Lesson Plan: The Space Race — the Challenger Tragedy

Objectives:

Students will:

• Learn how the United States sought to expand its space program in the 1980s.
• Explore the organizational culture at NASA that fostered “normalization of deviance,” setting the stage for the Challenger accident.
• Examine how the problems of organizational culture that contributed to the Challenger explosion are reflected in other catastrophes, like the 2008 financial collapse.

Essential Questions:

• Apart from its tragic ending, what was unique about the last mission of the Challenger?
• Why did leaders at NASA feel pressure to go forward with the launch?
• What technical failure led to the Challenger explosion?
• What is meant by “normalization of deviance”? How is it related to the Challenger explosion?

Additional Resources:

• Retro Report video “Lessons From the Challenger Tragedy” (Transcript) | Retro Report
• President Reagan’s Speech to the nation after the tragedy |Reagan Foundation
• “Challenger, Columbia and the Nature of Calamity” | Retro Report

Standards

Common Core Literacy Standards

• CCSS.ELA.LITERACY.RH.11-12.7:Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem
• CCSS.ELA.LITERACY.RI.11-12.3:Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequences of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact or develop over the course of a text.

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies

• D2.His.14.9-12.Analyze multiple and complex causes and effect of events in the past.
• D2.His.1.9-12.Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.

AP U.S. History

• Topic 8.2: The Cold War from 1945 to 1980
  Skill 3.A: Identify and describe a claim and/or argument in a non-text-based source.
  Theme 5: Politics and Power (PCE)