A study of curriculum effectiveness in social studies. The Gqted Child Quarterly

Abstract: This quasi-experimental study examines the effects on student performance of a Javits-funded curriculum designed to respond to the needs of high-ability students in elementary and middle school social studies. The cur-riculum, implemented with all students in heterogeneous classrooms, addresses state standards while integrating advanced content, higher level process emphases, and a conceptual orientation. Data collection focuses on student performance in conceptual reasoning, critical thinking, and content learning and on teacher demonstration of specific desired teaching behaviors. Results demonstrate significant and important differences between treatment and com-parison groups in the area of content learning, favoring the treatment group; no significant differences are found for the small subsample of gifted students. Subanalyses yield differential results for specific units and schools, poten-tially indicating issues of treatment fidelity. Contextual challenges and implications of the study are discussed, including issues related to social studies curriculum implementation and differentiation in the current standards-based environment. Putting the Research to Use: This study provides evidence useful in practice and in further research, in terms of both its specific findings and the contextual issues that emerged in the implementation of the study. First, the study supports the idea that curriculum that integrates higher level processes and specific conceptual thinking activities with strong content may yield content gains as strong as or stronger than a more direct, knowledge-based struc