DIVERSIFYING TASKS AND TOPICS IN SOCIAL STUDIES CLASSROOMS LoFaro 1

Diversifying Tasks and Topics in Social Studies

Classrooms

William LoFaro

Manhattan College: Education 376

DIVERSIFYING TASKS AND TOPICS IN SOCIAL STUDIES CLASSROOMS LoFaro 2

Abstract

In this paper, I will be looking at the subjects of social studies within the

classroom, along with the varieties of signature pedagogies and strategies that can be

implemented to best compliment the content being taught.  I will do this through my

analysis of what types of issues present themselves within classes that typically cover

the topics of social studies, researching successful methods that have been used, and

finally present my own plan to diversify both the content covered, along with the format

and tools in which they are covered.  This will all contribute to the formation of my own

signature pedagogy to be used.

Introduction

            Before detailing some of the issues that come from teaching social studies, what

first must be covered is what the subject is in reference to.  Social studies is not simply

a stand-alone subject, but instead comprises multiple other topics that when looked at

together form the overall bigger picture.  Some examples of these classes that I have

experienced are history, sociology, and economics.  While there are subjects that fall

under social studies as well, the three mentioned are some of the most diverse, all

taking notably different approaches in order to detail aspects of the greater whole.  This

is where the first glaring issue arises, being that despite their differences, the ways they

are taught are often similar.

            The most common class format in my own experience has the class revolve

around two main forms of relaying information, those being lectures, and textbook

readings.  Despite how common this format is, it is also largely what many people’s

disdains for the topics arise from.  To break it down even further beginning with lectures,
DIVERSIFYING TASKS AND TOPICS IN SOCIAL STUDIES CLASSROOMS LoFaro 3

this aspect is not as problematic as its counterpart.  Including lectures in social studies

is largely integral due to the nature of what is typically taught.  With economics being

the exception at times, much of social studies does not heavily rely on application. 

While a math class may require a student to memorize multiple equations, it also has

them putting those equations into use through different methods of application.  Social

studies on the other hand predominantly relies on information retention, resulting in

much of the classes simply being about transmitting information to students.  Lectures

are a common method of doing this, as it allows for the teacher full control over the flow

of information being relayed to students.  The primary issue of this method is its ability

to attract and keep students engaged.  This is something that I have myself found in

multiple different types of classes throughout social studies.  The information of the

classes are of course different, but the classes regardless all feel similar as they

primarily consist of the teacher simply standing in front of the class and speaking for the

duration of the period.  As stated, this results in an unengaging environment for most

students, myself included, as the struggle can shift from remembering content, to even

being able to maintain attention.

The second aspect that is commonly integrated into social studies is a heavy

reliance on a textbook.  Similar to the lectures, textbooks all contain different information

depending on the topic, yet the vast majority are uninterestingly written, difficult to

maintain attention to, and even frequently contain bias.  Throughout the classes I have

taken under the umbrella of social studies, the overwhelming majority of them required

textbook readings, with history classes in particular suffering from this.  In fact, history

classes are typically hurt the most by an overreliance on textbooks due in part to their
DIVERSIFYING TASKS AND TOPICS IN SOCIAL STUDIES CLASSROOMS LoFaro 4

aforementioned frequency of containing biases.  Author Michael H. Romanowski speaks

of the types of concerns that he has in regards to the types of bias that he observed

during his research, specifically regarding history textbooks.  In the text, Romanowski

describes the conclusion he came to after his analysis of multiple different history

textbooks, “One of my principal concerns is with the presentation by textbooks of issues

that are important to understanding the historical situation of minorities in the United

States''(Romanowski, 1996, P. 170).  Romanowski speaks of an issue that I have also

taken note of throughout my time in history classes.  As he mentions, it is shockingly

common for textbooks to blatantly leave out, or lessen the importance of many events,

especially in regards to U.S. history textbooks.  What this results in is not only a

detrimental effect for the accuracy of the content, but it also creates issues of

engagement, as when a culturally diverse classroom does not discuss culturally diverse

topics, it can result in one or many students feeling alienated by the content itself.  This

is something that is not exclusive to textbooks, as it is also something that can take

shape in the class itself.  With these problems being in place in many classrooms, it

becomes apparent that the traits a healthier signature pedagogy would require include

the diversification of both content, as well as the methods used to teach it.

Research

As mentioned in the introduction, the lack of cultural diversity is an issue that often

plagues social studies classrooms. Geneva Gay attempts to address this issue within

her piece, “Teaching To and Through Cultural Diversity” which covers the many

different forms and attempts at lessons that the author implemented, along with the

findings that resulted from them.  How Gay used this was to link what the students were
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learning in school, to their lives outside of school.  The way this took shape was by

applying culturally diverse topics to her class in order to promote students' interest in

learning.  Gay explains the reasoning for her taking this approach, “Therefore it is futile

for educators to claim that they can attend to the needs of students (for academic

learning and otherwise) without engaging their cultural socialization, and to expect

students to divorce themselves from their cultural heritage easily and at will”(Gay, 2013,

P. 61). The point Gay is making here is that if there are issues with students

involvement in the class, it is up to the class to change, and not the students.  As she

implements such an idea into the class, she takes special note of the kinds of resources

being used, and makes sure they don’t neglect key information on the basis of bias.  An

example of this is Gay’s mention of textbooks, which prove to be a roadblock when

trying to implement this type of pedagogy.  As many textbooks will not match the needs

of a unique class of students, it means that a teacher must be picky when choosing

them, due largely to most falling short of covering genuinely diverse content.

               The next method researched was a specific model of pedagogy, that being the

flipped classroom (FC) method.  What this pedagogy entails is largely reversing the

structure used in the classroom.  As opposed to the usual method in classrooms of

teachers instructing the class, and having the homework be an assignment based on

that in-class lesson, the FC method changes the order of the approach.  What it instead

does is have students get introduced to the content as homework before the teacher

begins to teach in class.  This then extends into home assignments after the lesson

itself, creating a flow to have students become somewhat acquainted with the content,

fully informed of it by the teacher, and then given an opportunity to master it on their
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own. Authors Vasiliki Aidinopoulou and Demetrious G. Sampson tells of their

implementation of this model in their class, along with what effects it has on the class,

“In history courses that use the FC model, emphasis is given in the cultivation of

historical thinking skills. As students interact with material, they learn how to use

historical context and perspectives different to their own, towards developing critical

historical thinking skills, they analyze and hypothesize, and in general act as

historians”(Aidinopoulou & Sampson, 2017, P. 238).  What this strategy allows for is a

more application oriented approach to teaching class, and creating a far more involved

environment for students.  By having students play vital roles in the beginning as well as

the end of their time with a given topic, the authors make it possible for students to not

only develop their own perceptions and understandings, but to also actively engage in

the content as opposed to the far more passive role students take in a typical lecture

based class format.

The final piece of research actually consists of two different strategies, but due to

the similarity of them, they end up largely involving two possible approaches to the

same strategy.  The pedagogy that unites the two texts is that both of them center

around increasing students' interest and engagement in taking part in class resources

by supplying them with more appealing yet still relevant forms of media.  The first of

these is the simpler of the two, with it centering around Author William B. Russell III’s

use of films in order to better teach social studies.  Russell mentions that this method is

actually not uncommon, and in some specific regards, is used by many other teachers,

"Using film as a visual textbook is the most common method used by teachers. 

Teachers often will use a film as a visual record simply to convey what
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happened”(Russell, 2012, P. 158).  While commonality does not necessarily mean it is

the best option as is shown by the issues of how social studies are usually taught, the

fact that Russell takes specific note of such a thing displays his acknowledgement of the

method's success for both himself and others.  Russell outlines the way he typically

approaches using a film like this, with much of the preparation period being on the end

of the teacher, having to prepare the topic, find the film, screen it themselves, and then

organize an activity to follow.  That final detail is very key to note for how Russell

manages this type of method as it assures the films do not have to stand alone. 

Instead, he simply uses them as part of the lesson, always including some sort of

assignment afterwards in order to establish the point of the film’s viewing.  The Second

example of this once again relies on the idea of giving students an alternative form of

media in order to engage with the topic, but in this case, author Jeremiah McCall

describes his usage of simulation games in his history class.  McCall details the deeper

benefits of having students take part in simulation games, “There is so much to be

gained through their use.  This includes rich opportunities for students to engage the

past as independent historians; to consider the choice, cause and effect; to question

and interrogate”(McCall, 2012, P. 24).  What McCall’s statement reflects is how

dramatically more hands-on such a strategy is for students to have in class.  It creates

the chance for students to not only play a key role in guiding their own time with a given

topic, but it also builds an environment where far more students than usual are actively

excited to take part in the lesson.  Students become able to not only learn and

strengthen their skills through their time with some simulation games, but they will

potentially self-motivate, rather than relying solely on instructions on how to learn.  With
DIVERSIFYING TASKS AND TOPICS IN SOCIAL STUDIES CLASSROOMS LoFaro 8

both Russell and McCall’s formats and strategies looked at together, the link between

them can be clearly seen, along with the potential they have of truly grabbing a

student’s attention.

Class Plan

The plan for my signature pedagogy is one that pulls different aspects from all of

the different texts that I believe would be either helpful or appealing to students,

regardless of which topic of social studies they are learning.  The core structure of the

class will be based primarily off of the flipped classroom model discussed in

Aidinopoulou and Demetrious’ work.  By placing this kind of structure in the class, it

creates a far more consistent role for students to take part in, keeping them consistently

involved throughout the entire process of a unit being taught.  Focusing now on

specifics, type of content I would be including as the first part of the FC model.  Before

every major change of topic, students are given an assignment or resource that is

meant to introduce them to the topic, and hopefully hook them as to heighten their

investment in the following in-person class.  These preemptive resources will be

modeled in a similar vein to that of the ones mentioned by Russell and McCall,

attempting to focus not only on relaying quality information to the students, but doing so

in an appealing way.  The final aspect of my pedagogy would be in line with Gay’s

research, focusing in on the idea of covering a wide array of topics throughout my class

in order to properly fulfill both the wants and needs of a culturally diverse classroom of

students.  The hope with such a pedagogy is that the different aspects will come

together to form a class and environment in which students truly engage with and look
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forward to learning content, while making sure that the content they absorb and how

they absorb it are diverse and interesting.

Touching on the resources similar to the films and simulation games that have

proved effective in other classes, the plan will be to find interesting and enjoyable

sources of information that can stem from any variety of different forms of media.  While

the two texts referenced only cover films and simulations, I intend to use a much wider

set of options for content vehicles, including short videos, music, games, and even

some particularly chosen readings.  As discussed earlier, textbooks can often prove

detrimental when not found properly, but I believe that reading, potentially either

independent or excerpts from a textbook may also prove engaging.  With this method of

texts being used, the intention is to avoid latching on to one singular textbook and using

that as the basis for lessons or assignments, and instead picking and choosing multiple

parts of multiple textbooks or outside sources in order to properly cover the level of

diversity that may be necessary to accommodate for the class.  The goal with

implementing multiple forms of media as preemptive lessons is to supply students with

initial information in a way that is appealing to them and entices them to genuinely

engage, but to also make sure those forms of media do not grow stale.  If students

simply have a video to watch every single time they have to begin a new topic, that can

begin to feel more and more like a chore for them.  With that in mind, having not only

the content, but the delivery method be diverse would keep the assignments feeling

fresh and interesting overtime.

While the prior assignments of the FC model do play a key role in my pedagogy,

they are not the only aspect of it.  Moving to the other part of it, that being actual in class
DIVERSIFYING TASKS AND TOPICS IN SOCIAL STUDIES CLASSROOMS LoFaro 10

learning, my plan would be for a far looser version of a typical social studies class

lecture to be used.  While there are some potential drawbacks, I do not believe that

lectures are intrinsically negative teaching tools, and so I do intend to include them, just

not in a way that is overwhelming.  A key aspect of having students do introductory work

with the FC model is that it allows for them to better be involved when the content is

covered in class.  That being the case, the time in class would be far closer to a

discussion that is primarily lead by the teacher, pushing students towards the ideas and

concepts that are integral to the lesson, but still allowing them to draw their own

conclusions and develop their own thoughts based on all of the knowledge that they are

able to acquire both in and out of the classroom.  

The final aspect of the pedagogy to fulfill would be the last segment of the FC

model, that being the type of assignment that students are given after their exposure to

the content before as well as in class.  The intended approach for this would be to use

this opportunity to promote students sharing their thoughts with each other.  While the

assignments would not be particularly complex, I believe that having the follow-up task

after the first two segments of the FC model focus on collaborative work would help

students to gain a wider picture of the topic.  By having work that requires them to talk

to and discuss with another student, it is likely that their thoughts and opinions will be

exchanged, all in the hopes of once again expanding students grasp of the topic.  With

this plan and structure in place, I believe that students will not only be able to harbor

and nurture the information and skills they are meant to learn, but an enthusiasm for

learning it as well.
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Conclusion

While it may be somewhat commonplace for the different subjects within social

studies to be taught in ways that are unappealing or even ineffective for students, I

firmly believe that any teacher can take the steps to improve the experience.  By

focusing more on providing students with expansive learning options, and not just what

they learn but how they learn it as well, the types of social studies content that is

typically dreaded by the average student may finally begin to elicit enthusiasm and

passion.  In a world where the vast majority of classrooms will consist of a wide variety

of students, it is the responsibility of the teacher to make sure the way they teach is

prepared to be just as, if not even more diverse than the group it's meant to teach.

Execution

After taking the time to develop and theorize the potential effectiveness and

application of my signature pedagogy, I was able to apply it through two different

lessons done with slightly different circumstances surrounding them. The first of these

lessons was limited to fifteen minutes in length, and was the first case of applying my

pedagogy to the classroom. As it was the first time using it, this is was the most faithful

to my original plan of the two. The day prior to my lesson, I sent out the preemptive

resource for the following day, in this case a short video, and asked students to please

watch and review the content. Once the class had begun, I had students take time to fill

out and discuss several questions on a worksheet that I distributed to them. These

questions were both based on facts as well as opinion, so students had multiple angles

in which to approach the discussion that followed. This revealed one of the key flaws

that can potentially arise from including the flipped classroom model in one’s pedagogy,
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as the inconsistency of students partaking in the resource the day before was revealed.

There were numerous students who did not watch what was asked of them, and so as I

included time for group discussion, used that opportunity to catch up based on what

their partners who had watched the videos had taken away from the assignment. After

this, I had the students work through a short guided instruction in which I worked

through each of the questions with them, trying to receive different answers to some

questions from different groups. This group and overall class-wide oriented aspect of

my lesson I believe was effective, and students seemed not only to be accurate and

consistent, but engaged in the discussion as well. While there were many limiting

factors to this lesson, the short time limit foremost amongst them, it served as a

beneficial dry run for the key aspects of my pedagogy.

For the second lesson, I approached the lesson as similarly as possible while

attempting to fix the issues I noticed in order to have as close of a comparison between

the two lessons as possible. While this class was able to run for thirty minutes instead

of the initial fifteen, I stuck to the same core structure of the class, having students

answer questions on videos or other media throughout a worksheet to act as a guide for

the group and class discussions that would follow. As the assignment of the videos

before class had proven to result in some inconsistent coverage of information amongst

the students, I decided to shift this aspect somewhat drastically, instead showing the

content, a video and song, during the class period. While this did rectify the issue of

some students not knowing the content focused on, it did have a drawback of its own.

While the core knowledge was more equally distributed, it also was somewhat clear that

the students who had watched the video on the prior lesson benefitted from having that
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extra time to think about and consider the information they gained from the resources

they were given. Moving on from the videos, the class then began to fall more in line

with the first, with students taking time to work through their sheet, discuss with their

tables, and then move to the larger class discussion. While the extra allotted time holds

some responsibility, it was also apparent that the discussion was able to be more varied

and diverse thanks to the fact that the students who initially did not watch the content

were far more prepared to involve themselves in the discussion. The final result of the

changes I made for this longer lesson was one that I believed proved mor effective than

the first, but still could be improved.

When taking how both lessons went into account, It became apparent to me that

both of the approaches I took were the two far sides of a spectrum and that I had

completely missed the middle ground that likely would have proven most beneficial.

This realization is in reference to my idea that if I had essentially combined the two

approaches to media resources, I would have arrived at the best outcome. If I were to

ask students to review the resources given to them the day before class, as well as

showing the resources in class the following day, students would have likely benefitted

from both. The students who did not or were not able to interact with the resources

would still have been able to actively participate in the class discussion, but those who

did read or watch what was assigned would be able to come in with a deeper opinion on

the topic due to the time they would have to consider what they learned. Having

experienced the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, as well as the

effectiveness of the rest of my lesson that was consistent in each, I have gained even

more confidence in the potential of my pedagogy. While not completely consistent with
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the conclusion I initially came to, the research and articles held true regardless and

resulted in what proved to be an effective atmosphere for my students.

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References

GAY, G. (2013). Teaching To and Through Cultural Diversity. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1),

48–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23524357

McCall, J. (2012). Navigating the Problem Space: The Medium of Simulation Games in
the Teaching of History. The History Teacher, 46(1), 9–28.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/43264070

RUSSELL, W. B. (2012). The Art of Teaching Social Studies with Film. The Clearing
House, 85(4), 157–164. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23212875

Vasiliki Aidinopoulou, & Demetrios G. Sampson. (2017). An Action Research Study

from Implementing the Flipped Classroom Model in Primary School History Teaching
and Learning. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 20(1), 237–247.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/jeductechsoci.20.1.237

Romanowski, Michael H. “Problems of Bias in History Textbooks.” Problems of Bias in

History Textbooks, https://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/publications/se/
6003/600310.html.