Social studies is all about the critical understanding of relevant social issues. Social studies units about these issues should be underpinned by a "conceptual understanding" or a "big idea" about society. Students used newspaper clippings to come up with the overall theme of "Apocalypse Theories" which meant that they were engaged from the beginning which was great. But it took weeks of me reading and researching and a social sciences faculty meeting to develop a conceptual understanding that would have better tied everyone's exhibits together. As a faculty the social sciences teachers came up with "How societies use apocalyptic thinking helps us to understand their cultural values". Had I been thinking along these lines earlier we could have looked at a real social issue, such as the way some fundamentalist Christians require certain conditions in Israel to take place before the Apocalypse and Second coming and the potential consequences for Palestinians of this kind of support. In depth exploration of this sort of solid, real-world issue could have served as the vehicle for the conceptual understanding above.
Students have learnt a lot about inquiry but next time I will work on developing a more focused social issue at the heart of the unit, instead of fairly traditional social studies lessons on, for example, the Cold War and nuclear proliferation. This way, even if students aren't successful with coming up with a great exhibition display, at least I can still be sure they have developed their conceptual understanding of an important social issue. Next year it will be good to exhibit students' learning on a website instead of an open evening for parents. They could advertise a launch date, and have a goal of the number of hits to the site.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
Apocalypse Theories Post 9
It has been a long time since the last post and this Thursday is the big day. Students have been working pretty hard and it has been interesting to see which groups have survived and which haven't; also which ones have used presentation to delay in-depth research. I can totally relate to them doing this, but in the end an inquiry has to result in a high quality product.
Inquiry is a disposition, an attitude towards knowledge and I think that everyone, even if what they produced is not that complex, will be able to do some really good critical reflection on themselves after the exhibition. Here is a quote that I have often thought of for this inquiry:
"A phenomenon will persist until the effort required to maintain it exceeds the effort required to revise it" (Davis, Luce and Sumara, p.108)
This is an idea central to constructivism. I have especially noticed this with students' note-taking. I have given workshops on how to do this and explained that if their research is to be complex they will have needed to read and noted potentially useful information from many sources, as they search and revise their inquiry question and the only realistic way to do this is to take good notes. Very few students actually believe me. If this quote is to be taken seriously the teacher's job is to create the conditions whereby the effort to maintain this anti-note-taking mindset is too much. Perhaps for some of them this assignment has helped them get to that place, but this is the only way students learn. It has been interesting to observe students continually updating and "construing" (the better translation from the French word construct") their understandings of the world. It took one student 15 weeks to admit he couldn't really do research. That is a valuable 15 weeks if you ask me. Some people never arrive at that conclusion. If they do it before year 11 more's the better.
The student's last inquiry was done with booklets with 6 inquiry steps. This was a useful exercise in many ways and the language of the steps has also helped students with this inquiry. But if students can only do inquiry if we provide them with booklets they haven't actually learnt anything significant. The school's quided inquiry process is for many students very useful but if they don't learn that inquiry is an attitude, an orientation towards knowledge, they haven't learnt anything significant at all.
Many students I think are starting to realise this; as the quote suggests about learning, they are realizing that their preconceived ideas about "research" don't really work and they could do with updating. That has probably been the highlight of this whole exercise. Piaget was on to it.
If we were to do it again I would need to think how I could better incorporate a central idea about society. I have struggled to work out how to have a really strong inquiry running alongside a really strong social studies curriculum that is based on an issue that students have participated in developing. This last thought will be the topic of the last blog.
Inquiry is a disposition, an attitude towards knowledge and I think that everyone, even if what they produced is not that complex, will be able to do some really good critical reflection on themselves after the exhibition. Here is a quote that I have often thought of for this inquiry:
"A phenomenon will persist until the effort required to maintain it exceeds the effort required to revise it" (Davis, Luce and Sumara, p.108)
This is an idea central to constructivism. I have especially noticed this with students' note-taking. I have given workshops on how to do this and explained that if their research is to be complex they will have needed to read and noted potentially useful information from many sources, as they search and revise their inquiry question and the only realistic way to do this is to take good notes. Very few students actually believe me. If this quote is to be taken seriously the teacher's job is to create the conditions whereby the effort to maintain this anti-note-taking mindset is too much. Perhaps for some of them this assignment has helped them get to that place, but this is the only way students learn. It has been interesting to observe students continually updating and "construing" (the better translation from the French word construct") their understandings of the world. It took one student 15 weeks to admit he couldn't really do research. That is a valuable 15 weeks if you ask me. Some people never arrive at that conclusion. If they do it before year 11 more's the better.
The student's last inquiry was done with booklets with 6 inquiry steps. This was a useful exercise in many ways and the language of the steps has also helped students with this inquiry. But if students can only do inquiry if we provide them with booklets they haven't actually learnt anything significant. The school's quided inquiry process is for many students very useful but if they don't learn that inquiry is an attitude, an orientation towards knowledge, they haven't learnt anything significant at all.
Many students I think are starting to realise this; as the quote suggests about learning, they are realizing that their preconceived ideas about "research" don't really work and they could do with updating. That has probably been the highlight of this whole exercise. Piaget was on to it.
If we were to do it again I would need to think how I could better incorporate a central idea about society. I have struggled to work out how to have a really strong inquiry running alongside a really strong social studies curriculum that is based on an issue that students have participated in developing. This last thought will be the topic of the last blog.
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