I think what Mr Fisher should have done is taken a look at the Program of Studies (POS) to see what the outcomes were before he gave the students projects to do. I think if he had done that he would have had an easier time of defending his choices of projects and the time that was spent on them.
If he was having trouble understanding the POS then I think he should have asked for some help or asked the other Social Studies teachers what kinds of things they were doing. There was some good that came from his experience though. He found out that his students really enjoyed the projects. I think this very useful for the next year he plans. Instead of taking projects from the textbooks he could come up with or find other projects that have outcomes that relate to the POS. If he is really set on using the projects from the textbook he needs find ways to make them fit into the POS outcomes.
If Mr Fisher finds that the project work engages the students, it is relevant to the students' learnings and it meets the requirements set out in the POS then he could design the course to be reflective of that. His assessment of the students knowledge and skills needs to be more balanced. I do not think it is fair to students if they have no practice answering multiple choice questions and then get that in their final exam. The other problem I had is even though he inherited the questions from the previous teacher does not mean he has to use them. I think he should have went through the questions and picked out which ones he thought were good ones to use for the other ones change or make up new ones.
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