Teaching Comparative

Thinking curriculum

Linda Spoales, who teaches in Silver Spring, Maryland, asked about the transition (now nearly 2 years old) to the "new" Advanced Placement curriculum. I suspect the question reflects her own frustrations about trying to meet the needs of her students within all the limits on her time and other resources.

"Are teachers finding it harder to incorporate all the facets of the course now that their are six countries not five?"

Yes, people who taught the course before last year are having problems creating a course to meet the demands of the "new" AP curriculum. It takes time to adjust.

Not only are there now 6 countries, but there are admonitions from the course development committee and College Board officials that comparisons, concepts and theory are more important than they once were. So it's necessary to teach about things like democratization, legitimacy, economic restructuring, and globalization. (There's an 8-page glossary in my book.)

If we expect students to learn as much detail about structures and politics as before, all of us are going to be overwhelmed, or we're going to need a full year to teach the course. I think the course is still viable as a semester course.

As important as I think it is for students to begin thinking comparatively and recognizing and analyzing perspectives other than their own, most schools and most students can't "afford" to devote a whole school year to the course. Of course, I'm also convinced that an Advanced Placement course in U.S. Government and Politics can be successfully done in a semester. (And I taught one for 10 years.)

So, making the "new" comparative curriculum work takes rethinking and I think comparative methods, theory, and concepts ought to be a guide to that rethinking.

For instance, I don't think there's any need to talk about the House of Lords in the UK unless the discussion centers on a conceptual topic.

So when there's a debate in Parliament and the press about 1.) the value of democratic elections versus the value of "non-partisan" representation of the country and 2.) the purpose of upper houses in unitary states, it becomes a legitimate topic.

I'd want to follow up with a comparison of Lords to the quasi-legislative bodies in Iran and to the upper houses in the other AP countries.

Without those theoretical and comparative elements, I'd be satisfied with assigning the paragraph or two in the textbook about the Lords.

The AP exam is still half multiple-choice. I think you can ask conceptual and theoretical questions in a multiple-choice format, but the questions are mostly testing students' knowledge base. And my analysis of the sample FRQs and the FRQs from last year's exam, indicates that students are mostly being asked to "describe" things. So even those questions are primarily testing students' knowledge.

If you're still struggling to adjust, my best advice is to carry on thoughtfully. You can figure this out.

Labels: pedagogy

posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:34 AM