THE STUDY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AT SECONDARY LEVEL: A CRITICAL APPROACH

Córdoba Capital

Conferencia; Professional Development Conference for English Teachers; 2009

Fundación British School-Colegio Mark Twain, e In-English Training and Translation

The didactic model presented here encourages content-subject teachers to stop being so deeply concerned about WHAT information they transmit to their students and to start being instead facilitators of learning (Pugh, Pawan & Antommarchi, 2000). The model aims mainly at Social science subjects and proposes that facts respond to and should be explained through a hierarchy of causes and consequences, similarities and differences, and continuity and change. In order to explain this hierarchy, hypotheses should first be established; then, sources of evidence should be analyzed to decide upon the viability of the hypotheses; and finally, critical thinking should be fostered to demonstrate the validity of the information and thus formulate explanations (Hernández, Pibernat & Santacana, 1998) and adopt a stance. The ultimate aim is the students` independent construction of knowledge which will enable them to enlarge and improve their previous knowledge, to develop higher order enquiry skills and, above all, to develop critical opinions about the world around them.