Kathryn M. Obenchain

Experiential Education in the Classroom and Academic Outcomes: For Those Who Want it All.

We conducted a pretest-posttest study using measures of higher order thinking skills (HOTS), and lower order thinking skills (LOTS) in six 12th-grade American Government classrooms taught by three experienced teachers over one semester. One of the three teachers implemented a curriculum in two classes based on experiential education (EE) principles with guidance from the investigators. Students in the EE-emphasized classes demonstrated greater gains in HOTS than the students in the other four classes. There was no difference between the two groups in gains for LOTS. These results suggest that EE instruction in high school classes can promote HOTS more than traditional instruction does with no sacrifice in LOTS.

The Reliability of Students' Ratings of Faculty Teaching Effectiveness

Procedures for measuring faculty teaching effectiveness vary by university; however, student eval uations typically are considered in the process and are critical elements of tenure and promotion decisions (Haskell 1997; Marsh 1987). Because of the high corre lation between quality teaching and high student achievement (Darling-Hammond 1997), it is understandable that faculty teaching effectiveness be carefully moni tored. Student evaluations of faculty teaching effectiveness are also used in dispensing merit-based salary increases and can create a competitive climate among faculty members within university colleges and departments. Because of the emphasis placed on student evaluations and the pressure for junior faculty mem bers in particular to receive high ratings to bolster their promotion and tenure doc uments, an examination of the reliability of student evaluations of teaching effec tiveness is warranted. The weight that the student evaluations receive differs across universities and is continually under scrutiny (Haskell 1997; Sproule 2000). Faculty concerns regard ing the use of student-completed evalua tion forms as the sole or most important assessment of teaching quality have been

Student Ownership of Service-Learning Projects Including Ourselves in Our Community

Service-learning projects can be an effective tool to actively engage students with learning disabilities while also providing needed community service. The incorporation of academic skills, personal development, and emphasis of volunteerism are fundamental attributes of service-learning projects. This article details a five-phase construction plan designed to guide students through the process of planning service-learning projects. Students are responsible for all steps of the process with the teacher assuming the role of facilitator and guide. Active participation in the planning process results in student ownership of the project. Appropriately planned and implemented service-learning projects help students with disabilities include themselves in their community and allow all students the opportunity to use academic skills and assume personal responsibility.

Men's Perceptions of Their Experiences as K-2 Teachers.

Men are greatly underrepresented as elementary teachers in the United States. They comprise just 17% of elementary teachers and about 2% of K-2 teachers (Allan, 1993; Sanders, Koch, & Urso, 1997; Wood & Hoag, 1993). Moreover, the proportion of male elementary teachers (and male teachers, in general) has been declining in countries around the globe—such as Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States—for the past two decades (Boyle, 1997; Gong, 1997; Hill, 1996; Ministry of Education, 1996; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2001). Education researchers have paid little attention to issues surrounding the low and declining proportion of male elementary teachers. This seems perplexing in an era sensitive to issues of gender equity and diversity, one that promotes, for example, gender and racial balance within occupations. The popular press has devoted some attention to the issue, particularly in recent years. Journals, newspaper articles, and press releases, in electronic form and hard copy, report the issue and call for men to consider the teaching profession, particularly at the lower grade levels (Calling prospective teachers, 1999; Gong, 1997; Push for more, 1999; Turner, 1996; Walling, 1998). By conducting a Web search using the term “male primary teacher’’ or a similar word grouping, a researcher can locate a growing number of articles and discussions on the topic in recent years. It certainly seems worth understanding this phenomenon in light of the need for quality elementary teachers. Perhaps half the population is being inadvertently and systematically discouraged from entering this important profession. Moreover, the low number of men in elementary (in particular, primary) teaching denies students and staff gender diversity in their school’s teach-

How to Assess Language in the Social Studies Classroom.

been paid to the language and academic needs of English as a second language (ESL) students in the social studies classroom. In the most recent review and one of the few written on social studies texts and instruction, Short (1998) found that ESL students do not receive the language and academic support they need to master the abstract vocabulary and difficult reading and writing assignments that are endemic to social studies. In spite of the lack of recent research into the language demands of social studies, recent textbook series have responded to pressure from schools around the country to address the needs of ESL students. In a review of six teacher’s annotated editions of high school U.S. history textbooks published between 1995 and 1998, which included Boyer (1998); Danzer et al. (1998); Downey, Giese, and Metcalf (1997); Drewery and O’Connor (1995); Mason et al. (1997); and Ritchie (1997), we found that publishers have made good progress in addressing the needs of ESL students. All but one of the texts contains varied suggestions for accessing the content and providing background or the prior student knowledge assumed to be held by most students. Activities such as teaching suggestions that include cultural background activities, Spanish language editions, vocabulary exercises, the use of audiotapes, and heterogeneous grouping were common in the texts. Still, there is much work that must be done. To succeed and function independently in an English-only classroom, an ESL student must reach a level of competence that Cummins (1979) termed Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). According to Cummins, CALP concerns the ability to express in writing higher-order thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. That ability is interdependent with the first language. Students who enter the classroom without having developed higher-order literacy skills in their first language spend from five to seven years gaining those skills in their second language. Given the fact that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation requires that ESL students enter mainstream classroom work within three years, few students will enter a social studies classroom with the necessary skills. After three years of ESL, most students will have achieved Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS). Students at that level can ask and answer simple factual recall questions, converse about personal experiences, and describe the events in their lives, but their reading and writing skills may be extremely low. The disparity between ESL students’ current level of language development and the language demands of the social studies classroom presents a difficult situation for social studies teachers. Even those who are knowledgeable in the most effective techniques for ESL instruction find themselves forced to assess students who have learned a great deal orally but have not had the time to develop the cognitive academic language proficiency needed to succeed in class. Written assignments, for instance, which require students to compare and contrast two figures in history or to evaluate the actions of a particular group, are very common but represent a difficult challenge for students who have not achieved CALP because such an assignment calls on students to How to Assess Language in the Social Studies Classroom

Finding a Civic Voice: Latino Immigrant Youths' Experiences in High School Social Studies

Socialization into the dominant civic and political discourse lies at the heart of social studies. As they become proficient in the discourse of home and school, Latino immigrant youth demonstrate the potential to uniquely benefit from this socialization. This qualitative study explores ten Latino immigrant young adults’ perceptions of how their social studies experiences shaped their young adult civic selves. Participants internalized not only their parents’ high expectations for them, but also those of their teachers, highlighting the potentially instrumental role of schools in the civic fabric of the nation. In addition, the Latino young adults felt empowered by their social studies teachers via civic expectations and academic encouragement and perceived this empowerment to have facilitated the skill development necessary for later civic leadership. In closing, we reflect on immigrant students’ incorporation of the discourse of the dominant culture with that of the home to develop their own civic voices.

Angela: On a Critical Curve.

This qualitative case study examines one secondary social studies teachers enactment of her critical constructivist beliefs in teaching for democratic citizenship education. Results are organized around the knowledge, skills, and dispositions addressed, and their consistency with critical constructivism. The teachers practices were consistent with her beliefs; however, she struggled to balance her critical perspectives with her developing knowledge of critical scholarship and the belief that her students needed to come to their own conclusions.

Garnering Civic Hope: Social Studies, Expectations, and the Lost Civic Potential of Immigrant Youth.

Abstract Social studies education is designed to provide a foundation for civic society. In this study we consider immigrant optimism theory within the context of U.S. secondary social studies to examine the civic potential of immigrant youth. Using a mixed-methods approach, we complement analyses of teacher and immigrant young adult interviews with national survey data to explore how adults’ expectations shape immigrant youths’ civic identity formation. Although immigrant parents consistently express high academic expectations of their children, teachers’ civic expectations emerged as a critical factor in immigrant youths’ civic development. While teachers and immigrant youth reported rich civic discourse in advanced social studies classes, we counter that limited social studies course taking may restrict exposure to teachers’ civic expectations, and result in the unrealized civic potential of immigrant youth. We close with a cautionary note regarding the limits of social studies to develop a transformative, emancipatory citizenry, especially among the increasingly diverse immigrant youth population.

Demos as an Explanatory Lens in Teacher Educators' Elusive Search for Social Justice.

Borrowing insights from the Ancient Greek ideal conceptions of a democratic civic space (demos), this article examines the applicability of this framework to four teacher educators’ journey to implement social justice in their programs. It is proposed that the three constitutive dimensions of demos (freedom of speech, equality to vote and hold office, and equality against the law) could provide explanatory lenses to bottom-up collaborative projects in teacher education and beyond, through the illumination of both successes and failures.

Ethnic Attitudes of Hungarian Students in Romania

Participants in this study were ethnic Hungarian secondary students attending high schools in Romania in which Hungarian was the primary language of instruction. Attitudes of participants toward ethnic and cultural groups were measured using a variation of the Bogardus (1933) Scale of Social Distance. Results were consistent with predictions based on Allports intergroup contact theory. Students reported a wide range of tolerance levels for majority and minority ethnic groups with which they were likely to have contact in Romania. However, the students reported little difference in tolerance levels for groups that are not a recognized part of the Romanian cultural landscape, such as people of Hispanic origin, and Native Americans.