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Reflections on TAH and the Historian's Role: Reciprocal Exchanges and Transformative Contributions to History Education*
Kelly Ann Long
Colorado State University
| BOTH THE Organization of American Historians (OAH) and The American Historical Association (AHA) have engaged in the debate about reform and improvement of pre-collegiate history education which has been a hot political issue at least since the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk. National and state history education standards and the move to improve the professional development of history teachers through various initiatives are outgrowths of this move toward reform. Along with an ongoing forum exploring opinions about history education, preparation of history teachers, and public uses of history, both the OAH and the AHA are also supporting initiatives that promote the mission of K-16 linkage and outreach to pre-collegiate institutions and educators. |
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Although contention has arisen about what and whose history we teach, many historians, museum curators, and historical society personnel have embraced these efforts, and many have entered into partnerships with local school districts to develop such projects. While many historians have supported the call for more collaboration between K-12 and university educators, fewer have expounded upon the two-way gains made through such networking and outreach. Fewer still have articulated the need for sustained engagement by professional historians who understand the everyday challenges of in-service (and pre-service) teachers, and for validation of such work as a legitimate means of disseminating new scholarship and knowledge. Such acknowledgement would call for rethinking of tenure and reward systems within historians' home institutions. |
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James O. Horton offered an important articulation of this vision and the obstacles it confronts during his term as president of the OAH. Noting the significant role historians have to play in forming an educated democracy, he called upon those in the historical profession, and those in institutional administration, to consider the challenges confronted by academics that endeavor to educate a broad public audience. Horton sounded the call for individual scholars and institutions to contemplate how they reward or punish academics who reach beyond the halls of academe to touch a broader public. Recognizing that much is at risk for historians, especially those who are untenured, and stretch the traditional boundaries of recognized professional research activity, Horton called on all of us in higher education to recognize and ameliorate the impediments to public outreach.
All of us can encourage these efforts and work to provide rewards within the tenure system for our colleagues who devote time to this important effort. If departments and college administrations do not provide incentives, young untenured scholars will not be able to engage in this important work without putting their careers at risk. Ultimately, this may require a change in the culture of higher education so that we place greater value on public involvement by our colleagues.1
Yet even if Horton's challenge is embraced broadly within and beyond an institution, questions remain about what can and should be done to improve the teaching of history in order to develop the historical content-knowledge of younger learners and the broader public audience. |
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The Teaching American History (TAH) Act, initiated through Congress and implemented through the United States Department of Education, has garnered much comment, with some critics suggesting that such endeavors are likely to lead to government interference or oversight, or are simply insufficient in scope. An article in the May 2005 OAH newsletter touched upon some of the difficulties of engaging university-based historians in professional development of in-service teachers. Rather than discovering that "the history profession is vitally involved in this well-funded outreach program," the co-authors "discovered that participation is at a moderate level, driven predominately by school districts rather than history departments, and characterized by "workshops" and "summer institutes" that fit traditional professorial styles. The authors assert that although project directors of TAH grants were "generally satisfied with the role of historians," reports also included "repeated complaints that professors were not able to adapt content to grade level, integrate state standards, or contemplate teachers' classroom needs." One director asserted that university faculty "do not know about teaching kids."2 |
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Comments about an insufficient understanding of pedagogical approaches are hardly surprising when we consider the general lack of attention given to preparing historians as teachers, as well as scholars. While gifted teachers can emerge naturally at all educational levels, the prevalent mode of instruction, and one that is often modeled in grants funded through programs such as TAH, remains that of a professor who "stands and delivers" while participants "sit and get." How, then, can university historians make meaningful, lasting, and transformative contributions to history education, and educators at pre-collegiate levels? How might we strengthen connections with public educators who are central in shaping dispositions and aptitudes in the young people who will become our university students? How can we engage initiatives that invite us to share the gleanings of our own research and recent scholarship while also allowing this forum to be a place for demonstrating pedagogy that can improve our own classroom practice? What might university-based historians learn from educators who work at lower institutional levels about making content accessible to diverse groups of learners? |
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As an educator who taught at the secondary level for seventeen years prior to moving to the university level, I have acquired an important set of perspectives on the efforts to improve the historical content knowledge of teachers and the challenges Horton and others have addressed. As an untenured historian who reached out to colleagues at the pre-collegiate level, my engagement with Project TEACH, a three-year TAH grant, may provide useful examples for others as well as some answers to the questions posed above. My experience (and I believe I speak for my historian colleagues who joined the project as well) indicates that, if we challenge ourselves to become truly engaged in public outreach and reciprocal exchange with K- 12 educators, we may well discover a venue not only for sharing the most up-to-date scholarship drawn from our own research, but also a means to strengthen our own teaching and engagement with students. |
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We teach subject matter that invites many forms of exploration. As we endeavor to improve all students' achievement in the study of history, we can and must explore more dynamic pedagogical models and classroom practices. Lecture as an instructional mode is, at times, the swiftest means to address large numbers of students. Many of us have succeeded in acquiring knowledge that way. Yet, when employed alone, that approach does not address the multiple learning needs of an increasingly diverse student population—nor does it reflect cognitive principles or reinforce the higher-order concepts and critical thinking skills articulated by Peter Lee and others.3 Lecture alone often fails to inspire a lasting interest in learning about the past. Such desire to learn is imperative as we involve teachers and, thereby, the students they address, in serious engagement with historical content. |
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Project TEACH (Teaching Excellence in American and Colorado History), a grant crafted by research historian James Giese, offers a model of excellence in professional development that addresses key elements of successful content-centered engagement of K-12 educators. Adams Twelve School District in Colorado served as the Lead Educational Agency (LEA) for a program that, over three years, brought together university-based historians, mentor teachers from K-12 public education, a social studies curriculum director and more than 200 K-12 teachers from five school districts. More than fifteen historians contributed their historical expertise to Project TEACH. Giese's proposal focused upon "strands" of historical emphasis developed around major historical eras, and drew upon the frameworks developed by the Bradley Commission, the National Council for History Education, and the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA.4 The proposal was grounded in significant research on transformative professional developments that includes these key elements: a solid content focus aimed to improving and deepening teachers' content knowledge; sufficient hours of interaction; modeling of active-learning modalities; providing active engagement in analysis of teaching and development of teacher networks and mentoring relationships; and nurturing ongoing communication among teachers and other partners on matters of professional concern.5 |
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Working closely with the directors, I helped to recruit historians and mentor-teachers. These leaders engaged teachers in four distinct historical content strands in the first two years, and three in the final year of the grant. I also served as lead historian for three separate content strands over three years of the grant. In our initial work we noted that even well-intentioned scholars, when brought in on a "talk-and-run schedule," made limited impact by the sheer fact of inadequate time for interaction with the teachers. The "talk-and-run" model did not lead to discernibly deepened understanding, and certainly did not foster sustainable relationships or networking among educators at varying institutional levels. Lecturers sometimes overlooked the need to establish relevance for the learner, and missed out on other opportunities to help teacher-learners refine skills that are essential to our discipline. Over time, we moved toward more sustained and reciprocal exchange between scholars, mentor-teachers, and participants. That model has tremendous potential for transforming history education at all institution levels. An overview of my own experience as lead historian may help to reveal the lasting learning possible through such grants. |
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In year one, my "Emergence of Modern America" strand engaged fifteen secondary educators. Our studies investigated themes pertaining to turn-of-the-century America including the emerging city, women/gender, childhood, immigration, race, labor, social, and political issues. We focused on a set of key "events" including the Chicago World's Fair (the Columbian Exposition) of 1893, the United States-Philippines War, and the Great Depression, employing historical accounts, literary texts and visual representations of the period. Three presenters during one week offered fascinating scope and diversity, but having three may also have undermined the depth and continuity of the participants' forays into the content. For my sessions, we used a plethora of short, often conflicting or incomplete primary source documents to open up themes revealing tensions or contested positions on topics. Our explorations focused on a simple inquiry question: "What were these people/places/influences/problems like?" Participants teamed up to work with documents and then explained what interested, confused, or confirmed pre-existing notions. Thereafter, teachers grappled with the debates and interpretive struggles that professional historians engage in. Employing secondary source texts and more primary source accounts, we read a theme forward, backward and outward to investigate change or continuity over time. Our essential question became: "In what way has your study of this history deepened, challenged or complicated your understandings of the past?"6 Rather than offering lengthy prepared lectures, I commented in response to specific questions arising from participants' interaction with source documents. This mode of response led to interaction around authentic questions, and reflected the principle that individuals learn and retain new knowledge when it connects to pre-existing knowledge. |
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As one example of our approach, discussing Chicago's "White City" and its Midway allowed us to examine "elite" culture and ideals as revealed in architectural structures and city planning as opposed to city reality; race and labor issues with regard to who built the fair, who visited the fair, and how races, ethnic groups, and foreign cultures were depicted along the Midway; and immigration and expansion beyond continental shores. We traced such issues beyond Chicago to their historical antecedents, and peered forward to speculate about complications that would arise in the future. |
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Teachers found the content important and the approaches useful. Each participant prepared a unit plan focused on one of our strand topics and developed individual lessons within that unit. Many of the unit plans revealed that teachers intended to employ similar inquiries built around primary sources with their own students. I had the opportunity to observe several of these teachers as they worked with their own students during the following year. I saw impressive examples of content implementation by teachers when I visited their schools. |
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Yet in evaluating my own work with the teachers, I felt challenged to do more and better. Despite my efforts to address the needs of my students (college graduates-turned-teachers) I had not fully considered their ultimate audience—junior and high school-aged students. Some of the materials I had selected were challenging even for individuals with a good grasp of the historical past. Therefore, in future planning I made a concerted effort to consider readability of the source documents and worked to include more images and variety in primary source selections. I continued my work with the grant, little realizing the toll such commitment would take on my other research agendas. As my work with the project took my intellectual interests in new directions over time, my focus shifted from a desire to communicate with a small group of historians whose interests corresponded to my own, toward a will to communicate more broadly about my discipline and to share a broad base of content knowledge with a wider public audience. |
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Over the course of the grant, my view of my role changed from that of information deliverer to resource provider. Importantly, those resources included not only carefully selected materials, but also pedagogical approaches focused on higher-order concepts (continuity, change over time, contingency, causality, perspective, account, interpretation, evidence, and empathy) and content skills. That transition was reflected in the approach we took to the third cycle of the grant, during which we developed a transformative model of an "historians' workshop." Jim Giese, mentor teacher Meredith Melzer, and I met often, and for long periods, to engage in dialogue about approaches, materials, and aims; then, we planned each session together. During the sessions with participants, one of us took the lead for a given topic, yet each of us was involved in the planning and contributed during the debriefing of lessons. During two sessions held in the spring, we primed participants for the sort of activities, big-picture ideas, and conceptual focus toward which we planned to move in the summer. Teachers read selected chapters and articles, and engaged in activities aimed to set forth the major themes of the summer institute. Starting with a set of assertions about the nature of American society at the turn of the twenty-first century, we looked back to seek evidence, examine causality, and assert meaning or interpretation for these categories of historical analysis. We engaged participants in reading the preamble to the United States Constitution as they imagined the framers had intended it and, then, read it again for contemporary meanings. Moving to the topic of freedom, participants worked in groups to select the ten "best" or most important images representing freedom from a group of twenty images. They role-played members of different social groups and made the selections again, then created flow charts reflecting interconnections between "events," "images," and public notions of freedom. Each of these activities led to a discussion of multiple perspectives within present-day American society, and that led us back in time to our starting point for the post-WWII strand. |
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For months before the summer institute, Giese, Melzer, technology specialist Mike Mancini, and I gathered materials, previewed educational and documentary videos, ordered instructional items, selected useful websites, and raided our own bookshelves in order to create a miniature resource center of items pertaining to the post-WWII United States. During the summer institute, brief introductory "lectures" and materials demonstrations opened up the historiography of seven topics, which included the Family and the Baby Boom, The Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Revolution, Affluence and Consumer Society, Domestic Policy, Foreign Affairs, and Immigration. Participants engaged in a variety of learner-centered activities—directed inquiry, jigsaws focused on short articles, "scavenger hunts" of on-line materials, topic-station rotations, and reading civil rights and Supreme Court case studies in order to debate the importance of one case against others—all designed to develop our teachers' familiarity with historical debates, interpretations, materials, and strategies for exploring these topics with their own students. |
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With key inquiries and essential questions in mind, teachers' interest piqued. After introductory "lectures"—that were as much problem-setting as information-giving—teachers moved eagerly to the task of constructing knowledge. With the strand leadership team standing by as available guides-on-the-side, informal coaching and mentoring emerged between experienced and novice teachers as teams scoured hundreds of primary and secondary sources, enhancement materials, and internet sites. The excitement among the teachers was palpable. On most days teachers engaged in some form of public reporting after participating in a directed-learning or research activity. On the last day of the institute, teachers presented brief overviews of the sources garnered and directions of their investigations, making suggestions about how they would continue this work to create specific lesson and unit plans for use in their own classrooms. Participants were given a CD containing outlines, approaches, and links to resources created by their fellow participants during these short daily workshops. In the fall, they shared with the group exciting, well-detailed, and innovative lessons developed for their classes. |
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Historical content delivered through active-learning approaches worked in multiple ways to strengthen teachers' content knowledge, to improve teaching methods, and to create ripple effects in teachers' home institutions. One teacher commented on the active learning strategies: "The 'learner-centered' approach implemented by the instructors gave me additional ideas on how to shape various lessons. It reinforced the notions that learning takes place best when content is delivered more from the 'bottom-up' with the teacher as a facilitator rather than top-down with teacher as expert." A seasoned professional observed that: "I obtained numerous strategy ideas and found quick and easy ways to get kids to put their hands on documents.... The approach of both increasing historical knowledge and exposing us to different pedagogical strategies worked well and was of high interest." Historical content was not displaced by utilizing active-learning strategies; quite to the contrary, interaction with content, strengthening of conceptual thinking, and knowledge retention were increased. Reflecting changes in his own learning and teaching, a seasoned educator wrote, "This program has had a profound influence on me as a teacher. First, I have a much deeper knowledge and set of resources in twentieth-century history from which to draw when I'm writing lessons.... I have the kids more involved in inquiry into history than I have in the past. Working with the scholars in my strand has really deepened my interest in history in the twentieth century." |
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Teacher-participants noted the significance of ongoing involvement of historians and the collaborative planning between historians and mentor teachers. An experienced teacher wrote, "The scholars made me re-think some of my points/stances that I hadn't thought much about since I finished my degree in history. I believe that it is very important for professional historians...to be able to help those of us in the secondary schools to keep current on revisionist trends and resources." A three-year participant described changes in her K-12 classroom: "I have used primary documents more and more in my units and lessons. Students become historians trying to figure out what really happened in history based upon the documents and evidence they have in front of them. Students are also thinking more deeply and asking questions that get to the real meaning.... Students in my classes have been forced to think for themselves." |
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Such affirmation on these approaches and the project as a whole was not limited to the teacher-participants. My historian colleagues, who engaged teachers in different content strands, and I recognized that our interaction with pre-collegiate educators had strengthened our own teaching and provided an important audience. Scholars who had supported the grant project acknowledged personal transformation as a result of their engagement with it. Their comments show that reciprocal learning and sharing of scholarship are direct and important aspects of ongoing engagement in initiatives such as TAH. One historian reflected, "I learned teaching methods from them. Our mentor-teacher had all kinds of interesting methods for stimulating class discussion and fostering critical thinking, some of which I plan to adapt for my own courses." Another concurred: "I perhaps learned as much in the process as the K-12 educators. In particular, it challenged me to think about ways to change my teaching strategies and move from lecturing to bringing more innovative ways to engage my students with the material. By the end of the week, I developed a new appreciation of the art of teaching and was inspired by the creativity and commitment of my group." Another commented on the positive regard that grew through discussions and engagement of content: "I really liked hearing about their work: the challenges they face, the political pressures, and have a newfound respect for the incredible work it takes to take in new information and figure out how to present it in a lively and accessible way to elementary school students. I learned some new ideas and approaches I might experiment with in my own teaching." Nevetheless, some of these motivated and engaged historians, some of whom were untenured, found it necessary to disengage during the final year of the project in order to concentrate on more readily recognized forms of scholarly production. |
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Illustrating the reciprocal learning that can result through such grants, my approach to teaching my own courses has been transformed. As the teacher of a social studies methods course that aims to acquaint pre-service teachers with the best practices and innovative approaches in teaching history and social studies disciplines, I advocated the idea of "guide-on-the-side" and "student-centered classrooms." In my larger history classes, however, I had tended to revert to familiar patterns of lecture and recitation. I was sometimes tentative about employing active-learning pedagogy in my "traditional" history courses. My involvement in Project TEACH has created greater confidence in employing innovative pedagogy in all my history courses. |
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Convinced that sound principles informed the active-learning strategies we had employed in the project, I decided to employ an historians' workshop model in a course focusing on the history of United States relations with China. The course met twice a week for seventy-five minutes each session. In some ways the course conformed to others I have taught. Students did plenty of reading outside of class in a variety of secondary- source texts and articles, wrote essays, took quizzes, and engaged in class discussions. They did little, however, in the way of "sitting and getting"—in other words, lectures were now a novelty. Instead, the course revolved around student-centered strategies including a reader's theater presentation, jigsaw discussions of assigned short articles read outside of class, scavenger hunts for documents from selected websites, hosted in-class debates, and small group problem-solving activities focused around primary-source documents. |
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For the historians' workshops conducted nearly every week, I offered hundreds of primary sources including declassified government documents, international news pamphlets, broadcast scripts, official communiqués, newspaper and magazine articles, and more from my research files and from the personal research files of the late Harold Hinton.7 For the "historians' workshops," I modeled a guided inquiry by presenting a short section of primary-source documents that we analyzed together to determine period, perspective, authorship, and so forth. Students then moved into groups of five to work with and discuss document sets that contained cartoons, photographs, and short paragraph texts. Thereafter, a homework assignment directed students to specific websites to locate examples of primary source documents pertaining to Chinese immigration to the United States during the period leading up to 1900. |
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I developed a pattern of opening with an introductory lecture for a specific unit. During these introductions, students sometimes viewed short clips from selected documentaries or other visual sources. In the following four class sessions, students worked in small groups with common document sets; thereafter, they worked individually with file-folders organized topically or thematically to investigate a specific historical question. Students kept journals on their reading of documents; they returned to small groups at the end of each workshop to discuss their "research" and on most occasions the class debriefed the workshop with a question-and-answer follow-up. Students then drew upon notes, journals, and ideas garnered through discussions with their peers to compose four essay responses. |
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The mixture of students in this class provided a good opportunity to observe the efficacy of these approaches for history majors and non-majors alike. All forty were junior or senior undergraduate students. Three-quarters were history majors and about one-fourth were international students. Given that mixture of disciplines and backgrounds, the group showed remarkable openness to the approaches used in the class. Students listened attentively to a discussion of learning styles, cognitive principles, and higher-level historical concepts and to explanations of the pedagogy that aimed to reinforce these concepts. Student evaluations at the end of the course revealed that only one student openly objected to this moderate focus on "teacher stuff." Others proved intrigued, although only a select few actually used conceptual language to address their own learning in their reflective essays or course evaluations. While a few students initially expressed discomfort with an unfamiliar process, most became excited and intellectually stimulated by the opportunity to interact with documents and classmates, to comb through sources seeking answers to their own questions, to construct knowledge for themselves, and to use meta-cognitive approaches to assess their own learning practices. |
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My observations and assessments of students' work, and comments offered by students, suggest that the historian's workshop and active-learning strategies strengthened students' conceptual thinking, knowledge acquisition, and knowledge retention. Students presented challenging questions, and employed critical thinking to grapple with incomplete, inconclusive, and contradictory source documents, and most were fully engaged in the class. Writing assignments based upon a synthesis of their reading in assigned secondary texts and interpretations of source documents reflected heightened analytical skills and original thinking. |
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Of course, adjustments were needed throughout the semester to accommodate feedback from students. While I had intended that students would work in different groups for each session, some students felt intimidated or disoriented by meeting new peers each week. Therefore, I allowed the students to select a team of classmates with whom they would interact in most, though not all, workshop discussions. While I had wanted students to develop their own points of interest and research questions, time was spent more effectively when I gave specific questions which focused student scrutiny of sources. I was not always certain about what the outcomes of an individual session might be; yet, even in sessions where my aims were unclear or my efforts fell short of my hopes, the class collectively achieved something that may prove more empowering to those young learners, and more influential on their thinking and historical skill acquisition than other approaches I have employed in teaching history at the university level. |
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In addition to soliciting anonymous or signed informal comment throughout, at the end of the course I gathered two forms of evaluation: the required university student-evaluation on which many students wrote optional comments, and an informal "reflective postscript."8 Although these comments must be considered as merely anecdotal, they offer candid reflection on an important educational process. While several students revealed that they had been staunch skeptics in the early stages of the course, most indicated that they were engaged by the unusual approach. One student who indicated a combative view at the outset wrote an affirming overall evaluation: "As far as the historians workshops, at first I can say I was slightly hostile to the idea. I didn't feel they were a good use of time, and I think it is hard to realize how much they really teach you until the end when you have perspective and can compare and access your knowledge from all the workshops. What I began to appreciate about them was the sense of actually doing real historical work since, after all, history is the field that almost all of us are entering." Another revealed a movement from skepticism to recognition of personal growth: "The first week I was very skeptical about the format of the class.... I was uncertain about how much material I was actually retaining. When I was asked to write my first paper I was surprised by how much I actually knew and felt that I understood about U.S.-China relations.... It's not very often that we as undergrad students are asked to interpret primary and secondary sources.... I really enjoyed the historians' workshop and hope that you continue to use them." |
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Another student commented about the sense of confidence and real learning inherent in this approach to the study of history: "When I registered for this class, I assumed that it would follow the same pattern as the majority of history classes have. I was prepared for an hour [sic] lecture everyday, the usual papers based from primarily secondary-source documents, and in class essays—or, as I like to call them, mind dumps. However, my presumptions were proven false on the first day of class.... I feel confident with the material that we have covered in class. I know that I have successfully learned the material, not simply memorizing key facts to write an essay on." |
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Several comments were unusual with regard to students' thoughtful reflection on their own learning processes, not simply the mechanics of the class. One student wrote: "When looking back on most of my history work here at CSU, I realize that I remember only certain things from lectures. Hands-on work seems to be the only thing that makes long term impressions on students. Reading documents in the historians' workshops was an essential part of my experience.... I found it to be a very effective way of assimilating knowledge.... This was a case of being able to come to conclusions on my own through journaling and papers with open-ended topics." One international student noted: "Every way tried in this course was more effective than just a lecture class.... Unlike other history courses, this class did not require me to memorize a bunch of things and time periods to prepare for the exams. Instead, it helped me understand history.... I think that it was the first time for me to study history very joyfully." |
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For me as the teacher, the process was more time-and-energy consuming than a standard lecture approach, sometimes a bit overwhelming, and riddled with second-guessing. Yet I, too, found it a source of joy. Without doubt, it has opened a set of strategies that I will employ again in other courses I teach. I credit my work with Project TEACH for empowering me to effect change in my own classroom; the gains experienced by my own students are direct results of the transfer of learning that the TAH initiative can enable. I now experience a sense of greater integration in my professional life because the methods I advocate and model in the teaching methods course are more fully incorporated into my "traditional" history courses. Increasingly, I explore meta-cognitive theory and activities that help my students assess and understand their own learning styles and practices. Hereafter, even in traditional history courses, I will incorporate explicit reference to cognitive principles, and make overt efforts to reinforce students' critical thinking skills and understanding of higher-order historical concepts. I continue to employ such language in class discussions and in commenting upon students' work. In so doing, I seek to facilitate my students' development as monitors of their own learning and, hence, their capacity as investigators of the past.9 |
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In examining the impact of this and other TAH grant projects, four issues seem paramount for those of us in the history profession. First, approached in a collaborative spirit of mutual respect and sharing, initiatives such as TAH have the potential to open pathways in dual directions with respect to content knowledge and pedagogical models. Collaboration between skilled researchers in history methods and pedagogy, content specialists who are gifted educators, and mentor-teachers who understand the specific contexts in which elementary and secondary teachers work—and bringing them together in a setting that promotes active exchange between historians and classroom teachers—can have positive "ripple effects" that improve history instruction at all levels. |
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Second, sustained collaboration between historians and teachers is a key to nurturing truly transformative approaches to content-knowledge acquisition, as opposed to the mere transmission of content information, at all institutional levels. Yet such powerful reciprocal processes entail potential risk for untenured faculty. That such peril exists even as change is demanded to improve college education—including teaching and strengthening outreach to the broader public—reveals an inconsistency that must be addressed. Just as senior historians can be encouraged to share their scholarly expertise with a broader audience, so too, untenured scholars must be able, as Horton asserts, "to engage in this important work without putting their careers at risk." History departments must support individual historians in ways that will sustain outreach and networking between educators. Such support may require a re-envisioning of what constitutes meaningful dissemination and acceptable venues for sharing our scholarship. |
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Third, cognitive principles, higher-order concepts, and their implications for teaching must be brought to bear on our classroom practices, no matter the level at which we teach history. The methods employed to teach history have a direct relationship to acquisition of knowledge and increased student facility with major disciplinary concepts and skills. Students learn when they actually engage in a task, rather than when they are passive receptacles for others' knowledge. Such approaches cannot be reserved only for our small graduate seminars. Active-learning strategies build cognitive, critical-thinking and problem-solving skills that are as essential for understanding history as for success in life. Opportunities to work with primary- and secondary-source documents and use of active-learning strategies can challenge students to question and gather support from conflicting or limited evidence, suspend judgment at appropriate times in order to consider another point of view, develop historical empathy, and compare conclusions with those of peers and professionals—all of these skills lead to lasting learning. |
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Finally, we must form lasting connections between disciplines and educators at all institutional levels. When we allow ourselves to witness engaging models of instruction, and especially when we join in the activities as learners too, we may gain the courage to transform our own classrooms and thereby the learning of our own students. We can build stronger bridges between those who teach in schools of education and pedagogical fields and those who teach in history departments by setting aside the often long-standing antipathy between them. Those at all educational levels whose expertise resides in masterful approaches in the classroom have much to offer all of us. |
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Central to the achievement of these objectives, as Horton observed is the need of historians in secure positions not only to participate but to acknowledge such endeavors as meaningful contributions to knowledge.
Those who have experienced the positive outcomes of projects sponsored through TAH must, therefore, share with their colleagues the importance of this work and strive to categorize it as more than "outreach." We must work to widen the measures within institutional merit and evaluation systems by which university-based academics may demonstrate active scholarly engagement and productivity. Until such changes are addressed head-on, the full engagement of university-based historians in initiatives such as TAH will remain the exception rather than the essential and transformative rule. |
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Notes
* Special thanks to Margo Walsh at the Adams 12 District whose strong leadership as the social studies curriculum director facilitated the success of Project TEACH.
1. James O. Horton, "Teaching American History: The Promise and Perils of Public Education," OAH Newsletter: 32 (August 2004). Horton, Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Civilization and History at The George Washington University, served as president of OAH during the 2004–2005 academic year. <http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2004aug/horton.html> (accessed 4/16/2006)
2. Will McArthur, Brian Gratton, Robert M. Barnes, Laura Blandford, and Ian Johnson, "Improving the Contribution of Historians to TAH Projects," OAH Newsletter: 33 (May 2005). <http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2005may/mcarthur.html> (accessed 4/16/2006)
3. 3. Peter J. Lee, "Putting Principles into Practice: Understanding History," in M. Suzanne Donovan and John D. Branford, ed., How Students Learn: History in the Classroom, 31–78 (National Research Council, Washington, D.C. National Academic Press, 2005). Among the cognitive principles and higher-order or substantive concepts related to the historical discipline, Lee includes concepts of time and change, causality, contingency, account, perspective, empathy, evidence, interpretation, theme, and agency.
4. Giese used the National Council for History Education, Building a United States History Curriculum (Westlake, OH, 1997) and the National Center for History in the Schools, Lessons from History: Essential Understandings and Historical Perspectives Students Should Acquire (Los Angeles: NCHS, 1992) in shaping the proposal.
5. Research on professional development that informed the grant proposal includes B.L. Bernian, A. Porter, and M. Garet, "Designing Professional Development that Works," Educational Leadership (May 2000): 28–33; L. Darling-Hammond and M.W. McLaughlin, "Policies that Support Professional Development in an Era of Reform," Phi Delta Kappan (April 1995): 597–604; B. Joyce, B. Showers, and C. Rolheiser-Bennet, "Staff Development and Student Learning: A Synthesis of Research Models of Teaching," Educational Leadership (October 1997): 11–23; M. Fullan, Change Forces (NY: Fulmer Press, 1993); S. Wilson and J. Berne, "Teacher Learning and the Acquisition of Professional Knowledge: An Examination of Research on Contemporary Professional Development," in A. Iran- Nejab and P. Pearson, eds., Review of Research in Education (24): 173–209.
6. Kenneth Jackson offered these questions as part of an address to teachers involved in TAH grants during the OAH/TAH meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, in spring 2003.
7. Special thanks to Carolyn Hinton, widow of the late Harold Hinton, who donated his research files to the Asian Studies Program at CSU.
8. I sought feedback in the form of a "reflective postscript" for the purpose of improving my classroom practice. While I recognize that obtaining opinion in this manner is not statistically valid and may reflect inherent pitfalls of asking for student comment in courses where they are also being evaluated, I sought to mitigate any sense of inducement or threat by assuring that it was not a graded assignment and that these comments were garnered at the end of the course. Students were asked to comment on the following questions:
a) In what ways have our approaches to the study of the past and your personal investigations of the past beyond the class facilitated your learning? Consider our use of historians' workshops focused around primary-source documents, and discussions in group and full class sessions, and reading of secondary sources. How have these approaches deepened, complicated, or disturbed your understandings of the past or not?
b) In what ways would you change the historians' workshops and work with primary-source documents, readings, and group discussion/processing?
9. Peter J. Lee, "Putting Principles into Practice: Understanding History," in M. Suzanne Donovan and John D. Branford, ed., How Students Learn: History in the Classroom, 31–78 (National Research Council, Washington, D.C. National Academic Press, 2005).
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