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, September 12, 2023

CONTEXTUAL ELEMENTS OF THE LIBERATED FEDERALISM, II

 

Currently, this blog is continuing its account of the liberated federalism model of governance and politics.[1]  With this posting, the blog looks further into suggested instructional methods in civics that teachers can utilize as most amenable to this featured construct.  The previous posting identified the use of case studies and community service projects – in both strategies, one does not eliminate other methods, but simply states that the featured methods allow teachers to get at what liberated federalism deems to be important.

          That posting also identified the psychological school of thought that supports the efforts that liberated federalism pursues.  That would be constructivism as developed from the works of Jean Piaget and Lev S. Vygotsky and runs counter to those pedagogical views emanating from behavioral psychology.  This posting will share more of Piaget and Vygotsky’s ideas.

          The Piaget based model, as explained by Geoffrey Scheurman,[2] calls effective human learning as “cognitive constructivism.”  It is dependent on a developmental view.  Scheurman writes

 

[Piaget] believed that people develop universal forms or structures of knowledge (i.e., prelogical, concrete, or formal) that enable them to experience reality.  This view holds that while an autonomous “real” world may exist outside the learner, he or she has limited access to it.  The emphasis in learning is on how people assimilate new information into existing mental schemes, and how they restructure schemes entirely when information is too discrepant to be assimilated.[3]

 

Within the cognitive constructivism model, the teacher acts as a facilitator and challenges students’ views of reality by introducing disequilibrium with incongruent factual or theoretical material.

          The teacher further guides students through problem solving activities and reviews and monitors students’ reflective and interpretive thinking after they, the students, discover their researched findings.  Experience consists of actual physical and social encounters in which they deal with unexpected claims – either factual or opinionated claims – and reflect on them, according to Scheurman.

          As for Vygotsky’s strand of constructivism, Scheurman calls it “social constructivism.”  Scheurman explains:

 

Accepting Piaget’s view of how individuals build private understandings of reality through problem solving with others, Vygotsky further explained how social or cultural contexts contribute to a public understanding of objects and events.  In this view, reality is no longer objective, while knowledge is literally co-constructed by, and distributed among, individuals as they “interact with one another and with cultural artifacts, such as pictures, discourse, and gestures.”[4]

 

Within the social constructivism view, teachers take on a collaborative role.  That is, they participate with the students in “constructing” reality.

          By doing so, certain functions are met.  These functions are to bring to light students’ misconceptions, to hold open-ended discoveries and inquiries, and to lead teachers and students to real social resources and procedures.  A class of students, including the teacher, “creates” a reality by manufacturing a culturally based understanding, conducting open-ended inquiries, and reflecting on the mutually constructed meaning.

          Constructivism promises to be a viable methodology for teaching a communally based curriculum.  As Scheurman points out, it does not preclude other types of instruction as functional components in preparing students for meaningful constructivist lessons or reflective extensions to lessons that have had students construct conclusions to a set of inquiries.

          Already mentioned in the last posting, there are more behaviorally based lessons which can be employed to establish needed information.  Also, inquiry type lessons that can test claims or conclusions presented to students and are based on the behavioral science model, can be conducted.  In other words, a healthy mix of modes of learning and teaching can add various contributions toward viable civics instruction.

          Perhaps here, as this account completes the description of the commonplace, the subject matter, it is useful to provide a short review of what has been presented.  The account first reviewed the assumptions of the liberated federalism construct regarding individual decision-making.  The account then proposed a model of the liberated federalism model which is presented as the preferred foundation for the study of government and civics at the secondary level.

          Then, using Eugene Meehan’s criteria, the model was reviewed for its viability.  Last, this and the former posting looked at methodology as a contextual factor in implementing the liberated federalism model.  In that, the presentation was in line with focusing on the more interpretive approach of constructivism, i.e., it encourages more heuristic approaches – in which students derive their own conclusions.  In that, they avoid the claim that it promotes indoctrination.  Next, the blog will address the commonplace, the student.



[1] For readers who wish to review those corresponding postings and have not read them, they are guided to this blog’s posting, “From Natural Rights to Liberated Federalism” (June 2, 2023), at the URL, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/, where this series begins.

[2] Geoffrey Scheurman, “From Behaviorists to Constructivist Teaching,” Social Education, 62, 1 (1998), 6-9.

[3] Ibid., 8.

[4] Ibid., 8.

No comments:

Post a Comment