Deck 4: How Are Social Studies Concepts and Generalizations Developed

Question 1

Which one of the following is an example of an operational definition of a concept?

A) Aggression is any behavior that results in physical or emotional injury to a person.
B) Aggression is threatening, biting, gossiping, or teasing somebody.
C) There are four kinds of aggression: accidental, expressive, instrumental, and hostile.
D) Accidental aggression occurs when someone is hurt in the process of play or social interaction: stepping on someone's fingers while climbing the monkey bars.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which is a generalization about the local community that can be made from an investigation of local census data?

A) Our community has no Asian residents.
B) The population of our community has grown very little since the last census.
C) Our city is named for its first permanent settler.
D) More houses in our community are valued at $60,000 to $75,000 than are valued at $250,000 to $500,000.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

When teaching a concept, it is important to:

A) present simplified definitions of the concept to students.
B) group concepts so that all being learned have an equal number of essential attributes.
C) identify the essential attributes that will be taught before developing the lesson plan.
D) keep students from forgetting the examples by limiting the opportunities to apply the concept in the lesson to two or three examples.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Lessons and units should help students to link concepts so that they can begin to see patterns and relationships. Which of the following sets of concepts would be the best combination for a lesson or short unit to help students identify relationship or patterns?

A) President, United States, Canada, and ocean
B) River, city, governor, budget
C) Supply, demand, producer, consumer
D) Store manager, police officer, firefighter, consumer

Question 5

Which of the following characteristics illustrate the difference between generalizations and facts and concepts?

A) Generalizations identify relationships between two or more concepts.
B) Generalizations provide explanations of cause and effect.
C) Generalizations enable accurate predictions of their future occurrences.
D) All of the above are true of generalizations.
E) None of the above are true of generalizations.

Question 6

Facts are a part of all content knowledge. Facts:

A) are those experiences that we share in common.
B) are useful in predicting future experiences.
C) are single occurrences that do not allow us to predict future experiences.
D) are found in literature, textbooks, and media resources but are not found in personal experiences.

Question 7

In early childhood classrooms, facts:

A) are focused on the local use and not the national and global concerns.
B) are best learned through active experiences.
C) are best learned through rote memorization.
D) are best learned through drill and practice with creative software programs.

Question 8

Generalizations are formed:

A) through finding the similarities between facts we have experienced and putting those facts together into one new idea.
B) when a teacher leads students to an appropriate definition of an important idea.
C) by connecting concepts into relationships defined by the teacher, by social scientists, or by other authorities.
D) through experiences with concepts in life as we use those experiences to build relationships between the concepts.

Question 9

During which phase of the learning cycle should a concept be defined in the way that meets the learning goal of the lesson?

A) Exploratory introduction
B) Lesson development
C) Expansion

Question 10

Three of the following are subconcepts of the fourth, which is a superordinate concept. Which is the superordinate concept?

A) Invention
B) Light bulb
C) Automobile
D) Computer

Question 11

Concepts are formed by:

A) finding consistent similarities among a set of facts and ignoring small differences.
B) focusing on a key fact and ignoring other facts.
C) using a standard definition, like those found in a dictionary.
D) comparing and contrasting two facts.

Question 12

Which of the following is a generalization that allows us to make a prediction?

A) Mexico City, Mexico and Quito, Ecuador are both high-altitude capital cities.
B) Deciding the location of a capital city is influenced by politics as well as economics.
C) Santiago, the capital of Chile, is surrounded by mountains while Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, is located along a large river.
D) A capital city is where the government offices are located.

Question 13

Which of the following is a social studies generalization?

A) Columbus was a European explorer.
B) London is located on the Thames River.
C) Presidents are leaders of their political parties.
D) The day in November when Americans vote for president is always the first Tuesday after the first Monday.

Question 14

To determine if a student fully understands a concept, teachers first seek the answer to which of the following questions?

A) Can the students provide a correct example identified in the class discussion?
B) Can the students generate an example of the concept from their own experiences outside of our class work?
C) Can the students correctly name the essential characteristics of the concept?
D) Ccan students match the glossary definition with the name of the concept?

Question 15

Which one of the following is an example of a formal definition of a concept?

A) A bar scale on a map is a series of marks made along a line at regular intervals to measure distances.
B) A bar scale is a regular interval.
C) A bar scale is part of a map.
D) A bar scale is related to a bar graph.

Question 16

Which of the following orders concepts by level of complexity and therefore, difficulty of learning from least to greatest?

A) Conjunctive, disjunctive, and relational
B) Conjunctive, relational, and disjunctive
C) Relational, conjunctive, and disjunctive
D) Disjunctive, conjunctive, and relational

Question 17

Which of the following is NOT a concept?

A) Congress
B) Public policy
C) Interdependence
D) Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain.

Question 18

Which behavior is something students would most likely do during the expansion phase of a learning cycle that develops a generalization?

A) Students gather data from the Internet or library.
B) Students ask questions to clearly define the problem they wish to investigate.
C) Students test their ideas by surveying their parents to find the degree of support for their idea that their classmates' parents have.
D) All of the above are expansion activities.

Question 19

Which of the following is NOT a social studies generalization?

A) People in all nations engaged in a war have great losses.
B) Civil wars tend to be more destructive to the conflicting nations than international wars.
C) Politicians avoid voting on laws that might hurt their reelection opportunities.
D) What goes up must come down.

Question 20

Which of the following is an example of a concept?

A) Chicago, Illinois
B) John
C) Deforestation contributes to global warming
D) Telephone
F) Kennedy

Question 21

Students must be dissatisfied with their present ideas about a concept before they will go to the hard work of reconstructing a concept.

Question 22

Failure of teachers and students to communicate with each other may result in teachers and students using the same words while having very different ideas about what the terms mean.

Question 23

In forming concepts, facts are grouped according to similar characteristics that are then used to define the concept.

Question 24

Stereotypes are generalizations that are formed on the basis of few or no facts.

Question 25

Because generalizations are the most difficult social studies content to learn, they should not be a part of the curriculum until the fifth grade.

Question 26

Generalizations that are considered true, and for which there are no common exceptions, are often called principles or laws.

Question 27

Generalizations summarize less information than do concepts.

Question 28

"More of Africa is located north of the equator than south of the equator" is an example of a generalization.

Question 29

Young children are not capable of making generalizations.

Question 30

After making the effort to construct a generalization, it is destructive to students' self-respect to encourage them to decide how widely the generalization can be applied.

Question 31

"Families take care of their members" is a generalization.

Question 32

"War is the failure of diplomacy" is an example of a generalization.

Question 33

"Sensory" concepts are defined by assumptions and theoretical or hypothesized relationships.

Question 34

"Concrete" concepts can be understood through direct experience.

Question 35

Students with concrete reasoning patterns have little power of reflection and do not learn new ideas by hearing or reading about them.

Question 36

Generalizations explain a relationship between two or more concepts.

Question 37

The best way for a teacher to help students find the limitations of their generalizations is by asking, "When is this generalization useful and trying to applying the generalization as students suggest?"

Question 38

Students are carrying out data gathering to determine whether the relationship between concepts they are hypothesizing is supported. In which phase of the learning cycle are the students engaged?

A) Exploratory introduction
B) Lesson development
C) Expansion

Question 39

Inquiry learning lessons frequently involve students working in a small group or with a partner.

Question 40

Generalizations can be inaccurate.

Question 41

In the curriculum very difficult concepts such as justice are taught in the lower grades with simple definitions, which are redefined by adding new attributes as students gain more experiences and greater cognitive skills.

Question 42

For students to understand the meaning of a social studies generalization or theory, they must first understand the concepts in the statement.

Question 43

Concepts are defined through identifying their important attributes or essential characteristics.

Question 44

Many social studies concepts have meanings that evolve over time as individuals mature and cultures change so it is best to wait to teach these to children until they have mature thinking skills.

Question 45

Investment is a superordinate concept for savings accounts and checking accounts.

Question 46

Being able to recite the definition from the glossary or dictionary is a sign that the student understands a concept.

Question 47

Because concepts are at the basic or lower level of learning about a topic, as many as ten or fifteen concepts can be successfully taught by a teacher in one class period.

Question 48

Operational definitions of concepts enable students and others to determine if an object is an example or non-example of the concept.