Center for Technology and Teacher Education

Teaching Social Issues

Rationale for Module

Teachers who wish to emphasize the study of social issues in their social studies curricula have two considerable challenges facing them. First, the typical public school curriculum is often highly structured and somewhat rigid in terms of scope and sequence. It is unusual to find a separate course on social issues in many schools. Thus, teachers must find creative ways to infuse the study of social issues into the preexisting curricular structure - assuming they have the time to do so. Second, teaching materials for the study of issues may not be as available to teachers and likely take a lower priority in budget considerations than history or geography texts that must be purchased for all students. We wanted to design a module that invites teachers into an exploration of major social issues, facilitates their knowledge and understanding of these issues, and helps them think of ways to infuse this study into their social studies curricula. Although we cannot, in this module, provide extensive information on a wide variety of issues, we chose to focus on six that seem prominent in U. S. society at present: environmental issues, censorship, health care, poverty, gun control, and prejudice and the spread of hate crimes. The module design asks teachers to provide a rationale for incorporating particular topics into a preexisting social studies course, and to use knowledge from multiple perspectives and disciplines in order to understand these issues.

Conceptual Framework

The National Council for the Social Studies' Handbook on Teaching Social Issues (1996) serves as the basis for our conceptual framework. In this handbook, Evans, Newmann, and Saxe state that issues-centered education focuses on "problematic questions that need to be addressed and answered" and teaches students to "offer defensible and intellectually well-grounded answers to these questions" (p. 2). Students' well-reasoned responses are based on "disciplined inquiry (and) on thoughtful, in depth study" (p. 2). Ultimately, they argue, issues-centered study helps to empower students so that they can solve problems in their daily lives, bring about constructive change in society, and build an ethical foundation for their relationships. Four main principles serve as the foundation for building issues-centered curricula, according to Evans, Newmann and Saxe. First, teachers must embrace the notion of "depth over coverage," allowing time and opportunity for students to develop detail, context, and perspective on their issues. Second, topics and issues should be connected through some type of overarching structure: thematic, disciplinary, historic, or interdisciplinary. Third, study of issues should be grounded in challenging content, not just in the sharing of opinions. Students need opportunities to use reasoning, evidence, and appropriate content knowledge (e.g., historical) to support their views. Fourth, students must have influence and control over the inquiry process, and be able to draw from their own interests, experience, and prior knowledge. Evans, Newmann, and Saxe also assert that the teaching of social issues must adhere to four main principles: - the issues selected must be truly problematic questions, not questions whose answers seem predetermined and scripted - teachers must provide students with a variety of resources to use in their investigation - teachers must promote the use of both oral and written language as vehicles for exploring and discussing the issues - teachers must help students feel comfortable with "cognitive ambiguity and uncertainty" by providing a safe environment for the expression of doubt and diverse viewpoints. Evans, in The Social Studies Curriculum (1997) further outlines "reflective teaching strategies" appropriate to issues-centered study. These include the investigation of open-ended questions that pose a problem to solve, the search for evidence from multiple sources, reflective discussion through seminars and other group-oriented activities, and the weighing and evaluating of possible solutions and consequences. Moreover, students must adopt a flexible approach to researching tentative answers to their questions and must maintain a "healthy skepticism" as they evaluate everything they find. Evans (1997) also advocates an interdisciplinary approach to issues-centered social study. In his view, inquiry into any "real world" matter is naturally holistic, and issues provide a natural focus for in-depth interdisciplinary study. This module encourages preservice social studies teachers to take advantage of the wealth of information available via the Internet and to explore how such information can be used to integrate social issues into traditional social studies courses.

Center for Technology and Teacher Education, University of Virginia, This module was created by Elizabeth Anne Yeager and Kara Dawson University of Florida