Powerful and Authentic Social Studies (PASS)

NCLB Strategy

Background:

Powerful and Authentic Social Studies is a program for the professional development of elementary and secondary teachers of social studies produced by David Harris and Michael Yocum from Oakland Schools (OISD, Waterford, Michigan) in partnership with the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). It was developed over three years in Michigan under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to support the Michigan Social Studies Education Project. Publication by NCSS of PASS manuals for the professional development of teachers began in the spring of 2000. Since that time Authentic Approaches, Inc. has been involved in the training of teachers to effectively use PASS in designing social studies curriculum, creating assessment tasks and in delivering high quality instruction. Program instructor and facilitator, Paul Dain, was part of the original group of teachers that was instrumental in producing the unit plans, assessment tasks, and instructional lessons that make up the PASS manuals.

There is a separate set of PASS standards for each of the three major dimensions of teaching: designing curriculum, creating assessment tasks, and conducting instruction. PASS manuals for professional development are designed for use by teachers in small groups. They are intended as a tool to help build teachers’ capacity to meet the standards for powerful and authentic social studies. The PASS professional development training program is particularly useful for school district social studies committees or teams who are reviewing existing curriculum, assessment, and instruction and who would like to revitalize social studies teaching and learning.

The manuals begin by introducing teachers to the concept of powerful and authentic teaching including research findings, which demonstrate that it raises the academic achievement of students. The manuals then guide teachers first through the researched based standards for curriculum design, then the standards for assessment tasks, and finally the standards for instruction. For each of these dimensions of teaching, teachers participating in the professional development sessions apply the standards to samples of other teachers’ work included within the manual. They then bring samples of their own work to be analyzed against the standards by colleagues in their professional development group.

Project Outcomes:

• Gain an understanding of the research based PASS standards for curriculum, assessment, and instruction.
• Development curriculum, assessment, and instruction that meet the challenging research based PASS standards.
• Develop the ability to train other professional colleagues in the PASS process.

Standards:

The PASS manuals define the standards, explain the components of each entry, and contain scoring rubrics for evaluating the work of teachers. The PASS standards are based on the criteria for authentic academic achievement.

The Excellence in Teaching for Authentic Academic Achievement Manual defines the standards, explains the components of each entry, and contains the scoring rubrics for evaluating the work of teachers.