Effectiveness of teaching social studies for developing higher order cognitive process: a critical analysis

Teaching social studies make the best attempt at answering ‘what makes us humans ’, and this subject includes a breadth of disciplines covering various aspects of living and the inclusion of social studies in education helps students grow up into informed citizens. The objectives of the present study were: to examine process of teaching adopted by social studies teachers and to find out suitability of teaching process adopted by social studies teachers for developing higher order cognitive process. The present study was conducted on 10 CBSE affiliated private schools of Khurda district, Bhubaneswar by using descriptive survey method. The researcher had used self made observation schedule and interview schedule in this study. The findings of the study were: during teaching, social studies teachers were giving much more emphasis in freedom to ask questions, invited students to give their opinion, to visualize the topic, variety of explanation for each topic, understanding of students in content. But the teachers were not giving more emphasis on peer interaction, group discussion and debate during teaching-learning process.