Social Studies Project a Perfect Match for Professor

Social studies at Holt High School. For Tim Little, it was the perfect match.

Having taught social science at a Chicago-area high school prior to becoming a teacher education professor, Little had always had an interest in more effective ways to teach subject matter. Holt High teachers, meanwhile, were looking for novel and better ways to teach social studies. So for the past six years, Little and a core group of teachers have teamed as part of a PDS project.

The Holt social studies team has sought to develop innovative methods to encourage students to take their responsibilities as citizens seriously. The guiding idea for the team is that a prerequisite to acting as informed, voting adults is the ability to reason logically and to view information critically and analytically.

Little and the teachers began by trying some different ways to get students to look at issues more critically. Little knew that one of the problems with studying current events in the typical social studies class is that many issues don’t remain current for very long. For example, Somalia as a research or discussion topic would have been of much interest several years ago, but today would likely be little known among students. So Little suggested that a better route might be to move away from focusing on current events, and concentrate instead on teaching systematic reasoning skills.

The teachers chose to insert the systematic reasoning instruction within a pilot global studies course. The curriculum was developed by Little and the teachers and was built around various clusters of thinking skills. One segment of the course, for instance, treats alternative frames of reference. Students examine news stories and then create alternate ways the reporter could have framed or defined the story. Another unit takes students through the analysis of data with an eye toward spotting logical errors. As a test of their abilities to analyze data, students are required to develop a mock study replete with intentional mistakes of logic.

The most ingenious one to date, Little said, was a study developed by a student concerning correlation that proved graphically that breathing eventually caused death.

Toward the close of the course, students are asked to select a global issue and perform a complex cost-benefit analysis regarding competing proposed "solutions" to that issue. In doing so, they must apply the reasoning skills taught earlier in the course. In arriving at a "preferred policy," students can use software developed by Little that was featured in an article in Newsweek magazine.

According to follow-up interviews with students who have taken the course, the global studies program has proven to be a bit of a hit. To gauge their progress with students, the social studies PDS team developed a pre- and post-test evaluation design as well as alternative qualitative methods of assessing student progress. Pilot data gathered indicate that many of the lessons the students have learned are staying with them through succeeding years in high school and beyond.

The pre/post test pilot data indicates that students improved in three areas: developing a healthy skepticism toward potentially flawed studies, spotting specific logical errors, and systematic decision-making.

Little is quick to point out that the project has not produced uniformly utopian results and that there have been problem areas of instruction. Among them is the fact that student achievement following instruction did not increase, and in fact decreased, in the area related to problem framing. Little said it is unclear why and more study and analysis is needed.

Overall, however, Little said the collaborative project has been a major success resulting in the publication of a book, A Handbook for Teaching Global Studies: The Holt High School Experience. In addition, Little and his co-authors and collaborators-Jerry Gillett, Mary Gray, Peg Lamb, and Lynn Brice-have made multiple national and state refereed presentations concerning their work in locations ranging from Washington, D.C., to Phoenix, Arizona.