Social Studies Essay

The concept of best practices in teaching is not a new one, and the discussion of how to implement the most effective strategies in social studies education is ongoing. By definition, social studies is a curriculum design focused on the relationships among multiple disciplines such as history, geography, philosophy, and the humanities, and its purpose is to help students develop the ability to make informed decisions with a world perspective. However, due to the ever increasing pressure from high-stakes testing, teachers feel the need to focus instead on memorization of names, dates, and other facts as the primary method for teaching social studies concepts (Au, 2011). For social studies instruction to be powerful, it must be meaningful, integrative, challenging, and active (NCSS, 1993), and as teachers begin to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction, they will need to weave in strategies that promote critical thinking, a skill that is inherently challenging for many adolescents.

Executive Function in Adolescence

Definitions of executive function (EF) have changed over time, but it is commonly believed that EF is a set of mental processes that help us plan, organize, strategize, pay attention to details, and manage time. This umbrella term is used to describe differentiated yet still interrelated processes responsible for purposeful behavior focused on goal-setting and selection, organization, and planning (Anderson, 2002; Berninger et al., 2008; Meltzer, Pollica, & Barzillai, 2007). Included in this umbrella concept are mental constructs such as planning, higher-order organizational strategies, initiation, inhibition, working memory, goal selection and monitoring, self-evaluation and...

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...ffective interventions during the period of adolescence.

In education, academic success is linked with students’ mastery of several key EF’s that work together. Executive function is vital for successful cognitive functioning in the classroom as demands on working memory increase as tasks requiring greater complexity of thought appear (Anderson, 2002; Banich, 2009). For this reason, EF’s are difficult to precisely define, because they are thought to include multiple mental functions as shown in Figure 1 below. EF’s are multidimensional and there exist many models that provide varying viewpoints relative to its basic processes (Banich, 2009). The lack of consensus in the definition of the EF’s has led to competing models and theories. Larger models of EF’s include those by Anderson (2002), Barkley (2001), Brown (2005), and McCloskey, Van Divner, and Perkins (2008).