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Beyond Heroes & Role Models: Using Biographies to Develop Young Change Agents

Meyers, Laura E.
Holbrook, Teri
May, Laura A.
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Abstract

Reading, writing, and discussing biographies provide unique opportunities for teachers and students. Critical thinking can be developed through questioning, predicting, and analyzing various biographical mediums--texts, photographs and illustrations, book reviews, websites, films, news articles, etc.--to learn more about an individual's life experiences and choices. Decision making skills can be enhanced when students juxtapose their perceptions of heroes and role models to that of a change agent, even considering how their own life experiences and choices may be contributing to larger actions of change. In this article, the authors discuss six biographies that could be used with young people in the elementary classroom to study change agents. The authors carefully selected and organized their literary choices into four categories: (1) familiar historical figures, (2) familiar living persons, (3) less familiar figures, and finally (4) students and teachers themselves--because they can act as change agents today on a local and personal level.

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Date
2009-01-01
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Publisher
Research Projects
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Keywords
role models, change agents, biographies, history instruction, early childhood education, social studies
Citation
Meyers, L., Holbrook, T., & May, L. A. (2009). Beyond heroes and role models: Using biographies to develop young change agents. <em>Social Studies and the Young Learner, 21</em>(2), 10-14.
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