Social Studies

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions, taking into consideration multiple points of views represented in the sources, the types of sources available, and the potential uses of the sources.
• Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.
• Evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences.
• Analyze multiple and complex causes and effects of events in the past.
• Evaluate citizens’ and institutions’ effectiveness in addressing social, economic and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.
  
• Construct arguments using precise and knowledgeable claims, with evidence from multiple sources, while acknowledging counterclaims and evidentiary weaknesses.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.
• Construct explanations using sound reasoning, correct sequence (linear or non-linear), examples, and details with significant and pertinent information and data, while acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of the explanation given its purpose (e.g., cause and effect, chronological, procedural, technical).
  
• Analyze multiple and complex causes and effects of events in the past.
• Evaluate social and political systems in different contexts, times, and places, that promote civic virtues and enact democratic principles.
  
• Evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences.
  

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.
• Analyze multiple and complex causes and effects of events in the past.
• Construct explanations using sound reasoning, correct sequence (linear or nonlinear), examples, and details with significant and pertinent information and data, while acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of the explanation given its purpose (e.g., cause and effect, chronological, procedural, technical).

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Historical Thinking: Develop historical thinking skills to analyze historical sources and evidence, make historical comparisons, engage in chronological reasoning, and create and support historical arguments.
• Environment: Analyze the interaction between humans and the environment to determine how the environment shapes human societies and how human societies affect the environment.
• Culture: Evaluate the origins, uses, dissemination, and adaptation of ideas, beliefs, and knowledge within and between societies.
• State Building: Analyze the process by which hierarchical systems of rule have been developed and maintained to determine the resulting cooperation and conflict.
• Economic Systems: Evaluate the diverse patterns and systems that human societies have developed as they exploit their environments to produce, distribute, and consume desired goods and services across time and space.
• Social Structures: Analyze the process through which social categories, roles, and practices were created, maintained, and transformed to determine the connections between changes in social structures and other historical shifts.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Historical Thinking Skills: Chronological Reasoning-Students will be able recognize and apply historical causation, patterns of continuity and change over time, and periodization.
• Historical Thinking Skills: Comparison and Contextualization-Students will be able compare and provide contextualization for historical themes.
• Historical Thinking Skills: Crafting Historical Arguments from Historical Evidence-Students will be able to develop historical arguments using relevant historical evidence.
• Historical Thinking Skills: Historical Interpretation and Synthesis-Students will be able to interpret and synthesize historical evidence.
• Thematic Objectives: Interaction of Europe and the World
• Thematic Objectives: Poverty and Prosperity
• Thematic Objectives: Objective Knowledge and Subjective Visions
• Thematic Objectives: States and Other Institutions of Power
• Thematic Objectives: Individuals and Society

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Explain multiple causes and effects of events and developments in the past.
• Explain how the U.S. Constitution establishes a system of government that has powers, responsibilities, and limits that have changed over time and that are still contested.
• Construct explanations using sound reasoning, correct sequence (linear or nonlinear), examples, and details with significant and pertinent information and data, while acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of the explanation given its purpose (e.g., cause and effect, chronological, procedural, technical).
• Evaluate social and political systems in different contexts, times, and places, that promote civic virtues and enact democratic principles.
• Analyze the role of citizens in the U.S. political system, with attention to various theories of democracy, changes in Americans’ participation over time, and alternative models from other countries, past and present.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Compare important facts, concepts and theories pertaining to U.S. government and politics.
• Explain typical patterns of political processes and behavior and their consequences.
• Interpret basic data relevant to U.S. government and politics.
• Critically analyze relevant theories and concepts, apply them appropriately, and develop their connections across the curriculum.
• Compare and contrast political concepts, themes and generalizations.
• Explain typical patterns of political processes across countries to derive generalizations.
• Analyze and interpret basic data relevant to comparative government and politics.
• Compare and contrast political institutions and processes across countries to derive generalizations.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Explain points of agreement and disagreement experts have about interpretations and applications of disciplinary concepts and ideas associated with a compelling question.
• Analyze how incentives influence choices that may result in policies with a range of costs and benefits for different groups.
• Use margin- al benefits and marginal costs to construct an argument for or against an approach or solution to an economic issue.
• Evaluate the extent to which competition among sellers and among buyers exists in specific markets.
• Generate possible explanations for a government role in markets when market inefficiencies exist.
• Describe the roles of institutions such as clearly defined property rights and the rule of law in a market economy.
• Use current data to explain the influence of changes in spending, production, and the money supply on various economic conditions.
• Evaluate the selection of monetary and fiscal policies in a variety of economic conditions.
• Analyze the role of comparative advantage in international trade of goods and services.
• Identify evidence that draws information directly and substantively from multiple sources to detect inconsistencies in evidence in order to revise or strengthen claims.
• 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.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions, taking into consideration multiple points of view represented in the sources, the types of sources available, and the potential uses of the sources.
• Explain how the U.S. Constitution establishes a system of government that has powers, responsibilities, and limits that have changed over time and that are still contested.
• Evaluate citizens’ and institutions’ effectiveness in addressing social and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.
• Explain why advancements in technology and investments in capital goods and human capital increase economic growth and standards of living.
• Use maps, satellite images, photographs, and other representations to explain relationships between the locations of places and regions and their political, cultural, and economic dynamics.
• Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique characteristics of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.
• Analyze change and continuity in historical eras.
• Construct arguments using precise and knowledgeable claims, with evidence from multiple sources, while acknowledging counterclaims and evidentiary weaknesses.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Explain how a question reflects an enduring issue in the field.
• Analyze the impact of constitutions, laws, treaties, and international agreements on the maintenance of national and international order.
• Distinguish the powers and responsibilities of local, state, tribal, national, and international civic and political institutions.
• Explain how the U.S. Constitution establishes a system of government that has powers, responsibilities, and limits that have changed over time and that are still contested.
• Evaluate citizens’ and institutions’ effectiveness in addressing social and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.
• Evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences.
• Analyze historical, contemporary, and emerging means of changing societies, promoting the common good, and protecting rights.
• Evaluate the credibility of a source by examining how experts value the source.
• Construct arguments using precise and knowledgeable claims, with evidence from multiple sources, while acknowledging counterclaims and evidentiary weaknesses.
• 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.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Explain the sociological perspective and how it differs from other social sciences.
• Define social context in terms of the external forces that shape human behavior.
• Illustrate how sociological analysis can provide useful data-based information for decision making.
• Illustrate how sociological analysis can provide useful data-based information for decision making.
• Explain the social construction of self and groups.
• Construct explanations using sound reasoning, correct sequence (linear and non-linear), examples, and details with significant and pertinent information and data.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Explain how a question reflects an enduring issue in the field.
• Investigate human behavior from biological, cognitive, behavioral, and sociocultural perspectives.
• Explain the complexities of human thought and behavior, as well as the factors related to the individual differences among people.
• Describe biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors that influence individuals’ cognition, perception, and behavior.
• Explain the interaction of biology and experience (i.e., nature and nurture) and its influence on behavior.
• Use critical thinking skills to become better consumers of psychological knowledge.
• Acknowledge the interconnectedness of knowledge in the discipline of psychology.
• Apply psychological knowledge to their daily lives.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions, taking into consideration multiple points of view represented in the sources, the types of sources available, and the potential uses of the sources.
• Analyze the impact and the appropriate roles of personal interests and perspectives on the application of civic virtues, democratic principles, constitutional rights, and human rights .
• Analyze relationships and interactions within and between human and physical systems to explain reciprocal influences that occur among them.
• Evaluate how political and economic decisions throughout time have influenced cultural and environmental characteristics of various places and regions.
• Explain how the perspectives of people in the present shape interpretations of the past .
• Distinguish between long-term causes and triggering events in developing a historical argument.
• Evaluate the credibility of a source by examining how experts value the source.
• Construct arguments using precise and knowledgeable claims, with evidence from multiple sources, while acknowledging counterclaims and evidentiary weaknesses.
• 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.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Explain how supporting questions contribute to an inquiry and how, through engaging source work, new and compelling and supporting questions emerge.
• Distinguish the powers and responsibilities of local, state, tribal, national, and international civic and political institutions.
• Analyze the impact of constitutions, laws, treaties, and international agreements on the maintenance of national and international order.
• Evaluate citizens’ and institutions’ effectiveness in addressing social and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.
• Critique relationships among governments, civil societies, and economic markets.
• Evaluate multiple procedures for making governmental decisions at the local, state, national, and international levels in terms of the civic purposes achieved.
• Analyze historical, contemporary, and emerging means of changing societies, promoting the common good, and protecting rights.
• Analyze how incentives influence choices that may result in policies with a range of costs and benefits for different groups.
• Evaluate how economic globalization and the expanding use of scarce resources contribute to conflict and cooperation within and among countries.
• Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.
• Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.
• Use disciplinary and interdisciplinary lenses to understand the characteristics and causes of local, regional, and global problems.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Interpret maps, data sets, geographic models, and analyze geospatial data.
• Understand and explain the implications of associations and networks among phenomena in places.
• Recognize and interpret the relationships among patterns and processes at different scales of analysis, from the local to the global.
• Define regions and evaluate the regionalization process.
• Characterize and analyze changing interconnections amongst people and places.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Macroeconomics: Students understand the principles of economics and how economists use those principles to examine aggregate economic behavior.
• Macroeconomics: Students learn how the measures of economic performance, such as gross domestic product (GDP), inflation, and unemployment are constructed and how to apply them to evaluate the macroeconomic conditions of an economy.
• Macroeconomics: Students will recognize the global nature of economics and examine the impact of international trade and finance on national economies.
• Macroeconomics: Students will understand various economic schools of thought.
• Macroeconomics: Students consider solutions to economic problems.
• Microeconomics: Students understand the principles of economics as they apply to individual decision-making units, including individual households and firms.
• Microeconomics: Students will examine the theory of consumer behavior, the theory of the firm, and the behavior of profit-maximizing firms under various market structures.
• Microeconomics: Students will evaluate the efficiency of the outcomes with respect to price, output, consumer surplus, and producer surplus.
• Microeconomics: Students will examine the behaviors of households and businesses in factor markets, and learn how the determination of factor prices, wages, interest, and rent influence the distribution of income in a market economy.
• Microeconomics: Students will consider instances in which private markets may fail to allocate resources efficiently and examine various public policy alternatives aimed at improving efficiency of private markets.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• Develop historical thinking skills to analyze historical sources and evidence, make historical connections, engage in chronological reasoning, and create and support historical arguments.
• Examine how and why definitions of American and national identity and values have developed, as well as on related topics such as citizenship, constitutionalism, foreign policy, assimilation, and American exceptionalism.
• Analyze how different social and political groups have influenced society and government in the United States, as well as how political beliefs and institutions have changed over time.
• Determine the factors behind the development of systems of economic exchange, particularly the role of technology, economic markets, and government.
• Evaluate the roles that ideas, beliefs, social mores, and creative expression have played in shaping the United States, as well as how various identities, cultures, and values have been preserved or changed in different contexts of U.S. history.
• Examine why and how the various people who moved to and within the United States both adapted to and transformed their new social and physical environments.
• Analyze the role of geography and both the natural and human-made environments on social and political developments in what would become the United States.
• Evaluate the interactions between nations that affected North American history in the colonial period, and determine the influence of the United States on world affairs.

Course Details

Expected Course Outcomes

• History and Approaches: Includes history, perspectives, theoretical approaches and major historical figures
• Research Methods: includes types of research, research design, basic statistical concepts, and ethical issues
• Biological Bases of Behavior: includes influence of neural function, nervous system and the brain, and genetic contributions to behavior
• Sensation and Perception: includes basic principles and processes of sensory perception, common sensory disorders, interpretation of sensory inputs.
• States of Consciousness: includes impact of states of consciousness on behavior, hypnotic phenomena, major psychoactive drug categories and sleep
• Learning : includes types of learning, including classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning
• Cognition: includes how humans learn, remember, and retrieve information
• Motivation and Emotion: includes basic motivational concepts for understanding the behavior of humans
• Developmental Psychology: includes prenatal development, motor development, socialization, cognitive development, adolescence, and adulthood
• Personality: includes major theories of how humans develop enduring patterns of behavior and personal characteristics
• Testing and Individual Differences: includes an understanding of intelligence and assessment of individual differences, test construction and fair use
• Abnormal Behavior: includes formal conventions that guide psychologists’ judgments about diagnosis and problem severity