All the news that isn't

Once again for TE407, I will be entering a citation for each work discussed before discussing it.

Nelson, J. L. (2001). Defining Social Studies. In Stanley, W. B. (Ed.), Critical Issues in Social Studies Research for the 21st Century (pp. 15-38). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

I found this chapter, or perhaps I should say this article to be very redundant both with itself and with other themes we've been covering so far in our seminar. I feel that the chapter could be summed up in a number of short statements, as follows:

1. Definitions are important in policymaking and academics.
2. The definition of "social studies" is contested.
3. Therefore, policymaking and academic work about social studies are contested.
4. Social studies in general and history in particular are subject to political control.
5. Democracy requires educating people to be able to reach conclusions different from those of their government.
6. Therefore, maintaining the contestation of the definition of social studies is democratic.
   

Maybe the above are shocking to some people, but seriously this is almost all stuff we've been talking about already. Does it seem to anyone else that this article was also a hearty exercise in self-promotion in the sense that it aggrandizes what the author apparently loves to do the most, namely define "social studies?"

(yawn)

TE407, ahoy!

Well it's happened again, you've squandered another perfectly good second summer semester not taking TE302 (because it's not offered then). We're heartily into the fall semester of 2008, and already I'm seeing a lot about TE407 that is very different from the prior courses.

For one thing, let's talk about the difference between seminar and lab.

In the TE407 seminar, the class investigates various issues by discussing them. We might be presented with a video clip or reading, and then we'll take time to pick that apart by talking about it. Fascinating, right? Sure, if everything goes well. I would say that the quality of your TE407 experience will vary greatly depending on who you have as an instructor and who you have as classmates. (Some would say that this is true in any class, but I'll make at least the suggestion that in some contexts the material covered and the design of the course by the department can play such a role.) Given a sample size of one in our instructor, I'll make the bad inference that TE407 seminar instructors tend to be more experienced than TE407 lab instructors. You may get the feeling that I am saying that TE407 seminar is a lot of talk and not a lot of hands-on. You are partly right: from my experience so far, there's a fair amount of wide-angle thinking and not as much "do this now, it represents teaching." Some have criticized this as "too theoretical" and not enough practical. I am not sure I agree, but just because I don't know if "theory" is the right word for what we're doing. I think we're talking and listening to each other as opposed to absorbing from a centralized source. I suspect that a statement the class might agree with if it were presented clearly to them is the following: when one attends a high-level specialized course on teaching and the instructor doesn't do a lot of direct instruction, one may receive the impression that the instructor doesn't know the material and that the students cannot learn it from each other. To me, this represents a bet of sorts that by year's end we can unlearn our automatic preferences for direct, teacher-centered instruction.

In contrast, TE407 lab as the word implies is more about getting hands dirty. We will be designing lessons, and we're asked to do more homework-y type assignments. More on this as time goes on - I think that I don't yet understand all of what's going on conceptually in lab.

Final thing I'll mention for the post: for those who don't know, TE407/TE408 are segregated by major area, so I'm in a section that is just for secondary social studies folks. There are two such sections, and the idea is that probably both sections will be staying together through both semesters (i.e., the people in one's 408 section are the same ones that were in one's 407 section).

Looking forward to a good year, and more things to say on this blog in 2008-2009!