A History of Teaching History (original) (raw)
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What Counts as History: A Cross-National and Longitudinal Study of University Curricula
Comparative Education Review, 2000
Each people has, at each moment of its history, its own conception of man.' Within the sociological and educational literatures, there is a dearth of comparative and longitudinal work on changes in university curricula. Systematic empirical studies are especially rare. This article addresses the gap with a study of university history curricula in many countries between 1895 and 1994. History is socially constructed to provide a realistic account of the putatively objective development of "society." 2 But what and who count in society and how society is thought to develop changed over the twentieth century, catalyzing changes in what counts as history. In particular, we hypothesize that what counts as history shifted from a focus on civilization to a focus on nation-states as "imagined communities";3 that the latter were increasingly seen through a rationalizing social science discourse, depicting nation-states as "societies" with common identities and problems; and that this rationalizing social science discourse broke down nation-states into subnational and supranational elements, giving rise to common subnational groups and supranational organizations and environments in university history curricula. For helpful assistance and comments, we thank Susan Gayle Duncan, Christine Wotipka, and the anonymous reviewers at Comparative Education Review. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the
From Bold Beginnings to an Uncertain Future: The Discipline of History and History Education
The American Historical Review, 2005
WHAT IMPORTANCE SHOULD HISTORIANS ASSIGN to school history? Should attention to K-12 history education be among the concerns at the forefront of the discipline's professional commitments? This has been a recurring question ever since school reform gained prominence in the nation's public policy agenda some two decades ago. As a call to action, it first emerged explicitly when Arthur Link made educational activism central to his 1984 presidential address to the American Historical Association (AHA). On this centenary occasion, Link admonished the AHA for having "unthinkingly abandoned" the "determinative role" it had once played in history education and called for new initiatives designed to bring the association "back into the mainstream of the teaching of history in our secondary schools." No task, he said, was of "greater moment and urgency" for the historical profession than "the recovery of a crucial role for the AHA in the determination of the curricula of our secondary schools." 1 Many historians have joined Link in urging a revival of educational activism. Nonetheless, twenty years later, the discipline has neither decisively rejected nor energetically taken up this call. Prolonged indecision, of course, will settle the issue. While the profession has been irresolute, other, more determined claimants to influence over school history have come forward. Both government and the business community now take an interventionist stance toward policies that affect many aspects of history education. Once largely unassertive, they increasingly point to the need for reform as warrant for across-the-board involvement in framing policies that bear directly on curriculum and resource allocation, textbooks and tests, teacher certification and classroom methods. In these conditions, the profession's hesitance can amount to a concession that its own voice counts for little in shaping the future course of history education. How much, though, is actually at stake if the profession fails to act on Link's
The Two Kinds of History American History Taught
History Teacher
This paper is about why my Social Science students think there are two types of US history taught--on in the K-12 school system, and a different more critical one in the university system. The paper uses the approach of classical sociologist Max Weber to understand how such social stratification develops in the context of textbook writing, commemoration of holidays, and reproduction of the status quo. Examples developed to illustrate this point include the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Theory & Research in Social Education, 2020
is a collection of 24 chapters written by leading international scholars in history education. The book itself is a tour de force as it aims to synthesize in a comprehensive manner "the growth of history education as its own research field" (p. 1). The rationale behind such an endeavor, as suggested in Peter Seixas's foreword, is the growing preoccupation over recent political and social events and the need for history education specialists to take a stance and move the discipline "towards the central place that it deserves" (p. xviii). There is a sense of urgency to take action that transcends the 24 chapters that compose the edited collection, as well as a collective astonishment toward the speed in which the field has grown from a side consideration shared by some historians to a fully fledge academic discipline in less than 20 years. This growth is explored through five different lenses that compose the five sections of the book. The first section considers the policy, research, and societal contexts of history education. Its chapters propose an overview of the field from its beginning to today, identifying gaps that research still needs to address. The second section is centered on the different conceptual constructs found within the discipline such as historical thinking, historical consciousness, historical reasoning, historical empathy, historical agency, and global history education. The third section explores the ties between history education, identity, and ideology. The authors question the narratives proposed in classrooms and their influence on students' agency and growing sense of identity. The fourth section is more pragmatic and includes a vast array of teaching and assessment practices. From professional development to addressing controversial issues in the classroom, the authors look at the complexity of K-12 history instruction. Finally, the fifth section's theme is historical literacies, which encompasses working with evidence, as well as teaching with alternative media such as films, games, and museums. Learning history is not limited to the walls of a classroom, and students build their understanding of the discipline through family history, films, videogames, and museum visits. Teachers have rapidly integrated these alternative media into their teaching, but their effect on students' learning is not always well known. This last section underlines how certain scholarships, such as teaching history using film, are well established, while others, such as teaching using digital simulation gaming, are still emerging fields of study. It would be impossible, due to the length requirements of this review, to summarize each of the 24 chapters individually. Instead, three general ideas that bind the chapters together will be used to give an overall sense of the book. Keeping with historical fashion, these three ideas will be, in essence, chronological as they will look at the past of the discipline, the current preoccupations in research, and the questions that should be addressed in the future.
Teaching American History. Research Brief
Education Partnerships Inc, 2004
Best practice in teaching American History is a two-pronged approach: a high quality curriculum with highly engaging instruction. Muir (2001www.mcmel.org) showed that good learning experiences: create strong relationships; involve hands-on, active work; adjust for differences in learning styles; make learning interesting; allow students choices; make connections to previous knowledge, the students lives, and the real world; and put learning into context. The National Standards for History describe the kinds of content, activities, and historical thinking students should be involved. Students engaged in standards-based work will draw upon skills in the following five interconnected dimensions of historical thinking:
A Lesson from the Past and Some Hope for the Future: The History Academy and the Schools, 1880-2007
The History Teacher, 2008
THERE IS A LONG HISTORY in the United States of collaboration between the academy and K-12 educators.1 Indeed, history, as an academic discipline in America, began in an atmosphere of professorial concern about history's place in the schools. Frederick Jackson Turner, the originator of the famous frontier thesis of 1893, began an address to an audience of K-12 teachers in 1891 with the words "we teachers," expressing a sentiment that all of us in the academy more than a century later would do well to remember. Turner and Charles Homer Haskins
The Missing Links in History Education
The Canadian Journal for Social Research, 2011
This article explores the relationship between historical and pedagogical specialists in the field of history education. It outlines several limitations in the current state of history education research and considers as a consequence of these limitations the disconnect between how students learn history at the secondary level and how they learn history at university. After presenting the results of a study into what university history students themselves say about this gap between high school preparation and university expectations, it concludes by offering suggestions for how to forge better connections between different groups of history teachers.
The Belated Renaissance of University History in the United States
Canadian Review of American Studies, 1984
This essay sports a particularly ironic--and thus irresistible--title. It speaks of a re-emergent, expanding and potentially revolutionary field of historical studies: the investigation of universities in their broad historical contexts.' Yet this renaissance, coming after a half-century's neglect, coincides both in the New and in the Old Worlds with a crisis of contraction in the "official•' university-based profession of history.