Jessica Cavallaro wrote this in 2023 to show how wide-open questions, student choice and Kanban boards can bring civics to life. A new section below adds national civics results from 2022 and a randomized study of project-based learning in a government course.
Over the past 20 years, social studies have diminished in traditional K-12 education. Initially, the priority was only math and reading. As STEM gained importance, the need for engineers to work with new emerging technology rocketed through schools. This neglect of social studies left a generation of people with no knowledge of their past, their government systems, and the incredibly diverse cultures around them. So let’s talk about using Agile in the Civics Classroom.
In teaching about the past, teachers help students find the application to their lives when they struggle with the content: Why learn about the Mayflower Compact when there’s so much going on right now? And to their credit, they’re right to a degree. How will students get the knowledge they need as participating citizens who can recognize and understand the systems of power around them and navigate these systems in the future to advocate for themselves?
This is the value of Agile for a social studies classroom. Instead of teaching lessons by lecture and constructing isolated lessons on past eras, my curriculum shifted to answering: “How can the past help us navigate now?”
Why is Agile important for Civics Classroom?
Civic engagement is essential for a functioning society, especially one that is based on the people wielding power. When civics is poorly understood, or people do not see its value, people lose their power to advocate for themselves. It is of utmost importance that civics and history are engaging, empowering, and rich in the skills necessary for people to apply to their lives.
Agile is a way for people to collaborate on diverse teams instead of shuttering in silos, share information, adapt to new challenges, communicate in real time, and creatively problem-solve to achieve a shared goal. Agile teams typically use Kanban boards to visually organize their workflow, be transparent, and keep communication open. To bring Agile into educational spaces means embedding these soft skills into a content-rich curriculum.
Wide-Open Agile Questions
Great units always begin with a wide-open question. Open-ended questions open up a world of possibilities for students: They must explore all avenues of a question and settle on an answer that matters. Ideally, the question and the use of content mastery should intrigue students. Wide – Open Questions serve several purposes:
- Open-ended questions create student choice. Students feel like they are answering a question, not regurgitating their desired answer.
- Critical thinking skills are developed because there is no right answer — only the answer that can be supported by evidence.
- Students build connections from the mandated content to their world. It allows ownership of learning and answers the nagging question from middle school: “When will I ever use this information?”
- They allow real-world applications in which students connect the content to their lives. Each student learns the same content and may have the same question but will apply that question differently. When you ask a group of students: “How should power be distributed in a stable society?” and you get drastically different answers, the content has been personalized.
Content is Non-Negotiable, but Delivery Can Have Choice
Content should be delivered through different modalities to allow students more choices in their learning. Of course, there are certain documents that students must read and analyze, which are the non-negotiables in a given unit. For instance, students must read all of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution and be able to discuss the powers of the legislative branch. Choice does not mean a free-for-all. Standards and skills must still be mastered, but there could be choices with other material: Can students choose which articles to annotate and what videos they take notes from?
Differentiation and choice are essential when teaching abstract ideas, such as the systems involved in government, like checks and balances. Not all students can “see” how the branches of government interact, so let them choose the means that make it clear to them. We know our students learn in different ways. Why not teach them to search for the best option for themselves, developing critical thinking skills and understanding the content rather than struggling through materials? There must be a way to reach kids where they are and present content in an appealing way.
Student choice helps students develop metacognitive and executive functioning skills. They have to evaluate what piece they will read, if the video will hold their attention, or if they understand concepts better with graphics. In many ways, isn’t this how adults learn? Do you read long passages to see a new concept visually? Do you learn better with hands-on activities? These are incredibly important lessons that students can learn while mastering content.
Collaborative Learning
Students are given their wide-open questions; then, they are provided with the non-negotiables. Students are also provided with rubrics and a timeframe. All measures of success are provided and discussed upfront. Students must achieve content, skill, and time goals like in a job.
Now it is time to step back as the leader and become the guide. In an Agile classroom, students must use metacognitive skills to plan their projects. My students do this on their Kanban board: they take large tasks and break them into smaller steps.
They then have to negotiate who completes what and communicate the time frame based on the due date. When students begin the work, even more choices open up: How will this group choose to answer the open-ended essential questions? Can the group decide if a single government can represent the needs of all people? What ideals make revolutions successful? Students are stretched beyond the mandated content to draw connections to the real world. More choices open up: How will they justify their answer? Is everyone on the same page? This is where an Agile mindset is developed.
Agile For Content Mastery
Students collaborate, build connections, and synthesize information. Solutions that groups initially thought would be a slam dunk may hit major roadblocks, and students must be flexible enough to creatively problem-solve a new solution.
While all of this is happening, one may wonder what students are learning. They are mastering the content because they build connections and apply their knowledge to areas they care about.
Civics must be taught engagingly, focusing on how people can get involved in the system. An overarching curriculum pushed from the front of the room is lost on middle and high school kids. Students must have an interactive space to explore what civics means to them and how it affects their daily lives. By introducing the fundamentals of an agile classroom, we can empower kids to have choices and bring the lessons of government into their lives. The lessons must be open-ended, purposeful, and collaborative. Students deserve to learn marketable skills embedded in the curriculum and develop a passion for learning.
Stay Connected with Agile in the Classroom on edCircuit.
Project based learning civics: what the 2022 results and a randomized study suggest
Project-based learning civics lessons ask students to work on a question about government or citizenship over several weeks and to produce something that answers it. Jessica Cavallaro’s 2023 article above describes an agile version of that approach, with a wide-open question, non-negotiable readings, choice in how students learn them and a Kanban board for managing the work. This section looks at why civics teachers are searching for such approaches and at what a leading study of project-based learning in a government course found.
Why the question matters
The National Assessment of Educational Progress released its 2022 civics results for eighth graders on May 3, 2023. According to the National Assessment Governing Board’s release, the average score fell 2 points from 2018, the first decline since the assessment began in 1998. Twenty-two percent of eighth graders scored at or above the Proficient level, and nearly one-third scored below the Basic level, which the board describes as a level at which students likely cannot describe the structure and function of government. More students than in 2018 also reported low confidence in their civics knowledge and skills. Cavallaro’s opening argument, that civics has to show students how knowledge helps them act, speaks directly to that last finding.
What a randomized study of project-based learning found
The strongest evidence comes from a study of Knowledge in Action, a project-based version of Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. Government and Politics and AP Environmental Science. Anna Rosefsky Saavedra and Amie Rapaport, members of the research team, summarized the results in an analysis in The 74 published in April 2021. The article calls the study a randomized controlled trial evaluation comparing project-based classes with typical classes, and it does not say what unit was randomized. The study included 3,645 students, 74 teachers and 68 schools in five large, mostly urban districts, and the George Lucas Educational Foundation funded it. The researchers estimated that 45 percent of students in the project-based classes would score 3 or higher on the AP exam, a score that can earn college credit, compared with 37 percent in typical classes, a gap of 8 percentage points. The difference held in each district and across groups defined by course and household income.
Three limits are worth stating. The study covered two AP courses, so it does not show that the same gain would appear in a regular eighth-grade civics class. The teachers received a four-day summer institute, four full days of professional development during the year and on-demand virtual coaching, which is more support than most schools provide. And the teachers themselves reported difficulty with group work and with pacing the curriculum. The summary comes from the researchers rather than an independent reviewer, and the full report was not opened for this section, so a district weighing the approach should read it.
How Cavallaro’s elements fit the evidence
Cavallaro’s description shares several features with project-based courses: a driving question, a defined body of required content, student choices about how to learn it and rubrics shared at the start. Cavallaro’s insistence that content is non-negotiable matters for civics in particular. Students read all of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, for example, before choosing how to explore the legislative branch’s powers. Four planning steps follow from Cavallaro’s description and from the limits above.
- Write the question and the required readings together. A question such as how power should be distributed in a stable society works only when students must use specific documents to answer it.
- Plan the pacing before the project starts. Because teachers in the study named pacing as a challenge, set checkpoints on the Kanban board and agree on what each checkpoint produces.
- Teach group work directly. Assign roles, practice how to disagree and check each team’s progress on the board each week.
- Assess both the content and the reasoning. Short quizzes on required readings protect the content, while a rubric on use of evidence judges the argument.
What leaders can decide
A principal or social studies lead can start small by converting one unit, giving the teacher time to plan it and collecting both student work and comparison data from a similar unit. Because the study involved sustained training and coaching, budgeting for that support matters as much as buying materials. Teachers who want more on the approach can read Cavallaro’s article on wide-open questions, which explains how to write the driving question.
