Concept Mapping and Social Studies

The beauty of concept mapping is its interactivity which is not fabulously conveyed in a static screen shot. Thus, I've done two screen shots...a before and after of sorts.

I built this concept map as a visual aid for presentation to dimensionalize how and why social studies and social sciences can be merged and amplified to develop a meaningful secondary curriculum focus to better prepare students to understand the social contract in the world around them. Communications is the key nexus which ties us all to the floating continuum of human history. Thus, communications in multiple links is the center of the main idea that defines Social Sciences Studies and connects the many disciplines and study areas to one another. Communications from the most basic physical form of human touch to the most symbolic form of cyber-social media is how we share the belief systems that form the social contract.

Social Sciences Studies embraces and is visually linked to the primary study disciplines of Economics, Government, Geography and History. Each of these recognized study areas is further visually defined by the components that comprise their study. These components are certainly not all-inclusive but are representative.

Adjunct links which overlap across the four primary above include Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Ecology and Religion and serve to demonstrate how varied the human experience is over time, geography and culture. These adjunct links provide the context in which human interaction drives behaviors and belief systems.

These eight study areas all theoretically connect to one another through communications at the center. It is how we share them that builds communities of practice between and among individuals and groups of people.

Providing deeper understanding of these essential links are the rich disciplines of Psychology, Anthropology, Arts, Sociology and Science & Technology. These disciplines intersect and overlap through communications to help us understand the richness of the human experience.

In an interactive setting with a smartboard, or pre-designed through a dynamic presentation, the the audience either participates in or visually sees how the studies are populated with their components and how they all link together. For example, we see through the links that the study of Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics connects us to Religion and Philosophy and is manifest in the Arts, perhaps in architecture and literature. As we learn more, we see that other, seemingly distinct ares, such as Science & Technology and Religion are, in fact, connected through how and what they communicate about a people. A primary demonstration of this would be architecture, which though commonly associated with the Arts, embodies cultural and social aesthetic, religion, government, sociology, ecology and technology in the construction of the great temples over the millennia of human history.

The design for this is expressly to reconnect the social sciences with each other, and to merge social studies with the social sciences. This is to elevate them in the secondary curriculum which is slowly becoming an instrument of math and science to the exclusion of the richer cultural studies. Moreover, we see how math, science, technology, innovation are enmeshed within social systems and how communications enable us to demonstrate them.

The second slide, would be ideally interactive as the audience and the presenter populate the map with real visuals of the varied symbolic components for each of the disciplines. Thus we have the written word, flags, bridges, family structure and commerce all of which are demonstrations of how we communicate with another.

It is essential for all students to be able to read, write and perform necessary mathematical functions. For some, it may even be valuable to know what a mole is (in chemistry and biology). But, unless our students know how they connect to human history, we have scant hope for a better future.