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Responding to the Winds of Change in History Education
Matthew T. Downey and Fritz Fischer
University of Northern Colorado, Greeley
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SLIGHTLY LESS THAN TWO DECADES AGO the winds of change began to blow once again in the halls of historical academia and in history classrooms throughout the nation. Reformers from both inside and outside the historical profession began to reexamine the role of history in the nation's schools. Studies pointed to the dearth of historical knowledge among American students, helping to provide the impetus for the reformers. From the Bradley Commission on History in the Schools to reform efforts in a number of individual states to the National Standards movement, the late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed a renewed burst of activity focused on improving history education. At the same time, Colleges of Education and teacher education programs experienced even more extensive soul searching and even louder calls for reform. Now that the dust is settling, it's time to examine how those of us interested in history education have responded to the latest call for reform. The following is an account of how historians at one institution, the University of Northern Colorado, responded. |
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These calls for change focused on three areas, not all of which appear to be compatible at first sight. First, recent reformers in history education have consistently called for teachers to be more thoroughly grounded in the content of the discipline they teach. Such grounding in historical content is at the heart of the Bradley Commission report and served as the engine of the National Standards movement. Second, since the early 1990s reformers in teacher education have argued the need for more collaboration between university Arts and Sciences faculty, Education faculty and, especially, teachers in the secondary and elementary schools. This position has been most clearly articulated by Professor John Goodlad and the Center for Educational Renewal at the University of Washington. Goodlad argues that only through such partnership and collaboration can teacher preparation programs prepare effective teachers. The third area of reform is more recent and potentially more ominous, as many states focus reform efforts on new systems of evaluation and assessment, both for the students in the schools and for those teaching. |
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In part because of its background as the State Normal School, a central mission for the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) is to prepare future secondary and elementary teachers. It was natural, therefore, for the UNC faculty in history and social science to move as quickly as possible to react to the reform challenges of the 1980s and 1990s. The faculty first focused on the secondary schools, in part because they had long recognized the continuity between the latter stages of secondary schooling and the early stages of higher education. Another impetus for this focus came from the Colorado state legislature, which in 1989 mandated that all undergraduate education degrees be eliminated and be replaced by discipline-based degrees for all teacher candidates. Thus, all secondary social studies teachers in Colorado had to major in history or geography or take a multidisciplinary social science major. This forced the faculty at UNC to come to grips with the reforms and the winds of change in a way they might not otherwise have done. We will focus here on the response of the Department of History, although the Geography Department and Social Science Program faced the same challenge. |
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The historians' first reaction to the reform movement was to craft a history major for future secondary school teachers that provided the necessary content background and understanding to effectively teach the discipline. The faculty strongly believed that this background should be nearly identical to the content background of non-teaching majors. The point was not to provide the future teachers with specific discrete factoids for them to pass on to their students. Rather, it was to train them to think as historians, to use the processes and resources of historical inquiry and to have a broad and deep understanding of a variety of historical eras and areas. |
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The next reaction to the reform movement was to attempt to integrate this major in history with the reforms occurring in teacher education as a whole. UNC did this through a university-wide collaboration (including all the relevant departments in the College of Arts and Sciences with the College of Education) in creating a new Secondary Professional Teacher Education Program (SPTEP). Significantly, this program also included partnerships with local secondary schools, both in the stages of planning and implementation. These have been thorough partnerships, with teacher candidates spending time in the local secondary schools from the very beginning of the program during their sophomore year. By the completion of their program, teacher candidates spend more than 800 hours in the schools, and during many of these hours they are directly observed by UNC faculty. |
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This program, piloted in 1995 and begun in 1996, now includes the placement of over 200 secondary teacher candidates (approximately forty percent of whom are in history and social studies) in seven partner schools every semester. Every semester, faculty from history and the social sciences team-teach teacher education courses to these students and participate in the on-site evaluation of these future teachers. To reemphasize, these faculty members are not from the College of Education; they are from the faculty of the various disciplines and are trained first and foremost as practitioners of the discipline. There is no better example of discipline-based education in practice, because the teaching of the teacher education classes and the evaluation of student teachers must, in this system, be based primarily on content and on method only in connection with the content. |
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The secondary program has so far successfully integrated the academic program and the field-based preparation. Teacher candidates are integrated into the school classroom from the earliest stages of their experience. At the same time, they complete a rigorous and demanding content-based major. Partner schools and partner school teachers are directly involved in the preparation of future teachers, participating in each phase of the practical preparation of teachers in their own field. Such partnerships have had an impact on the university curriculum as well, with secondary teachers helping to teach methodology courses in history and social studies at the university level. |
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As our first cohort has only recently completed their degrees, it is too soon to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. However, anecdotal evidence is very encouraging. Partner school administrators testify to the greatly improved preparation in content and professional knowledge of the new social studies teachers from UNC that they are now hiring. A number of teachers who supervise student teachers also have commented on the stronger content preparation of our teacher candidates, as have social studies department chairs. The Department of History receives calls from school principals from throughout the state soliciting applicants for social studies teaching positions. They tell us that they prefer UNC students to teacher candidates from other state universities. |
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Taking the next step in the evaluation of this program involves addressing the third direction of reform--that of assessment and evaluation. State and local legislators and administrators have latched onto assessment in a manic fashion, and it is imperative that history faculty be intimately involved with the creation of appropriate assessment tools for both teacher candidates and the students they teach. This connects back to the idea of preparing teachers thoroughly grounded in the content of the discipline. The content of history does not mean only the mastery of a fixed set of names, dates and events. It is a way of thinking and a mode of inquiry, and it is this that future assessments must focus on. This is our next challenge for the secondary history education program at UNC. |
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The preparation of teachers at the elementary level encountered a different set of challenges. At UNC, the elementary program changed at the same time and in the same fashion as the secondary program. Students were asked to take a single subject academic major and were involved in local partner schools early in the program. Yet, in part due to their experience in these partner schools, the weaknesses of their preparation in a single major soon became obvious. Master teachers reported deficiencies in specific content areas. History and social studies majors were deficient in mathematical skills (termed "numeracy" in current educational lexicon), while students majoring in math and science disciplines were deficient in teaching reading and writing (known as "literacy"). This became even more problematic as the mania for testing in literacy and numeracy swept through the Colorado legislature. The legislature and the governor pushed through a set of "reforms" that graded schools on student performance on standardized tests in literacy and numeracy, thus forcing the issue in an unprecedented fashion. Clearly, the elementary teacher education program needed to respond to these changes. |
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The response came during the summer of 1999, when Marlene Strathe, UNC's Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, directed the deans of the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education to "develop an elementary education program which will address the content and pedagogical needs of future elementary teachers." She proposed that this be done by creating a multi-disciplinary Arts and Science major for elementary teachers, including more prescriptive General Education requirements to serve as a foundation for the major, and increasing the hours of supervised field experience required for teacher candidates. She asked that the new program be in place by the fall semester of 2000. |
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The deans responded by appointing a Joint Task Force on Elementary Education Preparation. It included eight Arts and Science faculty (from the departments of Biological Science, English, Foreign Languages, History, Geography, Mathematics, Physics, and the multidisciplinary Social Science Program), three from the College of Education, and two elementary teachers. It was co-chaired by Education and Arts and Science faculty members, with the Arts and Science and Education deans serving as ex-officio members. |
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The Task Force that set to work in August 1999 focused primarily on creating a new Arts and Science major. The task of expanding the student-teacher program was given to a committee in the College of Education. It was an intense experience due to the time constraints involved. To appear in the 2000-2001 UNC Catalog, the proposed major had to be submitted to the Arts and Science Curriculum Committee no later than November 1. The full Task Force met one evening each week, with small, working committees meeting more frequently. Fortunately, the Task Force was a compatible group strongly committed to teacher education and capable of placing the needs of that program ahead of the parochial interests of their respective departments. |
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During these lengthy discussions, a consensus developed within the Task Force about what elementary teachers should know and be able to do. The members felt strongly that in addition to a basic knowledge of subject matter, elementary teachers needed to be acquainted with the philosophies, mindsets, and working tools of the major disciplines they teach. They believed, in other words, that elementary teachers, to be effective in the classroom, must know what it is like to "think" in several disciplines. For example, while elementary teachers may lack the expert knowledge required to think like a professional historian, they should be engaged as undergraduates in historical thinking and should know how to involve their students in doing history as well as in acquiring historical information. |
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To accomplish this (and to abide by a strictly enforced UNC policy that every student should be able to graduate in four years), the Task Force identified nine lower division General Education courses that would be required for the new major. These included introductory courses in history, geography, and economics or political science, as well as courses in English composition and literature. Other requirements included courses in mathematics, biology, earth science, and physical science that had been designed specifically for elementary teachers. These lower-division courses were selected to provide a common foundation of knowledge on which to build discipline-based thinking in the upper-division courses required for the major. Requiring these general education courses effectively expanded the credits required for the major from the traditional forty or so hours to sixty-seven semester hours. |
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The major itself consists of two components. The first is a set of primarily upper-division courses in science, math, English, and history and the social sciences (twenty-two credit hours). These Core Courses provide students with greater multi-disciplinary breadth than any existing major. Three of these seven courses emphasize the intellectual perspectives of various disciplines; at least two of the remaining four (History of Colorado and Social Studies Methods of Inquiry) will be revised along similar lines. For example, the Colorado History course has already progressed beyond its traditional focus on the political history of the Old West because of recent trends in scholarship. We think it can be made stronger by explicitly incorporating the perspectives of geographers, economists and anthropologists. The revised Social Studies Methods of Inquiry course will engage students in methods of inquiry grounded in history and several of the social sciences, helping them understand that disciplines are systematic ways of thinking about people and places. The second component of the major is an Area of Concentration (eighteen credit hours) designed to give the students a more in-depth exposure to a subject area. They may choose an Area of Concentration from one of nineteen departments and programs that cover the gamut from mathematics to fine arts. |
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On November 1, the Task Force submitted its proposal for a new Interdisciplinary Studies Liberal Arts major. Its first stop was the Arts and Science Committee on Curriculum, where it met with opposition from several Arts and Sciences department chairs. Some thought the major was too prescriptive in its General Education requirements, a reasonable objection that was met by giving the students additional choices. A number of chairs objected to "top-down curriculum development" by the Provost, which they thought threatened one of the traditional prerogatives of academic departments. However, it is unlikely that an interdisciplinary major such as this one could have been created without strong leadership by the Provost. It will have a significant impact on departmental major headcounts and course enrollments. Within four years, the new major will enroll more than 1,200 students, which in an Arts and Science College of 4,300 undergraduates represents a significant redistribution of majors. It also will inflate enrollments in some courses while shrinking those in others. That an Arts and Science major was being created by a task force that included College of Education faculty and elementary teachers also caused eyebrows to be raised. However, even the strongest critics agreed that students preparing to be elementary teachers needed more breadth in their content preparation and that this major would accomplish that. In the end, the Interdisciplinary Studies Liberal Arts major was unanimously approved by the College of Arts and Science Curriculum Committee, by the department chairs, and by two University-wide curriculum councils. The new major was approved in May 2000 in time to be listed in the UNC Catalog for 2000-2001. |
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How do history and the social sciences fare in the Interdisciplinary Studies Liberal Arts major? The General Education courses required of all students include one semester each of history, geography, and economics or political science, which are the four social studies subjects for which Colorado has adopted Model Content Standards. The Core Courses in the major proper include a course in Colorado history and a multi-disciplinary social science course. In addition, students may elect to take one of the four social studies Areas of Concentration (history, economics, geography, and civics). These clusters of courses also have a multi-disciplinary thrust, as students may only take twelve of the eighteen semester hours in the designated discipline. Of the remaining six hours, three must be from a second standards-based social studies subject and three may be taken in a discipline for which there are no state content standards (anthropology, psychology, and sociology). That is, all elementary teacher education candidates are required to take fifteen semester hours in the parent disciplines of the social studies and may take up to thirty-three hours. Most prospective elementary teachers will receive substantially more instruction in these disciplines than they would have under the previous system, except those who majored in history, geography or social science. |
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The process by which the Interdisciplinary Studies Liberal Arts major was created also promises to have implications for the future. While the new major is open to all students, it was designed expressly for elementary teacher candidates. It was intended to be different from a generic interdisciplinary major. Consequently, it seemed self-evident to the deans who organized the Task Force that it should include at least two master teachers from UNC's partner elementary schools. They brought to the Task Force's meetings a different perspective on the kind of course content that is most useful to prospective teachers. While the teachers were unaccustomed to the University's curriculum-making process, their experience and knowledge helped the Task Force make better decisions than it might otherwise have made. Designing a major for prospective elementary teachers by a collaborative process that includes teachers was a significant departure from tradition for UNC, one that promises to have further repercussions. |
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For example, we plan to use such a collaborative approach when we redesign the Colorado History course. We suspect that the resulting course will be substantially different than a course developed by UNC faculty less concerned about which students might take the course. It probably will be more interdisciplinary in its approach. It also is likely to include historical content that might not be included in a traditional university course and may well minimize some content typically found in university offerings in state history. It surely will include more social history, especially topics of interest to children, such as schooling, children's work, and family life as seen from the perspective of children. Such a course might, in fact, reflect the balance of recent scholarship more accurately than many existing state history courses. |
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The bedrock goal of the teacher training programs at UNC (both elementary and secondary) is to provide teacher candidates with a solid background in disciplines they will be teaching. The winds of change should not blow this traditional idea away along with recurring and untested fads. As a matter of fact, historians have an unparalleled opportunity today in that the current trend stresses content over process. Yet teaching content does not mean striving to empty buckets filled with facts into the heads of future teachers or their future students. Instead, we must seek to prepare history teachers at every level to think as a practitioner of the discipline and to take advantage of new scholarship to think about history in new ways. Just as new theoretical frameworks from other disciplines have enriched historical scholarship in recent decades, new interdisciplinary approaches to teacher preparation can enrich our own students and the students they will teach in the future. |
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