Since the posting, “A Practical Turn” (March
19, 2024),[1]
this blog has been promoting the adoption of a consumer government approach to
civics education. The aim of such a
change would be to begin the focus of civics from a structural/national view to
a more local/engaged view.
What is in place is a highly individualistic sense
to politics and while the change would not counter that sense, it would help shift
students’ attention to the concerns of their local communities. In doing so, civics would undermine the
natural rights view and encourage students toward a federated view. Readers, if they have not done so, are
encouraged to use the archive feature of this blog to review those postings. That would be the postings that develop a
rational for this curricular change.
This posting will further comment on the goals
and objectives the last posting, “Goals and Objectives for Consumer Government”
(April 9, 2024),[2] presented. It begins by suggesting that school site
planning of this proposed curricular change should strive to adopt a resulting
course of study that highlights local problems or how statewide, national, or
global problems affect local realities.
Such adaptation needs to be done carefully
weighing the constraints of the classroom and relevancy of the materials
adopted. Text materials need to be edited
to reflect this newer approach (not a simple task), and they would provide a
pre-determined set of governmental/political problems. While it is expected some of these identified
problems will be applicable to local conditions throughout the US, others will
not. Naturally, appropriate deletions,
changes, and additions should be considered by implementing staff.
To further the “local” effect, where possible,
an added goal to this curriculum at the instructional level would be to learn from
real life situations or what are known as field experiences. That is, students are called upon, where
appropriate, to actively participate in political activities relevant to a
problem or issue under study. This
instruction should be considered or planned as local needs and concerns
dictate.
The lesson objectives as presented in the last
posting might seem repetitive since one basic decision-making model is being
employed. It should be kept in mind that
what has been presented is an initial proposal, admittedly needing further development. Variety of learning objectives, though, is
highly encouraged when planning the cognitive input segments. Depending on the nature of the individual
problems considered, students will need reliable knowledge to make rational
decisions based on actual conditions.
The
lesson objectives should reflect the different types of knowledge
presented. For example, it is strongly
suggested that objectives emphasize the development of process skills
associated with inquiry. Particularly in
problems where there are controversial decisions to be made, then predictive
assertions, anticipating the likelihood of consequences, can be investigated
through student inquiry that aim at discovering cause and effect relationships.
These
instructional objectives will target the teaching of transferable skills, make
disciplinary information functional, and add to the overall open-endedness of
real decision-making processes. And in
lessons where controversial decisions are to be made, they further highlight
the value component of the lesson. In
that, the lesson plans should first develop affective domain objective – those objectives
regarding students’ value positions.
And
finally, cognitive material – those elements regarding factual content – will
rely heavily on political science discipline but will not be exclusive to that
source. Other social sciences and respected
research sources should be employed for relevant, reliable information. This might be also useful in discrediting
disinformation one can readily find on social media. All this suggests certain teaching
strategies, which is the topic of the next posting.
No comments:
Post a Comment