Taba, Hilda (1902–1967)

Intergroup Education and Social Studies Curricula

Interest in intergroup education, which was seen as an antidote to tension in people's interpersonal relationships, surged in the period following World War II. Taba's Intergroup Education Project, launched in New York City in 1945, explored how to increase the level of tolerance between pupils from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The success of the project led to the establishment of the Center of Intergroup Education at the University of Chicago (1948–1951). Taba's approach focused on combating stereotypes and prejudices and drew extensively on concepts from cognitive and social psychology. The ideas of intergroup education and the experience of cooperating schools contributed to efforts to desegregate American society and to the strengthening of democracy.

In 1951, Taba accepted a proposal to reorganize and develop the social studies curricula in Contra Costa County, California. Initially, the study focused on the identification and analysis of students' learning capabilities and teachers' problems in the [Page 870]field of social studies. Many ideas underlying her curriculum model were born in the framework of this research, including the spiral curriculum; inductive teaching strategies for the development of concepts, generalizations, and applications in students; the organization of the learning content on the three levels—key ideas, organizational ideas, and facts; and her general strategy for developing thinking through the social studies classes. These curricular developments gained worldwide recognition in the 1960s and early 1970s. Taba and her Intergroup colleagues' attention in the 1950s to the value of a multicultural and meaningful curriculum in cultivating a strong relationship between the community and school foreshadowed similarly significant inter-cultural and multicultural reforms in the 1990s.

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