Weber: Testing and Diagnosing Social Science Literacy

Journal of Social Science Education:

Volume 10, Number 3, pp 3-5, © JSSE 2011, ISSN 1618-5293

A year ago the Journal of Social Science Education 4/2010 invites to debate the foundation of social science literacy. What are the competences, and ‘what are’ the contents, and individual needs to understand the relations, systems and orders of society, economy and politics? What helps to make autonomously found decisions and responsible judgements in individual and social life? What kind of abilities are needed for autonomous action within ones own life in order to participate within the given frames of society, economy and politics, in shaping them or in creating new rules. Search and discussion of the relevant concepts and competences in the domain of social science education are going on. Nevertheless the research on testing and diagnosing social science literacy is carried as well – despite the absence of a consensus on content.
Aiming at establishing a content consensus brings about controversial and vivid debates. On the one hand a minimum of agreed standards is the foundation of professionalism and relevance of a subject. On the other hand a domain based on controversial issues, on autonomous decisions for creating ones own life, on judgement of societal problems and responsible solutions, could fail in its own aims if it used instruments unsuitable to diagnose and test these core abilities.
Testing and diagnosing social science literacy is also facing the problem that the subject social science literacy is characterised by high variety. In many European Countries, secondary schools do not have an obligatory subject in this domain like, for instance, social sciences or social studies. In Germany, we face a variety of subjects like politics or economics, politics-economics, social science education, society education – sometimes also combined with history or geography. Against this manifold background, it is not only difficult to design tests for carefully constructed international comparison. But we have also to take into account that the social background as well as internal beliefs and attitudes influence the under‧standing of social phenomena, problems and possible solutions.
Despite missing common concepts and competences and despite of the structural, domain specific problems, in the era of Educational Olympic Games the requirements of testing and diagnosing political literacy or economical literacy are still increasing. Thus, the domain of Social Science is faced with a curious dilemma. By taking part in the games, the external relevance of the domain would be boosted while its very ‘specific’ characteristics and principles would be weakened. By not joining in the game, the social science domain would give away relevance and resources to other subjects. Therefore, the journal’s second issue on social science literacy is both focussing on more concrete attempts of diagnosing and testing and taking a critical stance on comparative testing. Furthermore, it is discussing criteria and methods which may be appropriate for diagnosing and testing in this specific domain whose competences currently seem to be not testable. But despite all criticism of educational Olympics and the culture of teaching to the test, it is beyond every doubt that a diagnosing of learning conditions and of the results of learning are necessary in order to develop students’ concepts and competences.