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undergraduate, I think the social sciences are full of knowledge that students can find interesting,
but more importantly helpful, in their own lives. If the role of school is to create well rounded
future citizens, then a solid education in the social sciences is necessary. This sentiment dates
back to the beginnings of America, as Benjamin Franklin “was insistent that the Colonies form
universities to educate people and instill democratic principles” (Noble & Kniffin, 2021, p. 172).
Noble & Kniffin note that civic learning and democratic engagement (CLDE) is currently in a
time of flux, but that at least at the collegiate level, it is interconnected with our nation and
higher education. The difficulty in presenting civics in public schools is that it often seems at
odds with some of the dark tendencies it has been associated with, such as: “imperialism
(especially as it was manifested during the Vietnam War and the Cold War), repression, and
racism and sexism” (Ceaser & McGuinn, 1998). To me, this is not a reason to shy away from the
topic. As Benjamin Barber (1998) notes, “Public schools are not merely schools for the public,
but schools of publicness; institutions where we learn what it means to be a public and start
down the road toward common national and civic identity.... Without citizens, democracy is a
hollow shell. Without public schools, there can be no citizens” (Barber, 1998, as cited in Ceaser
GULLEN MASTER’S PORTFOLIO 2
& McGuinn, 1998). To me, this raising of future citizens is one of the primary jobs of school,
and one which happens regardless of the schools' intentions to create future citizens or not.
To me, one way of dealing with this is to teach the social sciences as using an inquiry
model, where all viewpoints are respected and the students are questioning the topic and pushing
the dialogue themselves. This open dialogue was something I did in my UAS ED618 course.
One of the lessons was on ancient Egypt, and I took the students on a virtual field trip to the
Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. In the assignment, students toured the museum self-directed, and
with minimal input were allowed to explore another culture and learn about their culture. The
students seemed to really enjoy this, especially I believe because they had the opportunity to
direct their own learning. This self-directed inquiry model also has other benefits; some of the
major problems in history education for students is that they have learned there is often a
“correct” answer, issues are often dualistic to students (either/or), or the complexity of historical
reality itself does not facilitate a clear-cut answer to a question (Burkholder, 2020). Students
must develop higher order reasoning skills to transcend these issues. The inquiry model allows
students to ponder issues meaningfully, leading to relevant answers (Ruzaman & Rosli, 2020).
History is another fun topic that I have enjoyed teaching, and much like civics, has
important carryover to students in their future lives outside of school. Education is most effective
when it is relevant to our students' lives, and one of the lessons I taught had many connections to
the lives of my students. In it we learned about the creation of the Alaskan state flag, which was
done by an Alaskan boy named Benny Benson. We read about how he created the design, then
won a competition that made it the new state flag. My students took notes of things they found
interesting while we read, then got to design their own Alaskan state flag, taking inspiration from
their prior knowledge having lived here. This connection to prior knowledge is especially
GULLEN MASTER’S PORTFOLIO 3
important, as over the past decades “Almost all educational studies conducted during this time
acknowledge the importance of prior knowledge in learning” (Hailikari et al., 2007, p. 320). The
reasons are varied, but according to Hailikari one of which is that prior knowledge is used to
construct new knowledge (Hailikari et al., 2007), but also it is just more engaging to students.
We know that students who are more engaged learn better, regardless of if that material is used
to construct new knowledge or not. As a best practice then, social studies should be taught in an
inquiry model, with student driven learning, and should try to make as many connections to
students lives as possible, tying in as many of the social sciences (history, economics, civics,
References
ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uas.alaska.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=36cc69b9-
62db-4ebc-9031-57158d311887%40redis
Ceaser, J., & McGuinn, P. (1998). Civic education reconsidered. Public Interest, 133, 84–103.
Hailikari, T., Nevgi, A., & Lindblom-Ylänne, S. (2007). Exploring alternative ways of assessing
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2007.07.007
Noble, D., & Kniffin, L. E. (2021). Building sustainable civic learning and democratic
engagement goals for the future. New Directions for Higher Education, 2021(195/196),
171–179. https://doi-org.ezproxy.uas.alaska.edu/10.1002/he.20421
Ruzaman, N., & Rosli, D. (2020). Inquiry-based education: Innovation in participatory inquiry
https://doi-org.ezproxy.uas.alaska.edu/10.3991/ijet.v15i10.11460