Page 206 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

178 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
As a result, these students may emerge from fifth grade with misconceptions about the colonies and their role in the Revolutionary War.
Conceptual Change
Besides adding new elements to a child’s existing cognitive structure, active construction of knowledge may involve changing that structure through processes of restructuring and conceptual change. Sometimes the needed restructuring is relatively minor and easily accom- plished, but sometimes students need to undergo more radical restructuring that involves simultaneous changes in large networks of connected knowledge (Chinn & Brewer, 1993).
Merely exposing students to correct ideas will not necessarily stimulate needed restructuring, because the students may activate longstanding and firmly believed mis- conceptions that cause them to ignore, distort, or miss the implications of aspects of the new learning that contradict these powerful misconceptions (Kendeau & van den Broek, 2005). It may be necessary first to help students to see the contradictions between what they currently believe and what you are trying to teach, and then to appreciate that the target ideas are more valid, powerful, or useful than their existing concepts. Drawing out students’ ideas during whole-class lessons and engaging them in pair or small-group discussions are two ways to help students to recognize and correct their misconceptions.
Social constructivists emphasize teaching that features sustained dialogue or discus- sion in which participants pursue a topic in depth, exchanging views and negotiating meanings and implications as they explore the topic’s ramifications. Along with teacher-structured whole-class discussions, this includes cooperative learning that is con- structed as students work in pairs or small groups.
The key features of a social constructivist view are as follows (Good & Brophy, 2003):
1. Knowledge is treated as a body of developing interpretations co-constructed through discussion.
2. Authority for constructed knowledge is viewed as residing in the arguments and evi- dence cited in its support (by students as well as by texts or teachers, so that every- one has expertise to contribute).
3. Teachers and students share responsibility for initiating and guiding learning efforts.
4. Teachers act as discussion leaders who pose questions, seek clarifications, promote dialogue, and help the group recognize areas of consensus and of continuing
disagreement.
5. Students strive to make sense of new input by relating it to their prior knowledge
and by collaborating in dialogue with others to co-construct shared understandings.
6. Discourse emphasizes reflective discussion of networks of knowledge, so that the focus is on eliciting students’ thinking through questions that are divergent but
designed to develop understanding of the powerful ideas that anchor each network.
7. Activities emphasize applications to authentic issues and problems that require
higher-order thinking.
8. Students collaborate by acting as a learning community that constructs shared
understandings through sustained dialogue.
Discourse that draws upon these eight key features can lead to powerful learning.
The Need to Build a Content Base
Teaching content-rich subjects such as social studies and science is especially challeng- ing in the early grades as well as in multicultural classrooms or in settings where there is a wide range of achievement levels. In the first place, although students almost
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