Texas College and Career Readiness Standards

The College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) define the competencies and skills graduating high school students must possess in order to be successful in higher education and beyond. The standards represent the best consensus of K-12 educators and higher education faculty. Standards have been developed in four subject areas: Mathematics, Science, English language arts, and Social Studies. A fifth set of standards called cross disciplinary standards has also been developed.

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Closing the Circle: Infusing Social Studies College and Career Readiness Standards into the Texas History Course

Gene Preuss (University of Houston – Downtown)

Many college and university students take Texas history courses as part of their teacher certification program and training. While textbook publishers and, by extension, faculty have embedded pedagogical and anagogical learning tools into the classroom environment by infusing study aids into the textbook, this is not true for Texas history texts. Instead, Texas history texts tend to be insular and ignore larger national and international events, even when they directly influence the history of the state. Moreover, there is little effort in the Texas history texts to tie skills that are expected of teachers, including examination and evaluation of primary source documents. Finally, even in the better textbooks, there is more emphasis on the sixty-year period between 1830 and 1890 than on the twentieth century, or any other period. In sum, the Texas history course does little to prepare future teachers to teach social studies. This project has two phases: First, conduct a survey of secondary history teachers and college-level history faculty to determine whether college-level history courses prepared social studies teachers with the skills needed in the middle- and high-school classroom.

History Survey Project (HSP)

Keith Erekson (University of Texas – El Paso)

The History Survey Project (HSP) aims to explore, understand, and improve teaching of the U.S. history survey course. In the state of Texas, all college students are required to complete 6 hours of U.S. history coursework, but these "surveys" are taught in five different settings: universities, community colleges, early college high schools, dual credit classrooms, and AP history classes. This course, in turn, serves as the primary, comprehensive training that future history teachers receive in preparation to teach U.S. history in eighth (to 1877) or eleventh (since 1877) grades. Yet, there is virtually no coordination between teachers in the different settings. Thus, this course is crucial for the training of future teachers and the success of all college students.
The HSP will create a working group of teachers from each of the five settings that will examine the goals, standards, and requirements for each setting in order to create common expectations for teaching the history survey. Onto this basic structure we will integrate recent findings from the scholarship of teaching and learning, an international body of literature that draws from disciplinary-specific pedagogy and cognitive science. In the end, we aim to create free, online resources based on best practices from the classroom, findings from the scholarship of teaching and learning in history, and the Career and College Readiness Standards in the Social Studies. We hope the resources will be used by all faculty who simultaneously teach the survey and train future history teachers.

An Investigation Responding to Educators' Needs for Increased Social Studies CCRS Equity and Access

Emily Summers (Texas State University - San Marcos)

According to the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents, the need for identifying appropriate educational approaches, utilizing ongoing research, and providing educational services for the Hispanic community has never been greater; yet, in Texas, we have minimal college and career readiness documents in Spanish. This 18-month, four-phase study will investigate and respond to educators' needs for increased linguistic and geographic social studies CCRS equity and access. I will create bilingual Spanish/English, web-based resources aligned to a needs assessment of educators in two urban, two suburban, and two rural Texas school districts with established or growing numbers of students identified as ELLs. All of the social studies CCRS will be included, and the study may widen their use and appeal by translating them into Spanish. While the initial target audience will be limited to six school districts and two sections of pre-service K-8 teachers, the final target audience for the products will be social studies teachers anywhere in Texas who teach in English and/or Spanish.

Community Based Research Projects: CCRS Standards in Action

Karon LeCompe - Baylor University

CCRS in Action is a collaborative statewide initiative to engage secondary preservice teachers in community based research projects that seek to employ the interrelated disciplines and skills of the College and Career Readiness Standards in social studies. Through this multifaceted project, future secondary teachers will engage in the kind of research that promotes deeper understanding of the structure of social studies disciplines, greater pedagogical understanding, and a thorough knowledge of the complex issues faced by community members at various socio-economic levels. We will involve preservice teachers in the project, however, our target audience will be social studies methods faculty at all institutions that grant teacher licensure in Texas. Our objective is for a select group of secondary social studies methods classes to complete community based research projects utilizing CCRS standards. Those projects will undergo a rigorous review by faculty familiar with the CCRS standards. The projects that “rise to the top” in terms of implementation of the standards, exemplify high academic quality and practicality in practice will be showcased both in presentation and electronic form. Specific standards applicable to the projects will be those that closely align with community investigation. For example, a preservice teacher might use GIS tools to analyze resources within a designated community or investigate a community’s history through primary documents or evaluate a local community’s economic resources. These projects can engage preservice teachers in civic education based on the CCRS standards and provide them with the kinds of experiences that will transfer to their future students.

The Role of Social Sciences in Feeding the World

Gary Wingenbach & Kevin Fath (Texas A&M University – College Station)

Texas A&M University has a vested interest in the ability of both university faculty and secondary teachers to prepare their students to successfully meet the challenges of the 21st century.

In serving its mandate, Texas A&M University is dedicated to developing young people for career success in a globalized world. The Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communications (ALEC), the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture, and the Office of International Outreach are uniquely positioned to provide a professional development seminar, “The Role of Social Sciences in Feeding the World,” as a model for addressing the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) in teacher preparation.

Understanding the interplay between social science concepts in economics, culture, technology and the environment is crucial to successfully addressing problems of world hunger, underdevelopment, and the social unrest and conflict that hunger and poverty engenders. Participating Texas A&M faculty have extensive experience in educational leadership, research, and outreach in culturally diverse classrooms and have executed related programs in many areas of the world (e.g., Peru, Guatemala, Rwanda, Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Pakistan). The proposed seminar will address CCRS I – IV for social studies by providing real-world context and experiences, linked with practical classroom applications.

The proposed two-day seminar will begin with a keynote speaker addressing the importance of social sciences in the global marketplace. Subsequent presentations will focus on developing global competence in education and highlight Texas A&M programs in international agricultural development that require CCRS components.

Resources and Materials