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.

Friday, October 14, 2022

JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, XXII

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

The last posting introduced the teacher as the next commonplace of curriculum development.  For those just beginning to read this series of postings over the commonplaces, they are the brainchild of Joseph Schwab; his theorizing focuses on the factors that affect the way curricula are designed and implemented.[2]  More specifically, this posting, as opposed to what the last one indicated, addresses only teacher effectiveness and the next posting will report on teachers’ command of civics, the subject matter.

Teacher Effectiveness

Jere Brophy, some years ago, reviewed the research on this factor of effectiveness among teachers up until 1988.[3]  He states that, according to that research, effective teachers tend to be those who have a goal-directed approach and a businesslike, task-oriented personality.  These teachers do not waste time in class on non-academic activities but stay on task expecting their students to meet their goals.

Class periods are well planned, and students are clearly told what is expected of them.  Students’ progressions are closely monitored and problems such as behavioral ones are quickly identified and handled.  There are brisk paces to their class procedures, and presentations are conducted in smooth manners avoiding choppy transitions.

Students receive timely feedbacks on their evaluated works and content sets of material are organized into small increments so that successes are more likely.  These teachers rely mostly on direct instruction (usually didactic style).  They maintain enthusiastic manners and utilize content presentations that are structured in such ways as “integrated wholes.”

That leads students to grasp the material more easily.  Brophy adds that these teachers have students do challenging but not overly difficult activities, so that the students can more likely achieve successes.  And they also prepare students with appropriate framing or previewing of homework assignments so as to increase the likelihood that those efforts meet their planned purposes.

A respected online service, University of the People, identifies eight functions that social studies in general – and civics in particular – serve.  This review of the commonplaces addresses the function of civics as a subject matter earlier, but here, by extension, one can apply those functions to that subject’s teachers. 

And in that pursuit, UOP offers eight functions:  better reading and learning, citizen responsibilities and values, cultural understanding, economic education, critical thinking (especially in line with Robert Gagne’s approach to essentialist teaching),[4] real-world understanding, political skills, and respect for history.[5] 

In line with the effort here, and while this account focuses on secondary schooling, readers can derive useful information from elementary education literature.  One such case is what G. R. McKenzie[6] offers.  He applies these arguments from his study of elementary education to social studies.  His research further supports how social studies is a basic, fundamental source for much of the core information students need to know in order to perform in a typical curriculum.

That is, social studies information helps individuals make sense of the complex realities of the world, from local settings to the global stage.  Such knowledge is even necessary to acquire “basic skills” of reading, writing, and arithmetic.  McKenzie warns against the use of high-level questioning, stating that teacher effectiveness research does not support this practice because students do not have adequate knowledge to respond in a useful manner.  Of course, with secondary students, more sophisticated questioning can be expected.

McKenzie tends to support a systemic approach of curricular development.  He hypothesizes that problem solving skills are better taught with a systems approach than with a direct problem-solving approach and calls for more research into the question. 

Daniel T. Willingham addresses this directly.

 

It's true that knowledge gives students something to think about, but a reading of the research literature from cognitive science shows that knowledge does much more than just help students hone their thinking skills: It actually makes learning easier. Knowledge is not only cumulative, it grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more — the rich get richer. In addition, factual knowledge enhances cognitive processes like problem solving and reasoning. The richer the knowledge base, the more smoothly and effectively these cognitive processes — the very ones that teachers target — operate. So, the more knowledge students accumulate, the smarter they become.[7]

 

For some time, teacher effectiveness research has provided support for direct instruction, i.e., an essentialist approach to the teaching of social studies.  It is conducive to the content suggested by the natural rights construct and its reliance on political systems.

          Teachers who incorporate the pedagogic method outlined by the teacher effectiveness approach have at their disposal a theoretical foundation that has a holistic model of governance and politics, that being the political systems model (with the supplemental addition of the structural-functional model).  Once applied, an explanatory basis for that reality emerges and the essential facts and principles of American government become exposed, making cognitive acquisition by secondary students possible. 

Of course, this presupposes that teachers are sufficiently sophisticated in their knowledge of the discipline of political science and, to some degree, the other social sciences.  Teachers, one can assume, cannot know too much when it comes to the subject they teach.  The next topic of this review is teacher knowledge.



[1] This presentation continues with this posting.  The reader is informed that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of the natural rights view might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.  This series of postings begins with “Judging Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022.

[2] Joseph Schwab presents his conception of the commonplaces of curriculum development – they are subject matter, students, teachers, and milieu.  See William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[3] Jere Brophy, “Research on Teacher Effects:  Uses and Abuses,” The Elementary School Journal, 89, 1 (September 1988), 3-21.

[4] B. Janse, “Gagne’s Conditions of Learning,” Toolshero (2019), accessed September 15, 2022, https://www.toolshero.com/personal-development/gagnes-conditions-of-learning/.

[5] “Why Is Social Studies Important?  8 Reasons to Study,” University of the People (n.d.), accessed October 9, 2022, https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/why-is-social-studies-important/.

[6] G. R. McKenzie, “Learning and Instruction,” in Elementary School Social Studies:  Research as a Guide to Practice (Bulletin No. 79), edited by Virginia A. Atwood (Washington, DC:  National Council of the Social Studies, 1986), 119-136.

[7] Daniel T. Willingham, “How Knowledge Helps,” Reading Rockets (associated with WETA), (n.d.), accessed October 9, 2022, https://www.readingrockets.org/article/how-knowledge-helps.

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