The Three-Legged Race

Abstract

A healthy democratic society requires citizens with both the knowledge to understand the problems it faces and the dispositions to solve them. Yet recent studies have shown that citizens in the United States are losing the democratic habits required to solve social problems. Moreover, results on standardized assessments in United States history including the National Assessment of Educational Progress bear out the fact that the historical knowledge of typical American high school graduates is woefully lacking (Gaudelli, 2002; Shenkman, 2008). Some blame teachers for failing to teach students meaningful content, and others counter that students' poor performance signals a problem with the test's construction rather than with teachers. This dissertation was designed to inform the debate through a systematic study of the orientations of history and social studies teachers in Massachusetts, the skills and constructs measured by the MCAS-US history test, and the relationship between the two. This study considered the complex relationship between teachers' orientations and the skills and constructs measured on the MCAS-US test via two research designs. First, a survey of Massachusetts history and social studies teachers was conducted to analyze the orientations from which teachers approach the subject. Second, a content analysis of the MCAS-US test was conducted to identify the skills and constructs assessed on the test. Both the survey and the content analysis were carried out through the theoretical lens of democratic pragmatism, and both employed the same framework for understanding the varied ways that history and social studies is taught. Findings point to a very clear misalignment between orientations of history and social studies teachers and the skills and constructs measured by the MCAS-US test. This conjures up an image of a three-legged race where the two participants appear to work against one another. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study, including ways that test developers and history and social studies teachers can make progress toward the shared goal of improving civic knowledge and participation.