Report: Effective Pedagogy in Social Sciences: Tikanga ā Iwi: BES

Author(s): Graeme Aitken and Claire Sinnema, The University of Auckland
Date Published: November 2008
New Zealand Ministry of Education

pg 34

Introduction

1.1 Social sciences and the Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis Programme

…answer two questions:

1. What teaching approaches enhance outcomes for diverse learners in the social sciences
   curriculum domain?
2. How and why does this happen?

By connecting teaching and learning via these questions, the synthesis aims to inform understanding of a pedagogy for social sciences teaching that draws on the concept of ‘ako’. Linda Tuhiwai Smith explains17:

Our concept of those who teach and those who are taught, our word is exactly the same word, our word is ako. It means to learn and to teach (p. 179).

Likewise, Loughran18 describes the traditional European (Dutch, Belgian, German, and Scandinavian) concept of pedagogy as:

not merely the action of teaching … more so, it is about the relationship between teaching and learning and how together they lead to growth in knowledge and understanding through meaningful practice (p. 2).

The importance and relevance of research in the social sciences curriculum domain was emphasised by Stahl19 in his presidential address to the 74th Annual Conference of the National Council for the Social Studies:

we must never accept that we have been highly effective or successful until after we have ample evidence that nearly every student has attained and maintained the abilities, perspectives, and orientations that we have targeted (p. 47).

This is especially important in social studies because:

lack of success in our classrooms means that children will leave school with less of the information, abilities, perspectives, and attitudes needed to function competently as citizens of this nation and members of a pluralistic global community (p. 48).

Table 1: Tikanga à iwi / social studies / social sciences outcomes

Cultural identity	Outcomes related to students’ understanding and awareness of personal identity and layered/multiple identities.
Knowledge	Outcomes related to students’ understanding of concepts or ideas central to the social sciences domain.
Skills	Outcomes related to students’ use of methods (for example, the planning of inquiry) and techniques (for example, graphing, mapping, reading) central to the development of social science understandings and to their expression of those understandings (in, for example, writing, drawing, speaking).
Participatory	Outcomes related to students’ ability to participate, contribute, become involved, interact, and engage in dialogue. These outcomes included both inclusive personal behaviour (such as non-racist and non-sexist interactions with peers) and negative participation (such as the development of destructive or resistant responses).
Affective	Outcomes related to students’ dispositions and emotional responses to learning, to their ability to explore and analyse their own and others’ values, and to the development of a commitment to such values as social justice and equity.

pg 38

1.4 Social studies pedagogy in New Zealand

While a survey of 853 teachers in 2002 found that social studies teachers were generally very satisfied with the curriculum32, the Education Review Office (ERO)33 expressed concern that:

• students often experience ‘hit and miss’ social studies programmes that can result in shallow learning. It is rare for students to be engaged in a sequence of activities that have a purpose (p. 3).

In 2005, ERO carried out a follow-up survey of years 4 and 8 social studies teaching in 153 schools. Teaching was assessed against six criteria:

• The content of the learning programmes reflects Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum.
• Resources and technology are used effectively in the teaching of social studies in the classroom.
• Teachers have the subject and pedagogical knowledge to provide effective social studies programmes.
• Teachers have appropriate teaching strategies in place to assess and meet the needs of diverse groups of students.
• Teachers effectively assess student achievement in social studies.
• Teachers effectively motivate and engage students so they achieve highly in social studies.

The teachers surveyed typically taught 10–15 hours of social studies per term, often as part of ‘topic time’. The fact that social studies teaching was integrated with other subjects tended to magnify the difficulty of aligning what was taught with curriculum objectives. Significantly for this BES, only 38% of teachers were identified as effective or highly effective for diverse learners – largely because so many failed to make use of assessment to adapt learning programmes to the needs of their students.

pg 45

The analysis revealed four main mechanisms that explain what works for diverse learners in the social sciences. The mechanisms, with the appropriate teacher actions, are:

1. Connection: Make connections to students’ lives
2. Alignment: Align experiences to important outcomes
3. Community: Build and sustain a learning community
4. Interest: Design experiences that interest students.
   Each of the mechanisms is paired with a teacher action, beginning with a verb. The first, for example, begins with ‘make’, underscoring the teacher’s responsibility for activating the (‘connecting to students’ lives’) mechanism. In this way, we link the often-separated activities of teaching and learning and reference the Màori concept ako.

pg 46

Cases present evidence in a way that reveals the complexity and integrated functioning of the mechanisms, which almost always work in combination with each other. For example, ‘making connections to students’ lives’ provides a basis for ‘designing experiences that interest learners’.

The development of the cases was also crucial methodologically. Evidence was not always presented in ways that made the connection between pedagogy and outcomes immediately apparent

pg 48

1.6 Gaps in pedagogy–outcomes research evidence

Other areas where the social sciences research evidence is relatively thin include:

• Special needs. While there are studies relating to some physical disabilities, autism, and Down syndrome, there is little evidence relating to other disabilities.
• Teacher content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. A number of studies relate to teacher content knowledge and how it is reflected in or responsible for particular teacher actions; an even larger number describe and compare teacher pedagogies. What is lacking are studies that examine the relationship between content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge and learning outcomes for students.
• Online distance learning. There is much more research into the impact of online learning on student achievement at tertiary level than at school level.
• Addressing stereotypes. While there is considerable evidence on approaches to reducing prejudice and stereotyping, much of it relates to non-school contexts or is found in wholeschool studies. Few studies specifically concern social sciences; when the issue is student learning about diverse groups, the evidence is contradictory.
• Commonly used generic strategies. Many studies describe the effects of strategies such as
  concept maps, multimedia resources, and simulation games. While it seems likely that
  findings from these studies would be transferable to the social sciences, little has been
  done to test this hypothesis. Likewise, the extensive, growing work on cognitive load in
  science and mathematics is likely to have parallels in the social sciences, but with the
  exception of a few studies in geography, such parallels have not yet been researched.
  Finally, there are strategies popular in the social sciences for which there is limited or
  contradictory evidence concerning efficacy. These include project work, processes such
  as values exploration and social decision-making, and service learning (learning in which
  students participate in the community for an authentic purpose).

pg 52

2.2 A model of pedagogy for the social sciences

… this research supports a model of pedagogy based on teacher inquiry: a model in which teachers inquire into the impact of their actions on their students and into interventions that might enhance student outcomes. It distinguishes three phases of inquiry:

• a focusing inquiry,
• a teaching inquiry, and
• a learning inquiry.

The focusing inquiry helps determine direction. Given that time is limited and that students need multiple opportunities to engage with the content of new learning, priorities need to be established; this is the purpose of this phase of the cycle. The focusing inquiry is termed an ‘inquiry’ because the prioritising process draws from a variety of sources: curriculum requirements, community expectations, and, most importantly, the learning needs, interests, and experiences of the learners.

The focus of the teaching inquiry is on identifying strategies that are most likely to help the students achieve the selected outcomes. Central to this inquiry are the questions ‘What could I try?’ and ‘How good is the evidence?’ These questions imply a considered and reflective approach to practice and research that requires the ability not only to locate the evidence but also to evaluate its quality. In determining what to try, teachers are exposed to different sources of evidence, including their own experience as teacher and learner, the experiences of colleagues, prescriptive sources, such as curriculum documents and textbooks; and systematic sources, such as professional development and research. This does not mean that one idea is as good as another. Some are better supported by evidence, and the questions that guide the teaching inquiry are aimed at seeking these out. The mechanisms, developed as they were from a wide base of evidence across the social sciences, are key informants. Based on this
inquiry, teachers design teaching actions (learning experiences) for their students.

The focus of the learning inquiry is on the impact of teaching actions on student outcomes. Central to this inquiry is the collection and analysis of quality evidence based on the questions ‘What is happening for students in my classroom?’ and ‘Why might this be happening?’

Pursuing answers to the first question, teachers may find, for example, that some students are not interested in the content or that some have contributed little to teacher-led discussion or that some have difficulty working together and learning in groups. To determine what future action is appropriate, the teacher then needs to find out why students are responding in such ways. Hence the second question, ‘Why might this be happening?’ The mechanisms offer a framework that can help teachers answer this question. Are the students uninterested because the content does not connect to their experience (Mechanism 1) or because too much material is being covered to allow them to engage with the new learning and embed it in their memory (Mechanism 2) or because their own questions do not form the basis of their studies and so they have little interest in them (Mechanism 4)?

pg 53

Foremost among these are open-mindedness, fallibility, and persistence. Open-mindedness refers to a willingness to consider teaching approaches that may be unfamiliar or that may challenge one’s beliefs about the best ways to teach. It refers also to being open to what the evidence shows about the effects of teaching on student learning. Fallibility refers to the lively realisation that however strong the evidence may be, educational research findings are always conjectural because they are context-bound. Fallibility involves accepting the possibility that what was, or what has been, successful with one group of learners
may not be successful for another and that, for this reason, well-designed intentions might fail to generate the desired response. The need for persistence directly follows from fallibility, as teachers must inquire again into the focus of future learning and into the possibilities for future, more effective action.

pg 56

Connection (Mechanism 1)

Make connections to students’ lives

3.1 Why making connections to students’ lives matters

Mechanism 1 explains how students’ participation and understanding in the social sciences is enhanced when the teacher connects the content of learning to their lives. This is not the same as determining and then building on prior knowledge (see Mechanism 2 in chapter 4) in that the underlying explanation for learning in Mechanism 1 is that what learners experience is relevant to them. This mechanism explains how ‘putting students’ lives in the centre of learning’ supports achievement in relation to a range of social sciences outcomes.

Teachers can explicitly connect learning to the lives of students by using content that is relevant to their cultural knowledge and experience and by drawing their attention to parallels between new learning and their own experience.

Students’ own experience becomes a point of reference with which to compare other people’s experiences in different times, places, and cultures.

The inclusiveness of the learning environment is a powerful influence on what students learn in the social sciences, impacting not only on whether students can recognise themselves in the content but also on whether learning is balanced and equitable or biased and distorted.

pg 57

3.2 Draw on relevant content

As Gay (Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, & practice. New York: Teachers College Press.) has argued, culturally responsive teaching is teaching that:

• acknowledges the legitimacy of the cultural heritages of different ethnic groups, both as legacies that affect students’ dispositions, attitudes, and approaches to learning and as worthy content to be taught in the formal curriculum;
• builds bridges of meaningfulness between home and school experiences as well as between academic abstractions and lived sociocultural realities;
• uses a wide variety of instructional strategies that are connected to different learning styles;
• teaches students to know and praise their own and each other’s cultural heritages;
• incorporates multicultural information, resources, and materials in all the subjects and skills routinely taught in schools (p. 29).

pg 58

… the teachers took quite different approaches.
The control teacher:

• believed integration meant the occasional use of Aboriginal content/perspectives;
• taught a curriculum that remained largely Eurocentric;
• did not consistently use integration in the planning or teaching of units.

The experimental teacher:

• placed the integration of Aboriginal cultural perspectives at the centre of his teaching – such perspectives were “deliberately and consistently integrated into the planning and teaching of the units”;
• believed that Aboriginal cultural perspectives were a philosophical underpinning of the
  curriculum;
• thought that “… integrating Native perspectives may promote student learning, positive
  inter-group relationships, and, overall, an enhanced multicultural climate”.
  

Kanu, Y. (2002). In their own voices: First Nations students identify some cultural mediators of their learning in the formal school system. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, XLV111(2), pp. 98–121.

pg 59

One strategy used by the experimental teacher involved targeting both Aboriginal and non-
Aboriginal perspectives when planning learning outcomes….

A second strategy was to integrate the use of Aboriginal learning resources into learning
programmes. …

A third approach was to integrate pedagogical strategies documented as effective for the
teaching and learning of Aboriginal students57. These strategies included: the use of stories;
sharing circles in which there was equal, respectful, and non-threatening discussion;
illustrations as scaffolds; field trips (for example, to a pow-wow); community support;
knowledgeable guest speakers from Native communities; a variety of activity types; and a
mix of individual and collaborative work. …

The fourth strategy was to use journals, portfolios for reflection, and artefacts for assessment
purposes. Students’ written work, presentations of research, and performances of stories/
dramas were also used for this purpose, as well as traditional-style tests. …

A fifth element identified by Kanu as important was the experimental teacher’s belief that
integration should be a philosophical underpinning of the curriculum. He believed that
Aboriginal perspectives should be central to curriculum, not an ‘add-on’. …

pg 60

The findings show that the students in the class whose teacher integrated Aboriginal perspectives into the programme performed significantly better in terms of conceptual understanding and high-level thinking
than those in the control class.

… Kanu noted an increase in the self-confidence of the students in the experimental class over the course of the year.

In a study designed to identify teaching and learning strategies that promote literacy skills for learners in a year 1–5 Māori-medium environment, Bishop et al.59 found that a culturally appropriate and responsive
context was crucial. Teachers were able to create such a context by recognising children’s prior experience and knowledge and by using materials that related to their Māori world view and experiences and had cultural legitimacy.

Bishop, R., Berryman, M., & Richardson, C. (2002). Te Toi Huarewa: Effective teaching and learning in total
immersion Màori language educational settings. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 26(1), pp. 44–61.

Bevan-Brown also highlights the impact that culturally responsive teaching has on Màori learners. In a culturally responsive environment:

• learners’ culture is valued, affirmed and developed … learning is facilitated because their educational and home environments are culturally compatible. They are able to utilise familiar learning strategies and to relate new information to prior knowledge. In a culturally responsive environment students are more motivated to learn, they feel psychologically secure and thus are able to concentrate fully on required academic tasks (pp. 152–153).
• Bevan-Brown, J. (2005). Providing a culturally responsive environment for gifted Māori learners. International Education Journal, 6(2), pp. 150–155.

pg 64

Alleman et al.69 explain that:

• Cultural universals are domains of human experience that have existed in all cultures, past and present. They include activities related to meeting basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter, as well as family structures, government, communication, transportation, money or other forms of economic exchange, religion, occupations, recreation, and perhaps other factors as well. The term implies that activities relating to each cultural universal can be identified in all societies, but not that these activities necessarily have the same form or meaning in each (p. 168).
• Alleman, J., Knighton, B., & Brophy, J. (2007). Social studies: Incorporating all children using community and cultural universals as the centerpiece. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 40(2), pp. 166–173.

pg 65

Chan’s narrative inquiry (during which she took part in all aspects of classroom and school life with two cohorts of students) revealed that:

• Many activities in and out of classrooms were designed to acknowledge ethnic communities and strengthen cultural awareness of others and pride in each student’s culture. However well-intentioned, some of these events evoked complicated, even conflicting, responses from students and their peers (p. 184).
• Chan, E. (2007). Student experiences of a culturally-sensitive curriculum: Ethnic identity development amid conflicting stories to live by. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 39(2), pp. 177–194.

There were, for example, culturally-bound dilemmas around a post-graduation party. Fatima, a first-generation Somalian Muslim student, was “caught in the middle, wanting to participate in what her non-Muslim peers were doing while at the same time needing to adhere to her mother’s beliefs about activities she viewed as appropriate” (p. 184). The story reveals how curriculum events (in this case a graduation) “may contribute to the ethnic identity-formation of students of ethnic-minority backgrounds in ways not anticipated by their teachers” (p. 184).

pg 67

Not surprisingly, a number of the social sciences studies that reported gains in student learning
also reported tasks that involved attending to similarities and differences. In particular, there
is evidence that learning tasks that involve students comparing their own and others’ cultures
or communities can contribute to student success.

pg 70

By engaging with and sharing their families’ experiences and histories, the students gained
greater understanding of historical concepts – and developed greater respect for each other.

pg 72

The potential for similarities-and-differences strategies to have unintended
outcomes
While similarities-and-differences strategies have the potential to impact on learning in
positive ways, teachers should be alert to the possibility that they might influence learning
in undesirable ways. Johnstone90, for example, warns that binary thinking can result from
similarities-and-differences strategies when teachers ask formulaic questions such as “How
are people in Nigeria similar to and different from us?” A similarities-and-differences strategy
presented in this way could result in students adopting an ‘us–other’ or ‘them–us’ dichotomy.
These strategies need to be used in ways that support students to value diversity, rather than
entrench racism or promote a ‘tourist curriculum’.

3.3 Ensure inclusive content
While strategies aimed at encouraging students to make comparisons with their own experiences
can support new learning, it is important that teachers attend to the use of language and to
content and resource selection to ensure that diversity is not unwittingly excluded.

pg 76

Resources can either make diversity visible or bias student
understandings
Students in any group are diverse – in terms of gender, ethnicity, culture, disability, age,
sexuality, and the like – so if learning is to connect to their lives, resource and content selection
needs to reflect this diversity. Where resources fail to make diversity visible, students have
fewer opportunities to make connections and create meaning.

Pg 83

Alignment (Mechanism 2)

Align experiences to important outcomes

4.1 Why aligning related experiences to important outcomes matters

This mechanism explains how learning experiences work (and do not work) to fix learning in
students’ memories. Put simply, valued learning will not occur unless learners have sufficient
opportunities to engage in learning experiences aligned to that learning…

Learners make sense of new information by relating it to concepts and ideas in their long-term
memory, but the processes of selecting, sorting, and integrating that are central to this sensemaking
are complex. They are linked to the prior knowledge of the learner, the relationship between
the learning experience and the purpose of the learning (alignment), the number of times the
student engages with learning experiences related to the purpose (multiple opportunities), and
the nature of and relationships between the various learning experiences (sequencing).

So what should I do?

• Identify prior knowledge.
• Align activities and resources to intended outcomes.
• Provide opportunities to revisit concepts and learning processes.
• Attend to the learning of individual students

pg 84

4.2 Identify prior knowledge

If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him [sic] accordingly (p. 18) (Ausubel (1968). Educational psychology: A cognitive view. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.)

Identifying student prior knowledge helps set the direction for learning by distinguishing ‘new’ learning from that which is already known

The complexity of pre-assessment was illustrated in this case by the fact that different students knew different content, so the ‘average’ of 45% masked the considerable variation that existed within the
class’s prior knowledge profile.

The task of uncovering prior knowledge and then designing learning experiences to help move
all students towards the same end point was complicated by the limited overlap in the prior
knowledge of different students

pg 85

prior knowledge influences performance in end-of-topic assessments; a
relatively high proportion of the content to be learned is already known at the beginning; what
is known differs from student to student. These findings collectively reinforce the importance
of identifying the nature of student knowledge prior to and during teaching so that learning
experiences can be aligned not only to the intent of new learning but also to the existing
knowledge of individual students.

Identifying student prior knowledge alerts teachers to the transfer of existing understandings that may inhibit new learning

As students participate in learning experiences, they interact with new information and attempt
to make sense of it by making connections between it and existing knowledge structures or
schema128. These schema may contain understandings that inhibit the acquisition of new
knowledge.

[Lipson] found that the deliberate teaching of a compare-and-contrast text structure had greater impact on the students with less prior knowledge of the content. They speculate that this latter group may rely more on the approach they have been taught, while those with prior knowledge “may not perceive a
need to utilise a strategy if they think they already understand the material” (p. 746). (Lipson, M. (1983). The influence of religious affiliation on children’s memory for text information. Reading Research Quarterly, 18, pp. 448–457.)

pg 87

Identifying student prior knowledge alerts teachers to student misunderstandings that may inhibit new learning

Brophy and Alleman (Brophy, J. & Alleman, J. (2005). Primary-grade students’ knowledge and thinking about transportation. Theory and Research in Social Education, 33(2), pp. 218–243.) warn that students today receive much of their social studies content in a fragmented manner, which, when combined with the general fuzziness of social studies concepts, increases the potential for misconceptions. As they explain:

… contemporary children are exposed to a greater variety of verbally and visually mediated
input than ever before, but most of it is too incoherent to be retained as anything but
disconnected fragments and images and much of it is fictional content of dubious value.
Stereotypes and other distortions abound (p. 223).

Brophy and Alleman (Brophy, J. & Alleman, J. (2006). Children’s thinking about cultural universals. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.) research into children’s understanding of cultural universals revealed the following types of misunderstandings among K–3 children:

• Presentism: ascribing negative views to people in the past on the basis of present-day knowledge and experiences (‘they weren’t as smart’, ‘they didn’t have scientists’).
• Chauvinism: depicting the customs of other cultures as ‘weird’ and ‘funny’.
• Stereotypes: some have a basis in fact (‘the English ride subways’), others are misconceptions (‘there are no schools in Africa’, ‘the Egyptians live in pyramids’).
• Limited awareness of the relationship that exists between people’s lives and the surrounding physical environment.

Pg 88

Research-based trajectories of conceptual and skills development alert teachers to the possible nature of students’ prior knowledge

There has been considerable research into students’ conceptual knowledge and skills in the social sciences domain. While this research does not explain how teaching approaches might improve knowledge or skills, it informs pedagogy through its documentation of the nature and trajectory of students’ conceptual knowledge and skills.

As Osborne and Freyberg [Osborne, R. & Freyberg, P. (1985). Children’s science. In R. Osborne & P. Freyberg (Eds.), Learning in science: The implications of children’s science (pp. 5–14). Auckland: Heinemann Education.] explain, “Even where research has something to tell us (about conceptual understanding), it is always about other children, not our own” (p. 151).

Some New Zealand research has actually questioned the value of brainstorming as used in social studies classrooms. Barr [Barr, H. (2002). There’s too much B.S. in New Zealand social studies. The Journal of the Aotearoa New Zealand Federation of Social Studies Associations, 10(2), pp. 21–22.] observed that, at least in primary school classrooms in New Zealand, brainstorming is often used as an endpoint activity rather than as a means of determining the direction of teaching and learning.

Gawith [Gawith, G. (2005). ‘Enquiring’ into inquiry pedagogy. Good Teacher Magazine, Term 4.] questions the extent to which brainstorming actually reveals the prior knowledge that is most useful for teachers. She writes:

Somewhere along the line, brainstorming ideas has become the way to start ‘inquiry’ because, I’m told, we ‘share’ background knowledge. We’re brainstorming frogs. Hemi says ‘tadpoles’, Jo, ‘cane toads’, Sue, ‘YUK!’ and Annie, ‘prince’. I write up ‘cane toads’, ‘tadpoles’ and ‘prince if kissed’ on the board. Does it represent the background knowledge needed to ask relevant inquiry questions? NO! … ideas are not knowledge (p. 1).

pg 89

While acknowledging the importance of “grounding learning in prior
knowledge”, Gawith claims brainstorming is only of value if you are “doing an ideas-based
topic and you want to know students’ thoughts and opinions” (p. 1).

Valencia et al.[Valencia, S., Stalman, A., Commeyras, M., Pearson, D., & Hartman, D. K. (1991). Four measures of topical knowledge: A study of construct validity. Reading Research Quarterly, 26(3), pp. 204–233.] argue that caution needs to be exercised when selecting the means for assessing prior knowledge.

The recognition measures were a multichoice vocabulary test, semantic
mapping, and text prediction. The recall measure consisted of an open-ended question that
asked students what they knew about a situation, followed, where necessary, by increasingly
specific personal experience prompts designed to encourage them to talk. The researchers did
not find a strong correlation between the knowledge assessed by the recognition measures and
that accessed by the recall measure.

Teachers’ prior knowledge impacts on the extent to which they can support student learning

The research described thus far demonstrates that teachers’ awareness of student prior
knowledge impacts on their ability to effectively plan for learning and to respond to learners.
There is also a considerable body of research that indicates that the prior knowledge of teachers
is also an important factor in student learning.

Kunowski [Kunowski, M. A. (2005). Teaching about the Treaty of Waitangi: Examining the nature of teacher knowledge and classroom practice. Queensland: Griffith University.] for example, found that teachers who had not mastered the content of a Treaty of Waitangi unit made errors of information, were less able to illustrate and explain ideas and events using stories and examples, and attempted to simplify material in ways that led sometimes to misinterpretation and superficial student responses.

pg 90

Kaomea144 partly attributed students’ enduring stereotypes about early Hawaiian life to a lack
of teacher knowledge. This lack meant that teachers felt unable to challenge the stereotypes
expressed by the students.

Seixas [Seixas, P. (1993). The community of inquiry as a basis for knowledge and learning: The case of history. American Educational Research Journal, 30(2), pp. 305–324.] also argued that, in the absence of skilled teacher direction, there is a risk that too much interpretive leeway in discussions may result in the construction and reinforcement of “untenable views of the past and of their place in historical time” (p. 320).

Other researchers have noted that content and resource selection requires judgment, and that
such judgment is impaired when disciplinary knowledge is lacking. As Wineburg [Wineburg, S. (1998). A partial history. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(2), pp. 233–243.] commented, with reference to the teaching of history, “teachers cannot teach what they do not know. They cannot choose that of which they are ignorant” (p. 237). If we want children to develop historical empathy, “we must give them teachers who understand the subjects they intend to teach … teachers who haven’t understood a subject cannot hope to teach that subject with any deep understanding – or sophistication – to their students” (p. 241).

pg 92

Identify prior knowledge Summary of findings

• Identifying student prior knowledge:
  – helps set the direction for learning by distinguishing ‘new’ learning from that which is already known;
  – alerts teachers to the transfer of existing understandings that may inhibit new learning;
  – alerts teachers to student misunderstandings that may inhibit new learning.
• Research-based trajectories of students’ conceptual and skills development alert teachers to the possible nature of students’ prior knowledge.
• Techniques for accessing prior knowledge need to be aligned to the type of prior knowledge sought.
• Teachers’ prior knowledge impacts on the extent to which they can support student learning.

Purposefully aligning activities to desired outcomes supports students in achieving those outcomes

‘Alignment of activities’ refers to the deliberate structuring of activities to help students achieve the intended learning purpose. The evidence in this section is organised by learning purpose.

pg 96

… instruction aligned to either the structure or content of the resources was more effective than no instruction. More importantly, the explicit-teaching group performed significantly better on the strategy and comprehension (especially comprehension of effect) measures than the group that received content-only instruction.

When the researchers tested for transfer of the cause–effect strategy to other resources, they found that the explicit-teaching group generally outperformed the content-only group, especially in their understanding of effect in one-cause–multiple-effects contexts.

he general alignment of summarising to compare–contrast was not as effective as the specific alignment.

pg 97

Reflecting on the importance of avoiding assumptions about what students might be expected to learn naturally, the researchers concluded with a strong plea for teachers to be deliberate about developing
research skills:

Reflecting on the skills needed to undertake research it soon becomes apparent that these attributes are not necessarily synonymous with being an adult, they are synonymous with being a researcher, and most researchers have undergone formal training programmes. Many, perhaps most adults would not be able to undertake research without training. It would appear, therefore, that a barrier to empowering children as researchers is not their lack of adult status but their lack of research skills. So why not teach them? (p. 332).

In the real world, information seeking takes a long time. It is characterised by blind alleys and false scents and answers need to be constructed following critical consideration of the available information (p. 28). [Moore, P. (1995). Information problem solving: A wider view of library skills. Contemporary Educational
Psychology, 20, pp. 1–31.]

She found that few students were prepared for this reality:

It seemed that students had a simple rule for finding information – think of a question, identify its keywords, look up the subject index for a Dewey number, go to the shelves and find the answer in the exact form it is wanted. If any part of that sequence failed they often seemed surprised and confused (p. 28).

This reinforces the need for alignment that extends beyond skills teaching – for alignment of the teaching method to the problem-solving, multi-solution nature of the task.

Wall and Higgins [Wall, K. & Higgins, K. (2006). Facilitating metacognitive talk: A research and learning tool. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 29(1), pp. 39–53.] developed a research instrument designed to encourage children to talk about their learning. They found that this tool also had pedagogical benefits, because, by having children complete the thought bubbles and speech bubbles on pictures relating to the learning context, it provided scaffolding for their thinking and speaking. In other words, the bubbles were directly aligned to the processes that the students were being encouraged to use. The researchers commented:

We believe that the thought and speech bubble combination supports or scaffolds responses where the pupils’ thinking about their learning, or their metacognitive thinking, is brought out. This may be because the template encourages them to distinguish between what they might say (to someone else) about their learning and what they themselves think about it (using the cartoon convention of a thought bubble) (p. 45).

The researchers also found that the sequence of speech and thought bubbles mattered:

Where learners were not familiar with a vocabulary about learning, it was found that by starting with the speech bubble, the more easily attributable aspects of the learning process, and then moving on to the thought bubble, a ‘scaffold’ was provided for the children in moving from the concrete to the more abstract aspects of learning. Thus even children less accustomed to talking about their learning could be supported by the structure of the template to begin to engage with and reflect on their learning (p. 50).

{g 98

Alignment to enhance the development of conceptual knowledge

The value of explicitly teaching concepts was also clear in a more recent study by Twyman et al.165 The researchers were concerned about the mismatch between history textbook presentations of material (with their often shallow, factual focus and presumption of high levels of prior knowledge) and the skills needed for historical thinking, such as “the ability to analyse problems … and generalise interpretations by articulating patterns of similarities and differences as well as cause and effect” (p. 332).

pg 98

Alignment to support attitude and behaviour change

…Banks [Banks, J. A. (2006). Cultural diversity and education (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education.] finds that:

• incidental teaching about race relations and one-shot treatments are not usually effective;
• contact with minority groups does not in itself significantly change racial attitudes;
• the attitudes and dispositions of the classroom teacher are important variables;
• cooperative rather than competitive cross-ethnic situations should be fostered.

Other research has shown that prejudice can be reduced by teaching strategies that deliberately challenge subtyping.

pg 104

Katz [Katz, L. G. (2001). Another look at what young children should be learning. The Spectrum, Fall.] suggests that, to encourage curiosity in their students, teachers should make curiosity a focus of their language, using, for example, learning goals (‘see how much you can find out about something’) instead of performance goals (‘I want to see how well you can do’).

Sewell [Sewell, A. (2006a). Teachers and children learning together: Developing a community of learners in a primary classroom. Draft doctoral thesis, Massey University, Palmerston North.] noted that when the teacher stopped talking about ‘doing’ work and started using the word ‘learning’, so did the children.

pg 105

Levstik and Smith [Levstik, L. S. & Smith, D. B. (1996). “I’ve never done this before”: Building a community of historical inquiry in a third grade classroom. In J. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on teaching, Volume 6 (pp. 85–114). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press Inc.]… During oral presentations or videos, when
the students were required to take notes, the teacher would stand to the side, clipboard in
hand, conspicuously taking notes. As students shared what they had written down, she would
say, “Oh, yes, yes. I wrote that down, too”, or “Oh, I missed that. I think I’ll add that to my
notes too” (p. 97). To encourage students to use substantial rather than trivial questions, she
responded to the question “How many windows are downtown?” with a question of her own:
“I was wondering why is there a downtown?” The researchers observed that, in response to
this and other similar exchanges, the students began to ask more searching questions, such
as: “Why don’t we get many tornadoes here?” and “Is there more crime now than in the past?”
(p. 103).

Making the purpose of tasks clear to students reduces ambiguity and helps them to focus on important learning

pg 107

Using teacher action research to investigate a New Zealand project targeting effective teaching
and learning in senior social studies classrooms, Wood194 found that the provision of templates,
planning/writing guides, and structured overviews was helpful in developing students’
understanding of topics and their ability to communicate knowledge in written form. Student
comments affirmed that the provision of a writing frame helped them meet the requirements
of an assessment: “It was set out in a way we couldn’t miss out any important parts of the
assessment”, “We were less confused about the outline of the assessment.”

pg 112

Align activities and resources to intended outcomes
Summary of findings

• Purposefully aligning activities to desired outcomes supports students in achieving
  those outcomes.
• Aligning resources to the purpose of a task supports students in achieving outcomes
  related to that task.
• Modelling of intended outcomes makes alignment transparent to students.
• Making the purpose of tasks clear to students reduces ambiguity and helps them to
  focus on important learning.
• Aligning assessment with teaching helps communicate what is important.

Students need three to five aligned experiences not more than two days apart

Providing multiple learning opportunities supports concept development

pg 124

Reducing coverage enables learners to focus on important ideas and processes

…[time] constraint, combined with the need to provide students with multiple opportunities to engage, means that the content of new learning must be carefully selected.

… alignment not only requires making judgments about importance but also about relative importance.

…it is critical that students are actively involved in decisions about their learning.

Provide opportunities to revisit concepts and learning processes
Summary of findings

• Students need three to five aligned experiences not more than two days apart.
• Providing multiple learning opportunities supports concept development.
• Providing opportunities for repeated practice supports skills development.
• Reducing coverage enables students to focus on important ideas and processes.

pg 128

The significance of prior knowledge is also illustrated by the following example. The teacher is
speaking to students who are expected to understand who owned the land in England following
the Battle of Hastings:

“Remember when we talked about the feudal system, about the king owning the land and
giving some of the land to his loyal barons. The barons couldn’t use it all, so they gave
some to their knights. Um, these overlords had promised protection of the people who, um,
[were] in their care, and the people in their care had to promise they would be loyal to their
overlord” (p. 809).

Students would only have been able to connect this information to the expected understanding
if they already knew (or found out subsequently) that the teacher was referring to the period
after the Battle of Hastings. In the absence of prior knowledge or subsequent learning, the
intended learning from this particular experience would have been lost.

pg 131

Drawing on the experience of a cluster of studies in New Zealand classrooms, Alton-Lee and
Nuthall [Alton-Lee, A. & Nuthall, G. (1998). Inclusive instructional design: Theoretical principles emerging from the Understanding Learning and Teaching Project. Wellington: Ministry of Education.] discussed how student access to meaning may be inhibited by an over-reliance on group (and individual) work. They draw attention to the role that skilful, whole-class teaching can play in addressing ‘critical points of vulnerability’ in the learning process.

Attend to the learning of individual students
Summary of findings

• Differing levels of engagement with relevant ideas lead to differences in outcomes for
  students.
• Differences in interests, involvement, and background knowledge influence students’
  engagement.
• The sequence in which different activity types occur can influence what students learn
  from each activity.

pg 133

Community (Mechanism 3)

Build and sustain a learning community

So what should I do?

• Establish productive teacher–student relationships.
• Promote dialogue.
• Share power with students.

Establish productive teacher–student relationships

pg 135

Productive teacher–student relationships are those that result in mutually positive outcomes.
These outcomes may be:

• motivational, establishing a basis for learning (students want to learn);
• affective, establishing a community context for learning (students gain a sense of affiliation, belonging, and inclusion);
• cognitive, establishing norms for learning;
• participatory, establishing learners as active participants in a community.

Building respectful relationships with students establishes a basis for learning

…teacher had established much closer working relationships with his students. These relationships were characterised by:

• stronger cognitive connections (for example, responding to ideas in ways that generated new understandings);
• stronger social connections (for example, sharing responsibility for learning decisions);
• stronger emotional connections (for example, allowing the students to know something about other roles in his life and being open and honest about the emotions involved);
• spatial connections (for example, sitting with the students, at their level).
  The students noticed these changes and regarded them positively

pg 141

Building respectful relationships with students helps create a sense of community

Respectful relationships are not only important for the influence they have on motivation; they
are also vital for creating a sense of affiliation and belonging – to the class and the school
community. This outcome is particularly important in the social sciences, where community
needs not only to be experienced but also to be understood.

pg 142

A valuable strategy for developing affiliation is described in Sewell’s study274. The strategy,
‘What’s on top?’, was a daily ritual for Rhys and his students. It began with Rhys saying, ‘Let’s
catch up on each other’:
[Rhys] sat with the children in a circle on the mat. A child … began talking about an event
or issue beyond the classroom. Going round in the circle, each child had the opportunity
to share something that was on their mind without the use of visual aids. This became a
safe space in the classroom for each child to be vulnerable and to talk from the heart, with
Rhys just another member of the group. Even if they chose not to contribute, non-verbal
joint participation was happening, both in their presence in the circle, and through their
gesturing and body language … they shared slices of their lives, such as a sibling starting
school, being punished, playing netball, Mum yelling, Dad drinking or Nanna crying … It
is not show and tell, nor is it time to show off, tell tales or tune out … it was a genuine and
honest sharing of their minds and hearts in their responses to tragedy, to joy or to mundane
events.
… Rhys regarded What’s on Top as a way to bridge the gap between home and school, to
bring outside issues into the classroom and to “create spaces to validate feelings, park issues
and feel safe [so they] can move on ready to learn”. He also saw What’s on Top as a way to
value the individual and to build a sense of belonging to the group: “they connect with me
and I connect with them”. What’s on Top also enabled Rhys to show himself as someone
other than a teacher, and by so doing validated the act of sharing, caring and trusting.
This strategy helped students get to know each other and understand each other’s cultural
knowledge and out-of-school lives – prerequisites to developing the emotional connections
required for shared participation in a learning community. It had a marked impact, not only
on the students’ academic self-concepts but also on their involvement and on their achievement
of social studies objectives.

pg 149

Modelling learning behaviours in relationships helps embed students’ focus on learning

Caring and respectful relationships have a greater impact on cognitive outcomes when a
focus on learning is embedded in those relationships. Sewell [Sewell, A. (2006b). Teachers and children learning together: Developing a community of learners in a primary classroom. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Massey University, Palmerson North.] reported distinct changes in students’ identities as learners, and in their participation, when Rhys changed his style of interaction. There was less emphasis on behavioural compliance and task completion and more on learning; less on working alone and more on working together, creating ideas with others, and sharing expertise:

[The teacher] realised that he had asked the children what they wanted to ‘do’ to take the next step in their transport theme. Not surprisingly, the children suggested craft type activities such as making clay models of animals used for transport or folding newspaper into cars. Some children did suggest activities to reinforce their learning, such as making a facts quiz or acting in a play, but no-one came up with an idea that would promote new learning (p. 110).

Establish productive teacher–student relationships

Summary of findings

• Building respectful relationships with students:
  – establishes a basis for learning
  – helps create a sense of community.
• Inclusive relationships increase the involvement of diverse students.
• Modelling learning behaviours in relationships helps embed a focus on learning.

pg 150

Promote dialogue

Dialogue refers to two-way communication: speaking and listening. It is fundamental to the
participatory goals of the social sciences and, when directed towards other outcomes in the
social sciences domain, strongly supports learning.

Students learn content when they talk together about that content

pg 151

Involving students in developing groupwork norms improves group functioning and increases contribution

Littleton et al. [Littleton, K., Mercer, N., Dawes, L., Wegerif, R., Rowe, R., & Sams, C. (2004). Talking and thinking together at key stage 1. Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development. Retrieved 19 January, 2006, from http://anubis.open.ac.uk/thinking/publications.cfm?filter=2] researched what they called the ‘Thinking Together’ approach to establishing groupwork norms. Although demonstrated in the context of reasoning puzzles rather than a social sciences context, their findings suggest that Thinking Together is an effective framework for teaching talking and listening skills. Students
participate in a series of Thinking Together lessons.

At a whole-class introduction, the aims for group talk are made explicit. During plenary sessions, groups reflect on the quality of their talk. In the lessons, students are directly taught speaking and listening skills (such as challenging with respect, reasoning, and negotiating ideas) and then put into contexts in which they can apply such skills. Classes create and agree on a shared set of ground rules for exploratory talk,
to be used when working in groups. These rules are based on the understanding that “high
quality speaking and listening is of great value in class; high quality speaking and listening is
inclusive and respectful of opinions and ideas; all information is shared; reasons are requested
and given and the group seeks to reach agreement. The children’s ownership of the rules helps
the groups to implement them” (p. 11).

Each lesson within the programme lasted for approximately an hour and focused on one or
more of the seven rules of exploratory talk:

• All relevant information is shared.
• The group seeks to reach agreement.
• The group takes responsibility for decisions.
• Reasons are expected.
• Challenges are accepted.
• Alternatives are discussed before a decision is taken.
• All in the group are encouraged to speak by other group members.
  During the lessons, each group was encouraged to develop its own user-friendly version of
  the ground rules.

As a consequence of this deliberate
skill building, the students in the intervention increased fourfold their use of the three key
features of exploratory language:

• ‘because’ (indicative of reasoning);
• ‘I think’ (recognising the hypothetical nature of claims);
• ‘Do you agree?’ (agreement-seeking).

pg 172

Share power with students

Sharing power with students involves deliberately delegating authority to students to make
decisions about their learning, and – indirectly – teaching them in ways that enable them to
be more independent in their learning. Such approaches are of particular significance in the
social sciences because of the social and participatory goals of the subjects in the domain.

pg 174

Lotan [Lotan, R. A. (2004). Stepping into groupwork. In E. G. Cohen, C. M. Brody, & M. Sapon-Shevin (Eds.), Teaching cooperative learning: The challenge for teacher education, pp. 167–182. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.] makes it clear that delegating authority is not the same as relinquishing authority:
When the teachers delegate authority they hand over specific responsibilities to the groups
and to the individuals in the groups … Delegating authority, however, does not mean
relinquishing authority … one cannot delegate authority if one does not have it in the first
place (p. 171).
In other words, the teacher continues to have an important role in the prior preparation of
groups, in constructing challenging tasks that warrant group effort, linking group learning to
prior and subsequent learning, and in holding groups accountable for the quality of their work.

pg 179

Interest (Mechanism 4)

Why designing interesting experiences matters

This mechanism explains how learning activities can be designed to increase engagement and
interest and, as a result, generate learning that is memorable. It draws on evidence in three
categories:

• Diverse motivations. Learners are not all motivated in the same way: what interests one
  may not interest another. For this reason, it is important to understand and take account
  of different motivations for learning.
• Interesting activities. Although student motivations are diverse, some activities are more
  intrinsically interesting than others and, therefore, have greater potential to generate learning.
  We provide evidence of the potential of particular types of activity to engage students.
• Variety of activities. Variety of experience makes learning more memorable. As Nuthall [Nuthall, G. (2000). The role of memory in the acquisition and retention of knowledge in science and social studies units. Cognition and Instruction, 18(1), pp. 83–139.] explains:
  When students experience a narrow range of classroom activities they rapidly lose the
  ability to distinguish one activity from another in memory.

pg 180

Students are not all motivated by the same activities

While the social sciences have the potential to be intrinsically motivating because, at their
heart, they tap into children’s natural curiosity about the larger world [

D’Addesio, J. A., Grob, B., Furman, L., Hayes, K., & David, J. (2006). Social studies: Learning about the world
around us. Young Children, September, pp. 50–54. National Association for the Education of Young Children: Washington.], not all students are motivated by the same things. What is interesting and engaging for one may be demotivating for another; what has cultural and emotional meaning for one may have no meaning for another [Wlodkowski, R. J. (2003). Diversity and motivation: culturally responsive teaching. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.]

The students’ top three strategies
were:

1. Role-play characters in simulations of historical or hypothetical events.
2. Participate in group discussions of textbook or other material.
3. View videos and/or films about historical figures or events.

…these findings show is that teachers need to find out what motivates their students.

pg 181

One approach is to list teaching methods/approaches (such as role playing, reading historical novels,
participating in small-group projects) and ask students to rank these in order of preference.
Another approach, used by Schneider et al [

Schneider, B., Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Knauth, S. (1995). Academic challenge, motivation, and self-esteem: The daily experiences of students in high school. In M. T. Hallinan (Ed.), Restructuring schools: Promising practices and policies (pp. 175–195). New York: Plenum Press], involved an instrument developed and validated by Csikszentmihalyi and Larson [Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Larson, R. (1987). Validity and reliability of the Experience-Sampling Method. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 157, pp. 525–536.] that enables students to record their subjective experience of tasks as they engage in them and keep a log of their experiences as they move from one activity to another. The instrument is based on general principles of motivation and comprises the following items:

Challenge. To what extent does this activity make you feel excited or make you want to get
involved?

• Skill. To what extent is this activity enabling you to use your skills?
• Importance. To what extent is the activity important to you? To what extent do you feel
  that it is related to your future goals?
• Interest. To what extent do you wish to be doing this activity? To what extent do you
  enjoy what you are doing? To what extent is the activity interesting to you? To what
  extent are you concentrating on the activity?
• Success. To what extent are you feeling successful at the current activity? To what extent
  are you feeling in control as you work on the current activity?
• Relaxation. To what extent do you feel relaxed rather than anxious while you are doing
  this activity?
• Self-esteem. To what extent are you living up to your own expectations as you do this
  activity? To what extent are you feeling good about yourself as you do this activity?
• Cooperation. To what extent do you feel cooperative rather than competitive while you are
  doing this activity?

pg 183

Caution: Being able to choose activities based on interests does not guarantee that students will engage in learning with important outcomes

pg 185

First-hand experience of social, cultural, economic, and political
situations makes learning real
‘Real experience’, in the pedagogical sense, encompasses activities that either match or directly
replicate reality or that require participation in real situations beyond the classroom.

pg 203

Narratives have emotional appeal that engages students

Stories and content as narrative

Egan [Egan, K. (1988). Teaching as storytelling. London: Routledge.] argues that stories challenge and stimulate the imaginative powers of children and have, therefore, an important affective dimension and motivational powers. He makes his case on the grounds that stories have these characteristics:

1. Rhythm. “[Stories] set up an expectation at the beginning, this is elaborated or
   complicated in the middle, and is satisfied at the end … stories hold their power over us as
   long as all the events stick to and carry forward the basic rhythm” (p. 24).
2. Binary opposites. These order complex knowledge. The most “powerfully engaging
   opposites – like good/bad, security/fear, competition/cooperation – are emotionally
   charged and, when attached to content, imaginatively engaging” (p. 3).[Egan, K. (2005). An imaginative approach to teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.]
3. Concern for affective responses (how people feel; their motivations). “To present
   knowledge cut off from human emotions and intentions is to reduce its affective meaning.
   This affective meaning, also, seems especially important in providing access to knowledge
   and engaging us in knowledge” (p. 30).

pg 206

Barton [Barton, K. C. (1997b). “I just kinda know”: Elementary students’ ideas about historical evidence. Theory and Research in Social Education, 25(4), pp. 407–430.] suggests that the use of narratives may lead to the following problems for students:

1. They assume the story is true because they get caught up in the story itself and don’t approach it with a critical eye.
2. Narrative doesn’t help them understand how historians use evidence to create historical accounts.
3. “Children may assume that the stories they read are accurate, or that all historical accounts are equally fictional” (p. 15).
4. Children “think of the past as too much like a story” – they assume that history proceeds
   in linear fashion, not realising that many events happened at the same time and that
   different groups of people were having different experiences.

.