Changing Perspectives: Working with Elementary Teachers to Create Curriculum to Increase Students' Civic Perspective-Taking

Civic perspective-taking;Social studies education;Elementary education;Design-based research (DBR);Researcher-practitioner partnerships;Teacher learning;Education;Social Sciences;Educational Studies

Toledo, WilliamTorrez, Cheryl A. ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Civic perspective-taking;    Social studies education;    Elementary education;    Design-based research (DBR);    Researcher-practitioner partnerships;    Teacher learning;    Education;    Social Sciences;    Educational Studies;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/145872/wtoledo_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

There is an increasing need to engage students with civic topics and concepts in public schools. Researchers have identified the importance of civics, and the benefits of providing opportunities to engage with public issues in schools. This work studies civic perspective-taking, a process wherein students examine multiple perspectives on public issues and form their own stances on these issues using fact-based reasons with a consideration for the public good. To study this concept, I collected data during the 2016-2017 school year at a low-income, majority Latinx school in the Southwest. The research for this dissertation is organized into two papers that are presented here. Each paper represents an important idea in teaching civic perspective-taking in elementary schools: (a) the knowledge teachers use to teach civic perspective-taking and (b) how students understand civic perspective-taking and related concepts.The first study examines teacher knowledge by identifying the specific types of knowledge needed to teach civics, particularly civic perspective-taking in an elementary school. To do so, the adaptations three second-grade teachers made to a curricular intervention are analyzed through observations of teachers’ enactments of each lesson. Findings indicate that teachers used specific types of knowledge to teach civic perspective-taking, namely knowledge of locally-relevant issues, knowledge of students’ home lives and cultures, and knowledge of the community and its features. Implications for future research related to teacher knowledge used to teach civics are discussed.The second study examines student learning related to civic perspective-taking with second-grade students in three majority-Latinx classrooms as they participated in this civics unit. Specifically, student learning related to key concepts within the unit is examined through analyses of students’ individual work samples and field notes from small group work and discussions. Based on these data, levels of learning civic perspective-taking and related concepts are presented. Patterns of student understanding are examined through three student exemplars, each of which demonstrated different levels of understanding of concepts (advanced, developed, and limited levels of understanding) throughout the unit. Implications for future research related to civic perspective-taking and student learning are discussed.