John Gunn and Soribel Genao were awarded $900K by the U.S. Department of Education to support their grant entitled, Promoting Teachers’ Teaching of Global Studies through the Development of Teachers’ Curricular Design Teams. Over the 2011-2012 academic year the grant will pay eight teachers in two schools to develop two high quality global studies curriculum units. Gunn and Genao will collaborate with the teams to conceive and develop high quality global studies units and analyze the resulting student work. 

Although teaches will be presented with a proposed unit format, (i.e., units consisting of multiple lessons focused on students learning targeted concepts and a generalization and culminating with a performance-based summative writing assessment) the form the units take will be an outcome of a negotiation among the participants. Gunn and Genao are interested in understanding the conceptual and social challenges collaborative curriculum design work poses for teachers working in New York's public high schools in light of the increasing evidence of the importance of teachers' professional communities in improving the quality of instruction and student learning. This work is also significant because of the challenge the New York State Global Studies Regents exam has posed for teachers and students in New York City schools in general and the participating teachers' schools in particular.   

Both professors will be able to compare the afore-mentioned teachers' design team work with similar work funded by the grant. “These two grants [15K from the QC Center for the Improvement of Education grant and 900K from the USDOE] will fund six teacher curricular design groups that are wonderful sources for data to explore the design experiment research question, “ explains Gunn.  “The learning also involves a good dose of self-study for teacher educators [such as me] as we try to understand how to help social studies teachers try to balance their intellectual strengths and interests with those of other social studies teachers.”  Gunn and Genao hope the design team forums will allow teachers to build effective professional dispositions while addressing the challenges posed by the breadth of social studies content to improvement of student learning in social studies.  “This mix is difficult, but necessary. It is compounded by the fact that schools and teachers are under a great amount of pressure to raise test scores,” says Genao.   While Gunn and Genao expect the teachers' curricula to improve, they are extremely interested in understanding the micro-processes and challenges collaborative curriculum development entails for social studies teachers and administrators.