Resources for Informed Action

by Mary Ellen Daneels, Lead Teacher Mentor

John Dewey stated, "The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social life. To form habits of social usefulness and serviceableness apart from any direct social need and motive, apart from any existing social situation, is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by going through motions outside of the water." —Moral Principles In Education

In the same sense, the only way to prepare and assess if students are equipped to engage in civic life, is to engage them in civic life. As stated in a previous blog post, both the new Illinois Social Studies standards and civics requirement embrace the authentic assessment of student knowledge, skills and dispositions through informed action or service learning.

Several organizations have resources related to the proven practice of service learning/informed action. This can be a starting point for educators in the important work of measuring student growth.
  • Through funding provided by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) has published resources related to Civic Online Reasoning to help students become both wise consumers and producers of digital media.
  • In the state of Tennessee, all school districts must implement a project-based assessment in civics at least once in grades four through eight and at least once in grades nine through twelve. The Tennessee Center for Civic Learning and Engagement provides support for what such portfolio based assessments should entail.
  • The state of Washington has created an Open Source Assessment Portal for social studies that provides examples of performance based assessments K-12 across the disciplines.
  • The National Youth Leadership Council provides examples of informed action K-12. Many of the service learning projects provide rubrics to assess student investigation and preparation leading up to action as well as reflection and demonstration of learning “post action”.
  • Empowering Youth for Positive Change program from the Center for Prevention Research and Development has both rubrics and checklists for informed actions related to local public policy projects.
Do you have ideas for how to authentically assess the new Illinois Social Studies standards? Please comment below. Together, we can prepare ALL students in Illinois for college, career and civic life.

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