Joel M. Sipress | Why Students Don't Get Evidence and What We Can Do About It | The History Teacher, 37.3

Why Students Don't Get Evidence and What We Can Do About It

Joel M. Sipress
University of Wisconsin-Superior

AMONG MY GREATEST FRUSTRATIONS as a teacher of history, and a frustration that is apparently broadly shared, is the failure of many students, even bright and motivated students, to provide concrete evidence to support their assertions about the past. We try haranguing, explaining, cajoling, and still we receive paper after paper that, no matter how profound the ideas themselves, simply lack the necessary detail to make a case for the author's position. "In the late nineteenth-century, workers worked long hours under harsh conditions," a student may write. "How do you know that?" we muse to ourselves. Despite course readings extensively documenting the conditions of work in that era, the paper cites not one piece of evidence, either testimonial or statistical, to substantiate its claim.

When students display a repeated pattern of failure to understand one of the central concepts of our discipline, it should give us pause. Confronted with a stack of disappointing papers, our initial impulse may be to blame the students. Upon reflection, we may blame ourselves and resolve that the next time we require written papers we will explain the importance of evidence even more clearly. Following our explanation we may even provide a grading rubric that stresses the need to provide specific details. The problem, however, seems largely impervious to such solutions. And indeed it is. The problem of evidence is by its nature developmental, and thus not amenable to simple punitive or explanatory approaches. History, as a discipline, asks students to think in new and unfamiliar ways, and so we must find ways to help students truly understand and invest in this new way thinking. Only if we succeed in doing this will we find a solution to the frustrating problem of evidence.

During the 1999–2000 academic year, I had the opportunity to redesign my post-1877 introductory United States history course. The goal of the redesign was to organize the class around a theme of historical argument. The course already asked students to evaluate rival schools of historical thought and to draw their own conclusions and argue for them. In the past, however, I had not made the theme of argument explicit to students. Although skill-building exercises related to historical argumentation had long been a part of the course, the development of argumentative skills took place in a haphazard rather than strategic fashion. By redesigning the course explicitly around the theme of argument, I hoped to improve student understanding and appreciation of the process of historical argumentation.¹

The course redesign rested upon the premise that students of history, even at the general education level, should be viewed as introductory practitioners of the discipline. Within the field of history, there is a dichotomy between what we do in the role of scholar and how history is often taught. The fundamental work of historical scholarship is the construction and evaluation of arguments. Students, by contrast, are all too often asked simply to consume and reproduce historical arguments that have been constructed by others. This is particularly true in introductory and general education courses. My aim was to treat the students in my general education course as "professionals in training" who would do, at a basic level, what historians do and who would receive the academic support and guidance to learn how to do it. To treat students as "professionals in training," of course, one must dispense with the "coverage" approach to the introductory history course in favor of a topical model that more closely resembles how practicing historians conduct their scholarly work.²

The course redesign was also informed by Ernest L. Boyer's call for teaching to be reconceptualized as a scholarly activity, as well as by the broader discourse on the "scholarship of teaching." The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching defines the "scholarship of teaching" as "problem posing about an issue of teaching or learning, study of the problem through methods appropriate to disciplinary epistemologies, application of results to practice, communication of results, self-reflection, and peer review." The problem, in this case, was to determine why students, even highly motivated students, so often have difficulty engaging in historical argumentation. The method of study was, first, to redesign the course explicitly around the theme of argument, and then to assess student mastery of the component skills of historical argumentation. By doing so, I hoped to identify those particular aspects of argumentation that pose the greatest challenge for students and to develop strategies to help students meet these challenges.³

The theme of argumentation was made explicit to students in a pair of course objectives, highlighted prominently on the syllabus, that summarized the student learning goals of the redesigned class: 1) to learn to evaluate the persuasiveness of the historical arguments of others; and 2) to learn to construct persuasive historical arguments of your own. The organization and content of the course flowed from these objectives. The theme of argument was introduced on the first day of class via a participatory discussion of the nature of history. During this discussion, I defined history as a series of arguments about the past and defined an argument as a persuasive answer to an important question. Course reading and writing assignments, as well as in-class exercises, were designed to encourage an understanding and appreciation of argument and to foster the skills needed to engage in it. The language of argument was woven into the daily fabric of the class. Effectiveness of argumentation served as the basis for the evaluation of student work.

The organization and design of the course reflected a number of principles that support critical thinking across the curriculum.⁴ First, the course was question driven. Indeed, the course was organized around a single hotly debated question: what has been the impact of industrialization on modern society? Students received this question during the first week of class, and it served (in modified form) as the final exam question. Each of four chronological course units focused on a set of issues directly or indirectly related to the central course question. The initial course unit asked what impact the rapid industrialization of the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had on those who lived through it. The second unit examined the Great Depression and New Deal and asked what this great crisis reveals about the nature of modern industrial society. Unit Three asked why in the 1960s, in the midst of the greatest economic boom in human history, the United States entered a period of social and political turmoil. The final unit examined the impact of globalization on American society.

The class was also assignment centered. The course design required students to take a position on a series of important questions, and to make a case for their position in writing. Over the course of the semester, students completed three papers and an essay final, each of which addressed major questions of the course. The material covered in each unit was specifically geared toward the writing assignments. Reading assignments, lectures, and in-class exercises prepared students to formulate positions and to argue for them. On the final exam, students applied all they had learned to the central course question. The final exam question (made available approximately one week ahead of time) asked students to contrast the view of modern industrial society found in Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto with a classically liberal retort taken from the introduction to Harold Livesay's American Made. Students were then asked to explain which view they considered to be more accurate and why.⁵

Finally, the redesign assumed that critical thinking is a learnable skill. Most students enter an introductory history course with relatively little experience in formal argumentation and quite often no experience whatsoever in historical argumentation. Teaching history as argument thus requires the integration of skill development into the course design in a coherent and consistent fashion. My redesign focused on the development of four argumentative skills: 1) the ability to formulate a clear thesis; 2) the ability to effectively and fairly summarize another person's argument; 3) the ability to present supporting points in an organized manner; and 4) the ability to present evidence in support of one's position.⁶

The extent to which these skills were mastered served as the basis for the evaluation of student work. A simple grading rubric provided to students at the beginning of the semester made clear the centrality of these skills to the work of the course. (See Appendix) Across the semester, students completed a series of fifteen short (one to two paragraph) writing assignments geared to the reading, which provided an opportunity to practice and develop the four skills. (See Appendix) Students also engaged in a series of in-class skill-building exercises. Paper writing workshops that focused on the thesis statement preceded each of the first two papers.

The first course unit, which asked students to participate in an assignment-centered examination of issues of social class during the era of industrialization, illustrates each of the key elements of the course design. The unit began with a question: Why did the rapid industrialization of the United States in the late nineteenth century bring such great social upheaval? To pose this question, we viewed the film, 1877: Grand Army of Starvation, a powerful account of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the most violent labor conflict in American history and an episode that epitomizes the social strife of the late nineteenth century. To explore the reasons why industrialization brought upheaval, we read a general labor history text, Melvyn Dubofsky's Industrialization and the American Worker, and analyzed a set of primary source documents that illuminated both the cultural and economic aspects of late nineteenth-century labor history. In-class exercises asked students to identify, on the basis of evidence from the text and documents, factors that might account for the turmoil of the period.⁷

After exploring late nineteenth-century labor history, we read Jane Addams' Twenty Years at Hull House and considered the extent to which Addams' social reform philosophy offered an answer to the problem of class division in a newly industrialized society.⁸ Before beginning Twenty Years at Hull House, we discussed strategies for extracting the argument of a difficult reading assignment and we practiced and applied these strategies in an in-class exercise tied to the reading. The first unit culminated in a short paper that asked students to evaluate the extent to which Addams' reform philosophy offered an adequate solution to the problem of class division in industrializing America. (See Appendix) Students received this question before they began to read Addams and participated in a formal in-class debate on the question before the paper was due. To make an effective case for their position, students had to integrate material drawn from Addams with evidence drawn from our examination of late nineteenth-century labor history. The paper assignment forced students to consider the nature of social class in modern society, an issue directly related to the central course question, and required them to engage in historical argument, the central intellectual activity of the course. The remaining segments of the course were handled in a similar fashion.

At the conclusion of the fall semester, I evaluated the students' final exams for evidence of mastery of the four emphasized skills. Each exam received a rating of mastery, partial mastery, or failure for each skill. (Table I) The results were rather startling. Students were generally able to formulate a thesis and summarize the arguments of others with at least partial success. Students had far more difficulty providing a well-organized argument of their own (perhaps not surprising for an in-class essay, even with the question made available in advance). What was striking, however, was the failure of students to provide evidence. Seventy-one percent of the exams, in fact, gave little or no specific evidence whatsoever for the position taken.

Table I
*Skill Mastery—Fall 1999*
(N=28)
	Mastery	Partial Mastery	Failure
Thesis	50%	25%	25%
Summary	11%	54%	36%
Organization	11%	29%	61%
Evidence	0%	29%	71%

Though disconcerting, these results were, upon reflection, not particularly surprising. Because the ability to formulate a thesis is the prerequisite for engaging in academic discourse, it is the skill that I have most emphasized in my introductory-level teaching. The grading rubric that I employ allows no grade higher than C+ for a paper that lacks a clear thesis. My comparative success in teaching this stood in sharp contrast to the dismal and disappointing student performance in presenting evidence. This was disappointing because throughout the semester I had stressed the importance of evidence, and, on a theoretical level, students clearly understood the importance of evidence. Indeed, in an end of semester survey, students were asked what factors make an argument persuasive. Ninety-seven percent responded 'evidence." Few students, however, applied this theoretical knowledge in practice on the final exam.

In search of an explanation for my students' difficulties, I turned to the literature on student learning. William G. Perry's classic study of cognitive development among undergraduates provided a persuasive diagnosis of the evidence problem. Perry argues that most students enter college with a "dualistic" understanding of knowledge that takes truth to be clear-cut and revealed by authority. Relatively early in their college experience, many students abandon simple dualism in favor of a perspective that Perry labels "multiplicity." Such students come to view some realms of knowledge as clear-cut and others as uncertain. Within the realm of uncertainty, however, they view disagreement as a mere matter of opinion. The transition to a perspective in which one makes justified choices among rival positions, Perry concludes, is far more difficult than the transition from "dualism" to "multiplicity." In fact, Perry found that most college students never moved beyond "multiplicity." Perry's work has been critiqued on the basis of the elite male bias of the sample upon which his study was based. The relative ease with which my coeducational and non-elite group of students mastered the skill of thesis formation, however, coupled with their difficulty grasping the concept of evidence, lends credence to Perry's basic view of intellectual development among undergraduates. Indeed, the focus on argument had apparently moved my students rapidly from a "dualistic" view of history to one based upon "multiplicity." Viewing disagreements within the newly discovered realm of historical uncertainty as matters of mere opinion, they felt little compulsion to justify their positions with specific evidence, even after they were repeatedly told that their grade largely depended upon doing precisely that.⁹

I thus concluded that to solve the problem of evidence, what was needed was a set of classroom practices that would help students understand historical argumentation as an endeavor that requires them to make justified choices among rival positions. Making such justified choices, as Craig E. Nelson points out, is inherently comparative. Nelson urges us to make our disciplinary criteria of judgment explicit and to ask students to apply these criteria when selecting among alternative positions.¹⁰ In the discipline of history, we judge alternative lines of argument by the degree to which general assertions are consistent with specific and verifiable information concerning the human past. Evidence, in other words, is the criteria by which we judge the persuasiveness of historical arguments.

In the second semester of the course redesign, I introduced a number of modifications that made more explicit the criteria (i.e., evidence) by which we would judge persuasiveness of historical arguments. During the first week of the semester (immediately following the initial class discussion of the theme of argument), we probed the concept of persuasiveness to arrive at the importance of evidence. Prior to embarking upon the first topical unit of the course, students read the excerpts from The Communist Manifesto and Livesay's American Made that had heretofore been kept until the end of the semester. In discussing these readings, we focused on the type of evidence one could use to determine the relative persuasiveness of the two positions. Students also received the final exam question (which asked them to judge the relative merits of Marx and Livesay and to argue for their position) at the beginning of the semester. These initial exercises provided students with a framework and a language with which to understand the role of evidence in argument. I attempted to consistently employ this language and framework in discussion of evidence throughout the semester. Finally, I provided students with a one-page handout that briefly explained the four key skills of argument (including use of evidence) that they would be expected to master. (See Appendix)

The analysis of the second semester final exams (Table II) indicated a dramatic improvement in students' ability to present evidence in support of a position. This improvement is particular striking given the roughly equal levels of mastery of the other three skill areas across the two semesters. Does this mean that every student had left the realm of mere opinion to embrace evidence-based argument as an epistemological stance? Perhaps not, but as Craig E. Nelson points out, learning to play the "teachers' games" is an important way station on the path of cognitive change.¹¹

Table II
*Skill Mastery—Spring 2000*
(N=27)
	Mastery	Partial Mastery	Failure
Thesis	70%	19%	11%
Summary	11%	48%	41%
Organization	15%	26%	59%
Evidence	11%	63%	26%

One of the central themes of the literature on student learning is that effective teaching rests upon an understanding of what our students bring to the classroom. Teachers of history are well aware of our students' limited historical knowledge base. Indeed, the failure of students to master a sufficient body of facts has been the subject of much recent hand wringing. More important, however, even if less discussed, is the lack of an historical perspective among students. Relearning what it means to "do history" involves, in part, learning to view history as question rather than fact driven. But it also means learning that the answers to historical questions cannot be a matter of mere opinion. The facts do matter in history, but not as an end in themselves. Rather, the key role of evidence in the discipline in history is an expression of a central tenet of historical faith—that what we believe about the world around us should be consistent with what we can learn about that world.

Appendix

— Sample Course Materials —
Grading Rubric

The ability to take a position on a question and argue for it is the central skill of the discipline of history. In this course, you will put this skill into practice in a series of argumentative essays. The goal of an argumentative essay is to provide a persuasive answer to an important question. An argumentative essay presents its main point (the "thesis") and then supports that point with a well-organized argument and specific evidence.

Your essays will be graded on three criteria:

The thesis—do you have a clear and effective thesis? Is it clearly stated? (Unless you have a good reason not to, the thesis should be stated in the introduction.)
Organization—does the essay provide a well-organized argument in support of the thesis? Is the point of each paragraph clear? Is the relationship between each paragraph and the thesis clear?
Evidence—does the body of the essay provide sufficient evidence to support each assertion?

Grading:

An "A" Paper—Is strong in all three areas.
A "B" Paper—Has a clear and effective thesis, but is weak in either evidence or organization.
A "C" Paper—a) Lacks a clear and effective thesis; b) Is weak in both evidence and organization; or c) Has a serious weakness in any one of the three areas.

Other Policies:

Your essays may not be based solely on material covered in class lecture/discussion. You must include evidence drawn from the course readings and/or outside research. Any essay based entirely upon material from class lecture/discussion will receive a grade no higher than "D." Internet sources cannot be used, except with the permission of the instructor.
You must include a bibliography and proper citation. (See handout entitled "Plagiarism and Proper Citation" for details.) No paper that lacks a bibliography and proper citation will be accepted.
Any paper that fails to meet the minimum length requirement will receive no grade higher than "D."

Sample Skill Building Assignments

Jane Addams and Middle-Class Reform

Reading—Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, pp. 1–4, 15–31, 41–190.

In order to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of middle-class reform during the Progressive Era, we will examine the efforts of one particular group—the settlement house workers. The settlement house workers were a group of relatively affluent and educated individuals who established community centers (known as "settlement houses") in working-class slums in order to provide assistance to the impoverished residents of these neighborhoods. By doing so, the settlement house workers hoped to bridge the class divisions that characterized the new industrial cities of the United States.

In order to evaluate the settlement house workers, we will be reading a primary source document. A primary source is a document produced by an actual participant or observer of the historical phenomenon being analyzed. Secondary sources (like Dubofsky's book, for instance) are written after the fact by historians. Primary sources are the raw materials of history; they provide the evidence that historians need to construct and support their arguments.

Our primary source is Twenty Years at Hull House, an autobiographical account of the life and work of Jane Addams, the most prominent leader of the settlement house movement. Addams was the founder of Hull House, the most famous of all the settlement houses. At first glance, Twenty Years at Hull House appears to be little more than the story of Addams' life. The book, however, does have a point, and it does present an argument. As editor Victoria Bissell Brown writes in her introduction to the book, "It is a carefully crafted statement of Jane Addams's political philosophy." (p. 2) Your main task, as you read the book, is to identify Addams' line of argument. What is she trying to tell us about the goals and accomplishments of Hull House? What is her diagnosis of the problems of industrial society?

Writing—

In one or two brief paragraphs, summarize Jane Addams' solution to the problem of class division in industrial society. (Make sure to back up your answer with specific evidence drawn from Twenty Years at Hull House.)

The Youth Rebellion

Reading—"The Port Huron Statement"; "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows"

We are currently examining the youth rebellion of the 1960s. The youth rebellion was a wave of cultural and political unrest that swept a portion of the country's youth, especially its middle-class youth, in the mid to late 1960s. The youth rebellion took two forms: one cultural (the counter-culture) and one political (the New Left). Our assignment focuses on the New Left—a wave of political radicalism and that was felt particularly intensely on college campuses. Until the mid 1960s, the New Left was made up of a relatively small group of young people who had an optimistic faith in their ability combat what they considered the injustices of American society. After 1965, however, the New Left grew larger and angrier. This week we ask why.

Our readings provide a contrast between the early and later New Left. The first document, The Port Huron Statement, was issued by Students for a Democratic Society in 1962 and is the classic statement from the New Left in its early period. The second document is a 1969 statement from the Weathermen, the most militant (and violent) of all New Left groups. As you read these documents, pay close attention to how the tone and message of the New Left changed over these years.

Writing—

1. In one or two (brief) paragraphs, explain how the tone and/or message of the New Left changed between 1962 and 1969. Make sure to back up what you say with evidence drawn from the two readings.

Jane Addams Assignment

In this first part of the course, we have examined the class divisions produced by industrialization and the efforts by the reformers of the early twentieth century to address these class divisions. This first paper asks you to evaluate the efforts of the reformers. Please answer the following question in 3–5 typed pages (three pages means at least three full pages):

After analyzing the class divisions produced by industrialization, evaluate the extent to which Jane Addams developed solutions adequate to resolve these class divisions.

A good answer to this question will do three things:

Explain why industrialization brought class division.
Summarize Addams' proposed solutions to these divisions.
Evaluate the extent to which her solutions, had they been widely employed, would have resolved these divisions.

Your essay cannot be based solely upon material drawn from class lecture/discussion. You must also integrate material from course readings and/or outside research.

Four Key Skills of Effective Argumentation

Thesis—The "thesis" is the point that you are trying to prove. It is the thing of which you are trying to persuade the audience. It is your answer to the important question. A good thesis can usually be expressed in a sentence or two. The ability to formulate a clear and concise thesis is the fundamental skill of argumentation. One cannot argue effectively for a position unless it is clear what that position is.
Summary—Arguments often take the form of a response to another person's argument. In order to respond effectively to an argument, one must first be able to effectively identify and summarize that other person's argument, including the other person's thesis.
Organization—In order to demonstrate a thesis, one must present points in support of that thesis. The persuasiveness of the argument depends largely upon the organization with which one presents the supporting points. The key to a well-organized argument is to present the supporting points one at a time in a logical order.
Evidence—The fundamental criteria by which the persuasiveness of an argument should be judged is the degree to which specific evidence is provided that demonstrates the thesis and supporting points. The ability to locate and present such evidence is thus a fundamental skill of argumentation.

Notes

^1. The idea for the redesign was sparked, in part, by a published analysis of an argument-based history course taught by John R. Breihan at Loyola College in Maryland. Barbara E. Walvoord and John R. Breihan, "Arguing and Debating: Breihan's History Course," in Barbara E. Walvoord and Lucille P. McCarthy, Thinking and Writing in College: A Naturalistic Study of Students in Four Disciplines (Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1990), 97–143.

^2. Walvoord and McCarthy define a "professional in training" as "either a professional in the teacher's own field or a professional in some other field who could be able, as an informed citizen, to employ knowledge about the teacher's discipline." Walvoord and McCarthy, 9. For a scholarly critique of the "coverage" model, see Lendol Calder, "Looking for Learning in the History Survey," Perspectives: Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association 40 (March 2002), 43–45.

^3. Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990), 23–24; The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, "Instruction Sheet: Campus Conversations, Part One," http://www.aahe.org/teaching/Carnegie/instruct1.htm. The study upon which this article is based was conducted under the auspices of the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows Program of the University of Wisconsin System, a program organized around the concept of the "scholarship of teaching." I would like to thank Tony Ciccone and Bill Cerbin, directors of the Teaching Fellows Program, for introducing me to the scholarship of teaching. Thanks also go to my fellow teaching fellows and to my colleagues in the Department of History, Politics, and Society at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, particularly Naomi Standen and Richard Hudelson.

^4. Joanne Kurfiss has identified a set of eight common features of teaching practices that support critical thinking in the disciplines. Joanne Kurfiss, Critical Thinking: Theory, Practice, and Possibilities, ASHA-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Association for the Study of Higher Education, 1988), 88–89. Of these eight, four are especially relevant to my redesign of the introductory U.S. History Course: 1) Questions serve as the entry point for inquiry into the subject area; 2) Courses are assignment centered; 3) Students are required to formulate and justify their ideas in writing or other appropriate modes; 4) Critical thinking is a learnable skill.

^5. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels, 2^nd Ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), 473–483; Harold C. Livesay, American Made: Men Who Shaped the American Economy (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1979), 3–17.

^6. John R. Breihan's argument-based history course, from which my course redesign drew heavily, also stressed the skill of counter-argument. Walvoord and Breihan, 111–112. In order to maintain the focus on foundational skills, however, my course did not explicitly address counter-argument.

^7.1877: The Grand Army of Starvation (New York: Cineffects Videotape, 1984); Melvyn Dubofsky, Industrialization and the American Worker, 1865–1920, 3rd ed. (Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, 1996).

^8. Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, Victoria Bissell Brown, ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999).

^9. William G. Perry, Jr., Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970). A shortened presentation of his findings is found in William G. Perry, Jr., "Cognitive and Ethical Growth: The Making of Meaning," in Arthur W. Chickering, ed., The Modern American College: Responding to the New Realities of Diverse Students in a Changing Society (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1981), 76–116. For an accessible summary of Perry's model that discusses its practical application in the classroom, see Craig E. Nelson, "On the Persistence of Unicorns: The Trade-Off between Content and Critical Thinking Revisited," in Bernice A. Pescosolido and Ronald Amizade, eds., The Social Worlds of Higher Education: Handbook for Teaching in a New Century (Boston: Pine Forge Press, 1999), 168–184. A feminist critique of Perry may be found in Mary Field Belenky, et al, Women's Way of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 9–10.

^10. Nelson, 172–73.

^11. Nelson, 173–74.

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