Resumen de Consensus Building among Social Educators: A Delphi Study
The field of social studies education has long suffered from the absence of a consensus regarding a number of issues fundamental to the profession. It has also lacked well refined methodological tools for resolving such issues. A three-phase project was undertaken to create a consensus concerning major issues within the field of social studies using the Delphi technique as a methodological tool for facilitating dialog among anonymous experts. A second purpose of the project was to assess the impact of structured feedback on the priorities social educators assigned to the issues over a series of rounds. A third purpose of the project was to test the degree of cohesiveness of the consensus over sets of issues and rounds. Results indicated respondents were able to arrive at a consensus and assign priorities for professional issues and that the Delphi technique was a feasible tool for this task. They also revealed several aspects of the patterns of judgments that subjects made.
