Overview

How to Use the AERO Social Studies Standards, Benchmarks, and Suggested Topic Menus to Design Units

AERO Social Studies Overview

AERO social studies standards and benchmarks focus on key ideas and principles that students should learn, while rarely specifying content. This approach was adopted for two reasons. First, the greatest risk inherent in the standards movement (and one that is especially pronounced in social studies) is that instruction focuses on content only. Like all excellent teachers, the Project AERO team has a higher aspiration and vision for social studies than mere learning of people, places, dates, "facts." We envision schools using AERO to develop social studies curricula that require thoughtfulness, reflection, and valuation and are based upon problem-solving and social criticism.

The second reason that these standards and benchmarks prescribe little content is to recognize the wide range of types of schools that will use these standards and benchmarks: international schools, American overseas schools, American schools in the United States. With differing and diverse student bodies, these schools will have to draw on content that fits the needs of the specific schools, honors the requirements of essential stakeholders (parents, national governments, universities where their students matriculate) and serves the students themselves. To this final end, any content chosen must, in addition to being suitable for the instruction of specific standards and benchmarks, simultaneously meet the students at their social, ethnic, religious, and geographic station and broaden their horizons to other possibilities.
In recognition of the widely varying environments of American/international schools, the AERO social studies standards and benchmarks have been written to give schools a high level of flexibility in developing curriculum. They focus on key ideas and principles in social studies without specifying the content that should be learned by students so they can gain understanding of the key ideas. At the same time, the AERO team also recognized the value of providing content suggestions to guide teachers and curriculum coordinators as they develop units that will bring students to accomplishment of the standards and benchmarks. To that end, a set of suggested social studies topics has been developed.
The sample topic menus support the standards and benchmarks but are not intended to prescribe specific topics. Benchmarks need to be taught through specific content, and the sample topic menus provide possibilities across time and from around the world. These sample topics also illuminate the benchmarks. Individual social studies departments and school divisions can draw on these topics for ideas and illumination. The final topic for any unit should meet high standards of suitability for the benchmarks themselves and high standards of appropriateness for individual schools and their constituents', especially their students', needs. A final purpose of the sample topics menus is to encourage, by way of suggesting possible topics, schools to have an international vision in the development of their social studies curriculum.

Also on this CD, readers will find a "How To" guide, a unit development template and several sample units that were designed by using the standards, benchmarks, and suggested topics.