- Social Studies Strands
"Schools will show the progress of individual students, within any two year
period, in relation to achievement objectives from all five strands."
(Page 25 Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum)
"Through a wide range of assessment activities, social studies teachers can
ensure that, over time, sufficient information is gathered to enable them to
identify the progress of individual students in relation to the achievement
objectives."
(Page 28 Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum)
The crucial step in unit development
Before you decide on the CONTEXT for your unit, it is essential that you
unpack the AOs you have provisionally chosen as the focus for this study,
eg. Social Organisation Level 4.2:
- how people exercise their rights
- why people exercise their rights
- how people meet their responsibilities
- why people meet their responsibilities
Having gone through this process you can develop context-specific LEARNING
OUTCOMES for your unit, eg. students will be able to:
- describe how people in democracies exercise their rights
- explain why people in democracies exercise their rights
- outline ways that people meet their responsibilities
- suggest reasons why it is important that people meet their
responsibilities
(Note: You can either unpack an achievment objective as a set of Focusing
Questions, or just dismember the achievement objective into chunks.)
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Unpacking the Achievement Objectives is the key to the whole process
of unit planning.
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It may be appropriate to have a very small number of focusing questions
that are not directly linked to the AOs. Students will need help to identify
and build on existing or prior knowledge. It may be appropriate to add in
extra tasks to extend fast finishing students. There may be associated
studies that you will dive off and explore during the course of the unit.
But the AO(s) and related learning outcomes must always remain the
focus of the unit, and the focus of assessment.
Once the AOs have been unpacked the rest is simple.
The Focusing Questions can be turned into SMART Learning Outcomes -
Specific, Measurable, Relevant, Targeted. Check out page 12 of Getting
Started for some useful measurable stem starters. They have to be measurable
because the students must produce EVIDENCE to show their progress.
Keeping it Simple:
Each achievement objective can normally be broken down into at least two or
three chunks which then become the basis for LEARNING OUTCOMES.
How many learning outcomes can you reasonably and manageably assess (ie.
collect evidence from each learner) in a typical unit of work?
If you attempt to include too many AOs in one unit of work you will be so
busy assessing that the students won't have any time to do their learning.
The Social Studies Strand achievement objectives do not flow nicely from one
level to the next, eg. Place & Environment 4.1 (how places reflect past interactions of people
with the environment) does not flow naturally into Place & Environment 5.1
(why people move between places and the consequences of this for the people and the places).
It may be possible to manage several different AOs and/or AOs from different levels,
but the increased complexity can become difficult to manage.
See also: Achievement Objective Interpretation Service.
- The Processes:
Schools will be able to show the progress of individual students, within
any two year period, in relation to the achievement objectives of all three
processes.
Often unit overviews will claim that the unit addresses one or more of the
Processes. In fact the unit addresses one or more of the
SKILLS associated with a Process but not the Process itself. The curriculum
states that students will demonstrate (essential) skills as they work
towards achieving the Process achievement objectives so it is important to
teach specific skills. But one skill does not a Process make.
For example, students are asked to identify people's points of view - and that is
then passed off as the Values Exploration Process. However the Values
Exploration Process is a series of steps/skills designed to allow students
to explore and analyse values.
Identifying points of view or values positions is certainly a first step in
Values Exploration but it is NOT the Values Exploration Process.
The Social Decision Making Process (SDM) is often confused with Problem
Solving. The key differences between SDM and Problem Solving are:
- SDM refers to SOCIAL issues/problems - not, for example, environmental -
at least not until PEOPLE are brought into the study;
- SDM asks students to make decisions about possible SOCIAL ACTION.
Inquiry is not just going to the library! There is a clear sequence of
actions that students must be involved in as they collect, process and
communicate information about HUMAN SOCIETY.
Note: A Social Studies Inquiry will have a Strand achievement objective
as its knowledge or content focus - otherwise it will not be a Social
Studies Inquiry.
Sometimes a unit may lend itself to only some of the steps in a Process.
That's quite acceptable as students need to practise the skills that relate
to the various Processes. Recent research by the
National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP)
suggests that little explicit teaching of research/inquiry skills is actually done - so
let's do it!
- Settings and Perspectives
New Zealand settings are to be incorporated into programmes each year. All
the settings beyond New Zealand must be covered within that magic two year
period.
Problems arise when students are studying, for example, customs and
traditions important to the Pacific Island and Asian children in their
school - ie. within New Zealand - but the Settings that are "ticked" as
being covered are Asia and the Pacific. This is incorrect unless the customs and
traditions of these cultural groups are studied within the actual settings
of a Pacific Island country and/or an Asian country.
The Perspectives are also required to be covered within that two year
period. Again units will claim to have a Multicultural Perspective simply
because they focus on Pacific Island and/or Asian customs and traditions. It
is important to incorporate perspectives from those other cultures and to
guard against (inadvertently) taking an ethnocentric approach to the study.
Similarly, just because a study includes a section on Maori history, does
not mean that it necessarily has a Bicultural Perspective. The study should
incorporate Maori perspectives about that history in order to have a truly
Bicultural Perspective.
- Essential Learning About New Zealand Society (ELANZS)
Note the Society part of ELANZS - it is crucial to keep that people focus.
Schools are required to include essential learning about New Zealand in
their programmes but it is impossible (and not even desirable) to say that
a particular aspect (there are nineteen aspects - see page 23 of
Social
Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum)
will be covered at a particular year.
Ideally children will revisit and deepen (not simply repeat) their knowledge about their own
society as they progress through their schooling.
Teachers of Social Studies must themselves be knowledgeable about all
nineteen aspects of the ELANZS. Perhaps the days of "anyone (in secondary
schools) can teach Social Studies" are gone!
- Assessment
Summative assessment tasks must always relate to an achievement objective -
either a Strand AO or a Process AO. The links back through the learning
activities to the learning outcomes and the AO must be completely obvious to
both teachers and students (and everyone else).
See Assessment
and Classroom Learning
It is also essential that formative assessment is built into any unit.
Please don't ask the students to use an unfamiliar skill to demonstrate
their understanding of content. Ensure that they have had ample opportunity
to practise the skill beforehand.
- Integrated Studies - disintegrated Social Studies
Integrating Social Studies with Technology or Language or Science or
whatever is fine, as long as the Social Studies learning outcomes are being
met. If they are not then the unit is not a Social Studies unit - it is a
Technology or Language or Science unit with a Social Studies flavour.
If the AOs have been properly unpacked and learning outcomes that clearly
link to the AOs have been developed then there shouldn't be a problem.
The assessment tasks will also tie right back to the LOs.
