American Citizen: A Study of Liberty and Rights

Abstract

The Elk Grove Unified School District serves culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and economically diverse students in southern Sacramento County and Elk Grove. Twelve of its 22 secondary schools are not achieving Adequate Yearly Progress, and on the California Standards Test, 48 percent to 68 percent of eighth and eleventh-graders score below "proficient" on questions related to American history. Teachers who participate in American Citizen: A Study of Liberty and Rights (American Citizen) in Years 1-3 will take one or more professional development pathways: Mastering History (an intensive, 2½-year master's degree program in history that includes evening and weekend classes and reading seminars); Talking History (an annual series of six scholarly lectures, including two book studies); Doing History (four 2-day workshops); and Living History (four 2-day colloquia, a week-long summer institute at a historic site, and collaboratively developed units). In Years 1-3, 16 teachers will participate in the master's degree program, 50 in Talking History, and 25 each in Doing History and Living History. In Years 4-5, American Citizen will expand its reach through district-wide extension activities: a learning collaborative, monthly professional development trainings led by master teachers, participation in National History Day, continuation of Talking History and Living History programs, and possibly a master's degree program for a second cohort. The unifying theme will be the liberty and rights of the American citizen. Teachers will learn strategies for differentiated instruction, primary source analysis, historical writing, historical inquiry, document-based questioning, and the effective use of biography and multimedia. A program Web site will publish lesson plans and enable history teachers to share ideas for improving instruction.

The East Side Teaching American History Project

Abstract

This large district in the San Francisco Bay area has 11 high schools, six of which are in improvement. Only 35 percent of high school students tested at or above proficient in American history in 2007, and about half of the students speak a primary language other than English at home. The East Side Teaching American History Project will present six content seminars each year. To make them accessible to teachers, seminars will be presented once in the northern part of the district and once in the southern part. Additional activities will include a 5-day summer institute focused on pedagogy, strategies, and lesson plans; a 1-day summer field study at a local historical site; and two history book studies. An annual cohort of 33 teachers will participate, with some staying for more than a year. The project goal is to achieve systemic change, making American history a viable and relevant subject. During summer institutes, teachers will learn how to present the content studied during the seminars. Methods will include using research-based frameworks and adapting lessons to different learning styles and for English Language Learners. Approaches will include increasing empathy for events and figures in history, using multiple perspectives to teach the same event, and using stories to bring home the personal impact of events. A portion of institute time will be dedicated to developing lesson plans. Each year, every participating teacher will create at least two new lesson plans, which will be available for all high school history teachers to use in their classrooms.

Teaching American History

Abstract

The Teaching American History program in Arkansas's Little Rock School District will target teachers who are new to the district or to teaching American history in 19 schools most in need of improvement and where student literacy levels are low. Only one percent of the district's history teachers have a degree in American history; therefore, Teaching American History will provide content-rich professional development: an American History Academy (a 45-hour online course and seven 1-day colloquia during the year); a 5-day summer history institute; a 5-day summer field study; three seminars on using history sources in an online environment; history book club meetings; community-based symposia featuring guest speakers; and a co-teaching program for high school teachers. A cadre of six lead teachers will create opportunities for collaboration among history teachers across the district. Teaching American History will begin with a core group of 28 teachers participating in the academy; by the end of Year 1, 53 teachers will be engaged, with approximately 50 teachers added in each subsequent year until all 201 history teachers in the targeted schools are included by Year 5. Participating teachers will explore how the concepts in the Preamble to the Constitution (justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, general welfare, and liberty) have been a refining and defining force in shaping a more perfect union. Instructional strategies will focus on historical thinking, reading and writing in the content areas, technology integration, and analysis of primary sources. Lessons learned and best practices will be disseminated within professional networks at the local, regional, and national levels.

Gathering Lessons from Yesterday’s Peoples and Happenings (GLYPH)

Abstract

The Deer Valley School District in Phoenix has many teachers who have little formal history training and have expressed a lack of confidence in teaching the full scope of American history content. At annual Gathering Lessons from Yesterday's Peoples and Happenings (GLYPH) kick-off events, staff will preview the year's topics and teachers will receive materials for book studies and classroom use. Day-long history workshops, week-long summer academies at historic sites, book studies, Lesson Study, mentoring, and elective activities will provide content information, field experiences, and instructional strategies practice. The cohort of 45 teachers will be selected through nominations by principals and invitations to all history teachers from schools in need of improvement, with a goal of including teachers who need the most support. The theme of highlighting the perspectives of diverse groups in American history provides the backdrop for historical inquiry and developing relevant context and multidimensional understanding of history. GLYPH activities will address identified gaps in teachers' knowledge by selecting two topics for each summer academy and other topics for workshops during the school year. Teachers who participate in at least 75 percent of annual activities will be eligible to attend the summer academy. University historians and skilled GLYPH teachers will lead two book study circles each year, and GLYPH staff will provide classroom demonstrations and observations, as well as ongoing, one-on-one mentoring in using Lesson Study. The Lesson Study cycle will result in lessons to be shared with other teachers, and the project will also provide classroom resource materials, including multimedia libraries related to specific topics.

Obtaining Unalienable Rights (OUR)

Abstract

Tuscaloosa City and County Schools will collaborate with Hale County Schools, which is located in Alabama's Black Belt. Many teachers in these districts have not taken a formal American history course for 10 or more years, and a survey of selected students found little or no knowledge about the way historians study and think about history. Each year will feature a kick-off event designed to set the historical context and to distribute books for independent study and classroom resource packets. Other annual activities will include day-long workshops, evening speakers' forums, a week-long summer institute, an independent book study, online discussions and team study, and peer coaching in small groups that combine veteran and less experienced teachers. A two-part cohort approach will select 20 high-needs teachers to participate in all 5 years, and add 10 teachers each year who will participate on a year-to-year basis. OUR will focus on delivering relevant context and multidimensional understanding of history topics that teachers have identified as important and that align with Alabama content standards. Delivery of content and instructional strategies will conform to the OUR blueprint for an ideal classroom environment: using primary source analysis and historical inquiry, history-related service learning, print and electronic resources, and intellectual challenge; collaborating with colleagues to plan, teach, observe, and critique lessons; and implementing best teaching practices and new historical content and resources. OUR products will include the classroom blueprint, teaching materials (e.g., primary source documents, DVDs, historical fiction, and nonfiction), an online community, and traveling history trunks for classroom use.

Plowing Freedom's Ground

Abstract

The Lee County, Tallapoosa County, Alexander City, and Phoenix City School Districts in eastern Alabama include four schools that had not achieved Adequate Yearly Progress and two that were in Year 2 Delay status at the time of the grant application. Plowing Freedom's Ground will target schools with low student achievement in history and few teachers who have completed advanced course work in U.S. history. Yearly activities will include a week-long summer seminar, a week-long lesson study workshop during which teachers will prepare problem-based historical inquiry lessons, three day-long professional development retreats during the school year, and mentoring and technical support through affiliates of the Persistent Issues in History Network at Auburn and Indiana Universities. Lesson Study teams will visit one another's classrooms during the year to observe and videotape fellow teachers delivering jointly designed lessons. A cohort of 30 teachers will participate in the program each year and will be encouraged to develop themselves as curriculum leaders and mentors in their districts. The thematic focus of Plowing Freedom's Ground will be pivotal events in American history that exemplify the persistent democratic challenge of ensuring fairness and justice for all Americans. The primary instructional strategy to be employed is problem-based historical inquiry learning; Lesson Study workshops will help teachers develop technology-enhanced, problem-based historical inquiry lessons that promote student engagement, historical thinking, and reasoning and democratic citizenship. Each Lesson Study team’s refined lesson plan, support materials, and video products will become part of the Persistent Issues in History Web site.

The (In)Visible Author in History Texts

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A selection from an American History textbook. NHEC
Article Body

Written history, whatever the concern for objectivity, is inevitably shaped by the perspectives of its authors. Consequently, the first move historians often make when approaching a document is to identify its author. Yet in the high school history classroom where the impersonal voice of textbooks is often the norm, students can be unaware of the importance of author. As a result, students can see history as a story to be learned and recited rather than a mosaic to be assembled, rearranged, and interrogated.

In designing this study, Richard J. Paxton of Pacific University hypothesized that the presence of a visible author would change the way students read texts. But, he wondered, would it also influence the way they constructed historical understandings? Would it transfer to other texts and to the act of writing? To find out, he designed an experiment in which he worked with 30 high school sophomores and juniors to explore what effect authorial presence had on a reading to write task.

What Paxton found was that students from the visible author group said more than twice as much about the documents as their counterparts...

Exploring the murder of Julius Caesar, students were divided into two groups. The first group read an authoritative textbook narrative by an anonymous author followed by a set of six documents written from various perspectives. The second group read a text containing similar information but featuring a more visible author; they then read the same set of six documents. Students were then asked to write one-to-two page essays.
What Paxton found was that students from the visible author group said more than twice as much about the documents as their counterparts, they referred to authors more than three times as often, and they were more than twice as likely to attempt to interact with authors. In their own writing, students who read the visible author text also tended to write longer essays, ask more questions, and think more deeply about the historical events in question.

Interacting with texts

Students from the experimental group began with a first-person account rather than an omniscient textbook account. Having thus “primed the pump,” these students displayed greater interaction with documents and reflected a higher degree of interest. While Paxton was not surprised to see students make more interactive comments while reading the first text, he was surprised to find that this extended to the six documents that students read afterwards. Further, in their own writing students displayed higher levels of interaction with texts and authors and wrote longer and more substantive essays.

Awareness of authors

Students from the experimental group also interacted more with the authors of their six documents. Working with the same texts as their counterparts, this group paid more attention to authorship, evaluating style, speculating on author trustworthiness, and reflecting on the various perspectives offered. In their essays students were not only more likely to demonstrate recognition of audience but also displayed higher degrees of personal agency and original thinking.

Asking Questions

Overall, students who first read the visible author text tended to ask more questions than those who began with third-person textbook narratives. As they read subsequent documents they considered the purposes and goals of each text and, recognizing competing narratives, tried to place them within the context of the historical issue as a whole. In their essays the trend continued, with students from the experimental group asking 12 questions to the one asked by their counterparts in the control group.

In the Classroom
  1. Have students read more than the textbook in your classroom. Use many varied texts including primary sources.
  2. Use texts in your classroom with visible authors. Authors can be visible through:
    • clear attributions on documents,
    • use of first person in the text and statements of personal beliefs, and
    • authors’ statements about how they know what they are writing about.
  3. In discussion and on handouts, refer to texts and sources using the author’s name and coach students in how to cite sources similarly. Ask questions that prompt students to have ‘conversations’ with a text’s author.
  4. Teach the skill of sourcing to your students. Explicit lessons will help them understand how knowing the author, date, and genre of a source matters to understanding it.
Sample Application

Paxton found that reading texts with different degrees of author visibility heavily influenced how students read subsequent documents and wrote historical essays.
Students who began with a textbook passage by an anonymous author tended to be intellectually disengaged. For example:

  • Textbook: “The two most successful generals were Pompey (PAHM pee) and Julius Caesar (SEE zuhr). Pompey was popular because he cleared the Mediterranean Sea pirates. He also added Syria, Phoenicia and Palestine to the lands Rome ruled.”
  • Susan: “Well, I’m thinking that it’s kind of boring. I mean, who cares really? I mean, I can’t even read those words.”

The case of the visible author text, however, was quite different:

  • Visible author text: “To those of us looking back at the ancient past, Julius Caesar remains one of the most controversial figures. I, for one, have a hard time deciding if he was a great leader, or a terrible dictator.”
  • Lisa: “Um, I’m thinking that I don’t know much about this guy.”
  • Visible author text cont’d: “Other historians have the same problem. Let’s see what you think.”
  • Lisa: “Well, right now—right now I don’t think much. I guess I’m like consumed. I mean, like who is writing this? Who is this ‘I’? I mean, he asks what I think. Hm. Well I don’t think much yet.”

The students responded differently to the two different kinds of texts. The first, a traditional textbook excerpt, produced passive and mildly negative responses from students. The second, in which the author is much more visible, produced questions and engagement. That engagement, or lack thereof, also extended to other texts:

  • Susan responding to text by Dio Cassius: “I don’t know. So this is like from one of his books.”
  • Susan responding to text by Cicero: “I liked that one the best.”

Now look at how Lisa, who read the visible author text, responded to the same documents:

  • Lisa responding to text by Dio Cassius: “So, I kind of think this writer was for Caesar. I mean, even though he was alive after Caesar. I mean it says he was pro-imperial.”
  • Lisa responding to text by Cicero: “Well, this is a letter to Atticus. So he supported Pompey and later Brutus and Cassius. So he was on their side, well, that’s pretty obvious.”

Reading first-person narratives by visible authors did not transform all students into expert historians. However it did tend to raise student consciousness about the role of the author in history and prompted them to view themselves as active players in the construction of historical narratives.

For more information

Watch our What is Historical Thinking? video for an overview of using multiple sources in the classroom and teaching sourcing. Available on our home page.

Watch sourcing in action to see how a historian considers the author and circumstances of a source’s creation to help her understand the document.

See this lesson plan review for an approach to challenging the authority of anonymous omniscient textbook accounts.

This approach to using textbooks helps students see differences between them and consider how their perspectives can contrast.

Bibliography

R.J. Paxton, “The Influence Of Author Visibility On High School Students Solving A Historical Problem,” Cognition and Instruction, 20, no.2 (2002): 197-248.

Using Primary Sources to Teach Both Story and Skills

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Students closely examing the Declaration of Independence. NHEC
Article Body

History is the story of the past. But because the past comes to us via fragments, that is, surviving documents and accounts, history as a discipline focuses on interpreting what happened and why. Due to time constraints and standardized testing, many teachers focus on teaching students the basic story of the past, sometimes leaving out historical analysis. Many teachers who use primary sources to teach about historical thinking worry that it will take time away from helping students understand what happened. However, one study suggests both activities can—and should—happen at once.

Many teachers who use primary sources to teach about historical thinking worry that it will take time away from helping students understand what happened. However, one study suggests both activities can—and should—happen at once.

In two separate experiments, Charles Perfetti and his colleagues interviewed 30 undergraduate students, trying to understand how history students use texts. Students were given documents about the Panama Canal taken from textbooks, primary sources, and secondary sources, and written from a variety of perspectives. The researchers found that reading primary sources helped the students learn to read, write, and think historically. As a consequence, they gained a better understanding of the past. By reading multiple documents to develop their own opinions about the past, students became more thoughtful consumers of information even as they received a richer, fuller, and more accurate story of what really happened.

The Search for Accuracy

When students are presented with only textbook and/or secondary accounts, they tend to see history as simple and straightforward. They rarely seek out more information, and while capable of identifying author bias, do so only where bias is obvious.

When they encounter primary sources, . . . students become aware of subtle biases depending on when a document was written, where, and by whom.

When they encounter primary sources, on the other hand, students become aware of subtle biases depending on when a document was written, where, and by whom. They often express greater interest in seeing more sources in order to verify their understanding of past events. Students who are given primary sources refer more frequently to evidence, citing the sources of their information. Thus, examining primary sources helps students think more critically about the importance of accuracy, both in the sources and their own interpretations.

The Search for a Fuller Picture

In many cases, students look to the textbook to find out what happened. But when they were given primary sources, the students in this study began to question the textbook accounts, asking questions about issues the textbook had failed to cover. In seeing themselves as historical detectives, students began to piece together various accounts to build a fuller picture of events, using the textbook as a resource and not the ultimate arbiter of truth.

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Lithograph, "The Raven," J. Keppler, 1890, Library of Congress
In the Classroom
  • Begin by having students read the textbook account of a particular event. Aim for a manageable topic like the creation of the Panama Canal, rather than a large and complex event such as the Civil War.
  • After they have read the textbook passage, have students write about (or briefly discuss as a class) whether they believe the textbook account is reliable, or if they need more information.
  • Next, present students with 2-4 primary sources on the topic. They can read these either individually or in groups. Good primary sources can be found at websites like American Memory or The Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Ideally, such sources will add new information about the story, revealing gaps or inconsistencies in the textbook account (check out how Historical Thinking Matters handles the Spanish American War, the Scopes Trial, Social Security, and Rosa Parks).
  • After your students have reviewed their primary sources, ask them to reconsider the reliability of the textbook account. What has changed? What questions do they have that they didn’t have before? Are there disagreements among the texts? What could account for those? What additional information would students like to see?
  • At the end of the unit, discuss what the students have learned. It is likely that they will emerge with more historical thinking skills, as well as a better understanding of the past.
Sample Application

The authors of this study exposed students to different types of sources—primary, secondary, and textbook—and asked them four questions about each text which required some historical interpretation:

  • Did the author present a neutral coverage of the events? If not, what do you think the author’s attitude was?
  • Did you notice inconsistencies among texts?
  • Were events perceived similarly by the different groups involved?
  • What else would you like to know?

Through such questions, the researchers prompted students to consider author bias, inconsistencies across texts, narrative incompleteness, and presence of conflicting views.

Such an activity is helpful for history students of all ages. They can learn to identify bias, resolve contradictions, recognize the limitations of certain documents, and grasp the meaning of multiple perspectives.

Bibliography

Charles A. Perfetti, M. Anne Britt, Jean-Francois Rouet, Mara C. Georgi, and Robert A. Mason, “How Students Use Texts to Learn and Reason about Historical Uncertainty,” in Mario Carretero and James F. Voss, eds. Cognitive and Instructional Processes in History and the Social Sciences (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994), pp. 257-283.

Learning to Think Historically: A Classic Study

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Students exploring the Declaration of Independence. NHEC
Article Body

The School's Council History Project (SCHP) was the largest innovation in history teaching in an English-speaking country and arguably the most successful. But few in this country have ever heard of it.

Founded at Great Britain's University of Leeds in 1973, SCHP grew by 1984 to embrace a quarter of all British high schools. By the time the project ended in 1988, SCHP had left an indelible mark on how history was taught in the United Kingdom.

Rote Learning vs. Historical Thinking

Project founders believed that traditional instruction might leave students with bodies of information, but little idea how to evaluate it. Students could commit to memory an agreed-upon narrative but they lacked a way of deciding whether it—or any other narrative—was compelling or true. The project's evaluator likened students from traditional history classes to those in a drama class, who could talk "sensibly about the separate scenes and characters of King Lear, but do not know what a play is."*

What is History?

The three-year curriculum began in the eighth grade with a course called "What is History?" This course introduced students to the idea of evidence, an important first step since many students had no idea that evidence played any role in understanding history. Other units exposed students to how historians reason about evidence, the role of primary sources in reaching historical conclusions, and how historical understanding depends on inference and imagination.

The curriculum favored depth over breath, engaging students in research projects and thrusting them into focused inquiries, on such topics as Elizabethan England, Britain in the years 1815–1851, the American West, and the Arab-lsraeli conflict. The curriculum included other topics because they helped students to see that their current conceptions were often poor guides to understanding the past. For example, studying the history of medicine over a long time span challenged students' ideas about causation and change and continuity.

Thinking Historically

The project evaluation showed that with well-planned curriculum and teachers who enacted the SCHP philosophy, adolescents could learn to reason about history in sophisticated ways. This finding contrasted sharply with overzealous Piagetian ideas that historical reasoning was beyond the ken of middle and high school students.

Getting Better at History

A lasting contribution of SCHP was its model of how adolescents "get better at history." In other words, what does it mean to make progress in historical understanding or become more sophisticated as a historical thinker? In his evaluation report, Denis Shemilt provided a rough model of how adolescents progress in historical reasoning:

  • At Level I, adolescents view history as random events, with no inner logic other than their arrangement in chronological sequence.
  • At Level II they view history with "an austere, Calvinistic logic," equating historical understanding with putting pieces of a puzzle into a preexisting form. They view history as an inevitable progression of events.
  • At Level III, adolescents have a budding awareness of the difference between historical narratives and "the past"—and they begin to understand that narratives, based on selected pieces of surviving evidence, never fully capture the complexity of what occurred in a different time.
  • At Level IV, adolescents start to see problems with a search for timeless explanatory principles and come to understand historical explanation as specific and rooted in particular epochs and contexts.
Assessment

SCHP also left behind an approach to assessment that differs from the multiple-choice tests familiar in this country. In SCHP examinations, students reviewed short, carefully selected documents (including photos and charts) and had to respond in a few short sentences. These assessments allowed Project leaders to not only track student progress but also to detect common student misconceptions that could be addressed in future instruction.

In the Classroom
  • Recognize that many of your students will come to your classroom with beliefs about history that may prevent them from learning what you want to teach them.

    • Work to uncover students' preexisting beliefs.

  • Start the school year with a "what is history" exercise. For example, bring in two different textbook accounts of the same event or contrast a new textbook's account with an older one.

    • Students will need practice with this type of exercise to overcome their initial confusion and gradually become more adept at dealing with multiple accounts.

  • Help students understand the connections between analyzing historical accounts and figuring out which of two modern newspaper accounts to believe.

    • Present students with short sources (such as those listed in the Sample Application) and help them see the relationship between what is said and who says it.

Sample Application

Study the sources below:

Source A: The (buffalo hunters) have done more in the last two years . . . to settle the Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in the last thirty years. . . Let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle and the festive cowboy, the forerunner of an advanced civilization. —General Philip Sheridan, U.S. Army, c. 1882.

Source B: That buffalo slaughter was a dirty business. . . All this slaughter was a put up job on the part of the government to control Indians by getting rid of their food supply. But just the same it was a low down dirty business. —Teddy Blue Abbot, a cowboy in the 1880s

How do the attitudes of Sheridan (Source A) and Abbot (Source B) differ?

Sample Student Responses:

  • According to the grading manual, sub-par answers were superficial, e.g.,

    • "Sheridan wanted killing/Abbot didn't."

  • An adequate answer compared "attitudes which can be reasonably inferred from sources, in their historical setting," e.g.,

    • "Sheridan says that killing the buffalo will get rid of the Indians, and he wants to do it because the army could not solve the Indian question. Abbot kills the buffalo but doesn't want to. He is not happy doing it. He does it for the government."

  • Advanced answers looked "beyond the immediate issue of killing buffalo," and took into consideration the probable interests of the two different authors, e.g.,

    • "Abbot is a cowboy and therefore presumably approves of cattle ranching … (as does Sheridan), but, unlike Sheridan, is sympathetic toward the Indian, and disapproves of the government policy of cutting off their food supply."

* From the 1982 Written Examination, "Schools Council Project: History 13–16," administered by the Southern Regional Examination Board, October 1982 (with slight modifications).

For more information

Denis J. Shemilt, "The Devil's Locomotive," History and Theory 22 (1983).

L. W. Rosenzweig and T. P. Weinland, "New Directions of the History Curriculum: A Challenge for the 1980s," The History Teacher 19 (1986): 263-77.

Bibliography

Denis J. Shemilt, History 13-16: Evaluation Study (Edinburgh, 1980).

SCIM-C: Historical Source Analysis

Article Body

In this short video, created by the Historical Inquiry project at Virginia Tech, Education Professor David Hicks describes the five steps of SCIM-C, a model for analyzing historical sources and placing them within a historical narrative. The steps ask students to:

  • Summarize
  • Contextualize
  • Infer
  • Monitor, and
  • Corroborate

For a more detailed explanation of the SCIM-C method, check out this section of Historical Inquiry: Scaffolding Wise Practices in the History Classroom.

Website
SCIM-C: Historical Source Analysis Video
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