RESEARCH ON THE TEACHING OF HISTORY

1. RESEARCH ON THE TEACHING OF HISTORY Dr. Bill Cranshaw Social Studies Program Specialist Curriculum and Instruction Georgia Department of Education

2. Things to ponder • How do we organize the material we teach? • What opportunities do we afford our students to reflect on their work? • What opportunities do we provide for students to do higher order thinking? • What type of tests to we give our students? • How do we evaluate student progress?

3. A DEFINITION • History is not a telling of events (facts as truth), but an explanation (account) of what occurred (change over time) and what appears (evidence) to have produced (cause) those changes. • How might such a definition affect how you approach teaching history? • Would such a definition include geography, economics, and political science?

4. Principle of Learning #1 • New understandings are constructed on a foundation of existing understandings and experiences (type of schema) • Kids bring knowledge of Social Studies with them to the classroom • Preconceptions about the world works must be addressed and engaged • Preconceptions can be either powerful support or barrier to further learning

5. Principle of Learning #2 • Essential role of factual knowledge and conceptual frameworks in understanding • Factual knowledge must be placed in a conceptual framework to be understood • Concepts are given meaning by multiple representations that are rich in factual detail • Storing facts by using concepts to organize information allows for better retrieval and application

6. Principle of Learning #3 • The importance of self-monitoring • Students must take control of their own learning • Self-monitoring helps students become independent learners • Must learn how to ask how new knowledge relates to or challenges previous knowledge • Support for self-assessment is an important component of effective teaching.

7. For consideration • How do these principles square with my thinking? • What are the implications of these principles for teaching Social Studies? • How do these principles affect what students should know? • How do these principles imply knowledge should be organized? • What by these principles is mastery? How do we know when a students achieves mastery?

8. For Today • Focus on • Principle 1: importance of prior knowledge in shaping what is learned • Principle 2: importance of conceptual understanding • Schema or scaffolding as essential to learning • Principle 3: metacognition, not today

9. SECOND ORDER CONCEPTS

10. Second order concepts • Definition: concepts that give definition to history • Include: time, change, empathy, cause, evidence, and accounts • Problem: students often do not understand these concepts as they relate to history

11. TIME • Central to history • Problem • How students perceive time • How concepts such as “Age” are defined • Link between decades, centuries and periods

12. TIME • Examples • Century as adjective is not necessarily 100 yrs • 18th century vs. eighteenth century music • Centuries get linked to periods • Renaissance (1350-1500), Reformation (1500-1600), Age of Discovery (1500-1700?), Age of Revolution (1688? 1776-1850? 1917?) • Must know some of history from which periods are constructed • Need to know themes that periods are based on

13. CHANGE • A move from one state of affairs to another • Problem: • Students often see change as an event or occurrence of events • Nothing happening then something happening • Direction of change is always positive • Past is deficit, present is better • The way the past is taught by parents and grandparents • See move to today as progress • See their past as deficient compared to their life today.

14. EMPATHY • Defined: the understanding of past and present institutions, social practices, or actions as making sense in light of the way people saw or see things • NOT facility to get in other people’s minds • Problem: • Tend to write people off as not as smart as we are • Assume people in past did not understand basic things • Tend to view things from own historical and cultural perspective

15. CAUSE • Define: attempts to explain why something happened that no one intended, or why large-scale events occurred • Problem: • Treat causes as special events • Causes act like humans, if no cause acts, then nothing happens • Are discrete entities that act independent of each other

16. EVIDENCE • Concept is central to understanding history • Makes history possible • Students often see history as a known commodity that needs to be memorized • See historians using only truthful past sources • History becomes dependent on true reports • Reliability becomes fixed property • Do not realize bias, etc in reporting • Key for students is to understand importance of inference in using historical sources to construct picture of past

17. ACCOUNTS • Deals with how students view historical narrative of the past • Related to evidence, which establishes the facts • Accounts are the story told by the facts • Problems for students • Not all accounts are acceptable even when the facts are correct • See true account as copy of past rather than a picture or theory of the past • Need to help students see accounts are ways of looking at past, they do not reproduce the past

18. For Consideration • How do these secondary concepts affect my current teaching style? • How do these secondary concepts affect my students learning? • What are the implications of these secondary concepts for student understanding?

19. Substantive Concepts • Relate to specific content in Social Studies, or other disciplines • Are clusters of kinds of things • King • Nation • Trade • Constitution • government

20. Substantive Concepts • Problem • Meanings shift as historical time changes • Meanings can also shift in space • King in 12th century not same as King today • Revolution, American, Russian, Industrial • Cannot expect student to learn a definition and example then apply across the board • Must learn context in which terms apply

21. ENGAGING STUDENTS

22. An Observation • “The high educational value of history is too great to be left to teachers who merely hear recitations, keeping the finger on the place in the text-book, and only asking the questions conveniently printed for them in the margin or the back of the book.”

23. Questions • Discuss in your group how you feel about this statement • What are the implications for teaching? • What is the author’s point? • What are problems with the author’s position? • Should we even be concerned with such a criticism? • Who said this and when was this said?

24. Possible Answers • Need to make history more than memorization of facts • History is not a list of events, dates, people and facts • To go beyond recitation and pre-made questions requires in-depth knowledge on part of students and teachers • Yes, if our democracy is to survive • G. Stanley Hall, 1883

25. Where to Begin? • Historians work with big questions, so to engage students teachers should do the same thing • Problems • Teachers are to teach history others have written • Students are tested for accountability • Teachers are provided with a list of information the student is to know

26. Where to Begin? • Curriculum does not provide nor is it organized by big picture ideas (connections) • Necessary for students to build connections • Schema theory • Brain based learning • Learning Focused Schools • Understanding by Design • All use idea of essential questions, conceptual learning

27. Where to Begin? • Invent big questions that are answered by the curriculum objectives • Work backwards (unpack the standards) • Develop historiographic problems that cross standards (enduring understandings) • Provide students with concepts upon which to hang the knowledge and skills required by curricular objectives

28. Ideas on How To • Teacher needs to identify • What is historically significant • Not prioritizing the curriculum • Relates to big picture questions (enduring understandings) • What is instructive for and interesting to students? • What engages a students curiosity? • Help students learn to question historical accounts • Was the Trojan War a real historical event?

29. Ideas on How To • Use and teaching of facts • What do the facts tell us? • Can they be looked at differently? • If possible present historical accounts that use facts but differ • Example, populating the Americas (pre-historical) • How do the facts help us understand the big picture, enduring understanding?

30. Ideas on How To • Developing historical sense • Students write narrative of event all experienced • Share the narratives • Compare facts, interpretations, similarities and differences • Discuss reasons for, and then expand to larger issues, such as American Revolution, Civil War • NOTE: students are novices in study of history

31. Critical Features • Probe student thinking on historical issues • What do they know? • What are their perceptions? • Why do they hold their perceptions? • Ask students how they know something about an historical event, cause, etc • Not just, “I learned it last year.” • Explain from where their understanding is derived • Document their understanding

32. The What, Why, How Chart • The CHART • WHAT: what a student knows about an event, occurrence, concept, etc. • WHY: why the student thinks that • HOW: how does the student know this information, what evidence do they have • Purpose of chart is to help students identify their understandings and the base of those understandings • Hints at Principle #3 metacognition

33. A Caution • Ritualistic understanding • Need to challenge student understanding and presuppositions • Going through the actions does not lead to understanding • Students will need support • Teacher, visual prompts, strategies • Don’t just give a primary source and expect understanding. • Guidance, not worksheets

34. Goal • Teach students the facts, stories, while at the same time providing a background against which to place the facts. • Develop in students the ability to read, criticize, and evaluate the stories of history and the use of facts • Develop historical literacy • Ability to evaluate historical arguments, and make decisions given evidence regarding those arguments which is the most plausible

35. HOW TO BEGIN An Idea

36. Performance Standards • Tell what a students is to know and be able to do • Need to be attached to enduring understandings • Standards are not enduring understandings • There is not one enduring understanding for a particular period, standard, etc

37. Current Practice • Topic selected • American Revolution • Age of Enlightenment • Role of Congress • Develop unit on this topic • Includes causes • Facts related to topic • May be some larger concepts imbedded

38. Current Practice • Courses in Social Studies can be a sequence of topics • Students do not always make connections • Students do not come to Social Studies classes with a clear picture of the subject • Narrative sequence of topics may not be the most effective way to help students acquire new knowledge

39. Questions to Ponder • What is the relationship of this unit to the rest of the course? • Do students understand where this topic fits in with the rest of the course? • Of what important enduring understandings is this topic a part? • Do my students understand how this topic relates to the rest of the course?

40. An Idea • Schema • New knowledge is incorporated as it relates to previous knowledge • Students place new knowledge within the context of what they bring to the class • What ever they learned in elementary, middle, and at home is the background against which new knowledge is assimilated • Important we help students develop the framework to attach new knowledge