Project Plan 12 pages

GENERALIZATIONS

DEFINITION

* Learning something that is usually true across a wide variety of situations (e.g., people create new goods and services to help meet people’s needs and to satisfy their wants.

* A very important kind of learning for children to construct/understand.

* Broader than specific facts. May hold true across short or very long periods of time.

Examples

“Students will learn that what goes up must come down” (true of the stock market, gravity, people’s mood, etc.).

“Students will learn that change is something that happens to many things” (true of plants, animals, people, physical systems, social systems).

“Students will learn that there is usually more than one way to solve a problem” (true in math, engineering, social conflicts, etc.).

“Students will learn that product design must usually address both form and function” (true in the design of houses, clothing, cars, office products).

Note: If you find yourself writing about students’ improving their “ability to” do something or their “skill” at doing something, you’re writing a skill, not a generalization.

Difference Between Generalizations and Critical Facts

Generalizations are tricky to find, and it’s often tricky to distinguish them from critical facts.

That “the voting age in America is 18” is a critical fact.

If “the voting age in most countries is 18,” that would be a generalization stating what is generally true across most countries.

That “the Cleveland Browns had a losing record last season” is a critical fact (at least with respect to sports).

That “the Cleveland Browns usually lose” is a generalization.

Finding Generalizations

Generalizations are high-level knowledge about what is generally true. As you read about your topic, look for statements that say something about what is generally true about your topic. For example, in a project on families, look for sentences such as

"In families, people usually ..." "In families, people generally ..."

"Most of the time, people in families ...."

Language such as this can signal generalizations about families, but to find these generalizations, you have to do some reading about your topic. I know that’s work, but here’s a generalization about teaching: “It’s generally impossible to become a good or great teacher without a lot of hard work.”

Note: Any generalization that kids discover/learn/construct may extend beyond the topic the class is studying at the time, or may be broader than what any individual or small group is studying. For example, if you’re studying whales right now but studied humans or other mammals in the past, students might learn a generalization that is true about mammals (not just about whales). Similarly, if different groups are studying different types of insects, they might, by putting together what they learned about those different species of insects, construct some generalization about what is usually true about insects in general.

To assess generalizations, basically if kids say or write the generalization, and know what they are saying/writing, that’s evidence they got it. Honest, it’s that simple. So, if kids say or write “what goes up must come down” and understand what that means, they learned that generalization. However, if they say that hats thrown into the air generally come down, they’ve only learned how this idea applies to hats (the specific case) and have not shown they learned the general rule (generalization) that applies to most objects.