For now, I have decided to keep pursuing the use of current events in social studies classrooms as my research topic. Per Dr. Friedman's suggestions I will most likely implement my study by surveying and observing teachers. My sample will likely be a convenience sample - or grab group, made up of social studies teachers that our program works with in the Forsyth County school district. I may focus my study to just look at US History teachers since that is what I am most interested in teaching. Then again, I could probably benefit from more exposure to civics and world history classrooms. Including a survey for students on their opinion of instruction related to current events is something I want to consider as well. My literature review will of course be helpful in deciding exactly how to implement the study. For now here are a few questions I want my study to answer:
1. How often do teachers incorporate current events?
2. How do teachers incorporate current events (homework assignments, discussion, warm-up activities?)
3. What news/media outlets do teachers find are most accessible for high school students?
4. Do teaching materials (textbooks) help teachers integrate current events into the class curriculum?
I guess that's just a start. Does anyone have suggestions of other ways to investigate current events in the social studies classroom?
5 comments:
I really like your research topic, maybe because i like current events so much. I think current events are important in the classroom for multiple reasons. The first is that educated people should know what is going on in the world. The second is because history repeats itself. I think the number one answer that history teachers give for the reason for learning history is so that you don't repeat history. History seems to repeat itself even though we are all taking the history classes! But that is besides the point. I think students could better learn history if they see the parallel between current events and history. I think observations and teacher surveys/interviews are the best way to go about it. You can also survey students to see how often they perceive current events being integrated into the curriculum. Hope this comment is useful!
Jennie, I like this topic. I think you will find related studies, and it will be interesting to see how teachers incorporate current events. One thought that I have is whether it would be reasonable to ask teachers to keep a log (and send it to you weekly) about their use of current events topics over a period of several weeks. It seems if they do one interview or one survey, they may or may not remember the details of what they included in their classes over time. It might be just a short discussion at the beginning of class. If they tell you each week, you might be able to compare what they do with what you judge to be the important news stories of the week. You could say THIS was in the news, and X% of teachers mentioned it. Then you could follow up with an interview or survey at the end.
I think the log is a great idea Dr. McCoy! Dr. Friedman, do you think this is feasible. Do you think I could get seven or eight social studies teachers to agree to keep a weekly log?
Jennie I love this topic. I think you would be very smart to focus on American History during a presidential election year. My only concern would be, that because it is in fact an election year, I wonder if the your data might be a little skewed. It just seems to me, that everyone will be mentioning the election because it will tie in nicely to the curriculum. Maybe one way to kind of combat this possible skew, is to include a question on your survey that asks something like, are you using more current events this year than years past, etc. I like Dr. McCoy's idea of the log, because if the teachers listed what they talked about, you may see they talked about everything, while just briefly touching on the election. At any rate, this is a great topic!
I think you have some good ideas.
Being that this is an election year I think the study could be more interesting than in other years. The danger is that not every year is an election year so the discussions on the political process that will come to the fore this year would likely not come up other years. The advantage of course is that election years, and in particular during an election year where there are so many major issues facing the country, is that you will likely to be able to observe a lot of different instances that teachers use current events and may get some good strategies from that.
Election years are contentious. It could be interesting to see how teachers are able to separate their personal politics from the lessons.
One thing that could make it hard to do a methodical study on current events is that events are fluid. You can’t predict when something important that can be linked to course concepts will happen. So it could be harder to know the best days to observe.
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