C3 and Possible Additions

In the C3 Framework (see my last post for the details) is a guide for creating a well-rounded and meaningful social studies curriculum that is meant to help students prepare for real world challenges.

One of the weaknesses of the C3 Framework is that it defines Social Studies it is limited in the Social Studies fields considered essential. The C3 Framework considers Civics, Economics, Geography, and History to be the four key disciplines. I consider anthropology to be core to the subject of social studies. The Appendix of the C3 Framework contains some companion documents that demonstrate how other humanities or social science fields relate to the core of the program set forth, one of which is anthropology. I, however, think that anthropology deserves a space among the essential disciplines.

Anthropology, as a field, is very far-reaching in its content: it relates to the harder sciences and biology through physical anthropology, it considers humanity and culture at its most basic forms and definitions in cultural anthropology, archaeology and cultural anthropology study human beings from the beginning of our species to present day; and linguistic anthropology particularly studies human development of language. All the disciplines mentioned in the C3 Framework dimension 2 are highly connected to this single field. It is the field that often provides the kind of evidence that dimension 3 asks students to find and utilize. It provides the methodologies used to answer the compelling questions and conduct the inquiry suggested in dimension 1. It also seems to provide an understanding of the path for the community action that dimension 4 calls for. To me, this makes anthropology an integral part of the C3 Framework. 

C3 Framework for Social Studies Education

I have recently been reading about Inquiry Learning as part of the C3 Framework and as a methodology in the classroom. The College, Career & Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards (henceforth, C3F) is a guide for states to build upon the Common Core State Standards to create a well-rounded and meaningful social studies curriculum. It calls for "students to become more prepared for the challenges of college and career ... [and] civic life.” 

The C3F is built around an Inquiry Arc made up of four dimensions of activity that "support a robust social studies program rooted in inquiry".[1] These dimensions are:

1. Developing questions and planning inquiries

     This dimension is built upon the assumption that inquiry arises from innate curiosity and questioning. Questions are developed into two kinds: compelling and supporting (C3F, 23). Compelling questions bring out themes and issues that cross time, remain unsolved (or possibly unsolvable), and promote exploration and argumentation (ibid.). Supporting questions help to shape and develop a line of inquiry into a compelling question (C3F, 24). The C3F encourages teaching students to ask their own compelling questions and using compelling questions to guide students through curricula. 

2. Applying disciplinary concepts and tools

     The C3F is also assumes that the subject of 'social studies' is built upon several academic disciplines, but is not any one of those disciplines per se. The C3F focuses in on four core disciplines that "provide the intellectual context for studying how humans have interacted with each other and with the environment over time".[2] The four disciplines are civics, economics, geography, and history. They are each described with their own set of core concepts and tools as follows:

            - Civics: civic and political institutions; participation and deliberation: applying civic virtues and democratic principles; processes, rules, and laws

            - Economics: economic decision making, exchange and markets, the national economy, the global economy

            - Geography: geographic representations: spatial views of the world; human-environment interaction: place, regions, and culture; human population: spatial patterns and movements; global interconnections: changing spatial patterns

            - History: change, continuity and context; perspectives; historical sources and evidence; causation and argumentation

3. Evaluating sources and using evidence

     The C3F provides students with a conducting high-level inquiry by teaching them to evaluate sources and use evidence to create argumentation. This dimension focuses on the skills a student needs to find reliable information and build arguments by shaping the evidence collected.[3]

4. Communicating conclusions and taking informed action

     The final dimension of the C3F asks school systems and schools to include "expectations for students to collaborate with others as they communicate and critique their conclusions in public venues".[4] This dimension is meant to provide students with opportunities to engage in the act of being a citizen and part of their community in ways that "support the goals of college and career readiness ... and readiness for civic life".[5]

VanSledright (2013) suggests that this model of learning necessitates using more authentic assessment, rather than testing, to describe student learning. He suggests a three part formative assessment that assesses cognition through observable tasks that are interpreted consistently via rubrics.[6]

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[1] Swan, Grant, and Lee (2013), 12

[2] Swan, Grant, and Lee (2013), 29

[3] Swan, Grant, and Lee (2013), 59

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] VanSledright, Bruce. (2013). Can assessment improve learning? Thoughts on the C3 framwork. Social Education. Silver Spring, MN. NCSS: 77 (6).334-338.

Life-long learning, self-direction, and PLPs

One of the major things that students need to learn while in school is how to learn. Not only this, but educators need to be helping students develop learning habits that will make them life-long learners. This idea has become popular to talk about, but how are we actually helping students accomplish this goal in our schools? How are they supposed to learn to keep learning when we tie learning to such a peculiar context (e.g., the school building, sitting in seats facing a whiteboard, reading out of a book, listening to a teacher lecture)?

Photo by Ambro

I think one way to help create life-long learners is to create self-directed learners. If students cannot guide their own learning process and engage in that learning process without the context of the teacher and the classroom, then they will stop being active learners as soon as they leave school. By allowing students to be self-directed in the learning process, they become invested in the process for its own sake and they start to practice the learning process in broader, novel contexts.

One way of allowing for self-directed learning and establishing student ownership of learning is to use a PLP, or Personal Learning Plan. PLPs ask students to set learning goals, evaluate progress, supplement or revise the plan when necessary, and achieve long-term goals. In the school setting, PLPs are frequently set up by teachers, sometimes involving parents and students, to help students plan out and manage their school work. I believe, however, that we should teach students to set their own PLPs as a way to take on ownership of their learning process with a longer vision than just completing four years of high school.

PLPs can help students to:

1) organize their learning over long periods of time

2) track and assess their content and skill mastery while working toward a particular goal

3) set life goals, then create short- and long-term plans to achieve those goals
                - examples of possible education related life goals: go to an ivy league college, become
                   fluent in a foreign language, publish a written or artistic work, start a business


But if this kind of program can help student achieve these kinds of goals, why call it a Personal Learning Plan? If a student comes to me and says "my goal is to open up my own business one day", of course they are probably thinking that there are a few things they need to learn and a few steps to take between the first step (take a high school economics course or join the entrepreneur club) and the final step (open one's own business). But why call it just a learning plan? This is a life plan.

There it is. I mean, that is the goal, right? To create life-long learners. Learning is a part of almost every process that requires a human being to change or adapt. So maybe when ask our students to set some goals in school, the goal they set out on does not always need to look like a "learning" outcome, so much as some outcome that requires them to reflect and adapt to the world around them. That may be setting the goal of reading a certain number of minutes a week, keeping up with current events, or starting down the path to a life-long career.

The point is all of these goals, no matter their scope, require change and promote learning. By empowering our students to work on goals that are important to them and helping them gain the skills and knowledge required to complete them, we'll find ourselves on the right road to creating life-long learners.