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, September 1, 2023

VIABILITY OF THE LIBERATED FEDERALISM, VIII

Using Eugene Meehan’s criteria for judging social science theory and models[1] – its mental constructs – this blog, over its last seven postings, has provided the bulk of its viability statement regarding the model, liberated federalism.  While such a review is helpful to civics teachers, it does not directly address pedagogic concerns that civics educators have in their day-to-day responsibilities. 

This posting rectifies this – to a degree – by adding to Meehan’s list of criteria two more areas of concern, abstract level, and motivation.  This blogger believes these two concerns, while separate, are highly related and that relationship is highlighted below.  To begin with, both reflect mental qualities that affect how people learn.

Their meanings are fairly straightforward.  Abstract level refers to how much the construct's information or images contain elements of reality which constitute the phenomena it describes or explains.  Any representation, by necessity, has to strip elements of reality from it and, therefore, be abstract to some degree. 

For example, if someone asks how a person’s day was, that person would only be able to convey very little of that day.  If the person had gone to a movie, the person would very likely not relate the color of the person’s seat or whether it was cushy or not.  The more one leaves out, the more abstract the information is.  As for scientific research, it is known for its abstraction as a scientist tries to distill the causal factors that account for some occurrence or condition.[2]

As for the motivational quality, it simply refers to the potential a body of information has in soliciting interest on the part of an observer, consumer, or, in this case, learner.  Of course, the motivational quality of any material varies among the people who are exposed to it.  What's interesting to this blogger might be downright boring to a reader of this blog. 

But there are certain general aspects about motivation that one can abstract that helps one explain why some presentations tend to be more motivating than others.  Such characteristics as relevance, understandability, entertainment, curiosity, challenge, etc. are some of those aspects.  These are generally seen as qualities that enhance the motivational quality of information or other symbolic presentations. 

The connection between abstraction and motivation, how they relate, zeroes in on the quality of understandability.  It is hard to see any presentation or activity being motivational unless it is at least understandable to the learner or consumer of the content to some minimal degree.  Whether the presentation or activity meets this minimal degree reflects on the sophistication of the person consuming the information.  Sophistication in each area, in turn, reflects the level of abstraction the consumer can handle in dealing with the content in question.

There have been two theorists whose ideas help us see this relation between sophistication and abstraction and are highlighted here and in the next posting.  They both understood that the abstract level of information is dependent on the media in which the information is presented.  Some modes of presentation, by their very nature, contain more or less the reality contained in the situations or conditions described or explained. 

Before identifying these pioneers, let this blogger make the central point of this posting.  For presentation media or instructional activity to be motivating, the presentation of the content must employ an instructional effort that suitably matches the sophistication level of the student vis-a-vis the content being taught.  This is done by employing appropriate levels of abstraction or lack of abstraction in the media employed. 

Some media, simply due to the nature of the media, will contain, to various degrees, elements of the reality being addressed.  The general trend is that the less sophistication the student has, the less abstract the media needs to be.  Conversely, the more sophisticated the student is, in relation to specific content, the more abstract the media can be and probably should be to sustain the student’s interest.

That is, while for the lesser sophisticated students, to be successful, lower abstraction media can be considered necessary, for higher sophisticated students, higher abstraction media can be considered preferable.  This is because such instruction takes less time to implement and is likely to maintain the interest of such students.  Low abstraction material can easily turn out to be boring for the more knowledgeable students. 

The other factors affecting media choices are availability of material options, time availability, and technological options.  Material options are affected by the financial resources of the purchasers of the materials and access to material markets.  Time availability refers to the amount of time the instructor can dedicate to any lesson or set of lessons. 

As indicated, in general, instruction that is less abstract takes more time to use – if for no other reason due to the amount of reality it contains – and the more abstract material takes less time, assuming students are sophisticated enough to understand and appreciate its educational value.  In addition, technological availability is a concern.  Technological options refer to the media hardware and software the instructor or instructional institution can secure, and the instructional staff can proficiently use.

The two theorists referred to above are Jerome S. Bruner[3] and Edgar Dale.[4]  Both of these educational academics provided relevant insights to this topic in the 1960s.  This posting will stop here and promise that the next one will delve into the work of Bruner and Dale which this blogger believes is still powerful today.



[1] For readers wishing to read the previous postings relating to these viability claims that the blog is making, they can read the last seven postings found in the online site http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/.  As for Meehan’s criteria, see Eugene J. Meehan, Contemporary Political Thought:  A Critical Study (Homewood, IL:  Dorsey Press, 1967).  To date, the blog has reviewed comprehensiveness, power, precision, consistency/reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, and control.

[2]This could be, for example, information relating to what causes water to freeze.  A scientist observes water in a variety of environmental conditions and might eventually abstract the varying temperatures in which water is found and detect a pattern between lower temperatures and the freezing of water.  The abstracted bits of information would be the falling temperature of the water's environment, the changing temperature of the water, and the degree to which the water hardens into ice.

[3]See Saul McIeod, “Jerome Bruner’s Theory of Learning and Cognitive Development” (June 14, 2023), accessed August 31, 2023, Jerome Bruner's Theory of Learning And Cognitive Development - Simply Psychology.  The issue was how the material was presented.  And one of the factors determining success was the nature of the media used to present the information.  To this blogger’s understanding, Bruner was not arguing that young students had to mature to learn complicated material.  He was of the mind that any content could be taught to any student regardless of his/her sophistication.  The issue is how the material is presented.

[4] “Edgar Dale,” Wikipedia (n.d.), accessed September 1, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Dale.

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