Student Centered Classroom, The

Vol 1: Social Studies and History

Eli Johnson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138435681
• eBook ISBN: 9781317919483
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

What does a student-centered social studies classroom really look like? Renowned educator Bil Johnson reveals how to teach social studies so that your students become engaged, active, and responsible learners. This book demonstrates how student-centered strategies can be applied in your classroom. It shows you how to make students' work the focus of what occurs in your classroom, prepare lesson plans based on what students should know and be able to do, and create a classroom environment revolving around rigorous and creative student activity. Also included are classroom examples of socratic seminars and other forms of group work such as simulations and role playing, performances and exhibitions, projects and portfolios, and other demonstrations of student learning.

1

Why Do We Do What We Do the Way We Do It?

As we enter the New Millennium, a great deal of attention is being given to the “state” of education in this country. With the Cold War over and the United States’ preeminence as the dominant power in the world, education has taken center stage on national, state, and local levels. For all the talk of “World Class Standards” and school reform, it is remarkable how little has changed—particularly in secondary schools. Just to provide some perspective, consider the following facts.

In 1892–93:

♦ The Model T wasn’t invented yet

♦ A czar ruled Russia and Queen Victoria reigned over England

♦ Marconi’s radio was still two years away as “wireless telegraphy” (and commercial broadcasts were still almost thirty years away!)

♦ The Wright Brothers wouldn’t leave the ground for another 15 years

♦ Few knew who Albert Einstein, or Pablo Picasso, or James Joyce, were

♦ Freud was known in intellectual circles and Darwin’s theory was far from accepted fact

♦ Most cities were lit with gas lamps and only the wealthiest Americans (or their businesses) knew what telephones were

♦ Long-distance travel took days and weeks by train and ocean liner, and

♦ The American Secondary School system was invented

○ Four “major” subjects

○ A seven- or eight-period day

○ Curriculum was based on the concept that content-knowledge was finite

Put in this context, it is, to say the least, a disconcerting revelation. That little of the national debate around education raises this point, or the question why do we do what we do the way we do it, is at the heart of the virtual failure of secondary schools to educate all but a small percentage of our students well. The present system is based on a series of assumptions that have remained relatively unquestioned for over a century. Although some of these assumptions are known to educators, they still are not questioned in a way that will bring the kind of genuine reform our schools require. Richard Schwab, the Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Connecticut, has said his state wants “progress without change” (1999, March 14, The New York Times), and it strikes me that this is exactly the affliction we suffer from in American education.

Although politicians, policy makers, and community and business leaders have all raised their voices about school reform and change, no one seems willing to genuinely engage in the difficult public discourse necessary to bring true progress about. So, we live with the same basic system that was handed down by the Committee of Ten in 1892–93 and act as if this basic blueprint is somehow a “nonnegotiable” in our school reform debate. In answer to the question why do we do what we do the way we do it? and in hope of provoking dialogue around that question, the rest of this chapter is devoted to raising questions about assumptions schools revolve around. Before we can consider how to establish a student-centered classroom, we must first examine what has kept this educational system from creating those kinds of classrooms (despite John Dewey’s urgings) for over a century.

Questions and Answers about School Assumptions

What’s the Educational Philosophy behind the 7- or 8-Period Day That Most Secondary Schools Use?

In fact, there is no educational philosophy behind the basic schedule most schools operate on. It is the product of an efficiency model grounded in the Industrial Revolution and the influence of Frederick Taylor in the early part of the twentieth century. Consider this: if this were the best way to have people productively work, why doesn’t Bill Gates have his MicroSoft engineers get up every 45 to 50 minutes, move to a new work station, with a new supervisor, to start a task that is totally unrelated to what they were previously doing? In fact, secondary schools are the only place we will find this kind of system. It is, as many know, a factory, assembly-line, production model. It is not designed, particularly, for educating all but a small percentage who adapt to it and have a certain capacity to learn a small band of intellectual material in a certain way.

Although there has been some movement afoot to move to block scheduling, it is seldom accompanied by the amount of professional development teachers need to make such a radical shift. Changing the schedule doesn’t necessarily change what goes on in classrooms (they still remain teacher-centered). Creating a schedule without some intelligent and thoughtful educational philosophy behind it is the core problem here. Because the original schedule (which still dominates the scene) was thoughtlessly unphilosophical, it will require time and facilitated dialogue among educators to decide how scheduling in schools could be designed to actually benefit the learners. At present, we have a system that is generally dictated by bus schedules, tracked classes, various union regulations, and a paucity of imagination and creativity on the part of those in leadership positions (administrators, teachers, and community leaders).

Progress requires change, time, conflict, and many other dicey issues that we often don’t want to confront. Yet, no reform in history has occurred without moments of conflict and discomfort—dissonance is essential for change. Until we accept that, and put the learners at the center of the debate (not the adults and their interests), we may well see numerous changes without making any significant progress.

Why Is the Curriculum Arranged and Sequenced the Way It Is?

The Committee of Ten designated four major curricular areas in 1892–93: “Literature, History, Mathematics, and Science,” and then proceeded to recommend that local districts decide the particular areas (biology, algebra, etc.) to be taught, and in what order those topics would be sequenced. To help localities make their choices and decisions, the Committee listed topics under the “major” subjects in alphabetical order. That many, many secondary schools still adhere to algebra-geometry-trigonometry and biology-chemistry-physics in that same alphabetical order is one of the great unquestioned assumptions about school structure!

Equally questionable, though, is that the four “majors”—essentially a holdover from mid-nineteenth century European university organization (by way of the Middle Ages)—is still the cornerstone of curricular organization in United States secondary schools. Despite knowing that involvement in the arts (music, painting, etc.) increases student achievement in all other subject areas, these are courses that are relegated to less-than-daily or elective status and are the first to go when budget crunches affect a district. Despite the fact that we live in a highly interdisciplinary world, in which we must engage in critical reading and writing, and use a variety of skills from all different disciplines to do whatever work it is we do each day, schools resist team approaches to problem solving or crossing disciplinary lines, as if doing so would somehow lead to the collapse of the system. With Howard Gardner’s revolutionary work regarding multiple intelligences, as well as the continuing research into how the human brain actually functions around learning, it may serve us well to reexamine how we organize and even think about curriculum. As things are now, this area remains an unquestioned assumption—school has to be organized this way. The problems that this unquestioned assumption breeds lead to a number of other deficiencies, as we will discuss.

If We Truly Believe “All Students Can Learn,” Is Sorting and Tracking the Best Way to Help All Students Attain This Goal?

By organizing curriculum as we do, and then packaging it in short blocks of time to be taught in, we create another problem for our students. Early on, in most school districts, students are sorted into groups (usually as a result of teacher observation or some kind of “objective” test) that will generally dictate not only their success or virtual failure as students but will generally segregate them from interacting with whole segments of their school community. Starting with reading circles in the primary grades (“Bluebirds over here and Vultures over there, please...”) and culminating with rigid “accelerated” math tracking by the end of middle school, the fate of students is often determined by this form of school organization (for longer, more compelling arguments about this system see Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track [1985], and Anne Wheelock’s Crossing the Tracks [1992]).

Although there may be tremendous merit for grouping students with similar achievement levels together for some portion of the school day, it is ultimately disastrous to separate students the way we do. The creation of a winner-loser, competitive environment serves to discourage the majority of students in schools. Numerous studies have been conducted that show that teacher attitudes differ, too, according to “what level” student they believe they are working with.

That schools are not viewed as learning communities where the goal is truly “success for all” is one of the most distressing problems facing secondary education. The balkanized curriculum taught in short blocks to tracked students has managed to serve only a small percentage of “winners” in the system. Yet these assumptions remain unquestioned and are seldom, if ever, discussed in school districts. Until we begin an earnest public discourse around the unquestioned assumptions of schools, we will continue to thrash at school reform with few satisfying results.

Why Are Students Grouped According to Their Date of Birth, Rather than Their Stage of Development?

Of course, what supports the tracking mentality to begin with is that students are grouped in schools according to their date of birth. Step back and consider that. With all we know about developmental growth of humans, with all of our societal rhetoric about the importance of individuality, could there be a more arbitrary way to organize an institution. Certainly, it is convenient to organize schools this way, but consider what is lost as a result of this “efficient” form of organization. It precludes recognition of individual growth and talents; it ignores diversity at its most core level. What group of adults would allow anyone to organize them this way? It is only in the structure of schools that this form of arbitrary discrimination is adhered to and unquestioned.

Again, although primary schools have moved to multi-age grading (particularly in the K–2 years), we see this notion quickly fall away as students get older, ignoring individual differences for “grade-level” achievement goals (set by whom?). Ironically, by the time we get to high school we see an interesting contradiction in the pattern. In areas that require overt student performance —music and sports—it is not at all unusual to see multi-age grouping. What varsity football coach would deprive that gifted sophomore running back from playing with his seniors? What musical director would deny the first chair to the violin prodigy? But the academic areas have ossified into a system that accepts without question the assumption that it is somehow “natural” and productive to organize our schools this way. In fact, convenience, rather than intelligence, philosophy, or public discourse, determines quite a bit of what happens in schools.

Why Does Multiple-Choice (and “Objective”) Testing Dominate Schools When It Is Barely Present in the Rest of Society?

The answer behind this question, of course, is that it that multiple-choice testing is the most convenient way to process large numbers of students (I discuss the problem of numbers and the assumptions that accompany it later in this chapter). Because so much of the curriculum in secondary schools is based on basic memorization and regurgitation (which essentially requires that classes be teacher- and not student-centered) multiple-choice testing is both convenient and efficient (particularly if a school has a ScanTron grading machine!). The problems this creates, however, are far greater than the efficiency or convenience it provides.

There are few places where people are required to have automatic recall of memorized facts (Jeopardy, the television quiz show, and Emergency Rooms in hospitals are the only two that spring quickly to my mind, in fact—and in the ER you generally have others to consult with, as well as electronic personal aid devices). Yet much of the determination of student “progress” in secondary schools is made by scores on these kinds of tests. Given Gardner’s description of multiple intelligences, we know that these kinds of tests basically only tap into two out of seven or eight kinds of human intelligence (logical/mathematical and verbal/linguistic). Clearly, then, a large percentage of students, whose orientation for learning and developing intelligence does not fall into those two categories, are not well-served. This, of course, reinforces the tracking and grouping we see, the sense of who’s a “winner” and who’s a “loser,” and all kinds of other problems inherent in that labeling.

What you may see developing here, as we examine these unquestioned assumptions about schools, is that they are interlocked. It is not simply that they are like dominoes that might bump into one another as they fall. These unquestioned assumptions have developed organically so that you cannot simply say, “Oh, we’ll just remove this one from the line (like a domino) and fix the system.” Critical public dialogue is essential for school reform in this country. Blather about “national standards” and “more testing” is pointless in a climate devoid of serious discourse about core assumptions that affect the daily lives of students and teachers. And change of this magnitude cannot happen quickly. These are issues that demand our attention now. Assessment of students is a critical issue—and one the remainder of this book examines in greater detail. To simply “accept” testing as it now exists is to continue to guarantee that most of our students not approach their potential as learners and active, productive citizens in this society. Dramatic as that may sound, examine these assumptions; go out and spend time in schools—day after day. Shadow a student for an entire day and see if the schedule, the tracking, or the curriculum are genuinely designed to excite and engage an adolescent’s mind.

If Students Took Their Final Exams One Year Later, without Their Courses in Front of the Test, How Would They Do?

This question, which Grant Wiggins often asks in his work with teachers, is based on an assumption that if a student has scored well on a final exam—even an exam like the New York State Regents (in any given subject)—they somehow “know” the material; they have “learned” that subject. Yet, when I ask this question to teachers in workshops around the country, I consistently get the same reaction: eyes roll, heads shake, sheepish smiles unfold. We all know that the way most secondary schools work is that students spend about 179 days preparing for a three-hour Brain Dump in some gymnasium in June. So, if we all know this, why does it persist? Why do we continue to go through the motions of educating our students when we are relatively sure that one year later they will have forgotten just about everything from the year before? The power of the unquestioned assumptions strikes particularly hard here—and is at the core of what this book is about.

The way this system is designed—from curricular organization, to scheduling, to assessment—puts an emphasis on input rather than output. What’s important in most classrooms is that the teacher teach, not necessarily that the students learn. It’s not that teachers don’t want students to learn, it’s that the system is so entrenched in the “unquestioned assumptions” we are examining here, that people don’t really know why we ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Meet the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• Critical Learning and the Promise of Democracy by Henry A. Giroux
• Introduction
• 1 Why Do We Do What We Do the Way We Do It?
• 2 Basic Strategies Across the Disciplines
• 3 Kids before Content: The Social Studies/History Curriculum Conundrum
• 4 In the Face of Standards and Testing: Strategies and Methods
• 5 Where Do We Go from Here?: Implementing the Student-Centered Secondary Classroom