What is an ISSUE An issue is an

What is an ISSUE? An issue is an important subject that people arguing about or discussing. Collius Dictionary (1995) 1

What is an ISSUE? Political Education Disagreements over: Goals - What purposes would a given action serve? Values - In what way should we act or not act? Methods - How should we do it? Results - Was it the right outcome? the fairest? the best? Robert Strading & Alex Porter (1978) 2

What is an ISSUE? Social Studies • Public issues - problems or value dilemmas persisting throughout history and across cultures • Public issues current events • Public issues are the outgrowth of private decisions Donald W. Oliver, Fred M. Newmann & Laurel R. Singlton (1992) 3

Issues-Centered Approach Features • Emphasize questions that have no right answers • Emphasize thoughtfulness and depth • Discipline-based and interdisciplinary-based • Contains both personal and public components Ronald W. Evaus (1992) 4

Issues-Centered Approach Methods • Identifying and defining the problem • The use of probing questions • Identifying value assumptions • Identifying alternatives and predicting consequences • Leading and justifying a decision Engle and Ochoa (1992) 5

Rationales for Issues-Centered Approach People learn as they think, especially as they reflect on problems that are real to them. Dervey (1993) & Shaver (1977) 6

Rationales for Issues-Centered Approach • Students can “feel” the real problem • Students are motivated to deal with the problem and are interested in a solution • Effective in illustrating private issue as analogy to a public one (many public issues are the outgrowth of private decisions) 7

Reasons for the Limited Acceptance of the Problems Approach Teacher • Teachers are inexperienced • Used to content-oriented teaching • Assessment problems - test & testing programs always feature the ”right answer” • Availability of appropriate cases 8

• Teachers are afraid of not finding the correct answer • Analysis of controversial issues unsuitable for the young and immature students • Individual teachers must have certain attitudes towards subject matter • Conflicts of values - the most fundamental pedagogical problems Richard E. Gross (1989) 9

School • Failure of school administrators to help promote the problem approach • Difficult to support team teaching (time-table arrangement) Richard E. Gross (1989) 10

Government • Lack of sufficient in-service programs to support curriculum change • Lack of financial support to schools for producing instructional materials Richard E. Gross (1989) 11