Powerful social studies

1. Powerful and Meaningful
Social Studies

2. What is social studies?
• NCSS defines social studies as "the integrated
study of the social sciences and humanities to
promote civic competence.”
• It is multidisciplinary
• It is personal. Students take in information
and interpret it in terms of their own prior
experiences and knowledge.
• Goal: to help young people develop the ability
to make informed and reasoned decisions for
the public good (citizenship).

3. Social Studies
• Social studies is about our social world.
It’s about people, what they do, and how
they interact with each other and the
world.
• The tools of language, math, and reading
are used to investigate our world.

4. Purposeful and Powerful Social
Studies
• Meaningful
• Integrative
• Value Based
• Challenging
• Active
By including these five elements purposefully in
social studies instruction, powerful social
studies learning will take place.

5. Pedagogical Content Knowledge: PCK
What is pedagogical content knowledge?
What relationship does PCK have to best
practices for teachers?

6. Powerful Social Studies is
Constructed
• Students construct their own knowledge by
being given the chance to make observations
of, and interact with, a variety of sources and
educational materials.
• Students conclusions are developed through
the values they, their families, and community
have.
• These values may or may not be consistent
with the goal of social studies education.

7. Powerful Teaching/Powerful Learning
• The more teachers are able to use
instructional activities that give students
greater control of their learning activities, the
more active their learning becomes.
• When students “do” social studies, they draw
on thinking skills and knowledge that helps
them understand their social world.

8. The Great Connection
• SS is the core to which all parts of the
curriculum can be tied. Integration is
important because the real world integrates
all areas.
• SS is an interdisciplinary approach that relies
heavily on the social sciences and history to
achieve its goal of preparing people to be
informed and active citizens of a democracy.

9. Being an active, participatory citizen means
students ask questions, decide on answers to
their questions based on related information,
and act to bring about changes to their world.
This process of awareness, appreciation, and
understanding of the social world is learned
fully only through social studies.

10. The National Standards: 10
Themes
• I. Culture
• II. Time, Continuity, and Change
• III. People, Places, and Environment
• IV. Individual Development and Identity
• V. Individuals, Groups, and Institutions
• VI. Power, Authority, and Governance
• VII. Production, Distribution, and
Consumption
• VIII. Science, Technology, and Society
• IX. Global Connections
• X. Civic Ideals and Practices

11. Meaningful Learning
• Meaningful social studies learning is an active
construction process.
• A network of experiences, ideas, and
relationships come together to form
knowledge.
• Learning social studies meaningfully depends
on the prior knowledge of the learner, the
focus of the learner’s attention, and the
learners interaction with events, people, and
objects during instruction.

12. Traditional Teaching
• Behavioral Learning Theory
• Teacher Guided
• Views knowledge as transmitted by the
teacher or textbook.
• Uses strategies that enhance memorization
and recall.
• Useful for recalling of facts.
• Does not encourage students to find meaning
in what they are learning.

13. Constructivist Approach
• Encouraging students to find meaning often brings about
conceptual change.

14. What is Conceptual Change?
• Conceptual change occurs when students change
their existing concepts.
• Students do not give up their ideas without being
convinced that the new idea is better and more
useful.
• The constructivist approach allows students to:
– recall prior knowledge
– connect new idea to prior knowledge
– compare and confront prior knowledge with new idea
– use metacognition; think about their own thinking

15. Conceptual Change
BTW, conceptual change is just a fancy way to
say learning.

16. Reference
Sunal, C. S. & Haas, M. E. (2016). Social studies for
the elementary and middle school grades: A
constructivist approach. Boston, MA:
Pearson Education.