Page 209 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

wheat and beef but the Japanese eat relatively more rice and fish, or about the land- to-hand processes and occupations involved in producing common foods and fabrics and bringing them to our stores all incorporate process explanations (of how and why things are done as they are and how products are developed) and cause-effect linkages (explaining why things are done the way they are and why they change in response to inventions).
This approach also offers two important bonuses. One is that, precisely because the stories focus on people taking actions to meet basic needs and pursue common wants, students are likely to view their content as interesting and relevant, and such a content base leads to follow-up activities and assignments that are authentic because they involve applications to life outside of school. Second, when the stories deal with life in the past or in other cultures, teachers can convey them in ways that help their students to see the time, place, and situation through the eyes of the people under study, and thus to see their decisions and actions as understandable given the knowledge and resources avail- able to them. This helps to counteract children’s tendencies toward presentism when thinking about the past and chauvinism when thinking about other cultures.
Teaching for Thoughtfulness
Important social education goals such as helping students see the time, place, and situa- tion through the eyes of people under study require engaging them in higher-order thinking and teaching for thoughtfulness. Newmann and his colleagues (Newmann, 1990; Onosko, 1990) described teaching for thoughtfulness as challenging students to interpret, analyze, or manipulate information in response to a question or problem that cannot be resolved through routine application of previously acquired knowledge. They identified six key indicators of thoughtfulness based on their studies in high school social studies classes. These indicators can serve as important guidelines for elementary tea- chers as well, provided that students are adequately prepared to engage in carefully struc- tured discourse.
1. Classroom discourse focuses on sustained examination of a few topics rather than superficial coverage of many.
2. The discourse is characterized by substantive coherence and continuity.
3. Students are given sufficient time to think before being required to answer
questions.
4. The teacher presses students to clarify or justify their assertions, rather than accept-
ing and reinforcing them indiscriminately.
5. The teacher models the characteristics of a thoughtful person (showing interest in
students’ ideas and suggestions for solving problems, modeling problem-solving pro- cesses rather than just giving answers, acknowledging the difficulties involved in gaining clear understandings of problematic topics).
6. Students generate original and unconventional ideas in the course of the interaction.
Thoughtfulness scores based on these indicators distinguish classrooms that feature sustained and thoughtful teacher-student discourse about the content from two types of less desirable classrooms: classrooms that feature lecture, recitation, and seatwork focused on low-level aspects of the content, and classrooms that feature discussion and student participation but do not foster much thoughtfulness because the teachers skip from topic to topic too quickly or accept students’ contributions uncritically.
Teachers whose classroom observation data yielded high thoughtfulness scores were more likely to mention critical thinking and problem solving as important goals that
Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
CHAPTER 8 How Can I Use Discourse Powerfully? 181