Powerful social studies

Trying to operationalize a buzz word: "powerful social studies." I need this to make sense for me and for my students.

Data points:

• Parker
  
• Brophy & Alleman (2006) have a pretty good definition of "powerful ideas" -- fundamental to discipline, not a broad topic (transportation) and not just a factoid ("the fuel used in airplanes is not the same as the fuel used in cars") but in the midrange (categories of transportation, historical progression, relative merits of what's being transported, infrastructure). This points me at ideas that are important and useful.

Thinking about this for myself, I see a core of knowledge, preferably the kind of knowledge that associates with the powerful ideas suggested by Brophy and Alleman. Along with this knowledge comes certain attitudes and abilities that also must be in place for (IMHO) "powerful social studies" to take place. Here's a cheesy little sketch of it:

So: Sure, students need to know something about history, govt/civics, econ, geography, etc. But I also want them to be

• Curious in the face of new (hist, geo, econ, govt/civ) information (attitude)
  
• Concerned when they perceive problem (injustice, inaccuracy, looming environmental collapse) (attitude)
• Critical of new information -- not accepting it at face value but always seeking to triangulate (attitude/ability -- this is a skill b/c you have to be able to operate on the information while at the same time leaving the door open to altering or reversing the info)
  
• Competent at taking action to resolve problems of information, injustice, looming environmental collapse): looking up new info, expressing oneself, etc. (ability)

And of course you address these all simultaneously -- you can't first teach the "base of knowledge" and THEN do the interesting things (curious, concerned, critical, competent) with this knowledge. Both are developed hand-in-hand.