In this video, educator Sandra Rice demonstrates the uses of a whiteboard in a forensic science class at Armand Larive Middle School, Hermiston, OR. Though the subject featured isn't social studies or U.S. history, the footage includes useful demonstrations of clicker use and suggestions for incorporating whiteboards into test-taking.
Historical feature films are a popular tool history teachers use to engage their students. But what is it that students actually learn from the films they watch? Peter Seixas, a historian and professor of education at the University of British Columbia, showed that while students often empathize with the past they see on the screen, they also approach film history uncritically. Sometimes they even interpret a film's presentation of history to be as it actually happened. In a landmark article, Seixas described the difficulty students have in analyzing films for historical accuracy.
Contemporary Films vs. Old Films
Seixas showed ten students Dances with Wolves (1990), directed by and starring Kevin Costner, and John Ford's The Searchers (1956), starring John Wayne. Students watched and summarized segments from each film. After showing each film, students answered questions about the film's historical accuracy.
Students found Dances with Wolves to be more accurate than The Searchers for two main reasons—reasons that have more to do with film technique and contemporary beliefs than historical accuracy. Dances with Wolves used modern techniques and promoted a contemporary interpretation of the past. Students noted that the use of blood in violent scenes and the quality of the acting made this film more believable than the older John Wayne film.
Students criticized The Searchers for poor acting, and outdated cinematography (e.g., old folky music). Students also found Dances with Wolves to be more believable because they shared the film's critique of America's treatment of Native Americans. On the other hand, The Searchers' negative representation of women and Native Americans caused many students to question its historical accuracy.
Contemporary Films and Old Films
Seixas argued that students' acceptance of Dances with Wolves as historically accurate reflects a larger problem with showing films in history class. Students are often so engaged by such films that they fail to question the films' historical merits. They blindly accept such films as accurate mirrors of the past. However, Seixas found that The Searchers' blatant misrepresentation of the past prompted students to question the historical accuracy of Dances with Wolves. After viewing both films students still found Dances with Wolves to be more accurate than The Searchers—yet now they at least questioned Dances with Wolves, saying they needed more information to determine its truthfulness.
Historical Films and The Classroom
The visual imagery and powerful audio of film can engage students in ways that lectures and textbooks cannot. However, what makes these films engaging—their use of cutting-edge techniques and their contemporary perspective on the past—often results in students passively accepting these stories as historical truth. So how then can films be used to promote a more critical stance?
Seixas' research suggests that one place to begin is for history students to learn to question how the past is presented in this media. To do this, teachers can have students compare an older film on the same topic with a more contemporary film. This juxtaposition helps students see that no film is a direct mirror to the past.
Initially students accepted Dances with Wolves uncritically as historical truth. One student stated that Dances with Wolves taught her "things I didn't know before . . . things about the culture."
After seeing The Searchers, students questioned the accuracy of Dances with Wolves. Students also recognized the need for more information to determine the truthfulness of Dances with Wolves.
Student: I can't really say, well, if I had to say which one is more accurate I'd probably say Dances with Wolves but I'd probably just say that because it's more modern.
Researcher: When you saw Dances with Wolves originally . . . did the question ever occur to you how accurate it is?
Student: No, because it was just a show that I was watching and I was so wrapped up in feeling and crying that I didn't stop . . . to wonder if this is right. In The Searchers, it's a lot easier.
Mark C. Carnes ed., The Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, (New York, NY: Holt,1996).
Natalie Davis, Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Peter Seixas, "Confronting the Moral Frames of Popular Film: Young People Respond to Historical Revisionism," American Journal of Education, 102, no. 3 (May, 1994):26185.
Games are everywhere. Digital games have a long history of research and development in education. Yet despite this, there's still much confusion amongst the generation population, and even teachers. Are games good? Safe? A waste of time?
It's not hard to understand why there is still confusion. The field of games is vast—and therefore, confusing. Some games are aimed at skill-and-drill, some at learning specific facts, and others have been designed for deep learning—creating rich environments with dynamics that confront a student's conceptions and require complex decisions and collaboration with peers. Even some commercial games, not specifically designed for learning, fall into this last category. With such a complex landscape, it can be tricky for a teacher to know if and how to leverage games for learning, let alone which ones.
Well-designed digital games for learning provide learners with experiences that are built on principles confirmed by research in the learning sciences. The research in the field of educational games has shown that at the very least, well-designed games have the ability to dramatically increase engagement and motivation in students, as well as more critical skills like strategic thinking, problem-solving, and planning social skills such as communication and collaboration, and even personal skills such as initiative and persistence.
What does this really look like in the classroom? The MIT Education Arcade gives a nice overview of games in education, with examples and strategies for how teachers can begin using them (Editor's note: The author cowrote a white paper for the Arcade.). Their first vignette describes Ross, a middle school teacher who used the games Civilization and Diplomacy (commercial, off-the-shelf games) to explore the political causes of World War I. At a school that is not very big on technology, Ross found numerous benefits in using the game versus more traditional instructional methods, including teaching students skills in negotiation, how to problem-solve collaboratively, and how to be mindful of actions and impacts on others (systems thinking). Ultimately, Ross described the most beneficial aspect being that the game framed the context and content, providing a rich scenario with which the students could engage.
What's even more incredible is how Ross has described the advancement of his students' moral development through these learning experiences, as they forced students to negotiate and understand others' perspectives in order to achieve a mutually agreeable goal.
What this highlights is that games are often more than just a 1:1 exchange between the computer and the student. For many games, it's the dynamic created by the context of the game and the social interactions amongst learners and the teacher that are critical not only to the gaming experience, but more importantly, the learning experience.
While some argue that games can create learning experiences that bypass the teacher—and indeed, some games are designed for that—in general, games are not meant to replace or remove the teacher from the learning experience. In fact, the example of Ross and many others like it underscores the opposite—that games create scenarios in the classroom where the stakes are raised and the learning is deeper, thereby requiring highly skilled and engaged teachers facilitating the process.
This makes games used for learning history and the social sciences anything but fluff.
In reality, these games are some of the most robust learning vehicles, as they afford the opportunity to confront and tease out the complex historical and societal dynamics of our world, unlike many other disciplines, which can be parsed and truncated into short, discrete topics and smaller learning games.
Certainly, in general games can do many things that benefit learners, it's their intersection with history that is particularly unique (1):
These opportunities make games in education worth paying attention to, but it's also worth noting their limitations as learning tools. For one, they are oversimplified, since a digital game can't represent reality absolutely. While simplification isn't inherently bad, as it lets you weed out the noise and focus on critical variables, it's important to help your students understand these limitations.
Secondly, students may grasp symbols and elements in the game but not always be able to transfer those symbols back to their real-world referents. Supplementing gameplay with other resources such as videos, primary documents, and case studies can assist with this.
In short, games matter in history education. Play is not a one-way flow of information—the player's actions matter. That play allows learners to embody the rhetorics, arguments, and actions of the past in code, so that they may be unpacked in the present.
Which game(s) are right for you and your students? A variety of good learning games are available for students of various ages, across the disciplines—many of them researched and developed by leading universities and institutions. Some more advanced commercial games that have been used in education include Civilization III, Rise of Nations, Pirates!, Gettysburg, Patrician, Age of Empires, 1602 AD, and Europa Universalis.
So while navigating the landscape of games to choose those that fit the needs of your students can feel like a game in and of itself, it's certainly not all fluff. If you want to see the effects of games in learning with your students, all you have to do is start playing.
1 For more information on this, see Kurt Squire's work.
The Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project offers teaching resources and guidance for conducting document-centered inquiry in middle and high school classrooms. This wealth of resources includes vast archives of documents, (for example Montreal is Burning) and several guides for teaching students to think critically about history. Materials are available in both French and English.
The World Digital Library, a collaborative project of the Library of Congress, UNESCO, and other partners, is a collection of primary documents from around the world. Particularly useful for working with ELL students, the site has a drop-down language menu, which allows teachers to translate the site’s accompanying materials into a number of languages including Spanish and Chinese.
A month ago, on June 14th, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released the Nation's Report Card: U.S. History 2010, Grades 4, 8, and 12. The Report Card is the "largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do" in U.S. history, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Approximately 7,000 4th-grade students, 11,000 8th-grade students, and 12,000 12th-grade students in public and private schools across the country took the test, resulting in data that will be analyzed for years to come.
Several professional and educational organizations and publications released responses to the Report Card:
But what is the Report Card? What does it mean? The first step in interpreting the results is to understand the tools used for collecting them. Looking at the structure of the NAEP U.S. history assessments and at the stated goals behind developing and administering them may be a useful way to understand what exactly the results are before trying to understand what they say.
A good place to start is the U.S History Framework for the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress. This document explains the goals of the assessments, describes the structure and rationale behind them, and provides sample questions.
After reviewing this document, head over to NAEP to try your hand at answering sample questions yourself. How did you do? If you want to see more questions from the 2010 (and 2006) assessments, NAEP's item maps let you pull up further sample questions. (Note: When you arrive at the site, set the subject to "U.S. History" in the drop-down menus under "Select new item map," and choose the year and grade level you want to explore.) Questions are labeled with the knowledge or skill they were designed to address and their format (multiple choice or constructed response), related theme (U.S. democracy, the gathering of cultures in the U.S., economic and technological changes, and U.S. world role), and difficulty level.
Once you've gotten a handle on the tools NAEP used to collect data for the Nation's Report Card, read over the Report. It includes charts and graphs with short summaries of conclusions drawn from the data.
NCES commissioner Jack Buckley offered a brief interpretation of the Report's findings, and the press release for the Report Card included further remarks.
(For comparison, you may want to read Commissioner Mark Schneider's remarks on the 2006 findings, as well as the official 2006 release remarks of other experts. Follow the link and scroll down to "2007," "History and Civics.")
Understanding the rationale behind the Nation's Report Card, the tools used to collect data, and official interpretations, you can now investigate the numbers yourself. Using the NAEP Data Explorer, compare test data using filters including jurisdiction (public or private), gender, race and ethnicity, geographic region, eligibility for the National School Lunch Program, disability status, and more.
For a look at data on how the tested students were being taught prior to their assessment, try Classroom Context, a section of the official Nation's Report Card website. Here you can compare what percent of classrooms used primary sources or films, or how many classrooms used computers for certain tasks. The data can't capture actual teaching strategies, but it can provide some general ideas about how history is being presented in the classroom.
What can we learn about the importance of population change and industrial development in Detroit, MI? What does the Detroit story tell us about industrialization in American history? Do upsurges or downturns in the population become permanent? Or do they change direction again? Where do the people come from who determine the population changes, and where do they go? The 2010 Census and other demographic data helped me answer these questions for myself. Students can use demographic data to answer questions in similar ways.
Detroit's volatile population changes drew media attention in the spring of 2011 as the 2010 Census figures were being rolled out. I became curious about the reasons for this population change. The overall U.S. population reached 308 million in 2010, about a 10% growth rate, from 2000. Most states and major urban areas grew at a 1% per year rate. There were, however, a few areas which did not grow, but declined. One of those was Detroit.
I wanted to know more about the situation with Detroit and why people came and left at different times in its history. I looked into Detroit's population history through the once-a-decade census reports that are available from the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2010 Census website, and the University of Virginia's Historical Census Browser. The Census Bureau also published the American Community Survey in the years 2005–2009 that covers occupations, social statistics, housing, mobility, language use, country of origin, and other data. These surveys are available on Detroit's Population and Housing Narrative Profile and in its American FactFinder.
To get a feel for the demographic volatility in the history of Detroit since 1850, I examined the Census figures for each year and the percentages of increase or decrease:
Now that I had the numbers, I looked for interpretations. An NBC analysis of Census figures attributes the Detroit population decline to "steady downsizing of the auto industry":
Detroit's population peaked at 1.8 million in 1950, when it ranked fifth nationally. But the new numbers reflect a steady downsizing of the auto industry—the city's economic lifeblood for a century—and an exodus of many residents to the suburbs. Detroit's population plunged 25% in the past decade to 713,777, the lowest count since 1910, four years before Henry Ford offered $5 a day to autoworkers, sparking a boom that quadrupled the Motor City's size in the first half of the 20th century.
This led me to ask, what did Detroit's actual population look like in earlier years? I examined some of these periods of time, using older census data. The 1950 U.S. Census found that the population of the city was 1,849,568. It had grown by over 200,000 from its 1940 population of 1,623,452. The foreign-born population was 276,000 from Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, the USSR, England/Wales, and Scotland. The black population was 300,506. The 1910 U.S. Census revealed that the total population was 465,786. The native white population was 115,106, the black population was 85,000, and the foreign born was 156,555. The foreign born of this era came from Germany, Canada, Russia, Austria, Hungary, Ireland, and Poland.
Finally, I checked Detroit's pre-industrial censuses from 1850 to 1880 and found the area to be rural but commercially active as a Great Lakes port. It grew rapidly in these years, but had only a small fraction of the population it would later have during the rapid growth of the auto industry.
Now I had another question. Where did the people who contributed to this growth come from? The Detroit News' website, detnews.com, gave me an answer in an article by Vivian Baulch entitled "Michigan's Greatest Treasure-its people." This article presents an ethnic description of Detroit from the time that it was an important stop on the Underground Railroad through the boom years of the auto industry. The article concludes with a quote by historian Arthur Woodford:
Detroit has "the largest multi-ethnic population of any city in the United States. Detroit has the largest Arabic-speaking population outside of the Middle East, the second largest Polish population in America (only Chicago has more), and the largest U.S. concentration of Belgians, Chaldeans and Maltese."
Another source is the U.S. Senate's hearings in 1908–1911 on Immigration and Industry. Known as the Dillingham Commission, the hearings' 31 volumes have been digitized by Stanford University's e-brary. Volume 8 provides an insight into Detroit's diversity as shown by the children of immigrant workers in their school settings.
These population figures, when I connected them to the rapid growth and consolidation of the auto industry and the upsurge in immigration and internal migration, gave me an overview of what happened in Detroit. It showed a boom and bust cycle in industry and the apparent willingness of many people to leave the city and/or metropolitan area when economic conditions are bad. The rise and decline of the American auto industry helped me get a grip on industrialization as a major factor in population growth and decline. Other industries such as iron, steel, car parts, batteries, tires, and glass are at least partially dependent on, or tied to, the fortunes of the auto industry, and thus whatever happens to the auto industry in Detroit has an impact on the national industrial scene. Other nearby formerly industrial cities have demographics similar to Detroit's. However, the decline may not be permanent. The auto industry has begun a modest revival and may continue to grow in the near future. Detroit is still the center of this industry and may again rise to a greater position of prominence among American cities.
By exploring census and other demographic data, students can form their own historical questions and answer them by tracing quantitative and interpretative information, just as I did. Population and industry shifts can rarely be understood from one source. Ask a question and use the information you find to assemble you own answer.
Associated Press. "Census: Detroit's population plummets 25 percent". March 22, 2011. Accessed May 26, 2011.
Baulch, Vivian. "Michigan's Greatest Treasure-its people." Detroit News. September 4, 1999. Accessed May 26, 2011.
Intimidated by the thought of working with quantitative data (numbers)? Professor Gary Kornblith guides you through finding and interpreting such data.
If you're looking for some numbers to crunch, more than 50 websites we've reviewed feature quantitative data. Last year, our blog also suggested ideas for teaching with census data.
Note: Unpublished; converted to Examples of Historical Thinking entry
Scholars in Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. These two speeches, one by Sojourner Truth (1852) and one by Frances Watkins Harper (1857) reveal the ways that African American women presented their cause and themselves. For many reform-minded men and women in the 19th century, the movement to abolish slavery was the most important cause in American society.
Radical abolitionists who sought to create a democratic and egalitarian movement allowed women and African Americans to have unprecedented influence and public roles. Some women within the abolitionist movement noted the links between the plight of slaves and the plight of women and thus became active in some of the first women's rights organizations. Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Baumfree) was enslaved for 30 years prior to the abolition of slavery in New York. Once free, she was guided by spiritual revelation to change her name and become a preacher and an active abolitionist. Born to free blacks in Maryland, Frances Watkins Harper was a poet and a teacher who became active in the abolitionist struggle in the 1850s.
Some students in class today may have clear memories of the events of September 11, 2001. Some may have vague memories. Others may have been born years after the attacks. The 10th anniversary of 9/11 presents an opportunity for educators to explore with students what it means to experience history. Were students alive during the attacks? Do they remember them? How do their parents remember the attacks? How did adults they know make sense of the events as they happened? How do people who were alive during the attacks interpret the past when its events are close and painful? How long does it take for historians to find a framework in which to fit events such as 9/11? People watching the World Trade Center towers collapse knew that 9/11 would appear in history books later—what has happened during students' lifetimes that they think was "history in the making?"
One way to teach 9/11 is to compare and contrast it with other past events that witnesses believed were history in the making. Lesson plans often feature the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK as comparable to 9/11, but what about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The assassination of Abraham Lincoln? The assassination of William McKinley? The Boston Massacre? The Springfield Race Riot of 1908?
How many people witnessed those events? How many of them witnessed them in person? How well were the witnesses prepared for the events? Did they know ahead of time what the effects might be? Did they share their eyewitness knowledge freely with others, or keep it secret? What did people write about these events immediately after they happened? Years after they happened? Does where something happens make a difference in how people react to it? Has technology made a difference?
Regardless of how you choose to teach 9/11 and whether or not you contrast it with other historical events, approach the subject thoughtfully and with clear goals. To honor the anniversary and to help you as you learn about, teach, and remember the day and its effects, we've gathered together our 9/11 resources on one page: "In Remembrance: Teaching 9/11."
Our spotlight doesn't include all of the many resources available online. More examples follow. Some were created in the immediate wake of 9/11 and some were created 10 years later, in the present day. You can use the older materials as they are, or use them as primary sources in their own right. They represent snapshots of writers, publications, and educators trying to make sense of a sudden, horrifying event.
If you are contrasting 9/11 with other traumatic events in U.S. history, you may want to compare these early reactions with early reactions to those events. How did schools, educators, and students react to violence in the past?
From 2001:
From 2011:
Many websites and publications also offer primary sources, yet to be interpreted for educational use or packaged into lesson plans. If you have the time to search for and browse these materials, they can provide a rich base from which to assemble your own comparison of past and present. Here are some examples:
Soaring food prices, a hunger for locally grown produce, high obesity rates, and the desire by people to reconnect with nature and with each other have sparked a national renaissance in community gardening. As part of this movement, school gardens are sprouting up everywhere. Teachers are using these green spaces to teach a variety of subjects, including horticulture, nutrition, history, science, math, writing, and art.
The idea of incorporating gardens in schools began in the late 19th century when Henry Lincoln Clapp, a teacher at the George Putnam Grammar School in Boston, MA, established the first school garden. Inspired after visiting school gardens in Europe, Clapp created a wildflower and vegetable garden at Putnam in 1891 with support from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The establishment of school gardens soon spread throughout the state and eventually became a nationwide movement, with an estimated 75,000 school gardens by 1906.
For garden advocates, integrating school gardens in the public schools served many purposes. It was a way to get city children outside, engage them in physical activity, and instill in them a sense of pride and teamwork as they cultivated and maintained their gardens. Gardening classes provided students with vocational and agricultural training. Teachers taught a variety of subjects through garden activities. Students practiced writing by keeping planting journals and writing compositions about the garden. Math skills were acquired by counting seeds, measuring garden plots, and determining the appropriate soil depth for planting. Students learned botany and entomology by observing plants and insects and their interrelationships. Geography and history came into play when students studied the origins of fruits and vegetables and planting customs among different cultures. The gardens provided inspiration for drawing, painting, and performing music. In 1914, the federal government established the Bureau of Education’s Office of School and Home Gardening, which promoted school gardens and provided “how-to” pamphlets and course guides.
Children’s involvement in gardening took on a new urgency when the United States entered World War I in 1917. In order to provide food to European allies facing a food crisis and to U.S. troops fighting overseas, citizens were encouraged to grow food for domestic consumption as part of the war garden campaign. Children were enlisted to join the School Garden Army, which adopted the motto, “A garden for every child, every child in a garden.” Students became important contributors to the garden campaign, growing thousands of dollars worth of produce in their school and home gardens.
When the United States entered World War II, children once again played an active role in growing fruits and vegetables to assist in the war effort. During the war, citizens were encouraged to establish victory gardens in their backyards, vacant lots, and schools to provide food for civilians and troops. Gardening was also promoted to boost morale, encourage physical activity and healthy eating and to help Americans deal with the stresses of war. The U.S. Office of Education encouraged victory gardening at schools and promoted school lunch programs that served locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. The Boy Scouts of America, 4-H clubs, parks and recreation departments, churches, and many civic organizations were involved in victory gardening programs for children. In 1944, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that victory gardens produced 40 percent of the vegetables that were consumed nationally.
The post-war suburban housing boom of the 1950s and 1960s generated more interest in backyard gardening than in community gardening. This changed in the 1970s when rising food prices, an increase in environmental awareness, and a desire by citizens to revitalize neighborhoods plagued by crime and neglect sparked a new community garden movement. Citizens and non-profit groups, such as Boston Urban Gardeners and New York’s Green Guerillas, turned vacant lots into colorful, productive green spaces. The U.S. Department of Agriculture initiated the Urban Garden Program in 1976 to help residents in major cities grow their own food. Educators and activists who were concerned that children were disconnected from nature and unaware of where their food came from reached out to young people and encouraged them to participate in neighborhood, youth, and school gardens. In a 1974 article in the Washington Post, writer Henry Mitchell noted that in Washington, DC, “there are 1,000 small gardens about town in which children grow such plants as the radish, the onion, and (as the weather stops being barbarous) the tomato.”
Since the 1970s, the popularity of school and youth gardens has grown steadily. California took the lead in 1995 by launching the “Garden in Every School” program. As in the school garden movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, teachers are utilizing these outdoor classrooms to teach a wide range of academic subjects through hands-on experiential activities. In addition, educators are using school gardens to encourage a healthier lifestyle, promote environmental stewardship and provide students with the opportunity to develop leadership and team-building skills.
These free resources provide ideas on how to incorporate school gardens into the academic curriculum, including social studies:
Lawson, Laura. City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Mitchell, Henry. “A Child’s Garden in The City.” The Washington Post, May 19, 1974.
School Gardens with Constance Carter. Library of Congress webcast.
Test your knowledge of (modern) historical gardening with our quiz on victory gardens!