Alabama Social Studies SS24.S.4a
The Standard
- SS24.S.4
- Explain how values and norms influence individual behavior.*
Describe ways in which cultures differ, change, and resist change, including countercultures, subcultures, and ethnocentric beliefs.
2024 Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies · Self and Socialization
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students compare cultural practices without treating their own as the default. They explain why practices change or stay the same, and distinguish subcultures, countercultures, and ethnocentric beliefs.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Given a short case, students can tell whether a group has its own customs or challenges widely held norms. They can name a reason a practice might change or persist, then rewrite an ethnocentric claim as a neutral observation.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may call any group with different tastes a counterculture, even if it does not challenge wider norms. They may assume cultural change is always progress or judge an unfamiliar practice by their own customs.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: A chess club uses its own slang, while a student group refuses the school dress code. Label each group, rewrite “Their clothes are weird” as a neutral observation, and name one reason the dress code might stay or change.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs cards describing lunch routines at two schools; have them sort facts from judgments, then compare the routines.
Ask students to write two reasons a school tradition might change and two reasons families might want it to stay.
Run a card sort with club slang, a group rejecting mainstream norms, and “our customs are best”; students label each example.
Have students inspect the current school dress code and propose one rule to keep and one to change, with reasons tied to school needs.
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Printable SS24.S.4a Worksheet
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Related Standards
- SS24.HG.4b
Differentiate between material and nonmaterial culture within a society, including folk customs.
- SS24.HG.12
Explain how interaction between people and the environment affects culture in today's society.
- SS24.HG.4a
Identify and describe essential aspects of culture, including architecture, art, belief systems, customs, food, languages, religion, technology, and traditions.
- SS24.HG.7
Describe ways religion influences cultures, citing examples from around the globe.
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