Depth of Knowledge of American Elementary Pre-Service Teachers’ Social Studies Lessons

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the cognitive complexity of elementary pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) social studies lessons plans they developed to teach and assess 7^th-grade students. The data source included 235 lesson plans and assessments, which were coded using Webb’s (1997, 1999) Depth-of-Knowledge Model (DOK). The PSTs’ assessments primarily required only recall (36.2%) and basic reasoning (29.8%); however, more than one-third of their assessments required students to apply complex or extended reasoning. How PSTs integrate cognitive complexity in their teaching to align assessments with state standards is vital to their students’ performance, as well as to their performance evaluations.