How do we develop effective strategies and actions to effect social change?
While spontaneous and one-off actions can have impact, most lasting change occurs through intentional strategizing and planning.
This set of scaffolds helps students apply their insights from their coursework and change analysis to map out a viable strategy for action.
Students map out a plan of action to realize their goals. As with the other modules, students can also apply this lens to historical content to investigate how movements brought about change. While history classes usually teach that changes happened, this lens helps students understand how change happens.
Learn more about the Integrated Action Civics framework.
Strategies for Change includes four analytical tools:
From Vision to Realization / Stakeholder Transformation / Develop Change Strategies
From Vision to Realization
How does a movement move from a vision to achieving its goals?
This visual representation identifies three discrete aspects of any strategy in pursuit of a goal for change - Building Awareness, Developing Allies, Applying Pressure. This is a visual representation only(link is external), no strategies are associated.
The other strategies in this section scaffold student examination of historical movements for change as well as support student planning and action to influence contemporary issues.
Stakeholder Transformation
How might the stakeholders be mobilized to help realize a goal?
This step asks students to look at each stakeholder and consider how their relationship to an issues would need to shift in order to accomplish a desired change. For each stakeholder, the student asks:
- What is their current relationship to the change process?
- How would we want to see this shift regarding their interest and power?
- What are some possible approaches to realize this shift?
Develop Change Strategies
How do we move from analysis to a plan of action?
This strategy helps students understand how movements create plans (strategize) to effect change. Students draw from their research about the causes of a problem, the locations at which various expressions of power operate, and the stakeholders involved.
This can be applied to historical case studies or to support student civic action projects.