In my own words, this standard means that the teacher recognizes that social studies involves students, who are problem-solvers for contemporary issues of their communities and larger macro-spheres. Both the students and the teacher also engage in democracy as they navigate, interpret, and discuss these issues collaboratively.
Upon reading this standard during the early stages of my student teaching semester, I was unsure as to how I would demonstrate my success towards this standard, given my minimal knowledge of economic concepts. Therefore, one of my questions that I had involving this standard was, "How do I better demonstrate this standard within my clinical space of economics?"
A second question that I had related to this standard that was reciprocated by several of my fellow teacher candidates was, "What are the specific foundations, aims, and practices of social studies education that the standard is alluding to?"
Fortunately, those in my seminar had some concrete answers to what the specific foundations, aims, and practices of social studies actually were. Regarding foundations, Todd Dinkelman, our seminar instructor, contended that this was the overall history of the field and different disciplinarian approaches, such as cultural transmission, conservative, social science, and pluralistic. Based on his elaboration of each of these different camps, I would say I most align with the ideas of social science. In my own practice, I want students to think like historians, geographers, political theorists, or economists. However, I am also tempted by the pluralistic approach, though I am not sure that every adverse piece of the status quo can be solved with the short time that students are given in my class. Nevertheless, I am sure that these issues should be investigated and challenged by the students in a productive way. Regarding practices, one of my classmates, Justin Dooley, contended that practices involve the students acquiring and developing necessary skills that will help them succeed in social studies courses and civic life, such as writing, reading, modifying arguments, and "listening" to their peers and researchers. At the same time, Dooley also specified that aims involve understanding contemporary issues and their roles, rights, and responsibilities as citizens.
Regarding this standard, I had two powerful examples earlier in the semester, where my students collaborated around contemporary issues that were related to economic concepts.
In the first example, I had the students learn about the six broad social goals of an economic system: economic freedom, economic efficiency, economic equity, economic security, economic growth, and economic stability. The students read short paragraphs about each of the social goals and then evaluate the goals by ranking them according to how they think the U.S. economic system values each goal. I also had the students evaluate the goals themselves and rank them accordingly. Once each student had prioritized each goal and discovered which goal they ranked as number one, I had them find others who had prioritized the same goal. Once in their group, the students were asked to collaboratively come up with three arguments to persuade others to join their group. I did this activity with the students to show them how individuals and groups of people will prioritize the goals differently, and develop unique economic systems as a result.
A second example in which I felt confident that I demonstrated the students being problem-solvers together, was when I had the students guide my instruction regarding rational decision making. Earlier in the semester when Nathan Deal issued a state of emergency for several counties in Georgia, I had the students evaluate his choice and whether or not he made a rational decision in the presence of both positive and negative consequences. In doing so, I asked the students to come up with a comprehensive set of both pros and cons associated with his choice. Ultimately, the students contended that while many businesses would lose sales and the decision may be an overreaction, Deal made a rational choice to be prepared and ensure the safety of many denizens.
Regarding my future practice, I would say that ideas for what I would plan to do with this standard really depends on the subject that I would teach. However, I am steadfast in my belief that whenever possible, students need to be engaged in collaboration with their classmates to investigate, analyze, and interpret issues and topics in social studies. Issues that the students could think critically about would, again depend on the subject area, include items such as race violence, injustices, prejudices, income inequality, poverty, and government involvement. I am pleased to say that I had the students in my economics class strive for a deeper understanding of the last three items on the aforementioned list. Furthermore, I would like to encourage students to form concrete and realistic solutions of such issues, but recognize that time constraints, lack of resources, and the complexity of the issue may prevent the students from doing so.
Relating this standard to my rationale, I am enthralled by the idea of social studies being a space for students and the teacher to engage in democracy. Though I am still perplexed by the relationship between social studies education and democracy, I will say that I want to create a classroom where students engage in active roles and feel empowered, compelled, comfortable, and supported in voicing statements and solutions to complex and controversial issues. To do so, the classroom needs to be democratic, in that all are welcome to be participants and play equal roles of active learners, including the teacher. To feel "welcome," the classroom must be a safe space for the students, so that they feel secure psychologically, and know that unfounded or inflammatory rebuttals to their opinions, statements, or solutions will not tolerated. However, I am also aware that no true democracy has never existed, and that compromise between conflicting thoughts must be present to come to some sort of conclusion, which was an idea that was highlighted by one of my peers, Chris Ferguson. I do contend that a compromise should arise from collaboration between individuals or groups of students, rather than the teacher being the sole decision-maker.
This standard tells me that I should demonstrate a sufficient grasp for economics, or any other subject that I teach, and acknowledge that students should engage in inquiry regarding social studies concepts to form answers to compelling questions and using evidence from reliable accounts to support their claims.
After reading the contents of this standard, I had the following question: "How can I balance learning content and plan for meaningful lessons that feature substantive inquiry components?" At the time of reviewing this standard I felt very unprepared and uncomfortable with all of the content of economics. While I think that I have a much stronger grasp of economics that I did at the time when I wrote this question, I recognize that time constraints are still a very large barrier in planning, but am confident that this barrier encompasses all of the different social studies, not just economics.
A second provocative question that I had that was also asked by many of my peers was, "what are the 'modes of inquiry'?" In addition to answering compelling and content-based questions and using evidence as support, a few of my classmates also pointed to other important aspects of inquiry. For example, Ryan Leonard and Elizabeth Hicks concluded that inquiry also includes determining what sources are reputable, as in having the students analyze authorship, perspective, bias, and purpose for writing. Additionally, Taylor Perrault agreed that reliable and supportive articles need to be provided by the instructor, but also students need to seek out their own sources as well. While the above comments suggest that "modes of inquiry" relates to teaching students about inquiry and the way in which instructors do so, Todd Dinkelman confessed that this is a different direction than what the standard was designed for. Instead, he articulates that the mode of inquiry is related to the ideas of Lee Shulman, and therefore, is about knowing what you are teaching, how to teach it, and how you know all associated to the specific subject area, in this case, economics.
In engaging students in inquiry during the earlier part of the semester, I gave students a set of scenarios while we discussed the three basic economic systems. While reading each scenario, the students had to determine which economic questions were being answered and by whom in each of the paragraphs. Based on this information, the students had to determine which economic system was being portrayed.
In another lesson that I did this year, I had the students think critically about the following question: "How involved should the government be within our free enterprise system?" In order to answer the question the students went to four stations and read four narrative about positive and negative consequences related to government involvement and intervention in the U.S. economy.
In my future practice as a social studies educator, I would like to add more inquiry lessons wherever possible that are content-driven and require students to understand the subject on a more deeper level. In doing so, I would like for students to read, analyze, and interpret social studies accounts, while also assessing the validity and reliability of the source. In accordance with Taylor Perrault's comment from earlier, I would also like to encourage students to find their own sources that are reliable and useful for their arguments. Regardless of where these sources come from, I maintain that they must include multiple sources and represent diversity, so that students may have a well-balanced understanding of the complexity of the inquiry.
In engaging students in inquiry, I would also like to develop further lesson plans that are related to the subject but are also built on student interests and controversies that exist in their communities. Ideally, I would like for the students and myself to engage in a Youth-led Participatory Action Research, as advocated by Beth Rubin, around an issue in the students' community that incites an authentic interest.
This standard relates to part of my rationale, as I state that students should engage in content specific inquiry, while at the same time, discover and advocate for solutions to contemporary issues. By engaging in inquiry I am asking students to play a larger and more active role in the classroom, and be managers and facilitators for their own learning. Also by engaging in inquiry, students acquire and develop important civic skills that contain value beyond school, such as analyzing documents of varying perspectives, evaluating the authorship and reliability of these accounts, answering compelling, complex, and open-ended questions with supportive evidence, and to possibly formulate clear, sound, and plausible solutions to issues that are relevant and of interest to the students.
How I understand the contents of this standard is that it is the teacher's duty to interpret content to advance beyond the parameters of the state, local, and national standards, such as the Georgia Performance Standards, while also ensuring coverage of the contents of the aforementioned guidelines.
Upon reading this semester at the beginning of the semester, one provoking question I had was, "How much do I need to interpret the mandated standards?" I did not mean to sound indolent in asking so; however, I recognized that time constraints and the complexity of certain elements of the Georgia Performance Standards for economics prevented me from elaborating more on the content that I was mandated to teach. For example, I would say that standard SSEF5b ("Give examples of government regulation and deregulation and their effects on consumers and producers") is more interpretive and susceptible to elaboration than say SSEF1a ("Define scarcity as a basic condition that exists when unlimited wants exceed limited productive resources").
A second question that I had was that "being that economics is less interpretive than some of the other social studies disciplines, how can I navigate the discipline and interpret with my students while still accepting and respecting concepts that are factual and largely undisputed?" In his review of my thoughts, Todd Dinkelman did not agree with the validity of my question, and now having taught various economics concepts, I concur with his sentiments. While certain concepts in economics are factual and perhaps undisputed, like the Production Possibilities Curve, Supply and Demand, the Circular Flow Model, or the Business Cycle, others like government intervention in the economy, effects of inflation, and income distribution can be largely interpreted and are teeming with inquiry opportunities.
A curious thing about local, state, and national standards is that they tell teachers what they need to teach but not how they are to teach the content. Therefore, several times this semester, I have had to transcend the parameters of the standard, interpret their components, and decide how I would cover the information. For the sake of time, I will limit myself to describing two powerful instances below where I have had to decide how to teach given a GPS standard.
In the first example, I had to teach about the GPS standard SSEMI3b, that states that the student will "explain and illustrate on a graph how price floors create surpluses and price ceilings create shortages." The lesson that I gave was an introductory lesson to the concepts of price ceilings and price floors. After giving students brief information related to price ceilings and price floors in a mini-lesson, I had the students look more specifically at an example of a price floor: minimum wage. I asked the students to engage in an inquiry around the question, "Should the government raise the federal minimum wage, given consequential effects on workers, consumers, and businesses?" In order to answer the question I presented the students with four station readings that were contemporary and relevant articles regarding the effect that a raise in minimum wage would have on small businesses, their prices, and their workers, who desire a livable wage.
Likewise, I gave my edTPA lesson over the GPS standard SSEMA1b, that contends that the students will "define Gross Domestic Product (GDP), economic growth, unemployment, Consumer Price Index (CPI), inflation, stagflation, and aggregate supply and aggregate demand." Specifically for the lesson, I focused on America's GDP, economic growth, and how these two relate to overall happiness for Americans. The students were able to see, through graphical analysis, that America has had continual economic growth in terms of GDP; however, they were challenged to think more deeply about what truly makes Americans happy, like safety, healthy lifestyles, education, and marriage durability. In comparison to many other countries, the students were exposed to the fact that America consistently ranks low on various happiness indexes, regardless of its ranking on indexes measuring GDP.
As with most of these standards, ideas that I have to achieve this guideline would really depend on the subject that I taught, so that I know what content I am suppose to interpret. What I do know is that wherever possible I will seek to advance beyond the local, state, and federal standards to encourage complexity of the content, and to include multiple perspectives on many different issues.
It is also clear that my curriculum should be unique from year to year, and change annually even if the mandated standards remain the same. I acknowledge that new relevant and related issues will arise each semester, which I can and should tie in to the content that I am teaching. In other words, as the world changes so too should the curriculum that we teach.
This standard clearly relates to aspects of my rationale, specifically in what I contend is worth knowing given the presence of mandated standards. In all honesty, I don't know what specific content is worth knowing, but I know that it can not just simply meet the parameters of mandated standards and be content in my teaching practice. No, as I referenced in my rationale, local, state, and federal standards for most disciplines are typically absent of complexity and void of important perspectives. In my opinion, standards are only a starting point for curriculum formation and only offer teachers mandated guidelines. Standards need to be expanded on and interpreted to included complexity, differentiated perspectives, and relevance to contemporary life.