Buxton's Education Blog: Is the HS Social Studies lecture going the way of the dodo bird?

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Sunday, January 5, 2014

Is the HS Social Studies lecture going the way of the dodo bird?

by Jim Buxton

Is the HS lecture going the way of the dodo bird? Many educational reformers hope that this will be the case. From my observations at 8 RI high schools, the lecture is still very common, however the amount of lecture time in an hour long class seems to be diminishing, and seems to be intermixed with a lot of group work. Certainly, this depends on the school. I asked my Talent Development students at URI, who mainly come from urban RI high schools, how many classes they had in high school which were more lecture based than any other method, and the typical student said maybe 1 or 2. What happens when these students get to 100 level college courses at URI, for example? According to a recent study by the National Center for Educational Statistics, around 83% of college and university faculty rely on the lecture as their primary instructional method. My question is whether we should be throwing the baby out with the bath water in our movement away from the lecture at the high school level?

It should be noted that colleges are starting to wean themselves off of “start to finish lecturing.” The faculty at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has dedicated this academic year to finding alternatives to the lecture in many subjects. Johns Hopkins, Harvard University and even the White House have hosted events in which scholars have assailed the lecture. (“Colleges looking beyond the classroom” by Daniel de Vise; Washington Post; Feb 15, 2012)

Is it possible to teach using lecture and significant student participation? Harvard professor, Eric Mazur has developed an interactive teaching technique called peer instruction, in which the lecture is broken into chunks. Between topics, Mazur poses questions and students work together to answer them. (de Vise) George Washington biologist, Hartmut Doebel, likewise has developed an interactive lecture style whereby groups of 6 students at a time analyze aspects of the lecture material in short spurts. Doebel does feel that the lecture has its place and that it will never go away completely.

I agree with Doebel that the lecture has its place, but that it can be combined with significant interaction. What I like to do is to use a form of advance organizer, and role play in combination with my lecturing. Hence, let’s assume that I’m teaching about the chronology of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. I will divide the students into groups of 4, with two of the students being Jews and two being Palestinians. I will lecture on the 1947 UN Partition Plan of Palestine for 15 minutes, for example, and after doing so, I’ll give the students 5 – 7 minutes to discuss the UN plan in character. Eventually, when we learn the issue in greater complexity, I might have groups of 6 with Jews and Palestinians of various persuasions, discussing other controversial aspects of the chronology.

What I like about this format is:

students have to stay alert, and learn the information so that they can participate in the mini-discussions with their group mates
students are more likely to internalize the info presented to them if they are in a scenario where they have to identify with a particular point of view, as they listen to the lecture
students can ask questions of their group member if they are unclear about something
students can be corrected by their group mates. For example, if a Palestinian thinks they are Jewish, it will be corrected early on, and therefore they’ll be better able to understand the next part of the chronology

Perhaps you’d like to share your thoughts on the benefits and costs of lecturing in high school Social Studies courses. Where do you stand in regard to whether high school teachers are obliged to prepare their HS students for college lectures, assisting them in expanding their attention spans and their note taking?

Note: I found the following web site interesting in that it lists many ways of making lectures more participatory: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58474/TFTlectures.html

2 comments:

John O'MalleyJanuary 9, 2014 at 6:16 PM
As a Social Studies teacher at South Kingstown High School I've noticed a gradual but troubling decline in my students general knowledge of the world. Without my regular teacher directed mini lectures many of my students would be clueless, content wise, about the great issues facing the world. My experience from my 17 years as a teacher is that students actually enjoy my lectures as being informative and passionate. I don't shy away from engaging in alternative complimentary methods in the classroom but the new obsession with skills being paramount over content is short sighted and risks graduating students who can read and answer questions on a particular primary source document but are so content deficient that the skills they have acquired are often at times useless in fully understanding and thinking critically about important issues. Reject the notion that reasonable,knowledgeable and passionate lectures by teachers are somehow obsolete. Fight the power of the misguided but often sincere educational 'experts'.
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JLJanuary 13, 2014 at 8:03 AM
I am enjoying this blog very much, and find that the administrator is validating his position(s) with a thorough discussion. I mostly agree with these positions and hope to be a participant in on-going discussions. I also have extensive teaching experience (science) in the public high schools, and some occassional experience at the introductory university level.
One of my concerns is an extension of the administrator's observation over a possible loss of student attention span generally and a possible associated loss of students' capacity to absorb the information in the lecture format. This is of particular concern for students who will move along to the university environment where lecture remains the predominant format for teaching and learning. College enrollments continue to increase. (I would admit to having some bias for this format at the university, as parents and students pay substantial sums for the expertise of highly credentialled professors,who deliver maximum content via the traditional lecture). What I have found in my own experience is the possible gradual evolution of some students' decreased capacity to attend to homework tasks for an extended capacity of time. This seems to be particularly true of intellectually demanding problem - solving assignments which are can be demanding and frustrating. Such assignments are, nevertheless, rich with learning fundamental applications and help to develop significant cognitive pathways for future learning. If this is actually happening, then the blog administrator's concern over less content in the classroom might be extending to less content in the after hours as well. In the meantime, employers are on record as complaining over finding sufficient qualified local talent for many of our own professional positions, and subsequently seek additional applicants abroad.
Conversations with university instructors of incoming freshman reflect some of my thinking, and I would be interested in what other folks are thinking.
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If you want to know more about this blog......,

The purpose of this Blog is to create dialogue regarding the status of HS Social Studies in RI. It is not designed to discuss elementary or Middle School issues. It is not designed to discuss HS Math issues, and it's not designed to discuss Social Studies issues in Oregon. Although readers are welcome to post on the aforementioned topics, the focus will nonetheless be on HS Social Studies in RI. I have sat through all too many generic Professional Development days, and read far too many pages in K-12 Education texts where they talk about Mrs. Brown's second grade class. Both formats expect me to apply this generic information about teaching to my HS US History class. Frequently, it was and is a stretch! Additionally, it seems to me that we have far too many people with Elementary School backgrounds making educational policy decisions that might be appropriate at the pre-HS level, but not at the HS level.

The idea for this Blog came about after my conversations with numerous HS Social Studies teachers in my capacity of observing Salve Regina student teachers at a wide variety of RI high schools. Additionally, I have many Social Studies colleagues in a variety of high schools inside and outside RI as a result of my attending Model United Nations conferences. I noticed that there were many common concerns that these teachers had in common. My sense is that these Social Studies teachers expressed their concerns and shared best practices with others in their department, but didn't necessarily have a non-NEA forum to discuss common issues with HS Social Studies teachers from other schools.

Lastly, I feel like I'm in a unique position to assist the pendulum in swinging, which I observe many HS teachers are looking forward to. I have 32 years of HS teaching under my belt; I have 5 years of experience teaching at URI, so I have some ability to evaluate how the product of RI HS Social Studies courses fares at the next level. I also have lots of experience in the Salve Regina Education Department where I have gotten a greater sense for educational reforms, some of which I support, and some of which I have serious concerns about. Additionally, I have had the opportunity to speak to many Social Studies teachers, in a wide variety of settings, and hear their concerns. Finally, I feel I'm in a unique position, because I feel like I'm a lot more free to express my opinions regarding these matters than many other teachers are in the state.

In closing, I'd like to admit the following:
1) I like to write, and I like the Blog format. I used it frequently with my URI classes, and I also, for a period of time, managed a Blog that dealt with appropriate youth soccer coaching ideas.
2) I don't like to complain without doing something about the issues. Hence, at 4 different times in my 3 decades of SKHS teaching, I wrote lengthy pieces defending SKHS, which were published in the SK newspapers. My hope is that this Blog may be a forum to express concern, but may also, eventually, lead to action to improve education for our students.
3) I'm semi-retired and have some time on my hands.