The image of academic historians dropping like lemmings into an abyss, futilely piling on top of each other in their efforts to translate their craft into classroom lessons is an amusing metaphor. But it is precisely the implication of the language employed in some of this week’s readings.
September 19, 2006
September 18, 2006
Week 4:We must teach, but how?
Because this course centers around teaching, it is of course necessary to talk about how we will accomplish that task. However, when choosing History as a field of scholarship; do all students need to be trained to eventually also teach History? Then, if one is going to teach History as a subject (at whatever level); what sort of training should they have?
Our readings for this week attempt to answer the sorts of training History teachers (and eventual Professors) should have. Mostly though, I came away thinking that perhaps, students of History should examine first their motivations for embarking on an academic career in History. Maybe many really just want to do the research, and find that they are thrust into the role of instructor by accident or financial necessity. Other than teaching History, what ways are there to finance a truer love of research, investigation, and writing? Since so many will find themselves expected to guide novice students, should there not be some sort of requisite course in teaching? (more…)
Week 4: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
The last article I chose to read this week was “Beyond Best Practices: Taking Seriously the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” by Kornblith and Lasser and I feel it encompasses the meaning(s) of what the scholarship of teaching and learning is. “The scholarship of teaching and learning, then, not only encourages us to bring our skills as researchers into our work as teachers; it also asks us to articulate the core substance and significance of our distinctive expertise as historians.” This excerpt is an excellent point, but the question is how to remedy the predicament of the K-12 system, which does not seem to have a universal standard of ensuring that American high school graduates posses a working knowledge of history by the time the enter the university environment. Because of this, it is the responsibility of the college and university professors to compensate. How can a system be created that involves the scholarship of teaching and learning history at all levels of education and not leave it to the collegiate level to ensure students are not just continuing to learn facts, but creating strategies for which the students can build confidence in, as Pace states, “evaluate claims critically, to see complex questions from more than one perspective, to understand how different groups can view the same situation in different ways, to recognize the long-term consequences of actions, and to master dozens of other subtle mental operations that are absolutely necessary for their success as individuals…”?
Familiar Concerns
This week’s readings on historians and the scholarship of teaching and learning must be taken as a collection of documents on the pedagogy of developing the skills required of the history professional. The skills that these articles cite as important to develop are quite different than what fledgling historians learn in graduate school. David Pace places an entirely new burden on his fellow historians. He challenges his peers and the profession to not give up on teaching and consider it to be a collateral duty that allows for scholarship. Historians must view teaching as a new form of scholarship, one that is both personal and collective. Just as they keep current on the crucial arguments in their field, they must also work to keep up with “the creation and dissemination of better tools for responding to the challenges of teaching history today could allow us to apply the intellectual skills that we have honed so carefully to the solution of the very real problems that we face in the classroom and that the nation as a whole faces on a larger scale.” Pace is correct that historian/educators are fighting against societal pressures that reduce student’s abilities to consider historical questions. Rather than succumb to such pressures and assume a defeatist, cynical attitude historians must redouble their efforts or else see the field become “impotent and irrelevant.” (more…)
September 17, 2006
Susan on Teaching Techniques in Bain, Cohen, Kornblith, Reichard, Van Sledright
Vansledright gives us qualitative research in narrative form that demonstrates the possibilities mentioned in my posting on Pace’s article. If the activity is well prepared, and the students are given enough latitude and guidance, the desired results can be obtained. Note that the experiment was conducted with a hand-picked (though all the selection criteria are not made known other than ethnic diversity, such as reading ability, behavior, gender, etc.) It is admittedly harder to reproduce such results in a class of 35 that meets a couple of times a week, but it is not impossible to expose students to such things. The idea that historical thinking is so utterly different from any other life situation is a bit far-fetched, and we cannot have it both ways: If learning history is helpful for life, then life experience must aid in learning history. For example, children get tons of practice in describing “historical” situations and reconstructing events when something goes wrong at home or on the playground among friends. They are marvelously adept at creating various narratives, defending them, and arguing the correctness of their version. Surprisingly, children often demonstrate the ability to assume positions that do not necessarily agree with their interests, and show considerable empathy for others’ positions at times.
Along these same lines, in Kornblith et al. “Beyond Best Practices,” the suite of articles describing ways of approaching the task of getting students to think historically, it is fascinating to watch how Coventry worked with students whose training is in various disciplines with a common element of training in media, and took them in multimedia projects through the process of creating historical accounts. Though Coventry doesn’t say it as O’Leary does, both are seeing what the students bring through their experience to the process of learning and constructing history, rather than seeing their non-specialization as an obstacle. O’Leary sees the “critical assets” that the students bring from their experiences as children of immigrants. (more…)
Scholarship of Teaching
“Pride in ignorance should be no more honored in teaching than it is in other aspects of our professional life.” This quote from David Pace’s article The Amateur in the Operating Room: History and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning sums up my feelings on the subject of the scholarship of teaching and learning rather nicely. Of the many objectives found in this week’s reading I found myself feeling a little cynical. It struck me that as important as it is to create and refine a scholarship of teaching it does require a rather large departure from what we as historians have been training for. Learning a new discipline (educational theory) at this late stage in our academic career or for others potentially decades after entering the profession reminds me of the condition college freshman are in when they’ve been practicing rote memorization in their history classes for 12 years. We have read how they must begin think historically and that this change does not always come easily. Historians that teach must make an equally drastic change and as Pace points out this may be too much to ask. Even if they wish to change are they qualified?
September 16, 2006
Reinventing the wheel?
I started reading these articles as I usually do, just ready to soak in all the info and take it as it is. But in trying to do better at analyzing, I took a proverbial step back and tried to decifer what it is these people are writing about. The following are thoughts and questions I’ll be looking for answers to as I finish reading this weeks articles.
So at first glance (and the limited scope of looking at just the first few pages of David Pace’s piece) it seems that the question here is: How do historians improve the teaching of history?
Now it’s what the answer to this question seems to be that has me a little confused, concerned, and a bit baffled. Pace, and some of the other authors from past readings, seem to be approaching this from a ground up method. They realize the teaching of history is bad, it doesn’t share the same level of importance as researching history does (and therefore lacks necessary tools), and that improvement is necessary. But at first glance, what with all of their lamenting the lack of research or scholarship on how to teach history, it would seem that Pace and others feel the need to find out how to teach from the very beginning, as it were. What I’m getting at, is that there has been tons of research, scholarship, and what have you in the field of teaching. There’s usually a school of Education at every university. People know how to teach. So why don’t historians just take some classes on how to teach, then apply history to that?
Well, one rebuttal to my own question is that there must be something different about teaching history than other subjects. And of course there is. (Warning blatant over-generalizations ahead.) For example, history is all subjective (how did people think 1000 years ago) and math is all factual (1+2=3, was true 1000 years ago, now and forever).
So those will be my questions that overshadow my reading: 1) How can historians improve the teaching of history? and 2) Why is teaching history different than teaching any other subject?
Check out my notes for the results of my reading.
September 15, 2006
Historians Form a United Front on SOTL
It would seem from the various articles assigned this week that some common themes are shared by many of the historians: cognitive approach is important and valuable approach for improving teaching and learning history; lecture, textbook reading, and exams are less effective, if not the least effective teaching method, and high school students lack the analytical skills to employ historical thinking, however, this deficiency is not linked to age or mind not yet capable of analytical thinking. Instead, the various authors submit that high school students can be taught to think like historians.
The onus is not solely on the student, according to Robert Bain, who states in his article “Into the Breach: Using Research to Shape History Instruction,” that history teachers must be subject matter knowlegeable, too. Bain relies on research to aid in his design and implementation of his curriculum and class activities. He suggests creating courses where the student becomes a mini-historian, thus utilizing a practioner role for the student where they are experiencing history and exhibiting historical thinking attributes such as corroborating, contextualizing, and sourcing. His approach is reminiscent of Wineburg’s in “Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts.” Bain concedes that he does not have enough evidence to begin drawing any conclusions, but he does mention that the students found the class more enjoyable and that they thought their thinking and analytical skills had improved. Bain utilized the research from many leading education and history researchers, some of which we have read over the past two weeks such as Peter Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Samuel Wineburg. He also utiliized research from a renowned cognitive development psychologist, Lev Vgotsky. (more…)
September 11, 2006
One sample of what I mentioned last week
Hi:
Here’s a link to Dennis Jacob’s course portfolio for the Chemistry course at Notre Dame I mentioned. I tried to find a link to the interview with the Stanford biologist, but that no longer seems to be up online.
See you tomorrow.
Mills