Constructivism is a broad theory with a variety of perspectives. However the basic tenet of constructivism is that learning is an active process where the learner constructs knowledge rather than acquiring it. The emergence of an inquiry-based approach to history education along with the new opportunities made possible by advances in technology have made constructivist approaches quite applicable in today’s history classroom.

There is a growing emphasis in history education on students being able to construct and analyze historical arguments. Many state standards, such as California’s History and Social Science Standards, call for students to be able to "construct and test hypotheses." Increasingly, both state standards and scholarship in history education are calling for students to analyze primary documents and assess various interpretations of the past.

Constructivism’s focus on the learner constructing knowledge might lead one to ask: what then is the role of the teacher? While students learn from experience from the constructivist view, a main function of the teacher is to shape those experiences. In many cases it is necessary for the teacher to provide scaffolds for students to construct knowledge. For example, sending students to an archive for an hour might not be the most productive way for them to learn how to construct an historical argument. Rather, providing them with a set of modified primary sources can create the conditions where students can begin to develop their own interpretations of the past.

Modeling how to construct an historical argument is also an important role of the history teacher. While an inquiry approach to history education is on the upswing, many students have been taught to simply recall facts. Modeling the complexity of constructing an historical interpretation based on evidence helps students develop their own historical interpretations.

Critics of constructivism fear that such an approach leads to completely subjective understandings of the past and fails to provide the common understandings of the past. Constructivists respond by saying that they are not proposing that students should discover just any ideas about the past, but rather that students develop the skills and dispositions to discern what to believe based on the available evidence.

Many constructivists also believe that students need to apply their understanding to concrete examples and point out that content standards can be mined for deeper concepts that in turn are exemplified by the several facts that are typically included in the content standards.

Technology facilitates constructivist’s approaches in the history classroom. Technology now offers unprecedented access to historical records and has made the goals of constructivism more attainable. Doolittle and Hicks (2003) outline six strategies for using technology to advance the basic tenets of constructivism in the social studies classroom. Theses strategies include using technology as a tool for inquiry, accessing authentic materials, and fostering local and global social interaction. Each strategy is accompanied by several websites that serve as exemplars.

Finally we should note that no single theory or approach should define a teacher’s practice. Students should inquire about the past, but history teachers still need to provide background materials for students. The theory of constructivism is not a prescription for how to teach, but rather provides a useful way for a teachers to think about their practice.

The broad scope of Social Studies that examines past and present human behaviors and interactions provides potentially rich topics for the Social Studies classroom. However, as a result of examining the human condition through such a broad lens, Social Studies teachers invariably encounter a variety of charged or difficult topics.

Issues around personal values, race, ethics, and stereotypes highlight just a few of the topics that can be potentially charged and consequently challenging for the Social Studies teacher. Teachers can also struggle with how to present controversial or contested interpretations of the past.

The Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education issued by the NCSS recommends "Students should also be encouraged to examine alternative interpretations of the discrepancies between ideals and realities in the life and history of the United States."

The NCSS suggests that teachers provide students with a conceptual framework for understanding and identifying multiple perspectives. The Canadian Benchmarks of Historical Thinking offers some guidance for teachers to develop such frameworks for their students. The document describes the aspects of perspective taking as well as identifies two potential tasks that ask students to assume or critique perspectives.

Lastly, while some teachers find role-playing to be an effective way to teach perspective, other educators view such simulations as being superficial or potentially harmful to students. Regardless of what approach teachers use, students should be equipped with the skills necessary to identify and understand multiple perspectives about the past and present.

Thanks for your question. Contingency is an important concept in understanding and investigating history and helping students develop historical thinking skills. Crudely defined, it is the opposite of inevitability. When students think that World War II or women's suffrage had to happen, that these events were destined to occur, they are ignoring the contingent nature of historical events. Contingency gets at how people in the past made history and how historic events and trends result from a variety of factors coming together—they are not preordained or unavoidable.

Contingency is key to historical thinking and helping students understand that while in hindsight, the past seems to unroll in logical storylines, this was not necessarily the case for those who lived through it. If suffragettes hadn't taken to the streets in the 1910s or focused on changing state laws, would they have won the vote in 1920? If the Treaty of Versailles contained different stipulations, would Germany have taken the path it did and would WWII have happened? Historical events are dependent (or contingent) on multiple causes that shape when, how, and why an event happened the way it did.

So contingency is deeply intertwined with understanding change over time—a framework many state standards and K-12 teachers use to focus and cohere their history courses.

Resources for explicitly teaching K-12 students this concept can be relatively sparse. But some do exist and they run the gamut, from instructional frameworks to particular activities. Historians Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke suggest using the "5 Cs" to frame history instruction in this article. While their work was developed at the college-level, it can transfer (with modifications) to the K-12 classrooms. Their fourth "C" is contingency and they suggest it may be the most difficult to teach, but their description can help clarify the concept.

UCLA's National Center for History in the Schools also includes contingency in the historical thinking skills that students should be learning. Their standards assert that students should "Challenge arguments of historical inevitability by formulating examples of historical contingency, of how different choices could have led to different consequences." (see standard 3.G) These standards also remind us that discrete historical thinking skills are "interactive and mutually supportive" and cannot be taught in the absence of particular historical content.

See this lesson for an example consistent with these recommendations. Located at the Canadian Benchmarks of Historical Thinking site created by the University of British Columbia’s Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness, it is a fine example of how to teach this concept. Focused on historical contingency, the lesson integrates this concept with the core historical concepts of causation and change over time to investigate the Chinese experience in Canada.

You will want to pay attention to instructional steps 1-7 and don’t miss the "outcomes" section at the end of the lesson. Not only does the lesson provide a coherent example of how you can take this concept into the classroom, it also succinctly describes how historic change is contingent on individual and group actions that are influenced and constrained by larger forces. It also uses two of our favorite ways to address contingency pedagogically:

• counterfactual questioning, or "what if" questions; and
• using cause and effect in a student's daily life to illustrate the concept before applying it to historic events.

For another example of a "What if" question, see this one about U.S. involvement in World War II or check out the series of "What if" books edited by Robert Cowley.

Contingency may be one of the harder historical thinking concepts to teach. To really grapple with it, students need to understand multiple causation and be able to think through change over time. But it's difficulty shouldn’t scare you away from teaching it as it is a critical link between history and civic preparation. As the National Center for History in the Schools says:

"A. . . trap is that of thinking that events have unfolded inevitably;that the way things are is the way they had to be, and thus that humankind lacks free will and the capacity for making choices. Unless students can conceive that history could have turned out differently, they may unconsciously accept the notion that the future is also inevitable or predetermined, and that human agency and individual action count for nothing. No attitude is more likely to feed civic apathy, cynicism, and resignation—precisely what we hope the study of history will fend off."

Including the sources you consulted for a history paper is important. Your bibliography helps readers see what sources you used to make your claims and your argument. When each of the accounts is accompanied by commentary, we call that an annotated bibliography. This sounds similar to what your teacher wants for this assignment.

But before including some general guidelines for writing this addendum, let me suggest that you directly ask your teacher this question. This is the best way to find out your teacher's specific expectations. (It’s likely that some of your fellow students would also benefit from hearing those—usually when one student is confused, others are also.)

Having said that, here are some general guidelines:

1. Keep each critique short. A few sentences are often sufficient and it should be no more than a paragraph.
2. “Critique” in this case does not mean that you have to be negative about the source. Rather it means that you need to analyze and question each source.
3. Use your own argument to help you choose how and where to focus your critique. Some questions that can help include:

• How did each source help you construct your argument and inform your synthesis of the sources? What sources stopped you in your tracks and made you reconsider how you were thinking? What sources reinforced your ideas?
• Did a source offer a new perspective or contradictory information? Which sources helped you with background knowledge or pointed you towards other useful sources to consult? How did this source’s content or perspective compare with other sources you consulted?

All of these questions can help you assess a source’s value for understanding your historical topic—the ultimate purpose of your critique.

Remember that when using a source from the time under study, you need to not only understand its content, you need to analyze that content. Ask questions of the source like: Who wrote it? When was it written? What was going on at that time? Who was the audience? What was the author’s purpose? Does the author use loaded words? Whose interests are represented by this source? These kinds of questions not only help you understand the source more deeply and accurately, they also help you critique it.

Similarly, you need to ask questions about any secondary source that you use. Start with asking: What is the author’s argument? What evidence does s/he use to make that argument? Does the evidence support the author’s argument? Also ask: Does the author consider alternative explanations and arguments? How does the account compare with other sources that you have consulted? Who is the author and does s/he have credentials or experience that make them trustworthy?

I am not suggesting that all of these questions should be answered in your critique, and indeed, given the brevity of each critique, that would be impossible. Rather they are examples of ways to assess the value of each source to your argument and the topic under study.

Finally, remember that if you judge a source “great,” “terrible” or with some other descriptor, include a specific statement about why it was great or terrible. For example, you might say something like, “This book was incredibly helpful” and then add the specific, “as it laid out the varied ways that historians have interpreted the conditions under slavery over the past 60 years.”

Good Luck!

Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, Fourth edition, (Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2004).

Whether you're studying the Mexican-American War or some other historical event, there are several steps you'll want to take.

First, you want to do some background reading and research. Teachinghistory.org is a good place to start. Head to the History Content page and try the Website Reviews and History gateway tabs in the bottom right corner. The History Gateway, for instance, will direct you to a number of good internet resources like PBS's website on the "US-Mexican War" and a website dedicated to the descendants of Mexican War veterans. You might also check out a general history resource like Digital History and see what they have.

After you've gotten a sense of the event, it's time to start thinking about potential writing topics. What's interesting? What's confusing? What's mysterious? What's uncertain? With a war, it's always worth considering why leaders thought it was worth fighting. What did they give as reasons? Were those reasons valid? Were there other, unstated reasons? Did everyone agree, or was there dissent? Remember, history is about using evidence to make arguments—so you'll want to make sure that you have evidence to support any claim you make. Try gathering some primary documents to find evidence for your answers. Head to any number of primary source repositories on the web for primary sources and you'll eventually find something like this collection of documents from the Library of Congress. It should give you fodder for thinking about how President Polk rallied support behind the war cause and other important issues relevant to the Mexican-American War.

Good luck!