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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Working-Class Students And Historical Inquiry, Leslie Schuster
Working-Class Students And Historical Inquiry, Leslie Schuster
Faculty Publications
For the past twelve years, I have been teaching a lower division introductory historical methods course that uses active learning to introduce students to the issues and practices of historical methods, the "how to" of historical inquiry, research and writing. While there are many models for such a course, including the one described by Jeffrey Merrick in the February 2006 issue of this journal, the design of such a course at my institution requires consideration of an often-overlooked dimension. The student body at Rhode Island College (RIC) is primarily working class, mirroring a significant transformation in the traditional college student …
Understanding Resistance To Standardization In Education: The Tragedy Of The Commons As A Theoretical Framework, Grinell Smith, Colette Rabin
Understanding Resistance To Standardization In Education: The Tragedy Of The Commons As A Theoretical Framework, Grinell Smith, Colette Rabin
Faculty Publications
The purpose of this paper is to articulate how a theory, developed in 1968 by Garrett Hardin to describe how shared resources, or “commons” can become depleted, also elucidates the mechanism by which standardization of educational outcomes and assessment have come to dominate current education discourse. We then present results of a case study of a school struggling to succeed within a context of a district’s hyper-focus on standardized measures of success, and employ the theory to illustrate its usefulness to explain what we found at the school site. We believe this theoretical framework provides interesting perspectives on current trends …