Page 313 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 14 What Is the Research Base That Informs Powerful Social Studies Teaching? 285
response to reading. Ah ha! If I could find reading selections that were rich in content, I could create opportunities to get more social studies into my already over-packed day. I was thrilled to find practical, useful ideas in just the first few pages of this chapter!
I was excited to read more, and next came “The 12 Principles.” With any book I read, I’m looking for ways to improve my teaching practices, not just interesting theory and the 12 Principles are exactly that. As I read, I found myself jotting down notes and making lists of ideas to use this school year and in the future.
The authors should be applauded for using this set of principles as a foun- dation for this textbook. These principles can be applied across subject areas and grade levels. Each principle includes research that supports it as well as suggestions and information for classroom application. This structure not only helps the reader consider and plan to use the principles but also provides sup- porting rationale and reasoning that can be used in professional conversations. More and more all teachers, myself included, are being asked to justify curricu- lar decisions and this chapter provides a strong research basis for the principles discussed.
Most of all, reading this chapter reminded me of a long-held belief that good teaching that promotes understanding, appreciation, and life application will prepare students to perform well on any test much better than canned, test-prep programs do. Therefore, if I use these principles to help create cohesive, connected lessons focused around big ideas and search for authentic uses for the skills we learn, my students will be ready for anything that comes our way!
This book began with an overview of social studies as a subject within the larger school curriculum. In the preface and first chapter, we delineated the nature of social studies as a pan-disciplinary subject emphasizing citizen education goals and also described the major curricular and instructional approaches that have been developed. The idea was to create a context within which to situate our beliefs as developed throughout the rest of the book.
In this final chapter, we want to reconnect to the big picture, this time situating the contents of the book within an even larger context: theory and research on curriculum and instruction in general (not just in social studies). A great deal of good research on teaching has accumulated over the last 50 years, most notably research on teaching school subjects for understanding, appreciation, and life application. The major findings of this research are reflected in our beliefs about elementary social studies education, as developed in previous chapters.
We conclude the book with a brief synthesis of these research findings for two major reasons. First, the synthesis provides you with a higher level organizer—a cognitive struc- ture within which to organize and assimilate the many concepts and principles you have studied. The synthesis features 12 principles around which to structure your learning in a network of connected knowledge. Structuring your knowledge this way will make it eas- ier for you to remember and access in application situations.
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