parochial/traditional construct as an approach too reliant on historical
materials to the exclusion of other sources.
This bias goes contrary to a great deal of both psychological and
pedagogic theory that advocates diversity of instructional methods for
different types of learners and for different types of substantive materials.
Here is what a current academic group has to contribute:
Teaching
methods are the broader techniques used to help students achieve learning outcomes,
while activities are the different ways of implementing these methods. Teaching methods help students:
· master the content of the course [and]
· learn how to apply the content in particular
contexts
Instructors
should identify which teaching methods will properly support a particular
learning outcome. Its effectiveness
depends on this alignment. To make the
most appropriate choice, an instructor should consider learning outcomes,
student needs and the learning environment.
Consider the following example:
· Learning outcome: Solve a complex math equation.
· Learning environment: An in person, upper-level math course with 20
students.
· Teaching method: Guided instruction. First, the instructor facilitates learning by
modeling and scaffolding.[2] Students take time to ask questions and
receive clarifications. Next, students
practice applying these skills together and then independently. The instructor uses formative assessment to
check for understanding.
This
example demonstrates alignment of what the instructor wants students to do, and
how they are supported in these tasks.
If the instructor chooses a different teaching method, such as a
traditional lecture, students would need to process the lecture’s content and
apply principles simultaneously. This is
very difficult to do and would lead to less successful outcomes.
Choosing
the appropriate teaching method brings instruction to life while encouraging
students to actively engage with content and develop their knowledge and
skills.[3]
HD-to-A was thought of with these sorts of concerns in mind. It calls for, where appropriate, employing
social scientific processes and findings, natural science processes and
findings, journalistic sources, literature and other artistic sources, and any
other reputable source that is relevant to the issue under study.
This approach – a diverse
and interactive one – to educational challenges has a rich history and includes
the work of such scholars as Thomas L. Good and Jere Brophy,[4] Robert
Slavin,[5] and
Robert Solso.[6] And when one considers what the above cite
advocates, it verges on the obvious in that it respects the notion, “different
strokes for different folks.”
In addition, when social studies curriculum employs
a more current, problem-solving, and relevant approach, it would be useful in
encouraging lower achievers to interrelate with the substance of the material
and bring it more to life. In addition,
relying on both experimental designs and then narrative based material can
avoid falling into a routinized experience for students.
Parochial federalism is too committed to
analyzing those historical materials, i.e., historical documents. Yes, they contain, for example, the values
and beliefs of the founding generation – useful information – but in adopting a
strategy that reflects the above citation, analysis of these documents to the
exclusion of other sources and modes of investigation is short-sighted. Instead, and this would be promoted by some
other construct, there should be a give-and-take between and among various
sources and/or activities.
And with that call for diverse methods, this
critique is set to address its final point of contention. That would be how parochial federalism
defines community. That view, being a
product of the nation’s early history with its limited technology, thought of
community only in geographic terms.
Today, given online technologies (hence this blog) and transportation
advancements, community can transcend physical localities.
These broader capacities call for a broader
view and that view should be incorporated into a definition of community. Parochial/traditional federalism – as its
name suggests – has an excessively local view of social/political concerns. Yet to meet what ails the nation, any view of
governance and politics needs to be proactively ensconced in what is currently
the relevant setting, that being a global reality.
And with that, this blog comes to its end of
how it substantively presents and critiques the parochial/traditional construct
– a construct by which Americans mostly saw governance and politics from
colonial days to the end of World War II.
In those years, it took on various versions of itself – the first being
a covenantal view, one believed to be witnessed by God.
Through such developments as the Enlightenment,
Western expansion, industrialization, the Hollywood effect, and the New Deal,
that construct was not a stagnant view but evolved with the major events of the
nation and with the various forms of its main challenge, the natural rights
view. But with the experiences of World
War II and how profound they were, that form of federalism gave way. This blog, with the next posting, will begin reviewing
its replacement, the natural rights view.
The next posting will be short and will summarize
what this blog has offered in terms of the parochial federalism construct. It will offer some introductory commentary on
what constitutes the natural rights construct and that will be in the form of
an overview in the context of how it was historically situated in the late
1940s.
[1] Available through Amazon. The book dedicates three chapters to the
development of three units of study a teacher can employ in a civics or
American government, secondary course.
[2] Scaffolding is merely an instructional strategy of breaking
up what is to be learned into manageable segments and either giving students
the tools by which to handle the segments or giving them various structures of
the materials that possibly render them in a more manageable and/or
understandable form.
[3] “Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation/Teaching
Methods,” University of Buffalo (n.d.), accessed July 20, 2022, https://www.buffalo.edu/catt/develop/design/teaching-methods.html .
[4] Thomas L. Good and Jere Brophy, Educational
Psychology: A Realistic Approach
(New York, NY: Longman, 1990).
[5] Robert Slavin, Educational Psychology: Theory and Practice (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1994).
[6] Robert Solso, Cognitive Psychology (Boston,
MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1995).
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