Social Studies Supervisors' Rankings of the Ncss Curriculum Guidelines

Abstract

This paper presents data from a study which sought to determine how social studies curriculum supervisors ranked the NCSS Curriculum Guideline statements in terms of their importance. A sample from the NCSS Social Studies Supervisors Association was given a Q-sort task in which they were asked to rank the 66 Guideline statements from most important to least important. The results indicate that dealing with student concerns within the context of the real social world are very important while systematic program evaluation and the organization of learning experiences are not as critical. The supervisors in general seemed to prefer general or globally stated items to the more specific task-oriented ones. The findings will be helpful to curriculum supervisors and advisory committees using the Guidelines as well as the NCSS Committee which is working on a revision of the Guidelines.