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Closing the Gap Between Professors and Teachers: "Uncoverage" as a Model of Professional Development for History Teachers
Timothy D. Hall and Renay Scott
Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Michigan and Owens Community College, Toledo, Ohio
| OUR AIM in the Central Michigan University Alpena-Montmorency-Alcona Teaching American History (TAH) Project has been to forge a model of professional development that would not merely improve teachers' knowledge of events, people, and dates. We have been seeking to go beyond this to strengthen their understanding of the nature and practice of historical thinking and to develop their ability to help their students develop this difficult set of skills. In doing so, we have discovered through trial and error, the truth that professional development is most meaningful and effective when the content of teacher learning is strongly linked to the curriculum the students are learning.1 In our primary source workshops, we have worked to combine sophisticated instruction in the history our participants will teach with practical strategies focused on developing effective, classroom-tested lessons and materials that reflect and teach both the content and structure of the discipline. |
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Our decision to center the grant activities on "primary source workshops," was informed by Grant Wiggins' and Jay McTighe's call for an "uncoverage" approach to teaching our subject as well as Sam Wineburg's research on historical thinking. Instead of attempting to fill the gaps in participants' knowledge with intensive lecture courses, we have sought to "inquire into, around, and underneath the content" of United States and Michigan history in an effort to help our participants learn to think historically while deepening their knowledge of content.2 We have worked with participants to select rich processes or events in Michigan and United States history and organized the workshops to uncover ways in which historians construct knowledge about the past. |
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In the weeks before each workshop, participants were expected to read material which provides not only needed background information on the workshop topic but puts this in historiographical context. They are instructed to read not only for the main point of each selection but to identify how each writer frames the reading historiographically and to identify points of interpretive variation and conflict among the readings. This also means looking for whether each writer is aware of other interpretations or approaches to the issue and why each writer believes his or her study addresses those approaches. For example, participants in our summer 2004 workshop, "Michigan in the Great West," read selections from William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis, Susan Grey's The Yankee West, and Martin Hershock's work on early agrarian resistance to the railroad companies. The workshop asked whether the early 19th-century westward migration was driven by market forces or a traditional agrarian ethos.3 |
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Once a range of interpretations has been identified for each workshop, we led the participants in an exploration of the event or process through intensive study of relevant primary documents, an activity we termed "conversations with the past." (We had spent some time explaining what historians mean when they speak of "conversations with the past" and "debates about the past.") Documents were organized to form case studies of various elements or aspects of the topic in question. Our "Michigan in the Great West" workshop, for instance, was organized into case studies of push and pull factors in migration to Michigan, the formation of early Michigan communities, the development of local and regional markets, the coming of the railroad, and the development of the lumber industry. Participants were organized into small groups of three to five people, and each was assigned a case study with accompanying documents. Each group was given a set of opening questions along with the document packet, questions tailored to assist them through the process of interpreting their specific documents. |
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This case study approach was designed to serve at least two important purposes: to uncover—that is, to tease out for direct examination and practice—crucial historical skills and to model the use of primary documents in classroom teaching. The case studies carried rich potential for uncovering a wide range of historical habits of thought, more than we could fully exploit in our limited format. We focused most on the habit of questioning the case study documents and making interpretive inferences from the evidence, and then on connecting the information and inferences drawn from the various sources. All inferences needed to be supported by referring back to the specific sources from which they were drawn.4 Each group spent several hours analyzing the relevant documents, organizing individual findings into coherent written interpretations, and finally organizing the group's findings into a concluding presentation to be made to the other workshop participants. Once each group had made their presentation, the entire group of participants discussed connections among the findings of the various case study groups. The object was to formulate an answer or possible answers to the question posed by the workshop. Participants were encouraged to take a stand on the question and to support the position with evidence. In this way, the workshops provided both experience in the activity of historical thinking and a model for using primary materials which the teachers could adapt to the appropriate age level of their students. |
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We think that the workshop methods we eventually evolved had some success in revealing the habits of mind distinctive to true historians, a process which one historian has called "uncoverage." The historians on our team worked hard to achieve this "uncoverage" by exposing our participants to a rich array of sources, each array designed to force them to think like historians to answer the question posed. Our hope was that as teachers, they would similarly "uncover" for their students the habits of mind of historians. The work of the historians was not all that went into our TAH grant project workshops, however. There were linked sessions on methodology which were the responsibility of the education faculty. In these sessions, participants were introduced—most for the first time—to Wiggins' and McTighe's "backward design" approach to formulating unit and lesson plans. We found this approach promising both for its adaptability to the large interpretive questions intrinsic to good historical inquiry and for its articulation of a "learning cycle" which could form a common, theoretically based template for lessons focused on uncovering historical thinking and practice.5 We joined this structural approach with instructional methodologies selected and adapted from the "History Alive" curriculum.6 |
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The History Alive strategies we found most adaptable included: the "social studies skill builder," that focused on interpretation of visual sources; "problem solving group work" centered on group inquiry into a problem of historical interpretation; "response groups," another method of group inquiry into a contested issue or historical problem; and "writing for understanding," focused on organizing writing assignments around a clear purpose which arises out of the material and issues currently under consideration.7 Participants were required to produce an extended lesson incorporating significant use of primary materials that significantly engaged pupils in one or more elements of historical thinking, with special focus upon supporting claims with evidence. The methodology course included follow-up sessions in which participants reported the results of classroom use of the lessons. Revisions were required before final submission. |
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We began the project convinced that our plan for linked history and methodology sessions was well grounded in historical content as well as in recent studies of history teaching and learning. Yet our initial foray into the project exposed weaknesses in the overall structure of the program as well as conflicting assumptions by the university specialists and the teachers. Participants proved less eager to read, study, and work with the content of our history courses than we hoped and they expressed disappointment at not being given classroom-ready materials which they could put to immediate use. The program coordinator, mindful of the need to market a summer experience that would attract recruits, contracted use of a tall ship which was historically authentic, but proved difficult to incorporate into the standards-based curriculum we were attempting to establish. In first-year evaluations, teachers expressed discontent with the separation of the content-based courses from the methods course, and with both from classroom application. The initial lesson plans reflected this disconnect in a disappointing lack of objectives focused on historical thinking and a continuing reliance on information gleaned from existing textbook sources and imperfect prior knowledge. Clearly, a re-thinking was in order. |
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Our revised program design developed a much tighter integration between the content and methodology than we had initially planned. We then re-focused the program on the intensive, all-day summer workshops conducted over two week periods already described. The workshops remained focused primarily on historical content and investigation as described above but with sessions on backward design-based teaching methodology incorporated at key points throughout. This integration set the workshops within a meaningful context of practice for teachers by preparing participants to develop lessons on topics related to the workshop content, lessons that incorporate the habits of historical thought in a central way. They are invited to use materials presented during the workshop and are provided with links to additional rich web-based resources such as the Library of Congress American Memory Project. |
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Have the primary source workshops increased participants' ability to think historically and to pass that gain on to their students in rich, engaging, historically sound lessons? Our honest answer must be that the gains so far have been modest and uneven. We would like to be able to report a greater number of dramatic results like the accomplishments of one participant whose lesson on the role of the Erie Canal in migration to Michigan reflected the central historical question of the "Michigan in the Great West" workshop that illustrated the role of the market in westward migration and settlement. The lesson included rich, appropriate primary materials, including period maps, store receipts, illustrations, and transcribed letters, organized into activities that engaged pupils in historical questioning, drawing historical inferences, and supporting conclusions with historical evidence. |
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If we look specifically at whether our participants' lesson plans show they are attempting to "uncover" the habits of mind so they can be learned by their students, we find that the results so far are more modest. To be sure, most lessons we have examined are now better focused on a central question. Most engage pupils in reading sources for information, and asking questions about and drawing inferences from the sources. Most help students to make connections among the observations they have made. The practice of evaluating sources is less consistently promoted in the lesson plans. Yet these historical habits of thought are less central to the lessons than we hoped they would be. Often they occupy only a small portion of the lesson, with too little time allocated for meaningful practice. Some lesson plans used and discussed documents primarily in optional extensions rather than in the main body of the lesson. Most reflect a novice understanding of historical thinking, a level insufficient to carry their pupils very far in those skills. |
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In addition, several participants exhibited a disregard for the question of historical significance in the topics they chose for their lessons. Some chose topics of primarily local interest with little attention to whether those topics illustrated larger themes or processes. Even where links were made between local history topics and larger historical themes, only a few participants made much effort to make those links explicit. We found all this somewhat dispiriting, especially because we had taken pains to address the question of historical significance directly, to select topics in Michigan history that had significant links to larger themes of United States history, and to introduce participants to professional historical writing that used Michigan history to engage central themes of historical interpretation. |
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What We Have Learned | |
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In the first place, we have learned that it is possible to forge a strong, productive partnership between a history department and a teacher education department. We have found that both faculties share many of the same concerns about the state of history education in the schools and many of the same convictions about the importance of disciplinary knowledge. A teacher must know history well in order to teach it well. We would certainly never deny the many important differences between the disciplinary perspective of history and the methodological emphasis of social studies. Still, we have found that our differing language for what students do in the classroom often masks significant agreement about what they should be doing and why they should be doing it. In retrospect we can see that our initial design, with separate courses for history content and teaching methodology, reflected lingering habits of compartmentalizing and perhaps guarding our own turf. Our ability to find common ground came about in large measure as we worked to integrate our two fields of expertise into a comprehensive program aimed at helping teachers become better at thinking historically and passing that skill on to their pupils. |
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We hope that we have also learned over the past two years to listen a bit more closely to teachers and their concerns. We do not believe the agenda we brought to the project was wrong. Teachers do need better knowledge of the past in order to teach it well, and too many professional development programs continue to perpetuate a focus on methodological quick fixes to the detriment of both teacher and student understanding. Nevertheless, we have come to recognize that we formulated our initial program with an insufficient appreciation of the gap between our expectations and the participants' expectations, and with insufficient consideration of teachers' legitimate concerns for their classroom practice. Both groups have had to adjust. We hope this project has become a more genuine partnership with teachers as a result. |
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Finally, we have learned that historical thinking involves a set of habits of mind that do not come easily and can at best only introduced during a workshop two weeks long. Historians themselves develop these through years of practice. In reviewing our materials after two years of practice, we can certainly identify areas where we need to make more explicit and precise our focus on the habits of historical thought we are attempting to uncover. We need to clarify the expectation of precisely how these should show up in lesson objectives, activities, and assessments. Ultimately, however, our experience has strengthened our conviction about something that goes far beyond TAH grant projects. This conviction is that the best place to improve how history is taught in the schools—especially the elementary schools—is in university history courses. The rising expectations for teachers at all levels, but especially for elementary teachers, makes it very difficult for them to find the time needed to develop the kinds of skills each discipline requires for them to teach it well. University students have more time available to learn these habits of mind while they are in college than they will ever have again. Therefore, college and university history professors need to take advantage of this fact to equip pre-service teachers with the habits of historical thinking that they need to be able to teach history well in the classroom. History and social studies majors should, at a minimum, have a course in historiography and methodology. But every course in the curriculum should be examined and reworked to model and to provide better instruction in historical thinking—especially the introductory United States history survey course which is often the only history course most pre-service elementary teachers will take.8 |
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Notes
1. Gary Sykes, "Make Subject Matter Count," Journal of Staff Development 20, no. 2 (1999): 50–51.
2. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Understanding by Design (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998), 98–114.
3. William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991); Susan Gray, The Yankee West: Community Life on the Michigan Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Martin Hershock, "Free Commoners by Law: Tradition, Transition, and the Closing of the Range in Antebellum Michigan," Michigan Historical Review 29, no. 2 (2003): 97–123; Hershock, The Paradox of Progress: Economic Change, Individual Enterprise, and Political Culture in Michigan, 1837–1878 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003).
4. For an excellent discussion of habits of mind and how one historian has structured his survey class to uncover them, see Lendol Calder, "Uncoverage: Toward a Signature Pedagogy for the History Survey," Journal of American History 92, no. 4 (2006): 1358–1370. See also his accompanying website, <http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/textbooks/2006/calder/>.
5. Wiggins and McTighe, 115–133.
6. We share concerns about accuracy of content in some of this published curriculum as well as the potential of some of the methods to distort historical understanding when used uncritically. Nevertheless, we thought it important to incorporate History Alive! because of its widespread use in Michigan, its endorsement by the Michigan Department of Education, and its adoption by Alpena Public Schools.
7. Bert Bower, Jim Lobdell, and Lee Swenson, History Alive! Engaging All Learners in the Diverse Classroom, 2nd ed. (Palo Alto, CA: Teacher's Curriculum Institute, 1999), 41–56, 71–124.
8. For models of reorganizing the survey along these lines, see Russell Olwell, "Building Higher Order Historical Thinking Skills in a College Survey Class," Teaching History 27 (Spring, 2002): 22–32; Julie Roy Jeffrey, "The Survey, Again," OAH Magazine of History 17 (April, 2003): 52–54; Stuart D. Sears, "Reinventing the Survey: Pedagogical Strategies for Engagement," AHA Perspectives 43 (February 2005): 21; Peter N. Stearns, "Getting Specific about Training in Historical Analysis: A Case Study in World History," in Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and International Perspectives, ed. Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 419–36.
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