What does it mean to be civic-ready? Uncovering citizenship conceptualizations in US states that require the ‘citizenship test’

2020 ◽  
pp. 174619792094997
Author(s):  
Aaron Paul Johnson
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
State Standards ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Test Model ◽  
Multiple Choice Questions ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Civics Education ◽  
Exclusionary Practices ◽  
Us States ◽  
Attention To Diversity

There is a growing trend within civics education within the United States to adopt the USCIS naturalization civics exam (commonly referred to as the ‘citizenship test’), which consists of 100 multiple choice questions, to determine the civic readiness of students. This study explores civics education within eight US states that have adopted the ‘citizenship test’ model through the lens of citizenship conceptualizations evidenced within their high school civics state standards. Utilizing a directed content analysis, the researcher located more than 230 standards within three citizenship discourse categories: civic republican, liberal, and reconstructionist. Citizenship within the examined state standards, was largely conceptualized as civic republican in orientation (96%) and nested within untroubled assumptions of US society and desires for a common American identity that often crowded out attention to diversity and conflict and in doing so, mirrored exclusionary practices common to standardized, high-stakes assessments including the USCIS naturalization civics exam.

The Common Core and the Evasion of Curriculum

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (3) ◽  
pp. 666-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Guillory
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Common Core ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Standards ◽  
National Standards ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right ◽  
K 12

Although the common core state standards initiative was adopted with little controversy in forty-eight states, it soon became the target of attacks both on the right, for the mistaken perception that public education was being taken over by the federal government, and on the left, in response to the institution of an all-too-real draconian testing regime that served the needs more of the testing companies and other corporate agents than of students or teachers. Despite these attacks, it seems likely that the initiative will prevail in most states, perhaps both for better and for worse. My position is that real national standards—not simply state standards— are a desirable goal for the United States today, and long overdue. The “local control” of public education by states and school districts has been, let us admit, the greatest flaw of the K-12 system and a powerful obstruction to the reform of that system. On the other hand, I agree with many (Bryant; Hacker and Dreifus; Ravitch) who see the Common Core as a misguided effort at reform, fatally undermined by the use of punitive, high-stakes testing as the driver of implementation (Loveless). Opting for this strategy, the promoters of the Common Core unfortunately imposed a top-down procedure just where it is least appropriate. Testing, by its very nature, ought to arise from the classroom, the scene of a unique relation between teacher and students. This is not to deny that universal testing is possible and even necessary but rather to acknowledge that the more distant tests are from the scene of teaching, the more limited their informational value.

scholarly journals Human rights and global citizenship in social studies standards in the United States.

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatoli Rapoport
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
Citizenship Education ◽  
Global Citizenship ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Standards ◽  
Us States ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

There is a synergetic complementary relationship between human rights education (HRE) and global citizenship education (GCE). Historically, however, HRE began to develop earlier than GCE. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and to what degree a human rights narrative in the social studies standards of individual US states facilitates the introduction of the concept of global citizenship, and whether social studies standards connect human rights and global citizenship, contextually or thematically. The analysis demonstrates that despite an increased visibility of both concepts, state standards still fall short of demonstrating a clear connection between human rights and global citizenship or utilising a human rights discourse and paradigm to advocate for a broader exposure and acceptance of global citizenship

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players: The Origins of Professional Baseball and the American Identity

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
National Association ◽  
American Values ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Formative Experience ◽  
The 19Th Century

Baseball has been proudly coined “the national pastime” for nearly its entire existence. The sport evolved from several English bat and ball games and quickly became part of the American identity in the 19th century. Only a few decades after the first baseball club formed in New York City, amateur clubs began to organize into loose confederations as competition and glory entered a game originally associated with fraternal leisure. Soon after, clubs with enough fans and capital began to pay players for their services and by 1871 and league of solely professionals emerged. Known as The National Professional Base Ball Players Association, this league would only last five seasons but would lay the groundwork for the American tradition of professional sports that exists today. In this paper, I analyze the development of the sport of baseball into a professional industry alongside the concurrent industrialization and urbanization of the United States. I used primary documents from the era describing the growing popularity of the sport as well as modern historians’ accounts of early baseball. In addition, I rely on sources focusing on the changing American identity during this period known as The Gilded Age, which many attribute to be the beginnings of the modern understanding of American values. Ultimately, I conclude that baseball’s progression into a professional league from grassroots origins compared to a broader trend of the ideal American being viewed as urban, skilled, and affluent despite the majority not able to fit this characterization. How certain attributes become inherent to a group identity and the types of individuals able to communicate these messages are also explored. My analysis of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players provides insight on the formative experience of the modern collective American identity and baseball’s place in it as our national pastime.

Best of Five MCQs for the Acute Medicine SCE

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Multiple Choice Questions ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
High Quality ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Acute Medicine ◽  
Acute Conditions

Best of Five MCQs for the Acute Medicine SCE is a new revision resource designed specifically for this high-stakes exam. Containing over 350 Best of Five multiple choice questions, this dedicated guide will help candidates to prepare successfully. The content mirrors the SCE in Acute Medicine Blueprint to ensure candidates are fully prepared for all the topics that may appear in the exam. Topics range from how to manage acute problems in cardiology or neurology to managing acute conditions such as poisoning. All answers have full explanations and further reading to ensure high quality self-assessment and quick recognition of areas that require further study.

El tú como un “mask”: Voseo and Salvadoran and Honduran Identity in the United States

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Woods ◽  
Susana V. Rivera-Mills
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Central American ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Strategic Approach ◽  
American Spanish ◽  
Linguistic Attitudes

AbstractThis sociolinguistic study explores linguistic attitudes of Salvadorans and Hondurans living in the United States towards the use of voseo, a distinguishing feature of Central American Spanish. Using sociolinguistic interviews and ethnographic observations, the Central American experience in Oregon and Washington is examined regarding linguistic attitudes toward voseo and tuteo and how these influence Salvadoran and Honduran identity in U.S. communities that are primarily Mexican-American. Initial findings point to participants developing ethnolinguistic masks and an expanded use of tú as a strategic approach to integration into the established Mexican-American community, while at the same time maintaining a sense of Central American identity.

Interpretative theories as roadmaps to constitutional identity: The case of the United States

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
OR BASSOK
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
Patient Protection ◽  
American National Identity ◽  
Constitutional Identity

AbstractAs long as the American Constitution serves as the focal point of American identity, many constitutional interpretative theories also serve as roadmaps to various visions of American constitutional identity. Using the debate over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I expose the identity dimension of various interpretative theories and analyse the differences between the roadmaps offered by them. I argue that according to each of these roadmaps, courts’ authority to review legislation is required in order to protect a certain vision of American constitutional identity even at the price of thwarting Americans’ freedom to pursue their current desires. The conventional framing of interpretative theories as merely techniques to decipher the constitutional text or justifications for the Supreme Court’s countermajoritarian authority to review legislation and the disregard of their identity function is perplexing in view of the centrality of the Constitution to American national identity. I argue that this conventional framing is a result of the current understanding of American constitutional identity in terms of neutrality toward the question of the good. This reading of the Constitution as lacking any form of ideology at its core makes majority preferences the best take of current American identity, leaving constitutional theorists with the mission to justify the Court’s authority to diverge from majority preferences.

A Natural-Language-Processing-Based Procedure for Generating Distractors for Multiple-Choice Questions

2021 ◽  
pp. 016327872110469
Author(s):  
Peter Baldwin ◽  
Janet Mee ◽  
Victoria Yaneva ◽  
Miguel Paniagua ◽  
Jean D’Angelo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language Processing ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Incorrect Response ◽  
The United States ◽  
Choice Test ◽  
Multiple Choice Questions ◽  
Response Options ◽  
Medical Licensing

One of the most challenging aspects of writing multiple-choice test questions is identifying plausible incorrect response options—i.e., distractors. To help with this task, a procedure is introduced that can mine existing item banks for potential distractors by considering the similarities between a new item’s stem and answer and the stems and response options for items in the bank. This approach uses natural language processing to measure similarity and requires a substantial pool of items for constructing the generating model. The procedure is demonstrated with data from the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE®). For about half the items in the study, at least one of the top three system-produced candidates matched a human-produced distractor exactly; and for about one quarter of the items, two of the top three candidates matched human-produced distractors. A study was conducted in which a sample of system-produced candidates were shown to 10 experienced item writers. Overall, participants thought about 81% of the candidates were on topic and 56% would help human item writers with the task of writing distractors.

American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Gerber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Illegal Immigration ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
National Character ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Anglo American

American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction traces three massive waves of immigration from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, and analyzes the nature of immigration as a purposeful, structured activity, attitudes supporting or hostile to immigration, policies and laws regulating immigration, and the nature of and prospects for assimilation. There have been some dramatic developments since 2011, including the crisis along the southwestern border and the intense conflict over illegal immigration. The population of the United States has diverse sources: territorial acquisition through conquest and colonialism, the slave trade, and voluntary immigration. Many Americans value the memory of immigrant ancestors, and are sentimentally inclined to immigrant strivings. Alongside this sits the perception that immigration destabilizes social order, cultural coherence, job markets, and political alignments. The nearly 250 years of American nationhood has been characterized by both support for openness to immigration and embrace of a cosmopolitan formulation of American identity and for restrictions and assertions of belief in a core Anglo-American national character.

scholarly journals The frequency of item writing flaws in multiple-choice questions used in high stakes nursing assessments

2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (8) ◽  
pp. 662-671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Tarrant ◽  
Aimee Knierim ◽  
Sasha K. Hayes ◽  
James Ware
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Multiple Choice Questions ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Item Writing
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