Page 321 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 14 What Is the Research Base That Informs Powerful Social Studies Teaching? 293
emerging problems before they become disruptive. When possible, they intervene in ways that do not disrupt lesson momentum or distract students who are working on assignments. They teach students strategies and procedures for carrying out recurring activities, such as participating in whole-class lessons, engaging in productive discourse with classmates, making smooth transitions between activities, collaborating in pairs or small groups, storing and handling equipment and personal belongings, managing learn- ing and completing assignments on time, and knowing when and how to get help. The teachers’ emphasis is not on imposing situational control but on building students’ capacity for managing their own learning so that expectations are adjusted and cues, reminders, and other managerial moves are faded out as the school year progresses. These teachers do not merely maximize “time on task,” but spend a great deal of time actively instructing their students during interactive lessons, in which the teachers elabo- rate the content for students and help them to interpret and respond to it. Their class- rooms feature more time spent in interactive discourse and less time spent in independent seatwork. Most of their instruction occurs during interactive discourse with students rather than during extended lecture-presentations.
The principle of maximizing opportunity to learn is not meant to imply emphasizing broad coverage at the expense of the deep development of powerful ideas. The breadth/ depth dilemma must be addressed in curriculum planning. The point of the opportunity- to-learn principle is that regardless of how the breadth/depth dilemma is addressed and whatever the resultant curriculum may be, students will make the most progress toward intended outcomes if most of the available classroom time is allocated to curriculum- related activities.
3. Curricular Alignment All components of the curriculum are aligned to create a cohesive program for accomplishing instructional purposes and goals.
Research findings. Research indicates that educational policymakers, textbook publish- ers, and teachers often become so focused on content coverage or learning activities that they lose sight of the larger purposes and goals that are supposed to guide curriculum planning. Teachers typically plan by concentrating on the content they intend to cover and the steps involved in the activities their students will do, without giving much thought to the goals or intended outcomes of the instruction. Textbook publishers, in response to pressure from special interest groups, tend to keep expanding their content coverage. As a result, too many topics are covered in insufficient depth; content exposi- tion often lacks coherence and is cluttered with insertions; skills are taught separately from knowledge content rather than integrated with it; and in general, neither the students’ texts nor the questions and activities suggested in the teachers’ manuals are structured around powerful ideas connected to important goals.
Students taught using textbooks may be asked to memorize parades of disconnected facts or to practice disconnected subskills in isolation instead of learning coherent net- works of connected content structured around powerful ideas. These problems are often exacerbated by externally imposed assessment programs that emphasize recognition of isolated bits of knowledge or performance of isolated subskills. Such problems can be minimized through goal-oriented curriculum development in which the overall purposes and goals of the instruction, not miscellaneous content coverage pressures or test items, guide curricular planning and decision making (Beck & McKeown, 1988; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1993).
References to attitudes, values, dispositions, and appreciations are intended to under- score the fact that instructional purposes and goals include not only knowledge and skills but also aesthetic experiences, positive attitudes toward the subject, efficacy perceptions, and other affective and motivational outcomes. Curricula should include activities that
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