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Review
| How Students Learn: History in the Classroom, edited by M. Suzanne Donovan and John D. Bransford. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2005. 615 pages. $34.95, paper, with a CD-ROM.
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| Picking up a book to read published by the National Research Council is not something every classroom practitioner of Clio might do. But the title of this work "How Students Learn: History in the Classroom" intrigued this reader who was trained and mentored to be a career educator-historian. Classroom teachers, no matter what grade level, need to be experts in at least two fields—content and pedagogy. Building on the research on learning conducted in the 1990s, the editors of this volume shift their attention away from general learning research theory to a more focused one on history. The reader is informed that "this volume highlights different approaches to addressing the same fundamental principles of learning." The introductory and concluding chapters, penned by learning researchers, examine the learning environment, the design of instruction, and the intent and organization of the book. The reader is introduced to three large blocks of content: Understanding History, Teaching and Planning, and Applying the Principles of "How People Learn" to work in the elementary, middle, and high school environment. Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and the cast of thousands involved in the History Standards movement in the 1990s might see this work as an extension of their chapters on historical thinking skills. Much of the terminology, strategies, and concepts used in "How Students Learn" will be familiar to the Standards makers. |
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Peter Lee wrote the chapter on Understanding History. Lee, like many of the contributors to this work, is an internationalist, teaching in the Institute of Education at the University of London where he also edits the International Review of History Education. Drawing on much of his own research, Lee delineates the principles of "How People Learn" by making such observations as students "do not come to their classroom empty-handed.... [They] need a firm foundation of factual knowledge ordered around the key concepts of the discipline." Citing various research, Lee utilizes meta-cognition excerpts from students' reactions to questions about their prior knowledge of historical events. Seventh graders reacting to "why World War II started" remark "Hitler was a madman... He was a complete nutter.... He wanted a super-race of blond, blue-eyed people...." Having shown the ideas students may bring to the classroom, Lee identifies ideas that teachers need to address in today's history teaching, these being, time, change, empathy, cause, evidence, and accounts. Drawing on documented conversation between teachers and students, Lee builds his case for "history that works" by illustrating actual classroom applications and experiences. |
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Lee also collaborates with two fellow English colleagues on the chapter on teaching and planning. These contributors focus only on elementary and middle school student's thinking as they analyze topics such as student preconceptions and the importance of providing students with conceptual structures and tools with which to organize and manipulate factual knowledge. Here meta-cognition as a reflecting tool to unpack students' own learning is also discussed. The authors close their analysis by identifying the implications of their research about planning for grades 3-7 by illustrating what curriculum designers need to know when developing a sequence of substantive topics that will allow for student's progressive mastery of certain concepts and content coverage. |
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Robert Bain, an assistant professor of education at the University of Michigan authored the high school version of "How People Learn." He demonstrates that research has shown that for many years history at the secondary level has been one of the least favorite subjects that students take. To change this perspective, Bain states that teachers need to transform the topics and objectives of history into the study of historical problems. The standards movement and the endless list of desired instructional outcomes rarely frame history as an unfinished mystery, something that might intrigue students and teachers alike. Bain recommends that teachers design historical problems, paying particular attention to the multiple perspectives on historical knowledge. The author brings his thoughts to life by illustrating how Columbus's discovery of the New World can be recast through the use of the information that has been provided about how people and, in particular how students learn during research. |
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How Students Learn: History in the Classroom got me thinking about how teachers learn history and historical methodology. Unfortunately, unless teachers were exposed to great scholars who made them think while they were learning their profession whether content or pedagogy, today's classroom practitioners may well have been poorly taught and so have a deep hole out of which to climb. The National Research Council and this particular group of authors should be commended for producing a thought-provoking volume. Even those educators who already do a good job "teaching history" can benefit by understanding the process of learning that is outlined in this book. |
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| Maryland Center for the Study of History |
James F. Adomanis |
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