| Introduction
to Social Studies Dr.
Mark Tebeau Office Hours: grades/requirements daily schedule assignments Last
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Introduction
to Social Studies |
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“Social studies” is an elusive, if not illusory, social construction. Regardless of its uncertain origins, social studies has become a tidy way for state legislatures, schools, and educators to package learning about human societies. In Ohio, the social studies curriculum includes a diverse range of approaches and materials related to both the social sciences and the humanities. At its base, the Ohio Social Studies Standards are based fundamentally in the study of history, but are nonetheless shaped by a diversity of areas of academic study. However, the lack of a clear disciplinary base for social studies has made it difficult for students studying to be teachers to connect the dots between their disciplinary courses and their future profession. Complicating this has been the tendency of colleges of education to emphasize pedagogy as THE critical element of teacher education, which has shaped the process of certifying and licensing teachers. Indeed, sometimes, education professors go so far as to teach about content without themselves being experts in that area of study. In this context, this course serves as either end of the education bookshelf of those students seeking licensure through CSU. This course introduces students to their social science and humanities curriculum as a critical component of becoming effective teachers, or alternately it allows students to reflect on their coursework at Cleveland State. This course focuses on content—but does not teach any particular topic in great depth. Rather, by examining and partaking in the process of seeking knowledge about a particular subject, this course allows us to integrate the various disciplines that make up social studies into a semi-coherent whole. We will learn about the sources used by scholars, their methods, and broadly about the types of questions they address, Intro to Social Studies, helps to make you self-consciously aware of creating content. Further, by demanding that you create packages of curriculum materials, complete with a scholarly essay, about the study of labor in American history, this course provides a practical, hands-on activity that mirrors what you will do EVERY DAY as teachers—especially in those first fateful years. Our goal, then, is to reemphasize content knowledge as a, if not the key component of your teacher education. Toward this end, this course seeks to conjoin insights about content, pedagogy, and debates about the teaching setting through a course project. Completing the project in this course is a very challenging task. It demands that students complete a variety of straightforward tasks and assignments in a timely and systematic fashion. In order to facilitate the development of the project—and introduce students to the research and critical-thinking process, the course is designed to lead students through those steps in a simple and methodical fashion. Also, student work is cumulative over the course of the semester, so that at the end of the semester. As a result, students will not only have compiled (and received instructor review of) a body of research and writing for their project that will become part of the final interpretive curriculum package and research binder. Given the nature of the project, it is critical that students complete each step/assignment along the way in a complete and timely fashion. The most significant barrier to successful completion of the course project (and student achievement in terms of grading) is procrastination and/or falling behind the course schedule. The project is divided into a series of discrete parts, each with a corresponding
due date. While this may seem overwhelming at first, you will find that,
if you give proper attention to each assignment, your final project will
virtually “write itself.” |
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