Janet Alleman

Activities as Instructional Tools: A Framework for Analysis and Evaluation:

Issues relating to the design, selection, and evaluation of learning activities have been relatively neglected in educational research and scholarship. This article identifies some fundamental questions in need of scholarly attention, reviews recent research findings, and then offers a conceptual analysis and a list of principles that might be used as a tool for designing, selecting, or assessing activities.

History Is Alive: Teaching Young Children about Changes over Time

ictory is alive! That is one of the H important messages that teacher Barbara Knighton communicates to her students as she develops engaging stories about changes in farming, government, clothing, or transportation, using timelines as her basis. In this article, we describe how Knighton constructs social studies units for her first and second graders using cultural universals and illustrated timelines (Alleman and Brophy 200 I , 2002, 2003). For :I time during the 1970s, some social educators questioned the feasibility of teaching history to elementary students on the grounds that they have not yet achieved the levels of cognitive development that are needed to learn history with understanding. Those notions were inferences drawn from

Social Studies Incorporating All Children Using Community and Cultural Universals as the Centerpiece

This article features an elementary teacher who has worked with the authors for the past 10 years in research on building a classroom community and using cultural universals as the centerpiece for elementary social studies for all children. Cultural universals are basic human needs and social experiences found in all societies, past and present, and include food, shelter, clothing, transportation, communication, family living, money, childhood, government, and so on. Actions related to cultural universals are experienced by all children regardless of their cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, achievement levels, or special needs, so teachers can connect to these experiences as bases for developing historical, geographic, political, economic, sociological, psychological, or anthropological understandings. The ultimate goal is connected knowledge about how the social system works, how and why it developed over time, how and why it varies across locations and cultures, and what all this might mean for personal, social, and civic decision making.

Primary-Grade Students’ Knowledge and Thinking About the Economics of Meeting Families’ Shelter Needs

The traditional K–3 social studies curriculum has focused on cultural universals, including shelter. To gather information about children’s prior knowledge and thinking (including their misconceptions) about economic aspects of this topic, individual interviews were conducted with 216 K–3 students. Their responses indicated that most of the students understood that people have to pay for shelter and that most people prefer houses to apartments. Some students confused apartments with hotels, and most were vague about what is involved in renting apartments and why some people choose to do so. Only a few understood that renting is a profit-making business or that people can get mortgage loans to allow them to move into a house before they have accumulated its full purchase price. These and other findings are discussed with reference to curriculum and instruction in the primary grades.

Primary-Grade Students' Knowledge and Thinking about Food Production and the Origins of Common Foods

Abstract Individual interviews were conducted with 96 K-3 students, stratified according to grade level, achievement level, and gender. The students were asked to explain land-to-hand progressions involved in bringing several common foods to our tables, identify products derived from common farm animals, explain why a pound of cereal costs more than a pound of apples and a restaurant meal costs more than the same meal eaten at home, describe the steps involved in growing corn, explain why there are few farms in Alaska, identify inventions that have modernized farming, and explain why many fewer farmers per capita are needed today than in the past. The students knew more about the physical appearances of things than their underlying natures, and more about the uses of finished products than about the land-to-hand transformations involved in creating those products. Response sophistication was related much more closely to age (grade level) and personal experiences out of school than to achievement level or gender. Findings are discussed with reference to an emerging literature on childrens thinking about history, geography, society, and culture, and to potential implications for curriculum and instruction in the primary grades.

Elementary social studies textbooks

Recent criticisms of textbooks have included accusations of favoring breadth over depth, dry writing, lack of context, failure to integrate minority groups, and overillustration. Social studies texts have, in addition, been criticized for meaning-less content, unclear goals, inadequate explanation, separation of knowledge from skills, and other failings. The authors of this article have specified other common faults. As a corrective, they suggests a return to the notion of developing curricula as means to accomplish major goals phrased in terms of intended student outcomes, and aligning social studies instruction with major social education goals.

Primary Grade Students' Knowledge and Thinking about Transportation.

Abstract Very little information exists about childrens prior knowledge and thinking (including misconceptions) about transportation, a topic commonly taught in elementary social studies. To develop such information, individual interviews were conducted with 96 K-3 students, stratified according to grade level, achievement level, and gender. The students were asked about transportation as a universal human need and the functions that it fulfills for us; its evolution over time and the impact of inventions; the tendency for settlements to be built along transportation routes; the ways in which improvements in transportation have “made the world smaller;” the fundamental importance of the wheel as a basic invention; the effects of building a highway through a rural community; how automobiles work; and several other aspects of the topic. Although inability to respond was a frequent problem, the students who were able to respond tended to be accurate and relatively free of misconceptions. However, they provided only limited answers to many of the questions because their responses were restricted to the micro-level of the activities of individuals or families, without addressing the macro-level of society in general or the world at large. Findings are discussed with emphasis on their implications for early elementary social studies.