Building the Collaboration and Creating the Curriculum

Building the Collaboration and Creating the Curriculum

Sandy explained that the MEDIA School did not even formally teach social studies classes because the principal believed that disadvantaged students were better served by developing basic academic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics. Finally, and probably most importantly, social studies is not covered on the Massachusetts State Exams, the high stakes exams that all Massachusetts students must pass in order to graduate. As a result, world history and geography were folded into other humanities courses, such as world literature.

An interview with Andrea, one of the students, about her attitudes toward social studies illuminates the issue. Andrea was deeply resentful of how she had been taught social studies.

Interviewer: Do you like social studies?

Andrea. I never really liked social studies... I don’t like learning about American history every year. I’m like, “Why don’t we do something else?” If you’re going to have social studies class, make it besides the wars or something. Like the Holocaust. Why should I have to learn about the Holocaust? I do it every year. It’s boring. And then they only talk about the Jews when they talk about the Holocaust. That makes me upset too. You know, if I was alive back then, I’d be dead. I was like, ‘Can we talk about me for a second? I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, so I would have been dead anyway because of my religion.’ And we have to learn about American history from the same textbook… I’m just now realizing that there’s a whole bunch of stuff that they don’t even write in the textbook. So they should have us do projects on what we think isn’t written in the textbooks. We should do a huge project on that or something. I think it would be better if you did a lot of hands-on stuff instead of reading and taking tests, because basically that’s all that social studies has been. It’s not like science or English where you can be creative. You read it, you memorize it, and then it’s over. If you did projects, like build landscapes or build what you think the world was like it back then, it would be more interesting. If it wasn’t so boring, I would like it.

Interviewer: So it’s not social studies but it’s how it’s taught in schools

Andrea: Yeah – how it’s taught in school is boring. I think African American history is left out of schools. I think Hispanic history is left out of schools. And I think that for schools that are so diverse in culture, they only teach one side of history, and I think that’s wrong. So if you’re going to have schools all filled with a bunch of black people, why are you going to teach them all about white history and not teach them anything ‘bout black history? Why have a school all about white history? That’s why people don’t like social studies. Social studies is boring.
Echoes of Wineburg (2001), Gardner (1991), and Loewen (1995) float through Andrea’s critique of her social studies education in which she argues that her identity is not represented in class and which she summarizes as “social studies is boring¹⁶.” Most students in the Media case had similar reactions to social studies.

We discussed how to supplement Civilization III with other curricula. I suggested that the game be used within an inquiry framework, having students develop questions, use Civilization III as a simulation, do additional outside research, and then develop artifacts representing their understandings (See also Barab, Barnett, Yamagata-Lynch, et al., 2002; Frederickson & White, 1998). Sandy and Lisa explained that most students read at between the 4^th and 9^th grade reading level and would struggle doing an independent research project. I gave each teacher a copy of the game to take home and play, and we agreed to reconvene to discuss more curriculum ideas.

Three weeks later, I met again with Joel, Sandy and Lisa to design the curriculum. None of the teachers had played their games, so I demonstrated Civilization III. All three teachers found the game overwhelming and confusing; none of them had played strategy games before. The teachers thought that students could probably play the game with coaching. Sandy asked if I would be willing to teach the unit if necessary. I said I could if necessary.

After seeing the game, Lisa thought that students might learn about the variables affecting the growth and decline of civilizations. She also thought that students would enjoy learning about ancient civilizations, building civilizations, and sharing their successes. Again, I suggested that students make maps, timelines, and a culminating project as a way to reach instructional objectives such as understanding historical timescales, how geography works as a process, how technologies build on one another, or how geography, politics, and economics affect history. Lisa joked that if students could even locate Egypt on a map, the project would be a success. The teachers were enthusiastic about the unit’s ability to engage students who were currently uninvolved in school and asked me if I’d be interested in running the unit starting two weeks, during the school day from 2:00-3:00 on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesdays for six weeks.

The remainder of the chapter details these events, which are organized into clusters of days by themes and tied together into a case narrative. Within each cluster of days, activities are broken out into themes in order to situate the reader in an unfolding narrative, a summary of which is provided in Figure 4.1. One of my objectives in this approach is to address the first research question: what practices emerge when Civilization III is brought into formal learning environments. A second is to preserve the representativeness of the data and let the reader vicariously experience the ebbs and flows of the unit. My hope is that providing a detailed narrative will be of use to educators and instructional designers engaged in similar design activities.