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Whitley Craig
November 13, 2014
Seeing Student Thinking

For my Seeing Student Thinking Interview, I wanted to explore the topic of citizenship
with the fourth grade students in my practicum placement. Our readings and in class discussion
of citizenship really opened my eyes to all the things a citizen can be. It is not just about being
responsible, active, or justice-seeking, but a combination of all three. After finding out what my
fellow classmates thought a citizen was or encompassed, I was intrigued there were underlying
themes of nationalism present in all of the posters we created. Is nationalism necessarily
connected to what makes a good citizen, or is that something we have self-constructed through
the information we have been given? I wanted to investigate this further by posing similar
questions we investigated in class to the fourth graders in my practicum placement who have not
yet been exposed to the amount of politics we have. I thought it would be interesting to then
compare and contrast the findings of our college classs responses to that of the young students
to see if there were more similarities or differences.
I chose two students to interview: one middle class, African American female, and one
more lower class, Caucasian male. For the rest of the reflection, I will refer to the female as Jade
and the male as Chris in order to keep the confidentiality of the students. I believe the students
are similar achieving because they score in the average range across all subjects when compared
with their peers. Because of this, I believed this would give me a good snapshot to what fourth
graders think about citizenship as a whole without interviewing all of the students.
I conducted my interviews with Jade and Chris separately. I thought this would give me
a clearer picture to what they thought because they would not be able bounce ideas off of one
another. In my interviews, I asked a total of four main questions. Additional questions were then

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asked as a result of their initial answers. Before asking any of the questions, I prompted each of
the students that we would be discussing the idea of citizenship. I then asked each of them if
they had heard of the word citizen. In each of the respective interviews, they both said they
had learned about it in past school grades. Jade recalled learning, about being a good citizen in
school by helping my friends in first grade. Chris said he knew about citizens because, my
third grade teacher did a project where we had to help the community in some way and we
helped clean up the trash around the park. After the introductory questions and gaining a
general sense of what they knew about citizenship, I probed with deeper, more specific
questions. Secondly, I asked, Who can be a citizen? When doing this, I was attempting to see
if any of the students thought citizenship required them to be a certain age. It was evident they
did not think so. Jade replied, Anybody can be a citizen, me, you, Mrs. Bwe are all citizens
because we live in a certain place. Chris replied to the same question by saying, I am a
citizenyou are a citizeneverybody is a citizen. I then followed with the question, How can
someone become a citizen? Respectively they each said, by doing good things like teaching
and helping the Earth, and helping your friends, and by living in Virginia and the USA. I
followed this question by asking What makes someone a good citizen? Although I interviewed
the two separately, Jade and Chris gave similar responses to this question. Jade responded,
Good citizens help out, clean up trash, help people with learning and help keep the Earth clean.
Chris replied that good citizens, help the Earth, cleaning up beaches, working, working to help
others like giving food to the poor. My last question was, Why is it important to be a good
citizen? Jade responded, Because if it gets too trashy and we dont help out, we never will
survive. Chris responded to the same question by saying, It is important to be a good citizen
so people wont starve, and so our ocean and animals wont be polluted, and our drinking water

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wont be affected. I followed up all of these questions by having both of the students draw
something that would represent a good citizen. Both of the students depictions were almost
identical even though I made sure they could not see the others drawing. This shows there are
some consistencies in thought among fourth graders when it comes to citizenship that were quite
different than what we presented as college students. Their drawings focused on environmental
consciousness, while ours as college students, focused on patriotism. This was very interesting
to me because I feel that even from a young age, we are pushed to learn the pledge and about the
flag. Because of this, I predicted much more of their depictions would include patriotic symbols
than what was shown.
From our readings and discussion in class, we learned citizenship varies depending on an
individuals opinions and political stance. There are three types of citizens: the personally
responsible citizen, the participatory citizen, and the justice oriented citizen (Kahne &
Westheimer, 2004, p.3). The ideas a person has about being a citizen shows which category of
citizen they probably will fit under. From the mentioned above, there are common themes that
can be easily seen among the two diverse fourth graders responses that lend them to mostly the
ideas encompassed in the personally responsible citizen. The personally responsible citizen
views the role of citizenship as acting responsible by being an example in their community
(Kahne & Westheimer, 2004, p.3). Both of the students showed they believed this was a key
point in being a good citizen when they talked about helping their communities, cleaning up
trash, and giving food to the poor. They focused on their ability to make their communities
better, but did not touch on the other two types of citizenship presented in the readings. This
shows that just like many elementary schools, this school focuses on creating and encouraging
ideas such as Character Counts where the focus is on morality and being a good person

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(Kahne & Westheimer, 2004, p.3). Although these are not necessarily misconceptions about
citizenship, I believe the students have not been provided with a broader picture of what
citizenship can really mean. Their responses show they are at a very basic level of understanding
citizenship. Neither of them referred to participatory citizen actions in local, state, and national
affairs from things like organizing a food drive to voting (Kahne & Westheimer, 2004, p.4).
Although Chris mentioned donating food to the poor, that is viewed as being personally
responsible over having more of a planning role in the bigger picture. Also, neither of their
responses referred to things that show a justice oriented citizen. These types of citizens do not
want to just learn about a problem or help out, but also problem solve to understand why there is
an issue in the first place (Kahne & Westheimer, 2004, p.4). This type of citizenship requires a
deeper level of thinking and understanding in order to evaluate the root of problems and find
solutions. I think the students responses show a lot about what they have been taught by
educators and other adults in their lives. It is important that the students be taught to be
personally responsible, but it is also important for them understand and think about other levels
of citizenship as well in order to create well-rounded, informed, and active citizens of their own
communities, states, and country.
This information would be very helpful if I were to plan future lessons for this classroom
about what it means to be a citizen and why it is important. It seems as though the students have
a good grasp on being personally responsible citizens because it has probably been the most
stressed aspect in their schooling, as it is in many elementary schools. From here, I would help
the students understand the other components of citizenship. I would start by completing a KWL
with the entire class about citizenship. I would then plan activities that promote students to
explore being a participatory citizen and being a problem solver like a justice oriented citizen.

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We would then apply this knowledge to citizenship directly and come back to the learned portion
of our KWL. This would help the students realize they do know some about citizenship, but then
take that knowledge and expand it to include other aspects as well. This will guide the students
into becoming more deeply active and engaged citizens where they can not only help out in a
situation, but come up with a solution to the problem as a whole.

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References
Kahne, J., & Westheimer, J. (2004). What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for
Democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 2-5.

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Jade

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Chris

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