A second possibility is that self and society classes do not prepare students for broad, real-life problem solving. Our hunch is that the courses focus on specific content of the respective disciplines, and do not engage students in problem solving. A third reason for the relatively low performance and lack of improvement lies in the assessment methodology. Students had little incentive to do well, and may not have put forward their best effort. We suspect that the quality of students' reasoning might be significantly better if the task was more authentic, richer and really mattered.
Some additional issues arise from the assessment.
We do not know the answer to this question, but it seems important in the course review process to examine the extent to which each course tries to foster social science reasoning. There is no simple answer to this question. This suggests a more problem-based focus in these classes. We suspect they are not. If there really are no core content and skills for the Self and Society category, then future assessment should focus on what students learn in individual courses.