Design Research in Social Studies Education

Critical Lessons from an Emerging Field

Beth C. Rubin, Eric B Freedman, Jongsung Kim, Beth C. Rubin, Eric B Freedman, Jongsung Kim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429656545
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This edited volume showcases work from the emerging field of design-based research (DBR) within social studies education and explores the unique challenges and opportunities that arise when applying the approach in classrooms. Usually associated with STEM fields, DBR's unique ability to generate practical theories of learning and to engineer theory-driven improvements to practice holds meaningful potential for the social studies. Each chapter describes a different DBR study, exploring the affordances and dilemmas of the approach. Chapters cover such topics as iterative design, using and producing theory, collaborating with educators, and the ways that DBR attends to historical, political, and social context.

PART I

Improving Practice through Iterative Design

2

FROM FORM TO FUNCTION

Learning with Practitioners to Support Diverse Middle School Students’ Disciplinary Reasoning and Writing

Chauncey Monte-Sano, Ryan E. Hughes, and Sarah Thomson

Four years ago, a local middle school invited us to work with them to integrate literacy and social studies inquiry practices into their history courses in grades 6–8. Our middle school partners explained that they wanted to improve students’ analytical thinking and writing in social studies, as well as develop curriculum to meet current standards initiatives. They particularly hoped to better support the learning and achievement of their African American, English learner, and low-income student populations, whose scores lagged significantly behind their White, non-English learner, and higher-income peers. After collaboratively developing, testing, and refining a series of curriculum units, we have seen students make statistically significant gains in their ability to: (a) exhibit disciplinary thinking in their writing, (b) craft a claim supported with evidence and reasoning, and (c) write with coherence and style. These gains were strongest for students who read at or below grade level. In this chapter, we share two examples of curriculum design work that highlight the importance of collaborating with practitioners, conducting multiple iterations, and using multiple sources of data in design-based research. Then, we share findings documenting students’ growth in writing during the third project year, after this period of design work with our practitioner partners.

Study Context

Our project is grounded in a strong university–school relationship with shared goals. Starling Middle School has a formal partnership with the local university, cultivated by a faculty lead at the university who coordinates with the leadership team of the school. Together, we maintain focus on the school’s priorities and needs as we determine whether potential collaborations align with our shared goals and should move forward.

After a school leader initially approached the first author (Monte-Sano) about collaborating, the first and third authors (Monte-Sano and Thomson) started meeting periodically with teachers at Starling Middle School in 2014–2015 to learn more about their school context and students, priorities and goals, and norms for social studies instruction. We learned that educators at Starling were concerned about the achievement gaps they observed in writing and social studies between students identified as Black, English learners, or economically disadvantaged and those students identified as White or economically advantaged. Educators there wanted to rethink the opportunities to learn that they provided and to develop their expertise in supporting the success of all their students. They were also interested in addressing the C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards and the Common Core State Standards for Literacy in their instruction (NCSS, 2013; NGO & CCSSO, 2010). We shared with them examples of lessons that framed social studies as inquiry, sources that could be used to support it, and ways of thinking, reading, and writing central to history and social science—all stated interests of the teachers and school. We knew from prior research that these types of lessons can support all learners, including those who struggle with reading and writing (De La Paz et al., 2017; Reisman, 2012). In project year one (2014–2015), we worked with teachers to identify topics for inquiry units and developed and tested a few in a handful of classrooms.

During the following school year (2015–2016), we developed and piloted four investigations per grade level (sixth, seventh, and eighth), observed in classrooms, interviewed a subsample of sixth-grade students, and talked with teachers about the materials during professional development time. Then in our third year (2016–2017) we iteratively refined the curriculum, continuing to pilot and test as we had the year before, and interviewed the same students who were then in seventh grade. (We went through the same process in year four [2017–2018], with particular focus on the eighth-grade curriculum, but that is beyond the scope of this chapter.)

Over the course of our collaboration, we have worked with seven social studies teachers at Starling Middle School. In this chapter, we focus on two teachers as we illustrate our iterative design process: Mr. Kerr and Mr. Smith. Both middle-aged White men, each had taught abroad before returning to the U.S. to teach middle-school social studies. Mr. Kerr majored in history as an undergraduate, taught abroad for 15 years in an alternative setting, and completed a post-baccalaureate program in Secondary Social Studies Education. When we started working together, he had been teaching in mainstream middle-school social studies classrooms for two years. Mr. Smith majored in Geography and English Education, taught out-of-state for four years, did other jobs, and taught abroad for two years. He had been working as a middle school social studies teacher for two years when we started to work together. We focus on these two teachers because they illustrate contrasting ways the curriculum was taken up and implemented.

Starling Middle School has a diverse student population, with 52% categorized by the state as economically disadvantaged (qualifying them for Free and Reduced Meals), 13% categorized as English learners with a wide range of languages spoken, and many more multi-lingual students. About one third of the student population identifies as White (which includes a sizeable Middle Eastern or Arabic-speaking population), one third identifies as Black, and the remaining third identifies either as Latinx, Asian American, bi-, or multi-racial. Based on county-wide data, we could see that in the region about 60% of Black and economically disadvantaged students scored below grade level on state assessments of writing, and about 80% scored below grade level in social studies. Starling Middle School recognized these inequities and wanted to better support their students.

In addition to inviting all students across sixth and seventh grade social studies to participate in the study, we invited a subsample of ten sixth graders to be interviewed during each investigation in year two, so that we could learn more about how they interacted with and made sense of the curriculum materials. We invited this same group of students in year three; six of the ten returned and four more joined to maintain a total of ten interviewees. Across both years, the subsample included English learners, African Americans, and students who scored below or at grade level on state reading assessments with a couple of above-grade-level readers, White students, and non-English learners included for comparison.

Study Design

This project utilized design-based research (DBR) methodology, which seeks to create innovative learning environments, study those innovations in real-world contexts, develop theory, and inform practice (Brown, 1992; Cobb et al., 2003; Collins et al., 2004; diSessa & Cobb, 2004). In this case, we studied the curricular and classroom-level conditions that support students’ learning of disciplinary thinking and writing at Starling Middle School. Year one (2014–2015) focused on learning more about the school and classroom contexts where the designed curriculum would be implemented, identifying research-based design principles to guide instruction, and initial testing with small groups of students to understand their experience with a few pieces of curriculum. In the two years following, we iteratively refined the curriculum through repeated cycles of inquiry. We studied the experiences of teachers and students as they used it, as well as what students were learning (as detected through oral participation, written work, and interviews). We paid particular attention to the experiences and learning of both high- and low-achieving students. This design-based approach is well suited to examining what aspects of the curriculum are or are not working, for whom, and why (Barone, 2011).

We integrated qualitative and quantitative analyses to understand students’ experiences and learning with the designed curriculum. We used grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to examine student interviews, classroom observations, and students’ written work during each curriculum unit (four each year). These qualitative analyses helped us understand how students experienced, made sense of, and learned about disciplinary thinking and argument writing. On this basis, we identified ways the curriculum could better support students, revised the curriculum accordingly, and then tested it in the next cycle of inquiry (that is, the next time a curricular unit was implemented). In year three, we analyzed sixth and seventh graders’ written work on a pre- and post-assessment to ascertain growth from the beginning to the end of the year. In other reports of this research, we share qualitative analyses of students’ disciplinary and linguistic work in their writing and classroom discourse (e.g., Monte-Sano, Schleppegrell, Hughes, & Thomson, 2018).

Two student learning goals drove our collaborative work with school partners: (a) developing students’ disciplinary thinking through inquiry and (b) improving students’ written arguments. The first goal refers to students’ ability to read and reason in ways consistent with a given social studies discipline as they participate in inquiry. The second relates to students’ capability to develop and produce argument writing, the genre most commonly associated with the work of historians and social scientists. This involves the complex work of generating a claim and supporting it with evidence and reasoning.

To ensure the disciplinary authenticity of the curriculum, we first interviewed historians about their approaches to historical writing (see Monte-Sano, 2017). We found that historians wrote many forms of arguments with different audiences and purposes, ranging from policy briefs to film reviews. Yet common features of writing dominated our findings regardless of form or audience—specifically, historians’ engagement with sources and questions to construct evidence-based arguments or critique those of others. As we developed middle-school social studies curriculum to represent this disciplinary work, we again consulted with historians about the authenticity and accuracy of the content and adjusted the curriculum as needed.

Previous research (De La Paz et al., 2017; Monte-Sano, De La Paz, & Felton, 2014) worked toward similar student learning goals (argument writing and historical thinking), but the current study differed in several ways. First and foremost, this study is more consistent with DBR in its attention to context. For example, we got to know the teachers, their instruction, and their school setting first and used that knowledge to design the curriculum (see McKenney and Reeves, 2012). In addition, based on our research with historians (Monte-Sano, 2017), we designed a range of writing tasks with authentic purposes and audiences, provided support for the transition from reading to writing, and used more open-ended (as opposed to dichotomous) questions to guide the investigations. In the current study, we also included a greater range of sources and longer investigations to allow students to explore the topics in greater depth, and we worked across sixth, seventh, and eighth grade so that students could build their literacy and disciplinary practices over an extended period of time. Last, the current study focuses more directly on English learners. Over time we have modified our reading tool to increase support for reading comprehension alongside disciplinary thinking.

Design of the Curriculum

Drawing from our prior work, our interviews with historians, and other research literature, we identified several design principles as guidelines to ensure that our curriculum development work supported students’ disciplinary thinking and literacy practices. We outline our eight design principles alongside the curriculum features we established to represent those principles.

Framing History as Evidence-Based Interpretation

Research across multiple grade levels and classroom contexts shows that when teachers approach history as interpretation—rather than as a fixed narrative of names, dates, and events—there are increased opportunities for students to engage in disciplinary thinking and to build a wide range of literacy practices (Bain, 2006; De La Paz, 2005; Freedman, 2015; Monte-Sano, 2008, 2011; Reisman, 2012). Using central, compelling questions open to multiple interpretations as well as a set of sources with different perspectives to drive the investigations helped us enact this principle in the curriculum.

Helping Students Connect the Topic or Issue under Study to their Lives

The knowledge, r...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Improving Practice through Iterative Design
• Part II Using and Producing Theory
• Part III Collaborating with Educators
• Part IV Contextualizing DBR Historically, Socially, and Politically
• Conclusion
• Index