A VARIETY OF APPROACHES

 

[Note:  This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses what a civics teacher preparation program should include.  The last posting finished describing and explaining the first of five elements.  This posting will begin by describing what the second element is.  If not read, the reader is encouraged to check out the previous postings in this series that began with the posting on September 28, 2021, entitled “Prime Reason.”]

So, here is the next element,

 

Element Three:  A program that imparts the teaching skills that allow those perspective teachers to conduct curriculum strategies instructing children and adolescents in the civic knowledge and skills suitable to their developmental level and to the civic challenges of their community, state, and nation.

 

Here one gets to the practical.  What technique or methodology is most apt to engage students to be willing, able, and intelligently review the issues addressed in civics education?  Intuitively, one would guess that it would be one that has students perform, in real or simulated form, those activities that make up active civic roles in those secondary students’ communities.

          That is a format that calls on students to deal with issues that are pertinent to the civic realities of the day.  Students under such an approach could be asked to identify, define, and relate their values to those issues by investigating and forming and applying conclusions regarding them.  There happen to be many imaginative ways to go about doing these things.  Summarily, these strategies tend to follow an inquiry approach to social studies.[1]

          A review of instructional strategies tends to identify different approaches, each based on different philosophic positions and, by implication, favor varying methodological techniques.  While the literature offers listings of these approaches, this blogger bases his argument on a listing provided by Allen C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins.[2] 

Their listing includes the behavioral approach, the managerial approach, the systems approach, the academic approach, the humanistic approach, and the reconceptualist approach.  This array, as presented by this listed order, suggests a rough continuum.      That continuum runs from a scientific/technical view to a non-scientific/non-technical, holistic view and, in between, various versions by degree of these more extreme views. 

If one were to draw this continuum, it might look like a list of approaches in the following ordered way:

Scientific/technical end of continuum

Behavioral – Essentialist approaches incorporating mostly didactic methods and emphasizing basic knowledge;

Managerial – Offshoot to behavioral approaches, emphasizing planning, rational principles, and logical steps (as in linear programming) but not necessarily stated in behavioral terms;

Systems – Incorporates a sensitivity to coordinating varying elements of social efforts, as in during the last century (mostly in the sixties), social studies promoted disciplinary (scientific based) methods of discovery;

Academic – Usually associated with historical or philosophical, deals with perennial questions and promotes the Socratic method of logical analysis;

Reconceptualist – Inheritors of the reconstructionist movement of the 1930s, with the aim of promoting justice and transforming society.  Methods used in this approach were geared toward critically challenging established socialization aims of existing curriculum;

Humanistic – Emphasizes artistic, physical, and cultural aspects of subject matter with an aim at the self-actualization of students.  Methods include a high degree of social interactions such as in small groups usually associated with student-centered curriculum.

Non-Scientific/Non-Technical, Holistic end of continuum

What has been the thrust of the literature in the field of social studies – perhaps of all education – has been to convince teachers that they need to develop lessons that call for students to participate in interactive, classroom activities.  This reflects adopting approaches associated with those listed from the systems to the humanistic end of the continuum.

          That is, it is generally ascribed that those approaches explicitly call on interactive methods and hands-on activities.  In general, there is among these approaches more of a reflective expectation on the part of the students (a necessary element of effective teaching no matter what approach is adopted).  Teachers, by and large, have been resistant to these approaches and favor the more didactic methods and essentialist content or methods that appear toward the scientific/technical end of continuum.

          They apparently have been more comfortable with what one can call traditional approaches in which teachers simply present the information that the students “need” to know.  The common teacher, in order to impart the information, gives lectures and has students fill in worksheets – or, being more innovative, might show a film.  This has been satirized in featured films depicting teachers who have yellowed, stained lecture notes or teachers who fall asleep in class while students fill in the answers to an endless stream of worksheets.

          This blogger’s take is as follows:  teaching is a very personal activity, and teachers will do what they feel most comfortable doing, but that does not relieve them from being as good as they can be in whatever approach they utilize.  But, as mentioned above, regardless of what method a teacher decides upon, if the student is going to learn, he/she needs to engage cognitively and emotionally with the content, what some might call being reflective of the material.

          Part of this engagement calls for the students to question and manipulate the information they are either given or that they discover.  Mere memorization might make the information available to the student in an end-of-the-lesson or unit test, but it will be soon forgotten if that information does not interact with information already known.  It will be temporarily stored and then dismissed – several learning theories support this depiction of long-term learning.[3]

          The point is that higher-level interactions with information do not necessarily come from inquiry, Socratic dialogues, or scientific discovery; they can come from engaging lectures and challenging worksheets.  If appropriate effort is given to preparing such activities, they can be effective. 

This blogger, though, does prefer inquiry, though an eclectic disposition – one that has teachers varying the approaches they use – is seen as necessary and advisable.  This is so because a variety of factors, including resources, time, and the need to evaluate various sorts of content are just some of the factors facing a teacher on a given day.  While to this blogger it seems to be commonsensical, given the national establishment’s commitment to the inquiry style of teaching (one not imposed at the school site), this message might be considered controversial among that professional audience.

This blog will start with this notion of variety in the next posting.  Just to remind the reader, this posting reports on the third element.  Upon completing its presentation of this element – of which there is still a good deal to go – the overall presentation has two more elements to address.  This overall topic, what should constitute a teacher preparation program, is more complex than what one would think when first presented with it.

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[1] For various classroom strategies, the reader can look at this blogger’s book, Toward a Federated Nation (available through Amazon).

[2] Allen C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues (Boston, MA:  Pearson, 2004).

[3] For example, see Morris L. Bigge and Samuel S. Shermis, Learning Theories for Teachers (New York, NY:  Longman, 1999).