I Can Do This Revelations on Teaching With Historical Thinking

Society for History Education

I Can Do This: Revelations on Teaching with Historical ThinkingAuthor(s): Brad BurenheideReviewed work(s):Source: The History Teacher, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Nov., 2007), pp. 55-61Published by: Society for History EducationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30037103 .

Accessed: 18/02/2013 00:23

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Society for History Education is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheHistory Teacher.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:23:43 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=history

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30037103?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


I Can Do This: Revelations on Teaching With Historical Thinking

Brad Burenheide Kansas State University

ATA RECENT STATE SOCIAL STUDIES CONFERENCE, I conducted a session on how to integrate historical thinking into history instruction. Even with modest optimism, I expected just a few participants for my "after-lunch" session. Much to my shock and pleasant surprise, I presented to a full room of eager participants. While reflecting upon my presentation-both the content and the audience-I discovered certain truths that raised concerns regarding how history is currently taught. In this article, I will share some ideas about history teaching gleaned from my experiences, established research, and from a current study. Among these ideas are the teaching of historical facts, the positioning of the student in historical study, and the assessment of student learning while "doing history."

My presentation at the conference began with a simple quote from Wineburg's (2001) seminal work where, in performing a review of historical research, he cited a 1917 study by Bell and McCollum. The study surveyed historical knowledge of students and found students learned very little. "Surely a grade of 33 in 100 on the simplest and most obvious facts ofAmerican history is not a record in which any high school can take pride." The conference participants nodded in silent agreement to this statement. I then followed with a second foundational study Wineburg referenced. I went on to explain the study also explored the notion of The History Teacher Volume 41 Number 1 November 2007 A Society for History Education



56 Brad Burenheide

historical knowledge and Wineburg proffered other pieces of evidence that this notion of our students either not learning or not retaining knowledge has been consistent throughout the past century.

Another reference from Wineburg was to Buckingham's (1920) study that questioned whether or not we as teachers truly looked at the difference between historical thinking and historical knowledge or if teachers simply equated knowledge of historical facts with mastery of historical thinking. This point seemed to puzzle participants and during my reflection, gave pause to me. Do we allow students to explore the discipline of history fully, causing them to construct knowledge? Or, do we focus upon a set of knowledge that is provided to us through the textbook, hopefully sprin- kling in activities that somewhat engage our students in active learning? It appears to me, both in conversing with participants of the conference and observing practicing teachers, that many are content to do the latter. We cannot necessarily fault teachers in doing so because the experiences that help frame the teaching of the discipline appear to be grounded in deliver- ing factual information.' In this age of assessments and standards, there is only a small push towards the application of historical thinking and it has not yet resulted in having our students "do history."2

Throughout my reflection, I found what participants in an ongoing research study reported their students doing and what their objectives in teaching the discipline to be extremely compelling. Titled "What Good History Teachers Do," it is a qualitatively-grounded theoretical study in which participants share the activities of their classroom and how they have gotten their students to wrestle with the issues of history. Participants were selected through purposive snowball sampling (Bogdan and Biklen, 2003) and have been recommended by peers and colleagues to participate in the study. The participants were considered exemplars of outstanding history teaching based upon school and/or classroom performance on state assessments, on recognition of teaching excellence via awards, and on the reports of colleagues aware of their teaching ability. Their practices were judged worth noting for the innovative and creative means by which they have students learn history, and their responses to questions asked them provide tremendous insight into how historical thinking has been imple- mented in their historical instruction.

One of the respondents described "doing history" as "the thinking part of analyzing the variety of primary sources and then making sense of the primary sources." In doing this, students learn "how to read and manipulate information, look for bias, and organize" the information. Another respondent explained the process by which his students practice historical thinking:

[I]f I was talking about the institution of slavery, I [would] have some hand- outs that have four or five different rationales for why slavery was started



Revelations on Teaching With Historical Thinking 57

whether it be...Winthrop Jordan or various historians that would say part of it would be class control, others explore pre-embedded racial ideas, things like that and as a result... let them make their own decisions as to which would be most correct and have them come up with a rationale as to why. It is in this realm of historical thought that students are constructing

knowledge, and research shows this causes students to internalize the historical facts that are often the goal of other methods. Students manipulate and use this information through the higher-order thinking skills involved in the grappling with history as noted by the earliest education researchers. This finding has consistently been reviewed by successive generations of researchers (Maxim, 2006; Wineburg, 2001).

Another concern that was voiced at the conference and continually resurfaced in the literature was students' perception of history. This perception of history and social studies emphasizing history has its foundation early in the educational careers of our students. Zhao and Hoge (2005) surveyed elementary students regarding how they view social studies and found that among students and teachers, the discipline "is not important, but is considered an enrichment or second ranked subject." Additionally the researchers suggested the reasons for this:

Most children mentioned reading, math, or science as their favorite subject because "it is fun to learn," "I'm good at it," or "it is useful and challenging." Most children said that they did not like social studies because "it is boring and useless," "it's reading the textbook," and "it doesn't apply." In their study, Zhao and Hoge note that this attitude was caused by "cur-

riculum content, teaching methods, and environment" A similar conclusion was reached by Stoskopf (2001) who theorized that poor history instruction had its roots in a huge curriculum that prohibited in-depth exploration of content, whereas good history instruction stemmed from the teacher bringing excitement and passion into an intense study and investigation of historical phenomena. It is a sentiment echoed throughout the research literature. Teachers need to bring to their students a level of energy that will propel student interest in historical study regardless of the grade level (American Historical Association, 1998; Brophy and VanSledright, 1997; Grant, 2001; VanSledright, 1998).

In addition to literature showing successful teaching of history occurring through active inquiry and involvement with the content, respondents in the study, "What Good History Teachers Do!" also advocate the benefits of an active investigative curriculum. Several study participants study said, "you have to have passion about what you teach." If the subject is taught without it, "the kids are going to know it right away and they will tell you every single time that the [good] teachers are.., the ones that are passionate about what



58 Brad Burenheide

they teach. They really care about it and relate that to their students." Some of the conference participants agreed, one saying: "what we need

to do in history is really excite the students, we need to show them it's not memorizing dates and facts." In support of this comment, another respondent discussed the need for students to be able to "create some ownership of [the content] by having them have an opinion about it." To do this, the participant suggested students must be actively engaged exploring relevant questions which are "trying to get them to think, but at the same time to get them to have some rationale based in some historical question." Another observed that the sheer size of the subject matter, often seen as a weakness in current teaching practice could become a strength if properly utilized. The sheer size of the discipline made it possible to "find something to interest each student" if the teacher knows the interests and learning styles of his/her students. In general, the participants encouraged inquiry-based learning in history throughout grades six to twelve. This appeared to support VanSledright's (2002) conjecture that students are able to "do history" from 4th grade up. The conclusion reached by myself and shared to the participants at the conference appeared to be that the curriculum needed to be streamlined, the approach to history needed to be rigorous and challenging in its nature. Students needed to be engaged deeply into exploration. In essence, my presentation urged: "teach less better and get after it!"

The final issue discussed with conference participants was how to efficiently assess student learning and understanding when students are engaged in "doing history." I noted that ongoing research studies and my observation of classrooms seemed to indicate that a holistic approach is often used when assigning marks to student interpretations of history. Typical were either rubrics for assessing aspects of procedural or completed work. Typically throughout the process, it was described as a wearisome process. A source in Wineburg (2001) states "the scrutinizing, marking, and correcting of the student products is the teacher's greatest bugbear" (Gorman and Morgan, 1930). This comment was further echoed by one of the participants who openly asked, "it is one thing to 'do history' in my class, but how should I determine how students perform?"

A work that is highly recommended for its potential in providing suggestions and answers to the classroom teaching of history is the work of Chris Husbands (1996), What is History Teaching? Using research done in Great Britain, where it can honestly be said that inquiry is the heart of the history curriculum, Husbands takes the reader through typical problems with classroom historical inquiry and discusses how these problems are handled in British instruction.3 About assessment, he offers two relevant suggestions: addressing the nature of student historical study, and establishing criteria for the evaluation of interpretations. To grasp the nature of student historical




study, it is necessary to contrast this with what professional historians do. Professional historians write articles and monographs. They also comment on other historians' writing (Gilderhus, 2000, Husbands, 1996). In addition to developing an analysis or narrative, historians analyze documents. Much more than just reading, historians question their sources and delve into the archives to find the pieces of information that help complete the picture of the topic they are studying.

Student historical study is not bound to the requirements of professional historians. Although writing can play a pivotal role in student history, students should be evaluated in broader terms ranging from objective test completion, observation of activities, and oral or visual output. There has been a lack of criteria bridging the two realms of history (Wineburg, 2001). Husbands (1996) offers suggestions for crossing this difficult bridge. He cites the work of Bevir (1994), who identified six specific criteria for evaluating professional historical interpretations.

Accurate-Does it fit the evidence? Comprehensive-Does it fit a substantial amount of the evidence? Consistent-Does it fit the evidence logically? Open-Has it been subjected to further examination and criticism? Progressive-Does it suggest new ideas? Fruitful-Does the new idea support further evidence?

If an interpretation of a historian meets these criteria, Bevir stated it could be considered an acceptable contribution to the body of historical knowledge. To assess student interpretations in light of Bevir's first four criteria would be very appropriate. The student work could be judged on its accuracy and how the student looks at the evidence. Simply put, does the student correctly use the evidence in the interpretation? Furthermore, does the student use the evidence in a consistent manner, which logically fits the process of historical inquiry? Does the student approach the evidence as a comprehensive whole and account for a significant amount of evidence? Finally, has the student openly presented the interpretation to analysis from both the teacher and fel- low classmates? However, to expect our students to produce "progressive" and "fruitful" historical interpretations would be idealism beyond what we could hope for in most classrooms. Still, it is well within our expectations for students to be able to produce ideas that meet the four initial criteria. I proposed in the presentation and encourage in this article that we assess our students' performance in creating interpretations by these four criteria.

In this article, I have explored three aspects of historical instruction. The learning and use of historical knowledge, the positioning of the student in historical study, and the assessment of student learning while they are "doing history." By having students work with materials rather than memorizing parts of the textbook, by having students understand and participate in



60 Brad Burenheide

the process of historical thought, and by having a system to analyze student's historical work, a type of learning where students are engaged in historical inquiry holds great promise for the future teaching of the discipline. By changing the way we have our students learn history, it is possible that a new life can be breathed into the study of our discipline where instruction has become somewhat stagnant. While it can be a daunting task to utilize this method of study, I have some hope because one of the participants at the conference, a veteran teacher who was looking to improve classroom instruction with a sudden revelation stated: "I can do this! I think my kids can like learning this way!"

Notes

1. For interesting and somewhat controversial thought provoking commentary on the current state of social studies education, consult the following two sources: Evans, R. W. (2004). The social studies wars: What should we teach the children? New York: Teacher's College Press. Leming, J., Ellington, L., and Porter-Magee, K. (2003). Where did social studies go wrong? Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

2. This is an interesting conjecture that needs to be researched. As a classroom teacher, I held the position that if my students could apply knowledge and think histori- cally, they can meet the challenges posed by a broad 'state assessment' without having to teach to the test. Again, it is a subject for future research.

3. For information about the The Schools History Project, conducted at Leeds University see: Dawson, I. (1989). The Schools History Project-A study in curriculum development. The History Teacher, 22(3), 221-238.

Appendix

References

American Historical Association. (1998). Statement on excellent classroom teaching of history. Retrieved 14 November 2004 online from http://www/historians.org/teaching/policy/ExcellentTeaching.htm.

Bell, J. C. and McCollum D. F. (1917). A study of the attainment of pupils in United States history. Journal of Educational Psychology, 8, 257-274.

Bevir, M. (1994). Objectivity in history. History and Theory, 33, 328-344. Bogdan, R. C. and Biklen, S. K. (2003). Qualitative research for education: An introduc-

tion to theories and methods (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.




Brophy, J. and VanSledright, B. (1997). Teaching and learning history in elementary schools. New York: Teachers College Press.

Buckingham, B. R. (1920). A proposed index in efficacy in teaching United States history. Journal of Educational Research, 1, 164.

Dawson, I. (1989). The Schools History Project-A study in curriculum development. The History Teacher, 22(3), 221-238.

Evans, R. W. (2004). The social studies wars: What should we teach the children? New York: Teacher's College Press.

Gilderhus, M. T. (2000). History and historians: A historiographical introduction (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Gorman, F. R. andMorgan, D. S. (1930). A study of the effect of definite written exercises upon learning in a course of American history. Indiana School of Education Bulletin, 6. 80-90.

Grant, S. G. (2001). It's just the facts, or is it? Teachers' practices and students' under- standings of history. Theory & Research in Social Education, 29(1), 65-108.

Husbands, C. (1996). What is history teaching? Bristol, PA: Open University Press. Leming, J., Ellington, L., and Porter-Magee, K. (2003). Where did social studies go

wrong? Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Maxim, G. W. (2006). Dynamic social studies for constructivist classrooms: Inspiring

tomorrow's social scientists (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Stoskopf, A. (2001). Reviving Clio: Inspired history teaching and learning (without high

stakes tests). Phi Delta Kappan 82 (6), 468-473 Wineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts: charting the future of

teaching the past. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. VanSledright, B. A. (1998). On the importance of historical positionality to thinking about

and teaching history. The International Journal of Social Education, 12, 1-18. VanSledright, B. A. (2002). In search of America s past: Learning to read history in

elementary school. New York: Teachers College Press. Zhao, Y. and Hoge, J.D. (2005). What elementary students and teachers say about social

studies. The Social Studies 96 (5) 21.



Documents

I Can Do This Revelations on Teaching With Historical Thinking