Thoughts on Wise Practice in the Teaching of Social Studies

RESEARCHERS have sometimes noted the lack of a rich history of in teaching--including the of social studies. Lee Shulman, for one, has pointed to the rarity of well-developed portrayals of how teachers manage ideas, and not simply student behavior, within the classroom.(1) William Stanley has likewise commented on the lack of research on wise practice. Although social studies researchers have gradually shifted their focus to expert teachers in order to describe what makes them effective, he sees the profession as having a unique problem in that most examples of excellent practice remain unknown to anyone outside the classroom.(2) Experienced teachers simply possess a great deal of knowledge and understandings that they have not formally articulated. Shulman argues that this wisdom of can and must be codified through an extensive case literature. He presents his own portrait of an effective teacher as one representation from which principles of good practice may be inferred. However, rather than over-generalizing from his own case studies, he argues for keeping such accounts highly contextualized, especially with respect to the methods used.(3) Teachers are not trying to teach generically; rather, they teach toward some specific outcome related to the content, observes Stanley. In his view, criteria for judging teacher effectiveness could be based upon Shulman's categories of teacher knowledge-especially academic content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge of the curriculum, and knowledge of learners and educational contexts. Teacher effectiveness, argues Stanley, is ultimately a blend of technical, practical, and critical expertise in many areas.(4) One of the most important contributions of the research on effective social studies is that knowledge of the subject is a major factor in-even the foundation of-teachers' effectiveness. Nonetheless, these researchers do not suggest that content knowledge alone makes better teachers. As Shulman explains, teachers' pedagogical content knowledge is also central to good practice. In other words, teachers must possess that special blending of content and pedagogy that enables them to translate their content knowledge into forms that students can understand.(5) One helpful conception of teaching in the social studies was articulated by NCSS in 1993. Informed by the goals of social studies education as well as the research literature, an NCSS task force identified five key characteristics of ideal social studies and learning. These features are summarized in the task force's statement that social studies is powerful when it is meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active.(6) Meaningful social studies encourages students to use thematic networks of knowledge that will be helpful to them as lifelong learners; such connects with their interests, focuses on in-depth treatment of fewer topics rather than shallow coverage of many, and incorporates authentic activities and assessments that encourage students to apply content in appropriate ways. For social studies to be integrative, teachers must address abroad range of forms of knowledge that crosses disciplinary boundaries with a variety of resources and activities. Value-based means that teachers have awareness of their own values and how these influence their teaching; it also means that teachers address controversial and ethical issues appropriate to the social studies and promote critical thinking and decision making. Teachers must also make the content challenging while assuring that it meets students' developmental needs; teachers encourage serious and thoughtful inquiry through the instructional activities they choose. Finally, teachers must ensure that social studies is an active learning experience through their development of curricula that encourage students to discover knowledge, to use a variety of instructional materials and authentic activities, to relate the content to their own lives, to engage in reflective discussion, to assume responsibility for their own learning, and to develop new understandings through a process of active construction of meaning. …