This blog is currently addressing an
instructional model that outlines a series of phases – admittedly intuitive phases
– that defines the action in the historical dialogue-to-action approach to
civics. Here is a shortened version of
the model:
Phase One: Reflecting one’s
interests and concerns, identify issue
Phase Two: Investigate local
aspect of issue
Phase Three: Identify local relevant
agents
Phase Four: Set up information
gathering protocol
Phase Five: Gather information
Phase Six: Review various action
options
Phase Seven: Perform action[1]
Phase Eight: Coalesce information in
a report
Phase Nine: Submit report and
provide evaluation of the experience
Anyone of these
activities, which have been pointed out earlier in the blog, need to be set up
by gathering from studied groups relevant information regarding some
problematic issue. Too much for the
average person to undertake? Perhaps,
life is full of responsibilities leaving little time for such activities; but a
civics course can promote a more engaged ideal.
A course of study that
adopts the HD-to-A model needs to allow enough time for students, individually
or in groups, to carry off such an action component. What follows is what this blog has described
before:
The course can assign an
experiential project as a course-long assignment – perhaps taking the place of
a final exam.[2]
So, while the units of a
HD-to-A civics course can address action components, a course-long assignment
can implement class instruction lessons.
They also can include activities more associated with students’ school
experiences: participating in debates or
other deliberations over a social and/or political issue relevant to student
lives and starting an educational plan that leads to an occupation that has
public value – and that includes teaching.
This writer is aware of a
couple of organizations that are dedicated to advance students in the pursuit
of these types of activities. They are
The National Action Civics Collaborative (NACC) and SOS Outreach.[3] The writer is not
recommending membership in these organizations.
His knowledge of them is limited to his awareness that they exist and is
mentioned here to be of assistance.
But
before leaving this concern there is one area of special interest. As Theodore Sizer points out, the school site
can do more to teach democratic values than any other source.[4] They can do more to impart a commitment to
social capital and civic humanism. Sizer
further offers the following: “Students
learn much more from the way a school is run,”[5]
and “… the best way to teach values is when the school is a living example of
the values to be taught.”[6]
These quotes hint at the type of concerns over which students could investigate
and deliberate.
And what can students
address? This can include every day
concerns such as student discipline, the school’s physical maintenance, social
problems among students like bullying, instances of sexism or racism, or, with
deference for expert input, questions concerning curriculum. In choosing actual policies in which students
could have a say, a teacher or perhaps an administrator needs to give that
choice some reflection.[7]
This review ends with
addressing a distinction related to dialogue.
Whether students discuss, argue, or participate in a debate, they should
be able to see a fundamental difference between history courses and civics
courses that use historical information.
That is, history can be used for one of two purposes: forensic
uses or deliberative uses.
Forensic questioning asks:
what happened, why did it happen, and what should have happened? This form of questions is suitable in
historical studies and, as these questions indicate, the study or dialogue
emphasize the past. Deliberative
questioning, on the other hand, asks:
based on past events or developments, what is likely to happen, why will
it happen, and what should happen? A
civics course deals with policy questions and, therefore, has a future,
deliberative orientation.[8]
The historic
dialogue-to-action (HD-to-A) approach has students review the historical record
relating to an issue. The conditions of that issue reflect some social reality
in which a federalist value is being, to some degree, defiled. Those involved use history to decide what
should be done to solve or ameliorate the issue. That is a future oriented process and the
reader – those who have opted to review the following elements of logical
argumentation – should keep that aim in mind.
[1] This phase is added from the original list.
[2] This option of
substituting a report or other work product is suggested also at the unit level
of the course by calling on some work product being used to substitute for a
unit test.
[3] “Civic Education,”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[5] Ibid., 120.
[6] Ibid., 122.
[7] Further,
when one talks of a school-wide effort, the supportive philosophy needs to be
widely shared among that school’s faculty and staff. If a teacher, who wants to engage in
experiential learning strategies, stands alone in terms of these ideas in a faculty,
he/she needs to be conscious of that fact and plan accordingly. But, if he/she is committed to apply this
experiential learning approach, with a bit of creativity, this writer believes
the opportunities are there in most schools.
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