About The Project
Through the Alberta Education grant, Central Alberta Regional Consortium’s Social Studies Project provided in-servicing to support implementation of the new Social Studies program of studies. This site contains legacy pieces of only one facet of implementation support and is designed for teacher access to both foundational resources as well as classroom resource materials. All classroom resource materials on this site have been created by Zone 4 teachers to share with other teachers in the province.
Central Alberta Regional Consortium Social Studies Project Goals
- Provide teachers and administrators with the knowledge of the new social studies curriculum, and the skills necessary for classroom application.
- Apply an integrated design that combines zone, district and site level approaches to “optimize the potential benefits of each and drastically improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of professional development practice” (Guskey, 2000, p. 31).
- Work with all Zone 4 stakeholders to provide appropriate, effective professional development using multiple approaches that balance and infuse expertise and which recognize the collaborative nature of professional development.
- Support classroom teachers as they develop understanding of the core components and program foundations inherent in the new program of studies: values and attitudes, knowledge and understanding, skills and processes, the core concepts of citizenship and identity, multiple perspectives, issues-focused approach, strands of social studies and dimensions of thinking.
- Focus extensively on professional development that enhances leadership capacity building for each jurisdiction.
- Ensure high quality facilitators for all learning opportunities.
- Support a variety of initiatives designed to reach teachers at the “initiate” stage for implementation and who are new to teaching social studies.
- Support the “sustaining” phase for teachers of K-12 Social Studies.
- Offer learning opportunities that focus on creating grade level products, encouraging teachers to “dig deeper” into an understanding of learner outcomes.
- Offer a flexible model of professional development which can be tailored to meet specific needs.
- Create a fair and equitable distribution of initiatives throughout the zone.
- Support classroom teachers as they explore instructional and assessment strategies which will best meet general and specific learner outcomes.
- Support school administrators (including department heads/team leaders) in developing awareness and understanding of the new program of studies.
- Implement strategies designed to reach all adult learners, including the independent learner.
- Allow flexibility in the plan to also meet emerging needs of education stakeholders, recognizing the necessary balance of “tight/loose” initiatives when creating the plan.
