Customer Reviews

ICTS Social Science-History 114 Teacher Certification Test Prep Study Guide (XAM ICTS)

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Do not buy this book, borrow it from your college library like I did. Then use this as a starting point. It broadly lays out a lot of important information, but not in much detail. I used this book, and after I read about something I knew I needed to know more about, I read over my old lecture notes, read over textbooks, and consulted websites. The test questions in the back are of very little help, and as previously mentioned there are many errors. It is also of poor taste that some of the passages in the book are just copied and pasted into other sections that contain similar objectives. Also, some of the test questions pertain to California history, not Illinois history, though the title of the book is ICTS...so that is also a negative aspect of the book. Overall, it is not worth your money to buy this book, but if you can get a hold of it for free, it does have good, very broad concepts that you can use as a starting point for further study.

This test guide was very poorly written and did not cover the materials that are on the actual test. I recently took the test and I can say that there were only a handful of questions which the review book actually helped me. There were some egregious mistakes in the book. For example, one of the practice test questions was not properly written. The question asks one thing and the corresponding choices did not make sense. The writing for this type of book, was not concise enough. The author seemed to be intent on being clever and witty instead of being informative and to the point. Not an effective tool for someone who is trying to prepare for the History exam. Would try to find another study guide.

I have mistakenly depended on this book for studying for the history content exam for the Illinois teacher certification exam. There are some glaring mistakes. For example, question 16 of the practice questions states that "in the U.S., federal investigations into business activities are handled by the:" she has the answer as the federal trade commission. The correct answer is the Government accountability office (GAO). She says that there is no such thing as the government accounting office. Well, there is a government accountability office for sure. So, that statement she makes is a trick one. There is some useful material in the book. I can't say it is an entire waste of time, but it is full of spelling mistakes and it just seems like she, Sharon, didn't care much about its' quality. She should have researched better and cared more.

This brings to light an important problem in American education, and that is that the emphasis of "no child left behind" is on thinking there is a correct answer for every information question. Many times answers are multi-faceted. I strongly recommend that testing be less emphasized or done away with and instead emphasize teaching students how to do research. By doing research, the student learns how to frame and ask a specific, informed research question. Then, this would feed student's curiosity and seeing how important values and philosophy is to studying most social science subjects. Values is the "infant terrible" of social sciences including history and psychology. It would teach students how to question assumptions and not be so easily manipulated by propaganda.

I used this book as my only source of study for the test and nearly scored a perfect score on the test. It was very useful and provided a very high amount of the information that was on the test. It did not cover every single little topic that was tested on but it is a study guide not the answer sheet. I thought it was easy to read and while it could have been organized better it did the job.