In the article, “Controversial Issues and Democratic Discourse”, Hess (2011) explored the implications of incorporating Controversial Issues (CI) into Social Studies lesson. She included multifarious research findings from studies conducted in Social Studies classrooms in US and delved further to discuss its implications on teachers and students. This review aims to summarize the main research findings and contextualise its implication on the teaching and learning of Social Studies in Singapore.
According to studies carried out in US schools, research findings showed that CI discussions were actively carried out in Social Studies classrooms where students claimed to have discussed about their differing opinions on political and social issues as part of adopting an ‘open classroom climate’ and teachers do allocate time for discussion. However, Hess also surfaced contrasting research findings that reported on the lack of inclusion of CI as minimal time is allocated and in some cases, no discussion are carried out at all. An observational study was conducted to explain the disparity of both findings and the problem identified was definitional, in which students are unable to distinguish regular classroom talks about recent events from a proper discussion due to the varied definitions of ‘discussion’. This definitional problem resulted in both teachers and students conflating regular classroom talks with discussions and further study explained that this problem accounted for the initial findings of schools that report the inclusion of CI in their classrooms.
CI discussions may pose as a problem in classrooms but it did not hinder teachers from including it in their curriculum. Investigations from studies reported that teachers agree...
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...emocratic citizenship: Decision-making in the social studies. NY: Teachers College Press.
Hess, D. (2011). Controversial issues and democratic discourse. In L.S Levstik & C.A. Tyson (Eds.). Handbook of Research in Social Studies Education (pp. 124-136). NY: Routledge.
Ministry Of Education (2012). Primary School Social Studies Syllabus. Retrieved on February 14, 2014 from http://lonline.nie.edu.sg/bbcswebdav/pid-618910-dt-content-rid-1460510_1/courses/ACL402_TG01_130114_210214_HSSE/MOE%20Social%20Studies%20Syllabus%20updated%202013.pdf
Shindler, J. (2008). Chapter 7: Examining Motivational Strategies – What Makes Your Student Care? Retrieved on February 14, 2014 from http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/jshindl/cm/Chapter7motivation.htm
Traeger, J. (2014). Mayvin: Why facilitate? Retrieved on February 15, 2014 from http://www.mayvin.co.uk/articles/why-facilitate.html
Overall I do agree with Freire that students should have a hand in the discussion to help them learn to think more critically about what they are learning. I think every teacher or professor should try and incorporate the problem-posing model in their classrooms. But, the problem-posing model will not always work for every subject. All students should be able to think critically about what they are learning, express their opinions, concerns, and thoughts especially in the
Dutt-Doner, Karen M. and Susan M. Powers. "The use of electronic communication to develop alternative avenues for classroom discussion." Journal of Technology and Teacher Education 8.2 (2001): 153-72.
Teachers are able to set clear goals for learning and relate that learning to the needs of the students therefore motivating the intrinsic learner. While teachers should predominately use intrinsic motivators in their classrooms extrinsic motivators do have their place in motivating the extrinsically orientated student. Extrinsic motivators though should be used with caution as students will only ...
Through fifteen weeks of reflective, discussion-based learning, my views and philosophy of social studies education has drastically changed for the better. In the beginning, every time I heard “social studies”, I instantly had a negative mindset. I believed social studies was equivalent to history and that the two subjects were interchangeable and meant the same thing. Due to this misconception, I thought social studies was boring and solely regarded past events and numerous, overwhelming dates. Since I have been enlightened, I now have a deep appreciation and admiration for social studies and its importance in education.
Thus, the COI offers us a dual message of promoting critical thinking and encouraging an obligation to one's fellow inquirer. As such the concept of COI attempts to address contemporary challenges to education to produce better thinkers and more caring members of society who can tolerate differences at the same time they can submit conflicts to reasonable scrutiny. In a COI all participants must respect one another as thoughtful persons who seek communally to better understand the issue at hand.
Reviewing the literature surrounding the teaching of controversial issues, it is evident that defining controversial issues in its self can be contentious and there is ...
Teachers in every subject area face the challenge of teaching content that may be controversial in some way. The global origin of Language, for example, allows teachers to explore not only different cultures and traditions but also contentious issues as environment, sustainability and historical or current event such as immigration.
As a participant in the International Baccalaureate program, discussion has become a huge part of my academic journey. With any assignment we have been given, my class has picked everything apart to fully understand the material, feeding off of each other’s perspectives to shape our own views. Similarly, The Common Core allows for students to participate in an open exchange of ideas and interpretations while using others’ inputs to form our own. I would like to take the understanding I have grasped as an IB student and develop it to reach a deeper level of understanding that is only possible at Columbia.
The silent debate comes after LP#2, where in small groups students worked to compose lists of cultural components within their school. At the conclusion of the graffiti wall assessment, students were tasked with defending the best examples of components within the school. Their defense of the component examples they selected provided them with a foundation of knowledge in regards to how to evaluate cultural components based on given criteria. In LP#3, students will be asked to think back to the previous day’s graffiti wall assessment. Students will have to evaluate the school’s culture and whether it meets the primary goal of the school (i.e. educating and preparing students) by assessing the components they defended. Central to the development of this language function is student’s ability to justify their argument by layering facts and substantial reasoning to not only prove their point but address the opposing perspective as well.
Classroom discussions, in part, are well grounded in the now current notions of constructivism and postmodernism: "Most simply put, the transition involves a shift from the notion of knowledge as the apprehension of universal truth…to the notion of knowledge as the construction in language of partial and temporary truths by multiple and contradictory individuals" (Cooper 143). In such a paradigm, students are contributors to knowledge, which is jointly constructed by all the contributors, who may even produce multiple knowledges. In fact, Cooper tells us, students "need to be able to engage in the process of knowledge construction" (144). Discussions in themselves "emphasize the communal aspect of knowledge ma...
The analysis of classroom discourse is of value to teachers wanting to understand the dynamics of classroom communication, to discover “whether there is a proper equilibrium or an imbalance between real communication and teacher talk.” (McCarthy 1991). During my MS coursework, we learned about Sinclair and Coulthard’s conversation analysis model which struck me as a very useful tool to analyze classroom discourse. The three-tier model is particularly helpful in gauging the progress of teachers’ pedagogical goals and students’ learning in real time.
In the field of education there is a broad spectrum of strategies to motivate students. Through research only a sample of the spectrum was covered, which consisted of twenty-nine sources. Four interrelated categories were created that individually provide strategies to motivate students. The four categories consist of teaching strategies to motivate students, program structure to motivate students, self-motivational strategies, and parent strategies to motivate students. All of these categories conclude that a positive environment provided by parents, school officials, and the students themselves, act to enhance a students motivational drive to succeed in the classroom.
Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) has reinforced that point by stating that “learning is social and not isolated, as people learn while interacting with each other through shared activities and through language, as they discuss, share knowledge, and problem-solve during these tasks.” Therefore, students are enabled to obtain, develop and use tools that assist in their critical thinking as they collaborate in their learning environments. (Brown, Collin and Dugrid, 1989)
3. Full-Class Discussions (Teacher- or Student-Led): Typically less agonistic, argument-based, and competitive than debate and deliberation but still dialogic in character. Often times has the quality of creating an atmosphere of collective, out-loud thinking about some question, idea, problem, text, event, or artifact. Like deliberation and debate, a good way to encourage active
The Social Studies covers a very diverse fields of studies that focus on the “humanities, mathematics and natural sciences” (NCSS). With these diverse fields it is the objective to teach the student to understand and then create self-informed decisions that will have positive effects on society. This objective will help the student to understand why and how people react to shifts in society, geography, government, economy, stability, and so forth. When students understand the reasons and reactions to these shifts better and more informed decisions can be made when such issues rise again. This understanding will further cultivate cultural improvements for those who study and teach the Social Studies.