The website for Maine's state social studies curriculum opened up to a page simply stating: "Performance level definitions are developed to describe the quality of a students responses on the Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) in relation to the standards for achieving Maine's Learning Results. These definitions will provide language for use in standard setting and reporting." I had to dig through the website, mostly with links encouraging kids to take the MHSA SAT, to try to find any social studies framework for standards. I finally found the 5 page PDF for "Major Enduring Themes in Social Studies" after much searching. This document is incredibly different from Michigan's extensive layout for social studies curriculum. The standards were laid out in options as a whole, not directed for specific grades, and were unbelievably general. One of their options, specifically Option 2 CSSAP, breaks down civics, economics, geography, and history with 4-5 additional notes below each. It does not direct any exact topics or events to follow, rather for example in history, it says "comparative history of major developments". This is very different when you look at Michigan's very specific outlines for each era or event in history, directing us to make sure we hit on specific points.
Being a future educator this made me think how we are often mad at the restrictions that the state has laid out for our curriculum, often limiting our ability to make genuine lesson plans. Looking at Maine's much more simplistic lay out though I'm not sure which would be worse. Some outline, or almost rubric you could say, helps keep you on the right track towards achieving an ultimate goal. How do they know what their students will be tested on? How do they keep somewhat of a unification in the Social Studies department in the curriculum among different teacher's classrooms? Maybe this is discussed further, but in this document I saw very little specifics about anything really.
BEST SUB DAY EVER!!!
15 years ago
I found your post really interesting because in my state's curriculum (Massachusetts), they were both very specific about what should be taught in each year, yet, the emphasis on testing was limited--in fact testing--called the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System--only took up one page of the 132 page document. Also, there was flexibility in when districts had to administer the tests based on how they wanted to structure their curriculum. I thought this was pretty neat and seemed conducive to learning...thoughts? Anyway,I figured you might be interested as a future educator:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/hss/1022prepub.pdf
So do you think that these standards are going to be more difficult to use than say another state such as Michigan's. Are they too general to be helpful or are they general enough to give you room to maniupulate them?
ReplyDeleteBrianne from what we're discussing in class and from your extensive blog it certainly sounds like Massachusetts is the polar opposite of Maine in its Social Studies standards. It's the argument that too much structure is frustrating/limiting whereas (like Maine) very little structure/outline can be also just as frustrating. Both certainly have drawbacks, and people going in to education for history like myself are often aggravated with the uber detailed MI outline but bare bones structure would probably be disadvantaged as well. How do you keep unification within the department with such little structure? But no teacher who is so passionate about history wants to be reigned in too much. It seems kind of hypocritical looking at it written out, but that’s the battle.
ReplyDeleteDan, I can't really say which would be more frustrating. I hate being told so specifically what to teach, but next to no guidance must be tough to. I feel they give you room to manipulate, if you have knowledge in history, but someone who does not have the extensive background/education would struggle to do so.