Applying the world-changing through social action protocol with young adult literature

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe a protocol for developing students into social actors using young adult (YA) literature in social studies. The world-changing through social action protocol (WSAP) utilizes five recursive steps (P2TripleS): problem posing, problem history, systems thinking, solutions thinking and social action. WSAP is designed to provide secondary social studies teachers with tools to create thematic units, activities and discussions about difficult current issues, such as school violence, bullying, death, or suicide. The purpose of WSAP is to help teachers incorporate strategies to encourage civic action for social justice. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, WSAP is applied to the YA novel Violent Ends (Hutchinson et al., 2015), which describes a school shooting and its effects from multiple perspectives. Findings This paper discusses the use of the theoretical framework, WSAP and its five recursive steps (P2TripleS). The protocol developed is a helpful tool for teachers to integrate ELA and Social Studies curriculum in a student-centered, project-based environment while addressing the C3 and Common Core State Standards. The protocol is applied to the YA novel, Violent Ends (Hutchinson et al., 2015) and includes questions and strategies that guide teachers and students to critically think about democratic action and gun violence. Practical implications The specific steps of the WSAP protocol will be demonstrated with Violent Ends, providing example activities from this book for practitioners. Originality/value This paper is the first to apply the WSAP with a YA text.