Teaching History in the Digital Age

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.

David Pace’s aritcle “The Amateur in the Operating Room: History and the Scholarship of Taching and Learning,” looks at the traditional approach to teaching history, considers the new approaches being researched and implemented, and offers comments on how traditional historical scholarship practices are now being applied to the scholarship of teaching and learning. It seems a bit ironic that this has not occurred earlier to historians sicne historians should be quite attuned to considering the aspects of all the participants in an activity, yet it seems that historians have not looked at teaching history from the students perspective. Pace asserts that the there are two types of knowledge being utilized when teaching, the knowledge of how the students learn, and, similar to Stearns’ above argument, knowledge of subject matter. Pace’s article brings up current debate topics on scholarship of teaching, where some scholars want “…a culture of teaching as intellectual work,” i.e., transform teaching from an art to a science. While Pace’s article provides a survey, or overview, of topical issues for all educators to consider when teaching their subject matter, he also tailors some of the discussion to the scholarship of teaching and learning history. Pace considers changes to textbooks from gospel-like prose to a narrative form that provides a more interesting format that allows the student to internalize stories and improve their ability at retelling the stories, therefore, memory or recall is enhanced. Pace also agrees with the general theme found in the other articles that the high school students are ill-equipped to think historically. Pace basically puts out a call to historicans to follow up on Wineburg’s reearch and take responsibility for thinking about and implementing changes in the way history is taught. Pace then presents potential reasons why the scholarship of teaching may not take hold in history courses. Some historians and/or universities fear that time spent on the scholarship of teaching may reduce their time for historical scholarship. However, Pace offer the counterpoint that the time spent toward the scholarship of teaching should not be signficant at the individual level, not to mention that an improved approach to teaching history could actual save time since best practices could be established, thereby saving time for newer professors who will not have to revinvent the “wheel.” I am not quite sure I agree with the somewhat flippant suggestion that little time would be required toward scholarship — an opportunity for more research, perhaps. In the end, although Pace may have presented both sides of the argument, he seems to favor implmenting some form of scholarship of teaching and learning for historians.

Peter Stearns’s article “Getting Specific about Training Historical Analysis” focused on freshmen World History students. Stearns agreed with Bain’s assertion that high school students lack historical analytical skills. Stearns article discusses his goal to improve the students’ analytical skills in one semester using a cognitive approach. He found exercises worked better than essays and discussion, which differed somewhat from Bain’s approach, who felt that informal journals were helpful. Stearns found marked improvement in the students demonstrated ability to handle unfamiliar comparitive works. Stearns did not cite many other studies or work in his notes section. He basically was reporting his findings of his own study and, since this study is a follow-on to a previous study, he referenced the previous study as well. Stearns article is more of a “how to” guide than Bain’s general research. Stearns provides several Appendices to describe specific exercises he used in his study, exercises that others may consider and tailor accordingly. Similar to Bain’s argument, Stearns suggests that lectures and discussion shoud be replaced by activities. Stearns goes farther, though, in focusing exclusively on using charts as a primary tool for developing or enhancing the students’ analytical skills, with less variety than perhaps other approaches presented in the readings for this week.

On a slightly different tactic, the software tool called the by the same name as the article, “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” by M. Anne Britt, Charles A. Perfetti, Julie A. Van Dyke, and Gareth Gabrys, applies a technology solution to the ability to assess documents. Their tool utilizes document and argument maps that remind me of the way we use to try to outline chapters and books. They used the SA on narrative texts to help map the author’s primary argument(s) and supporting arguments, as well as for comparing two documents. Their research, which dealt with high school students, echoed  the findings in other articles in that high school students’ analytical and comparative skills were less developed, if at all, compared to college students. Their goal is to use SA as a history “lab” to raise the students’ document literacy. The screen shots gave me the impression that this was similar to the educational games you can buy for students at a Best Buy or Zany Brainy store. I wonder how effective the tool will be over the course of a year, i.e., will the interface and flow become stale or less stimulating. Used intermittently over the school year may alleviate this concern. I liked the quicker feedback mechanism and student choice feature of the tool to facilitate learning. The article cited many articles on cognitive development, technology, and studies on the thougtht processes of students, especially regarding text based learning, which seems sensible since the SA focuses on document assessment.

Although the authors of most of the articles I read focused on high school and college students, Bruce VanSledright dared to address historical thinking activities with ten and eleven year students in “Can Ten-Year-Olds Learn to Investigate History as Historians Do?” VanSledright found that with teacher assistance, which also has been present in the high school approaches already discussed, these younger students were capable of developing investigative and compartive sklls. Now this article can really get our hopes up. What if we actually established this kind of teaching philosophy at the grade school level and continued it through high school. What skills would the first year college freshman in world history require? Would professors have to change their approach and teach the freshmen courses they way they might teach an junior, senior, or even graduate course? More research is need as the class size was only eleven students, but the results piqued my curiosity and hope for future improvement.

James Axtell’s “The Pleasures of Teaching History,” as the title suggests, posits that his chosen profession is rewarding and quite pleasing. He first focuses on the challenges the students present to history teachers due to two factors, stereotypes, and sef-knowledge being historical knowledge. His asserts the “fun” for him, which he seems to assume applies to current and future teachers, is to debase the students of their erroneous mental programming. Axtell seeks to tap in the youth’s creativity by exciting and unlocking their minds which will expell the faulty programming, thereby allowing his students to experience the past. Although he states his approach for his teaching goals is a little different than most of the authors I read this week, his attitude and goals are in line with the other authors — all of the them have a genuine concern for the students, they want to reach them and make history fun, to live history as if the student were there. He seeks to make the learning active by having the students read primary sources and generate their own interpretations, which reminded me of Bain’s approach to let the student become a mini-historian.

Kornblith and Lasser’s “Beyond Best Practices: Taking Seriously the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,” actually provided a summary of what many of the authors of the articles for the reading this week are advocating: developing teaching goals, having students learn history by “doing history,” and using the vast empirical research already available to develop a scholarship of teaching and learning history.

Finally, David Reichard article “How do students understand the history of the American West?: An Argument fo the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,” takes a similar tack as authors such as Pace and Axtell in that teachers must understand that the student brings certain attitudes and beliefs into the classroom that will impact, even impair, their ability to analyze and interpret the past. Reichard considers the challenges of reaching these students at a time when concepts about the American West are changing. Reichard also asks the question of how do students learn and what methods can or should teachers use to teach the students about the new West. Reichard supports Seixas and Pace’s calls to develop a scholarly approach to teaching and learning history by discarding the folklore methods of lecture, incorporating new methods which include various forms of techonolgy, collecting data on the methods employed and results obtained.

Based upon these readings, if one can assume they are representative of the general experience of high school and university history teachers, it would appear that a foundation is growing for developing a scholarship of teaching and learning history. If so, some of the future challenges may include getting education research professionals to work with historians and managing university perception such that they do not see this new movement as a threat to their professors abitility and available time to conduct research.