Key Curriculum Developments in Later Iterations

• In Event: Advanced Placement Government in Poverty-Impacted Urban Settings: Multidisciplinary Research on Access, Learning, Literacy, and Engagement

Abstract

Objective and perspective. As our PBL-AP design progressed yearly from one iteration to the next, the research team strove to learn from the data and incorporate it in a revised design. This paper examines three curriculum problems that arose in years 3 and 4, as we migrated to urban school systems, and that were addressed in the revision during year 5 and will be implemented and investigated in year 6 (2013-14).

Methods & Data Sources: (see summary)

Findings and their Significance: The first concerns the identification of the structure of the APGOV course. We use “structure” as specified by Bruner (1960) and Schwab (1964). The identification of both substantive and syntactical structures was a response to the teaching-learning problem posed on the AP platform by the impossibly vast array of tested topics: The question became: Which few topics can anchor and facilitate the rest? As Schwab wrote, “To know what structure underlies a given body of knowledge is to know what problems we shall face in imparting this knowledge.” Without this focus, we learned, instruction was dispersed. This structure will be presented in detail and includes federalism (substantive structure) and constitutional reasoning (syntactical structure).

The second is the identification of the course’s core texts—media that engage and represent the structure and occupy a central and unavoidable place in the tested AP material. In the parlance of the Common Core, these are “informational texts”; but in the parlance of Socratic Seminars (e.g., Brann, 1979) these should approach the standard of literary works brimming with ideas, issues, and values— powerful texts. Working with teachers across five years, we identified the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Federalist Papers 10 and 51, and Locke’s Second Treatise. But there are also the textbook and web-based texts, which are the information sources that teachers and students rely on as “background” for explanations of, say, the federal court system or congressional committees. As a solution, the identification of core texts is another response to the vast universe of the tested topics but also to the literacy difficulties we encountered in urban schools in years 3-5. The question became: Which few texts are essential and generative?

The first two developments arise from the formidable constraint AP coursework puts on meaningful learning: the sheer quantity and breadth of topics. The solutions aim for deeper learning of core concepts and robust engagement with core texts. The third development arises from observing in the initial years that students could learn (at some level) the structures and functions of US government and politics without developing as political actors on the public stage, with views and arguments of their own. Democracy relies on the “consent of the governed,” quoting the Declaration, which requires political autonomy: the capacity to make un-coerced decisions. The team decided to build into each project opportunities for students to drop their assigned roles and decide for themselves what to believe and what to do—to determine their own political views—and in this way to cultivate political autonomy.

Authors

• Walter Parker, University of Washington - Seattle

• Jane C Lo, University of Washington - Seattle