How should the diverse perspectives of community members influence the development of civic solutions?
In this lesson, students will identify and interview stakeholders with a diverse array of perspectives on the issue of water quality. They will use what they learn from their interviews to make their solution plans more democratic (and effective).
What are stakeholders?
- Discover what stakeholders are
- Practice identifying stakeholder groups for a given issue
- Identify stakeholder groups for the issue of water quality
- Create a list of stakeholders they know (or know of) that might be willing to share their perspectives
How can we collect stakeholder perspectives?
- Consider the strengths and limitations of collecting stakeholder perspectives via interview
- Decide what makes a “strong” interview question
- Determine best practices for conducting an interview
- Practice writing strong interview questions and using effective interview techniques
- Collectively write questions for upcoming stakeholder interviews
- Interview community members from different stakeholder groups
How can we take stakeholder perspectives into account while designing solutions to community problems?
- Analyze the results of their stakeholder interviews
- Explore ways to balance conflicting stakeholder perspectives
- Learn about ways to involve stakeholders in their solution plans
Discipline: Social Studies
Sub-discipline(s): Civics
Grade level: 9-12
Summative Performance Task
Description: The students will reflect on key takeaways from their stakeholder interviews and consider how they could alter or add to their solution plans to better reflect the perspectives of multiple stakeholder groups.
Assessment method(s): Discussion; essay
Assessment criteria:
- Did the student recognize the potential intended and unintended consequences of their solution plan?
- Did the student recognize how different stakeholder groups could be impacted by their solution plan? (both positively and negatively)?
- Could the student generate ideas for how their solution plan could be altered to better accommodate and/or involve stakeholder perspectives?
- Did the student recognize the value of their stakeholder interviews?
- Did the student identify unforeseen obstacles or unintended consequences that they should account for when designing their solution plan?
Taking Informed Action
Description: After considering how they could change their solution plans to better reflect stakeholder perspectives, the students will write “elevator pitches” about their solution plans, tailored to different stakeholder groups. They may give their speeches to real stakeholders.
Assessment method(s):
Speech
Assessment criteria:
- Were the student’s elevator pitches significantly different from one another?
- Did the student demonstrate an understanding of each stakeholder group’s perspective in the way the elevator pitches were written?
- Did the student propose feasible ways that each stakeholder group could be involved in their solution plan?
Types of activities featured in this lesson plan...
C3 Standards
- D3.1.9-12. Gather relevant information from multiple sources representing a wide range of views while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the sources to guide the selection.
- D3.2.9-12. Evaluate the credibility of a source by examining how experts value the source.
- D3.4.9-12. Refine claims and counterclaims attending to precision, significance, and knowledge conveyed through the claim while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both.
- D4.1.9-12. Construct arguments using precise and knowledgeable claims, with evidence from multiple sources, while acknowledging counterclaims and evidentiary weaknesses.
- D4.4.9-12. Critique the use of claims and evidence in arguments for credibility.
- D4.7.9-12. Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
Interdisciplinary Connections
Give your students a more integrated educational experience
Overlapping standards and skills
- History: One of the activities in this lesson highlights the similarities between oral history and present day interviews. This activity could be expanded into a full-fledged exploration of the credibility of different kinds of primary sources, past and present.
- History: One of the main themes of this lesson is exploring the value and origins of multiple perspectives. It would be appropriate to precede or follow this lesson with activities about the importance of studying history from multiple perspectives.
- English: If you choose to have your students write an essay for their summative performance task, consider collaborating with an English teacher for instructional and/or assessment purposes. Similarly, if you require your students to write short summaries or analysis essays for their stakeholder interviews, they will need to use their English writing skills to help them.
- English/Journalism: In this lesson, students will practice interview skills, including writing questions, generating follow-up questions, taking and organizing notes, communicating with interviewees, following interview etiquette, and summarizing/analyzing the results of an interview. Developing these skills may help your students fulfill English and/or journalism education goals.
- Science: When thinking about and interviewing stakeholders, you may choose to highlight scientists as stakeholders. While the students will be acting as scientists themselves by collecting and/or analyzing data about a local body of water, their findings may also interest other local scientists. The students’ research may also be related to what other scientists are already doing. Therefore, the scientist’s stakeholder perspective may be especially helpful to your students as they try to design better solution plans.
Relevant lessons from other disciplines
English Lesson: How do we write an effective paragraph using CREW?