Seventh-grade Social Studies Research Articles

A Quiziz Game-Based Learning Implementation in Improving Learner’s Critical Thinking Skills

This study aims to determine the effectiveness of game-based learning through Quizizz in improving the learning outcomes of seventh-grade social studies students at SMP Negeri 7 Semarang. The research employed a pre-experimental design, specifically the one-group pre-test-post-test method. Data sources included teachers, students, the learning process, relevant documents, and validators. Data were collected through observations, document analysis, and questionnaires. The data analysis utilized the N-Gain test and the T-Test, with the predetermined minimum completeness criteria. The findings demonstrate that game-based learning through Quizizz is highly feasible and effective. The validation data indicate that Quizizz as a tool for improving critical thinking skills has a high level of validity, with average scores of 95.7% from media experts, 100% from material experts, and 100% from experts in critical thinking. The N-Gain analysis indicated a 29% improvement in the first cycle, categorized as Less Effective, and an 82% improvement in the second cycle, categorized as Quite Effective. In addition, the significance value of 0.00 indicates a statistically significant difference between the two groups. Keywords: Game-Based Learning, Quizizz, Critical thinking

Investigation of 7th grade middle school students' views on evidence-based learning

This present study was carried out to determine the opinions of the students before and after the implementation of the evidence-based learning applied to the 7th-grade students in the social studies course. In addition, this study aims to determine the difficulties encountered by students during the application process and to reveal their thoughts about the process. It enables students to make evaluations by comparing evidence-based learning with the existing method. The research was carried out with a class of fourteen students at the seventh-grade level of secondary school. The research was conducted with action research. Action research is one of the qualitative research methods. As the sampling type of the research, the easy sampling type was determined from the purposeful sampling model. The research is based on student views after a total of 32 hours of the evidence-based learning process in the social studies course. For this purpose, the units named "Communication and Human Relations" and "Living Democracy" of the seventh-grade social studies course were carried out with an evidence-based learning method. At the end of the research, a significant change occurred in students' views on evidence-based learning. It can be stated that they liked the Social Studies course more with evidence-based learning. In this process, it was observed that students' interest in the course increased, they showed a positive attitude and behavior towards evidence-based learning and actively participated in the course. It was observed that students developed positive thoughts about evidence-based learning.

Obstacles to Achieving the Goals in the Curriculum of the Social Subject for the Seventh Grade Basic in the Point of View of Educators and Teachers

This study aimed to identify the obstacles to achieving the goals in the curriculum of the social subject for the seventh grade basic in the point of view of educators and teachers in the city of Erbil for the academic year (2021-2022), from the point of view of: Identify differences in statistical significance and differences in statistical significance in the social curriculum for the seventh grade from the point of view of educational supervisors and teachers in Erbil city, for variables (sex and experiences interaction between supervisors and teachers).The research community is made up of supervisors and teachers of the seventh grade social studies of both sexes (male) and female, the researcher was taken to the community randomly, consisting of (8) supervisors and (100) teachers of the subject of sociology for the seventh grade basic, to achieve the objectives of the study used the researcher descriptive curriculum. In order to prepare the study tool, the researcher benefited from sources consisting of the parameters of the constraints of the social book i took. Which we adapted to the environment of society, and the researcher reaffirms the sincerity of the tool, by distributing the questionnaire form to (11) experts and specialists from Salaheddine University, as well as from the stability and sincerity of the tool, the researcher distributed the research tool to 45 teachers from the community of origin, and then implemented the stability of the research tool by the program (SPSS) Which consisted of 40 lines and in the last 31 lines and became the study tool of five areas.

“Breaking the fourth wall”: The effects of cinematic virtual reality film-viewing on adolescent students’ empathic responses

This research study investigated the use of cinematic virtual reality (CVR) in a seventh-grade social studies classroom and its effects on adolescents' empathic responses. In this quantitative research study, participants (n ​= ​60) completed the Adolescent Measure of Empathy and Sympathy (AMES, Vossen et al., 2015) as a pretest a week before viewing The Displaced, a film about the lives of three refugee children, in either CVR or two-dimensional (2D), 360-degree format. Promptly after viewing the film, participants repeated the AMES as a posttest. Paired t-tests were conducted to explore the changes in mean scores for the AMES subscale scores between participants viewing the film in CVR and 2D formats as well as the changes in mean subscales between male and female participants viewing the film in CVR. Gain scores were also calculated and analyzed through a two-way MANOVA to examine the possible interaction effect between film format and gender on AMES subscale scores. The results of this study indicated that while the 2D, 360-degree film format affected adolescent students' affective empathy, there was a greater increase in both cognitive and affective empathy scores for those viewing the film in CVR with male adolescent students’ scores demonstrating the most remarkable increase.

Teachers' Viewpoints on the Content of Social Studies Textbooks Prepared in accordance with 2018 Curriculum Revision

The purpose of this study is to examine teachers' opinions on the contents of the fifth, sixth, and seventh-grade social studies textbooks. Designed as a qualitative case study, this research employs 25 social studies teachers working in the province of Tokat and having at least 5 years of professional experience. A semi-structured interview form consisting of six questions aiming to reveal various aspects of the textbooks such as accuracy, harmony, density, suitability for the level of the student, language, and expression of the content. The content analysis method was used in the analysis of the data. At the end of the research, the participants directed some criticisms to the social studies textbooks in terms of information inaccuracies, inconsistency between themes, content density, unsuitability for the level of the students, and deficiencies in language and expression. When the textbooks prepared by the Ministry of National Education are compared with those of the private publishers, it is seen that the teachers emphasize more disadvantages of the textbooks prepared by the Ministry of National Education.

The effects of reflection on seventh grade social studies student learning and perception

ABSTRACT Educators manage student readiness for learning by applying models of instruction. The most common model used, however, is imprecise about cognitive operations. One way educators address this issue is with reflection, but reflection means many different things. An approach for narrowing reflection is to focus on metacognition. Literature has shown that educators structure metacognition with different kinds of prompts. This study examined the effects of open and closed prompts on the learning and perception of seventh grade students in social studies. Characteristics of prompts that affected performance on a content-specific test include 1) referencing criteria for judging performance, 2) using procedures for self-monitoring, 3) directing students towards error detection and correction, 4) encouraging continuous adjustment, 5) elaborating on information and connecting ideas, and 6) repeating use of prompts. Results also showed that open prompts provide an additional benefit in terms of expressing thoughts and ideas.

Evaluation of social studies teaching textbooks

This study is aimed to examine social studies textbooks of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus of sixth and seventh grade students in terms of content analysis. The population of the research model is constituted by social studies textbooks of sixth and seventh grades of five secondary schools that were found appropriate by Republic of Turkey Ministry of National Education Board of Education and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Ministry of Education Board of Education. The books were evaluated on the Likert scale using the content analysis evaluation scale. The rating of the scale was calculated as ‘yes – option 2 points’, ‘partially – option 1 point’ and ‘no – option 0 points’. The data were evaluated by scoring between 1 and 10. As a result, it was determined that the seventh grade social studies textbook of Republic of Turkey received the highest rate. The lowest rate was observed in the seventh grade taught in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Keywords: Textbook, Social Studies Teaching, Content Analysis Scale, Education, Learning

English

One of the objectives of comparative education research is to compare within a certain period of time educational systems that have developed in similar or different environments and processes. The aim of this qualitative study is to compare the value education in Turkish and Iranian seventh-grade social studies textbooks. Data were collected using document analysis. Results show that both books underscore the values of scientificity, sensitivity and responsibility. Unlike the Turkish social studies textbook, the Iranian social studies textbook addresses the religious aspects of those values as well. The Iranian social studies textbook also highlights the values 30% more than its Turkish counterpart. This article examining textbooks is limited to determining the placement of values; it is not intended to measure the effectiveness of textbooks in the formation of attitudes. Key words: Social studies curriculum, social studies textbook, Turkey, Iran, values.

A comparison of the reliability of the Solo- and revised Bloom's Taxonomy-based classifications in the analysis of the cognitive levels of assessment questions

This study aims to compare the reliability of SOLO and revised Bloom's taxonomy-based (RBT) classifications in the determination of the cognitive levels of the assessment questions. The data were obtained by three experts' examination of the assessment questions in the Seventh Grade Social Studies Textbook published by the Ministry of National Education and Eight Grade Science and Technology Textbook published by Yıldırım Publishing in 2015. The collected data were analyzed in a crossed design whereby the assessment questions were the object of measurement and the experts were the facet on the basis of the generalizability theory. It was found that the variance percentage of the main effect of the assessment question was found to be higher in the SOLO-based classifications. The variance component related to the experts' main effect and the residual variance values were found to be higher in the RBT than in the SOLO taxonomy. In conclusion, compared to the RBT, the SOLO-based classifications were found to have higher G and Phi coefficients. These results indicate that SOLO taxonomy seems to be more reliable than RBT in the determination of the cognitive level of assessment questions.

Determination of Students' Argument Levels in Argumentation-Based Social Studies Course

The purpose of this research is to determine the argument levels formed by students in the seventh-grade social studies course in which argumentation-based teaching is performed. The study was carried out by action research of the qualitative research methods. A total of 33 seventh-grade students including 15 male and 18 female students continuing their education in Sehit Cem Ozgul Secondary School located in the central district of Adiyaman province in the academic year 2013-2014 constituted the study group of the research. Social studies course was carried out based on argumentation in the class including the study group which was assigned to achieve the purpose of the research. The Argumentation Assessment Scale which was developed by Erduran, Simon, and Osborne (2004) was used to determine the level of arguments formed by students depending on the problem status. As a result of the analysis of the data obtained, it was concluded that in the seventh-grade social studies course, in which argumentation-based teaching was performed, students produced arguments at Level 2 during the first activity at the most, at Level 3 during the second activity, at Level 5 during the third activity and at Level 4 during the fourth and fifth activities. This finding can be interpreted as that a positive development occurred in students' argument levels through the process and that their argument levels and quality increased. Furthermore, it was also revealed that the argument levels of students showed differences in terms of weekly activities, that students used more rebuttal in the activities to which they felt closer such as career choice and included current issues in their arguments. Based on these results, suggestions were made such as a more frequent inclusion of the activities designed in accordance with the method of argumentation in the social studies curriculum and course books, and teachers' requirement to prepare environments in which they could include students into the argumentation process.

Seventh-Grade Social Studies versus Social Meliorism

ABSTRACTThe Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), in the state of North Carolina, has gone through considerable recent effort to revise, support, and assess their seventh-grade social studies curriculum in an effort to serve three goals: comply with the Common Core State Standards (Common Core), comply with the North Carolina Essential Standards (Essential Standards), and create a curriculum that best serves students. Meanwhile, the curriculum theory of social meliorism was conceived of over a century ago. Since its inception it has influenced curriculum development and provided a foundation for many other curriculum theories that all start from an assumption that social meliorism holds to an accepted truth that the purpose of education is to improve society and address its injustices. Given contemporary discussions about how to achieve social justice, this is a philosophy that seems particularly meaningful when thinking about the ways that schools can help to accomplish the goals of social justice. I intend to investigate the seventh-grade social studies curriculum of WCPSS in 2014 and juxtapose it with the goals and ideals of social meliorism, determine how well the curriculum addresses the goals of that curriculum theory, and make suggestions for how a social meliorist might suggest modifying the curriculum to better serve the needs of society.

Using Academic Notebooks to Support Achievement and Promote Positive Classroom Environments

Authors examine how the use of academic notebooks impacts collaborative learning experiences of young adolescents.Picture the following: Actively engaged seventh graders, accessing resources that they created, using notebooks to prepare for their upcoming interviews with local community members who played a role in the Civil Rights Movement. Students work in small groups, leafing through their oft-used academic notebooks to find detailed information about people and events that relate to the people they will soon interview. Students take excellent care of their notebooks; they keep them organized and leave them in a designated location so that the notebooks are easily found when needed. No two notebooks look alike, though each has the same components; students' own styles shape their notebooks, though the teacher takes care to assure the quality of work contained within. If you ask one of these students about the value of their notebook, they speak emphatically about the wealth of information they contain, visibly showing pride in their creations. These notebooks connect students to the material, to the classroom, and to each other.Middle grades teachers, faced with increasingly heterogeneous classrooms, need specific tools and resources that support learning for all students. As depicted in the opening vignette, in this article we examine how a specific type of notebook-an academic notebook-can help promote in-depth academic learning. We describe how academic notebooks were used with a diverse seventh grade social studies class engaged in a multi-month investigation of the Civil Rights Movement.Notebooks are commonly used in middle school classrooms as a place for students to record information delivered via lecture, classroom discussion, or independent work. A primary reason teachers ask students to use notebooks is to capture and organize information. In many cases, students are expected to use these tools with little direction, follow-through, or support; they are solely responsible for deciding what to put in their notebook, managing and caring for it, and knowing when and how to use its contents (Klentschy, 2010). For students unsure of how to do this independently, conventional notebooks can actually create a barrier to learning. One question we tried to answer through our implementation of academic notebooks was How can middle school students be best supported in the efficient and organized use of notebooks in the specific context of an extended collaborative project, and as a crucial resource for learning, in general? We found that employing explicit, teacher-driven strategies and structures to help students organize and make sense of their learning was the answer.What Are Academic Notebooks?Although various words could be used to describe the type of notebooks we discuss in this article, we employ Marzano's (2004) term academic notebooks. In our case, which mirrors Marzano's use of academic notebooks as a tool for building background knowledge, student notebooks had the following characteristics. They were (1) teacher directed, though student created; (2) a consistent place for students to put ideas and information they gathered, creating a warehouse of easily retrieved learning; and (3) a tool for both teacher and student to track learning. Students' notebooks started out as blank composition-style notebooks-bound, with lined pages and no removable pages. Slowly, over the course of the project, notebooks became filled with handwritten notes; academic vocabulary; graphic organizers; glued-in, teacher-created rubrics; and formative and summative assessments related to specific learning targets and the overall goals of the unit. Students rarely took their notebooks out of the classroom. Each page was labeled so that information was easily retrievable.Teacher-guided notebooks of many varieties have been shown to support different content areas at the middle level (e.g., Klentschy, 2010). …

Company Men

In this comparative, longitudinal case study, the author investigates the two different pathways that have been most strongly advocated for certifying middle school social studies teachers: the specialized middle school and subject-specific secondary pathways. Drawing on classroom observations, interviews, documents, teacher and student work samples, and surveys, this article compares the learning and practice of 2 seventh-grade social studies teachers across time. Both teachers learned key principles and practices from their respective teacher education programs but ultimately taught in ways that often demanded little of young adolescents intellectually. The findings suggest that teacher educators preparing social studies teachers for the middle grades need to look not only at the opportunities they provide for teachers to learn about young adolescents, social studies teaching purposes, and social studies teaching strategies but also at the implementation and integration of these learning opportunities.

Curriculum Enhancements in Inclusive Secondary Social Studies Classrooms

This investigation compared the use of traditional instruction with that of classwide peer tutoring using materials containing embedded mnemonic strategies to provide strategic information and supplemental practice of important content. Eight inclusive seventh grade social studies classes with 186 students, of whom 42 were classified with mild disabilities, were randomly assigned to treatment and traditional conditions, delivered over 10 weeks of instruction. All students were given a pretest, three unit tests, and a posttest. Overall findings revealed that experimental condition classes statistically outperformed comparison condition classes on content learned; this was true for target content (taught directly in the experimental condition) as well as nontarget content (related information not included in the experimental condition). Implications for inclusive content area instruction are provided.

The effects of GIS on students' academic achievement and motivation in seventh-grade social studies lessons in Turkey

This study sought to determine the effect of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) on the academic achievement and motivation of seventh-grade students. The study used a quasi-experimental design and a set of social studies lessons. The study was conducted over the 2006–2007 academic year on the students of a primary school at Ankara, Turkey's capital city. The study included two groups – a treatment group with 21 students and a control group with 23 students. For the treatment group, a unit on the population of Turkey was given with GIS-based lesson materials. For the control group, the same subject matter was presented using traditional learning methods and traditional maps. At the end of the study, analysis of the data indicated that the academic achievement and motivation of students who used GIS were statistically higher than the achievement and motivation of the control group. The study concludes by offering suggestions based on the results of the research.

Teaching as an Emotional Experience

Introduction Twenty-five years ago, I began my first full-time job, teaching seventh grade social studies at Francis W. Parker School in Chicago. I was a young and inexperienced teacher, just out of college. But I was filled with enthusiasm and convinced that education could play a progressive role in our society. I was hired to teach African and Latin American history (I had majored in European history and literature) to seventh grade students (known to be a challenging age group). I tackled this challenge by revamping the curriculum so that my students would learn not only about the cultures, histories, and geographies of these continents but also about themselves. I used a combination of textbooks, novels, and experiential exercises in my classes. For example, while discussing the conquest and colonization of Africa, we read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. This wonderful book not only depicts this historical moment from an African perspective but also portrays the main character as someone who is struggling to define himself and his role in a rapidly changing society. I thought that a discussion of this text might help my students learn something about Africa while at the same time become aware of (perhaps clarify) some of their own (inner) struggles. Similarly, when covering the 1973 Chilean coup, I had the students read excerpts from the U.S. Congressional Records on CIA covert activities, memoirs of people who had been arrested and tortured by the military regime, and poems by Pablo Neruda. Films, guest speakers, and experiences supplemented the texts. We even learned to dance to African drumming! In short, I had organized a rigorous and engaging academic experience. (See Appendix 1 for a copy of the course curriculum.) Yet, beyond the academic learning that was (I hope) taking place in my classroom, a completely different, perhaps more powerful experience

Pall of Orthodoxy?

THIS MONTH we will examine two cases center on extent to which religion may influence teaching, one illustrating influence from outside classroom and other from inside. CASE I In 1995, after teaching social studies and then language arts in middle school for several years, Gary Cole began to teach seventhgrade social studies in a school district in northern Maine. According to Cole,1 first two years went well; district's curriculum coordinator, Pamela Hallett, complimented him on his course, which covered history, culture, and religion of Europe and Asia. With her permission, he used textbook Human Heritage to teach his course, rather than outdated Europe and Soviet Union. Hallett met with Cole and Kevin Sipe, seventh-grade social studies teacher at district's other middle school, to review Maine Learning Results requirements and found that, while Cole was fully implementing requirements, Sipe was not even coming close. Hallett recommended Sipe meet with Cole to work out how to follow Cole's example. In early September, however, at his school's open house, parent of one of Cole's students confronted him, angrily expressing opposition to the religious aspects of topics Cole covered. The parent followed up a few days later with a visit to Cole's class, where she observed him mention Cro-Magnon man is at least 40,000 years old. Seeing parent's agitation, Cole met with her after class, whereupon she emphatically explained she believes every word of Bible is true, including claim Earth is probably 8,000 to 10,000 years old. She left and went directly to principal's office, withdrawing her son from Cole's class. Her sister, who also had a child in Cole's class, also spoke with him, objecting to that old ... ancient history and stuff. Cole understood stuff to refer to religion; for example, sister explained she only let her daughter be exposed to his teaching of evolution because her daughter's faith was strong. The two objecting parents were granddaughters of Rev. Blackstone, who was minister at a local church where thenchair of district's board of education was a member. Years earlier, former principal of middle school had told Cole people at church think they can run school. In mid-September, Hallett sent Cole a note notifying him of an upcoming meeting at high school to discuss changes in seventh-grade social studies curriculum. At meeting, she told Cole teacher of ninth-grade world history had complained that, when they entered high school, his students had already covered what she was going to teach, whereas students from other middle school had not. Based on this complaint, Hallett stated Cole should no longer teach about Asian history or ancient Greece. She further directed him to use as course text Europe and Soviet Union, rather than Human Heritage, to facilitate district-wide coordination. Shortly after meeting, Cole went to superintendent for clarification as to what material he should cover. For example, he understood Hallett to tell him to teach history of Europe, but not Middle Ages in Europe or any history from ninth-grade curriculum, which included European history. Pointing out directives conflicted with Maine Learning Results and they were issued in wake of two sisters' complaints, Cole suggested district was letting church run district. The superintendent did not seem to deny these accusations. On November 3, Cole wrote to Hallett for guidance, but she did not respond. At start of 1998-99 school year, Cole wrote to Hallett to summarize what he had understood to be agreement resulting from a meeting she had held with him and Sipe on implementation of Maine Learning Results, but she did not respond to his request for confirmation. …

Curriculum-Based Measurement in the Content Areas

The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of curriculum-based measures as indicator of growth in content-area learning. Participants were 58 students in 2 seventh-grade social studies classes. CBM measures were student- and administrator-read vocabulary-matching probes. Criterion measures were performance on a knowledge test, the social studies subtest of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), and student grades. Both the student- and examiner-read measures reflected change in performance; however, only the student-read measure resulted in interindividual differences in growth rates. Significant relations were found between the growth rates generated by the student-read vocabulary measure and student course grades, ITBS scores, and growth on the knowledge test. These results support the validity of a vocabulary-matching measure as an indicator of student learning in the content areas. The results are discussed in terms of the use of CBM as a system for monitoring performance and evaluating interventions for students with learning disabilities in content-area classrooms.

Ulysses S. Grant, Nativist

Ulysses S. Grant, Nativist Tyler Anbinder As Americans become increasingly conscious of the multiethnic nature of American society, we are also gaining more familiarity with the role ofnativism in our nation's history. Grade-school children in New York City, for example, once sheltered from these aspects of our past, are now regularly taught about Know Nothingism and other famous outbreaks ofanti-immigrant sentiment. The instances of nativism selected for inclusion in the New York curriculum, such as the burning of convents and the lynching of Jews, mirror those most often studied by academics as well, for scholars too tend to focus on dramatic examples of nativism. Such a focus may be misleading, however, because it conditions us to associate nativism with a fanaticism that is usually assumed to be marginal and atypical.1 By documenting the bigotry of those who played little or no active role in nativist organizations, we can better appreciate how and why nativism has become so deeply ingrained in theAmerican psyche. One such nativist was Ulysses S. Grant.2 Grant was not an obsessive nativist. He expressed his resentment of immigrants and animus toward Catholicism only rarely. But these sentiments reveal themselves frequently enough in his writings and major actions as general and I would like to thank James McPherson, John Y. Simon, Brooks Simpson, Patrick Williams, and the Washington Seminar on American History and Culture for critiquing earlier versions ofthis paper. 1 "New York City Seventh-Grade Social Studies Curriculum Workbook" [1991], Unit Five, in the possession ofthe author. Excerpts from the workbook are in New York Times, Sept. 15, 1991. Dale Knobel's study of antebellum Americans' attitudes toward the Irish, in which he explicitly excludes from consideration the views ofnativist activists, is a notable but singular exception to the general trend of scholarship on nativism. See Knobel, Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity andNationality in Antebellum America (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1986). 2 "Nativism" can be defined in a number of ways. Sociologists and anthropologists tend to describe nativism as a mixture of xenophobia, ethnocentrism, racism, and ultranationalism. My use of the term connotes someone who fears, hates, or resents most immigrants and believes that immigrants pose a threat that must be actively resisted. In addition, because the vast majority of Catholics and Jews in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century were immigrants, I believe it is appropriate to use the term "nativism" to describe Civil War-era anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism as well. Civil War History, Vol. xuu. No. 2 © 1997 by The Kent State University Press I20CIVIL WAR HISTORY president that the failure of Grant's biographers to mention this aspect of his worldview is surprising, especially since it recurs from early adulthood until his death. Nativism tinged the letters he wrote from Mexico while a young soldier there in the 1840s. In the 1850s he joined a Know Nothing lodge and irrationally blamed immigrants for setbacks in his career. In the 1860s he promulgated one of the most infamous acts of state-sponsored anti-Semitism in American history. The most talked-about speech ofhis presidency, delivered in 1875 and all but forgotten today, had a clearly anti-Catholic message. And in the 1880s, as Grant looked backupon his careerwhile composing his memoirs, he still seemed to believe that immigrants (especially Catholics) posed a threat to the nation. The first hint of Grant's enmity toward Catholicism is revealed in his letters from Mexico during the Mexican-American War. After Grant's death, unfortunately , family members did not want his less flattering writings to become public, so they excised from the letters almost every potentially embarrassing comment that Grant had written while in Mexico. From what remains, however, one can piece together Grant's views. Grant believed that Mexico, with its abundant natural resources, would have been a great nation were its population not "degraded" by Catholicism. In Puebla, the twenty-five year-old Grant reported that "the mass ofthe people are the same poor degraded looking beings that we have seen all over the country. At a certain ring of the church bell or when the senior Priest of the place passes you might see them...

The Curriculum Shadow

This article presumes that the curriculum field needs to be semantically rich so that practitioners and researchers may enhance their educational perceptions. Languag enables us to communicate and it helps us to “see” what otherwise may go unnoticed. Hence, this article propounds a new term, the “curriculum shadow,” to refer more precisely to aspects sometimes viewed as what is commonly called the “downsides” of curricula. The new term reveals how every discrete curriculum has a shadow that can be found by reflecting on what the curriculum privileges and what it disdains. What the curriculum apparently disdains could actually augment the curriculum, and may, in fact, be vital in creating a balanced curricular unit.This article begins with an overview of some critical Jungian concepts, and then distinguishes the curriculum shadow from the hidden and the null curricula. The idea of the curriculum shadow is then applied to the teaching of science, liberal arts, and reading. My analysis suggests that in thinking about science curricula, educators ought to consider including such processes as feeling, fantasizing, intuition, and dreaming to help students understand how science is really done. In discussing the liberal arts curricula, I use Noddings’s ideas to emphasize that caring ought not be neglected, and I also suggest what one can do when one discovers a curriculum shadow. Finally, I point out that even approaches to teaching reading can have shadows. For instance, in our rush to help children learn to read, some approaches may be “petrifying” children’s thinking.Mr. Hutchins teaches seventh-grade social studies. Civically involved and a former state representative, he lectures his students about the importance of citizenship in a democratic state. He demands that they read the U.S. Constitution and the Federalist Papers. He says both will be covered in his lectures over the next four weeks and warns his students that they will be tested on the documents at the end. Ironically, Mr. Hutchins does not encourage discussion on issues pertaining to democracy in class—an omission Mrs. Fine tells him is inconsistent with his beliefs. Numerous times she has urged him to allow students to engage in dialogue. She says practice in discussion is vital as a skill for prospective citizens, but Mr. Hutchins considers class discussion inefficient and he abhors inefficiency. Hutchins’s curriculum would be better, Mrs. Fine tells him, if he allowed some inefficiency so that his students could experience the inefficient aspects of democracy.