"Uncoverage" in History Survey Courses

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A middle school student completing a writing assignment. NHEC
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The emphasis in survey courses is on "coverage"—trying to get through vast quantities of material. This can create routines which, according to Lendol Calder, rarely lead students to develop skills as historical readers, writers, and thinkers. As one of the study participants put it, in history survey courses you listen to a lecture, then you read a textbook, then you take a test. And then you do it all over again. Many teachers, however, acknowledge that covering everything is an impossible goal. But if "coverage" is not the aim of survey courses, then what is?

In this article from the Journal of American History, Calder argues for a new way of teaching these courses. Too often, history survey courses focus only on "what happened," without stopping to consider the work that historians do or to inquire into the writing and reading of history. Calder argues that "uncoverage" (a term used by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe to describe a way to delve into content instead of just covering it) is naturally suited to history, which is about inquiry, argument, and point of view, and often uses incomplete evidence to construct reasonable stories about the past. Calder claims that plowing through piles of historical facts actually prevents students from connecting with the disciplinary work of history. By emulating the work of historians, students actually retain content better, because they are more engaged in the process of learning and absorbing information.

. . . plowing through piles of historical facts actually prevents students from connecting with the disciplinary work of history.

Although the article focuses on college-level courses, the uncoverage concept could apply just as well to middle- and high-school classes, which are almost always taught as survey courses.

Framing the Course

Calder begins by asking students to consider reasons for studying history, the problems that arise in the pursuit of historical knowledge, and the stories and patterns from the past. After explaining the nature of "doing history," Calder explains that the class will be focusing on particular "problem areas" from the American past such as "Origins of the Cold War" and "1980s Culture Wars." For each problem area, Calder identifies six historical skills students can develop: questioning, connecting, sourcing, making inferences, considering alternate perspectives, and recognizing limits to one’s knowledge. At the heart of his approach are three modes of inquiry that students should learn to employ: the visual, the critical, and the moral.

. . . three modes of inquiry that students should learn to employ: the visual, the critical, and the moral.
Visual Inquiry

Calder tackles each problem area with a visual inquiry into the period. Through films that focus on historical topics and create an environment rich in information, students can become engaged and begin to ask historical questions. This approach "uncovers" the way historians choose topics to focus on, based on what they find interesting or have questions about.

Critical Inquiry

Next, Calder has his students engage in critically examining the problem area. In a structured history workshop, students examine primary documents and construct interpretations about the period. During this phase, Calder emphasizes questioning what doesn’t make sense, drawing connections to prior knowledge, making inferences, and considering alternate perspectives.

Moral Inquiry

Finally, Calder leads his students into what he calls "a moral inquiry" of the problem area. By this time students are primed to begin reading opinionated secondary sources that seem to "pick a side" in the history they tell. Particularly useful are provocative texts that prompt students to consider how they would think or write about interpretations of the past.

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Marginalia, CHNM
In the Classroom
  • If you teach a survey class, it's time to take a step back. Don’t worry about what you need to "cover." Instead, think about what you want to teach.
  • Consider which overarching history lessons students need to know. Ask your students questions like "What is the story of American history?" and "How and why have freedoms expanded (or contracted) over time?"
  • Next, consider the skills you want your students to acquire. Calder hoped his students would gain an understanding of how historians do their work. Perhaps you want students to conduct a conversation about how history is written. Or maybe your students could develop concrete skills such as using evidence to support their claims.
  • Once you’ve decided on your ultimate aims, consider what units of instruction would promote them. You’ll still be covering content, of course, but in the service of setting bigger goals for your students.
  • Leaving out material is hard. But remember, no one can teach everything. Using the "uncoverage" approach, you can explain to students why you’re teaching what you’re teaching.
Sample Application

Instead of asking them to memorize textbook pages or lecture notes, Calder presents his students with big questions about American history, such as:

  • What is the story of American history?
  • Who are Americans?
  • What have we accomplished?
  • How do we judge what we have done?
  • Are things getting better or worse, or are generalized statements like these possible to believe in the first place?

From there Calder asks questions about the process of "doing" history:

  • How do historians know what they claim to know?
  • Why would we want to think the way historians think?

Calder is asking his students to think about why and how they are studying history. These questions about purpose and process are at the heart of "uncovering" history.

For more information

Lendol Calder, with the assistance of Melissa Beaver, created a website to accompany his JAH article. Visit to explore his ideas in greater depth.

Bibliography

Lendol Calder, "Uncoverage: Toward a Signature Pedagogy for the History Survey," The Journal of American History, volume 92, no. 4 (March 2006), pp. 1358-1369. http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/4/1358.full.

Multiperspectivity: What Is It, and Why Use It?

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Photo, San Francisco, Calif., April 1942. . . , Library of Congress
Question

What is multiperspectivity in history?

Answer

Exploring multiple perspectives (which is known as "multiperspectivity" in parts of Europe) requires incorporating source materials that reflect different views of a historical event. In recent decades scholars and educators have begun to question the validity of singular (one-sided) historical narratives. Instead of just focusing on dominant groups and communities, they recommend employing multiple perspectives. One reason for this stems from increasing diversity and cultural pluralism, since many groups—women, the poor, ethnic minorities, etc.—have been ignored in traditional historical narratives.

. . . many groups—women, the poor, ethnic minorities, etc.—have been ignored in traditional historical narratives.

Another reason is disciplinary. After all, good historians don’t just settle for one perspective on a historical issue—they piece together many (sometimes competing) versions of a story to construct an accurate interpretation. As Ann Low-Beer explains, "In history, multiple perspectives are usual and have to be tested against evidence, and accounted for in judgments and conclusions."

Here's an instance of using multiple perspectives: When studying the voyages of discovery, students would not only learn about explorers like Columbus, but about the peoples who had been "discovered." Historian Jon Wiener, writing in American History 101 in Slate magazine, offers the following example:

In the case of Reconstruction. . . I focus [on] the three most significant [perspectives]: the Northern Radicals, who shaped federal policy and who wanted to bring the former slaves into the economy of the free market, as wage earners, and into the political system, as voters; the Southern planter elite, who wanted to preserve as much of the old plantation labor system as possible; and the former slaves themselves. Their understanding of freedom was, as Eric Foner has written, "shaped by their experiences as slaves." Freedom for them meant freedom to work for themselves—economic autonomy and access to land. This argument shows the freedmen defining their own interests, in conflict with the federal government, which claimed to represent them. Thus, instead of giving students a list of facts and dates to memorize, I would ask them to conceive of what's happening as a three-sided conflict over the meaning of freedom.

. . . instead of giving students a list of facts and dates to memorize, I would ask them to conceive of what's happening as a three-sided conflict over the meaning of freedom.

Consequently, for Wiener, "students end up learning not just about what happened during Reconstruction, but about how history itself gets reconstructed."

If not yet universal, this approach is widely accepted. In its most recent Position Statement, the National Council for the Social Studies in the United States recommended students learn to "think critically, and make personal and civic decisions based on information from multiple perspectives."

So what can a classroom teacher do? Try incorporating primary sources that represent a range of views on a historical issue. Then, ask students to spend some time thinking about why different groups may see the same event in different ways. Oftentimes a different story emerges when those multiple perspectives are put together. The result is enriched historical understanding.

Scholars in Action: Analyzing Blues Songs

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Scholars in Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. "Two White Horses Standin' in Line" (sung by Smith Cason) and "Worry Blues" (sung by Jesse Lockett), both recorded in 1939 by folklorist Alan Lomax, are known as "blues" songs.

The blues emerged as a musical form among African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and gained the attention of folklorists and record companies. Historians have studied blues and other African American musical forms to gain insight into the experiences and perspectives of poor and working-class African Americans who left few written records about their lives.

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Scholars in Action: Analyzing Blues Songs

Women Taking History: Women's History Month 2011

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Photo, Woman with camera, White House, Washington, D.C., Apr. 8, 1922, LoC
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African American History Month ends, and Women's History Month begins! Take a glance around the internet, and you'll find plenty of resources for teaching women's history—whether it be the Seneca Falls Convention, heroes of the American Revolution and the Civil War, social activists, First Ladies, workers during the World Wars, jazz and blues stars, or presidential candidates. You'll find photographs of many of these women, too—working in factories, on the campaign trail, helping the wounded, conducting scientific experiments.

But who takes these photographs? Who makes these images that become the records of history? Aren't the people behind the camera as significant as the ones in front of it?

Of course they are, though they can easily be forgotten. When we look at photographs of Amelia Earhart, we rarely ask who took the photo. When we're struck by a picture of New York during 9/11, do we ever ask if it was snapped by a man or a woman?

Explore women's history behind the camera this Women's History Month. What have women chosen to capture on film, as they record and live through history?

Taking Photos and Making History
  • The Kansas Historical Society tells the story of Alice Gardiner Sennrich, a professional photographer early in photography's commercial history. Born in 1878, Sennrich purchased a Kansas photography studio in 1902, and ran it throughout her life, including after her marriage. Recognized by the National Association of Photographers, she was also active in the Photographers Association of Kansas (PAK), an organization that had active female members since its founding. You can hear more about Sennrich in this podcast by the Society.
  • During the Great Depression, the Federal Government gave photographers, both men and women, work documenting the lives of ordinary U.S. citizens and the social conditions of the day. The Library of Congress's American Memory collection From the Great Depression to World War II: Photos from the FSA-OWI preserves more than 150,000 of these photographs. Try browsing the collections' black-and-white and color photos by creator. Look for women's names and work—and remember to check names with only a first initial and a surname! These may be women, too. Giving only a first initial was (and remains) one way to avoid being judged (at least in print) by gender.
  • Photographs aren't always taken as documentation. Sometimes, they're carefully composed as art. The online archive Women Artists of the American West showcases the artwork of 19th- and 20th-century Western women. Photography exhibits include photographs by white women of Pueblo arts and crafts workers (many of them women), taken from 1900 to 1935; modern art photography by Native women; landscape photography by Laura Gilpin (1891–1979); and 1972–1997 lesbian photography (some pages contain nudity). The Women in International Photography Archive, collects essays on more than 25 women photographers.
  • For an example of a modern photographer using her work as part of a political journalistic career, check out Jo Freeman.com. A writer, lawyer, and activist, Freeman's site features her photographs of Democratic and Republican conventions, marches and protests, New York after 9/11, the Chicago riot following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's 1972 campaign for the presidency.

If photographs aren't enough, branch out into art, journalism, fiction and nonfiction writing, and other ways of recording and responding to the world, all meant for the public eye. What have women created and documented? What were their (myriad, uncountable) reasons for crafting "snapshots" and composing reactions? Women make history when they're behind its lens, as well as in front!

Further Resources

Looking for more resources? Take a quiz on women in history, with our weekly quiz archive! See how well you do on quizzes with subjects like women in the West. Search our Website Reviews, as well—we've reviewed and annotated more than 200 websites with women's history content.

If you'd still like more, these organizations feature content and pages created just for Women's History Month:

For more information

Speaking of photographs, the Smithsonian is looking for help identifying women in photographs with missing or incomplete background information. Take a look and see if you can help out!

National History Day Wins 2011 National Humanities Medal

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Photo, Final preparations, Mar. 6, 2009, Jose Kevo, Flickr
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On February 13th, National History Day (NHD), a year-long, nationwide contest that challenges students to hone their historical thinking, research, and interpretation skills, received the 2011 National Humanities Medal. Presented by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the medal "honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens' engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand Americans' access to important resources in the humanities." This marks the first time a K–12 education program has received the medal, according to a press release.

Interested in learning more about the program? Your first stop should be the National History Day website. Then come back to Teachinghistory.org to read what our teacher-writers have to say about their NHD experiences! Eighth-grade teacher Amy Trenkle loves the website and documentary categories, which ask students to practice 21st-century skills in their NHD presentations (read her thoughts). Mike Yell, 7th-grade teacher and former National Council for the Social Studies president, recommends using the program as a differentiation option for self-directed students (read more here).

Are you and your students already involved in NHD? Do they have questions about historical thinking and research? Do you? Remember that anyone can submit questions to Ask a Master Teacher, Ask a Historian, and Ask a Digital Historian here at Teachinghistory.org. In the past, we've answered questions about aligning NHD to state social studies standards and given tips on places to begin research and steps in developing a research topic.

Congratulations, National History Day!

Brookgreen Gardens

Description

In 1931 Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington founded Brookgreen Gardens, a non-profit 501(c) (3) garden museum, to preserve the native flora and fauna and display objects of art within that natural setting.

Today, Brookgreen Gardens is a National Historic Landmark with the most significant collection of figurative sculpture, in an outdoor setting, by American artists in the world, and has the only zoo accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums on the coast of the Carolinas.

In 2010, the Brookgreen Gardens Education Department provided field trip experiences for 4,093 students with South Carolina curriculum-based programs about History, Art, and Nature. Additionally, our annual curriculum-based special event for Horry and Georgetown County students, “Gullah Gullah Days,” a third-grade social studies program, provided educational enrichment for 1,708 students.

Programs generally are 50-minutes in length. History programs are: “Creek Excursion”, “Stretching and Growing: Children on Lowcountry Rice Plantations: and “Rice Plantation Exploration.” Cultural presentations offered are: “Gullah Lessons on History, Family & Respect”, “Gullah/Geechee Rhythms”, and “Priscilla’s Posse, A (Simulated) Press Conference about Gullah Heritage.” Teachers receive pre-visit Program Information Sheets that detail: content area, grade, maximum number of students, South Carolina State Standards, and program description. Program descriptions also are available at www.brookgreen/org, after viewers click on Education.

The Children’s Discovery Room attracts numerous enthusiastic public guests. Its seven interactive stations target 4- to 12-year-olds and reflect the history, nature, and art of Brookgreen Gardens. Educators also may gain historical enrichment through visiting one of the following Public programs: Gullah/Geechee Program Series, the Lowcountry Trail Audio Tour, Oaks History and Nature Trail, the Creek Excursion, and the “Lowcountry Change & Continuity” exhibit.

African American History Month 2011

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Photo, Navy baseball team--Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, Sept. 1944, NARA
Photo, Navy baseball team--Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, Sept. 1944, NARA
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It's February! Resources throughout the web stand ready to provide you with lessons and primary source materials for Black History Month (also known as African American History Month), but African American history stretches far beyond the confines of one month and the narrative litany of a handful of cultural heroes. Maybe you want to go beyond Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, and Jackie Robinson. What stories can you uncover beyond the headlining stories textbooks provide? Remind your students of the complexity of African American history with these resources.

Documenting African American History
  • The New York Times' lesson plan "Stories to Tell: Curating an African-American History Exhibit" introduces students to the difficulties in curating a large museum—or even just one exhibit. How can curators for the developing Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture create a museum that honors all of African American history?
  • Search the Carnegie Museum of Art's Teenie Harris Archive Project for photographs taken by photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris for the Pittsburgh Courier. Published from 1907 to 1965, the Courier was a major African American newspaper, and these photographs show Harris's journalistic perspective on Pittsburgh events of all scales. Use the keywords "Teenie Harris," along with others related to your topic of interest, to find images of life at school, home, community events, church, work, and out on the town.
  • The Smithsonian National Museum of American History's Portraits of a City provides a similar photographic record of a place. The Scurlocks ran studios in DC for much of the 20th century, documenting African American life in the nation's capital.
  • The Library of Congress's American Memory collection The African American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920 focuses on the themes of slavery, politics, and religion. Its wide range of primary-source documents, including thousands of newspaper articles, can help students construct a view of just what the collection's title implies.
  • High-quality photographs in the National Archives and Records Administration's "Pictures of African Americans During World War II" could give students a look into another kind of community—one that formed both overseas and on the home front during war.
Looking for More Suggestions?

If none of these resources fit into your curriculum or spark your interests, there's plenty where they came from. Search our Website Reviews using the topic "African Americans," and you'll turn up close to 300 websites, on topics ranging from Marcus Garvey to the construction of race to Seattle's Black Panthers to sheet music by and about African Americans. Or test your African American history knowledge in our weekly quiz feature! You and your students can take online quizzes on African American baseball players and other athletes, the historical accuracy of the film Glory, Jim Crow laws, and foodways.

You can also explore the African American History Month pages of history and educational organizations, including:

Seeking U.S. History Books for 9th and 11th Graders

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Cigarette card, Robinson Crusoe, New York Public Library
Question

I am interested in locating a list of U.S. history fiction and nonfiction books that are appropriate for use with my U.S. history students, grades nine and 11.

Answer

Some of the best and most easily available sources for lists of appropriate books for 9th and 11th graders come from school districts and teachers who have compiled them and shared them on the internet.

An excellent example of this can be found at Oxnard Unified High School District. This annotated list includes both fiction and nonfiction titles related to high school U.S. history. Another example of this type of list has been posted by a classroom teacher. This list highlights nonfiction titles on a range of U.S. history topics but also includes a brief list of recommended historical fiction.

Libraries are another obvious choice for booklists. Library Booklists is a clearinghouse of public libraries across the nation, providing links to lists of books put together by librarians on diverse topics. You can search for nonfiction as well as historical fiction lists, and it differentiates between young adult and children's literature.

The American Library Association's Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has annotated lists of suggestions for teen readers. Many, but not all, of their nonfiction history titles relate to U.S. history. They also have excellent annotated lists of fiction, but they do not differentiate historical fiction from general works.

Another approach to finding books would be to use a search engine to generate a personalized list on a particular topic. The reading measurement company Lexile has an online feature that can be used to search for book titles. To use Lexile, go to Find a Book, then follow the prompts to enter information about your students (for average 9th-11th grade readers the Lexile range would be 880–1165), and then you enter your search terms. The California Department of Education also has a reading list generator. These sites can be tricky, and you may want to try a variety of searches as often a search will bring up too few results or so many that it is hard to tell what might be worthwhile.

Finally, there are many excellent high school booklists on specific topics that might be of interest to you. Check out the lists for Black History Month, (extensive and divided by grade level, but not annotated), and Lincoln and the Civil War which offers an annotated list on the topic for young adults.

Kudos to you for bringing books into your curriculum! And happy reading.

Where Experience Meets Practicality

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Photography, Flat Classroom Workshop, 17 Sept 2009, Flickr CC
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Over the course of the many different TAH grants in which the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) has participated, it has become increasingly clear that listening and sharing are not just skills taught in kindergarten to get children through elementary school. Rather, they are essential skills for life, particularly when your work requires constant collaboration with a wide range of groups, including teachers, scholars, libraries, museums, and school administrators. It has also become clear that it is through listening and sharing with these many different stakeholders that the most rewarding results are achieved. This is where we find ways to make the experiences we provide meet practice in the classroom.

Institutions like museums and libraries have a unique set of resources that can enrich and revive teachers’ intellectual lives and interest in history. Beyond access to primary sources, these institutions can also provide valuable interactions with historians and curators. This is not always easy, however. One of the most common criticisms among teachers throughout our most recent TAH grant has been that while the scholars have offered a lot of interesting information, most of it is inapplicable to their classroom or grade level. In answer to this repeated concern, the TAH team, which included the AAS, Old Sturbridge Village, and the Worcester Public Schools, decided to offer separate sessions with the scholars for the different grade levels, and encouraged the scholars to follow a more informal, interactive lecture format. The feedback has been very positive and the teachers have begun to fully appreciate what specialty speakers have to offer.

Institutions like museums and libraries have a unique set of resources that can enrich and revive teachers’ intellectual lives and interest in history.

This grade-level specific content has also extended to breakout sessions, where elementary and high school teachers are looking for very different pedagogical approaches to the material. In particular, elementary teachers have often commented on the limited time they have to teach Social Studies and History, and are always looking for ways to teach the material quickly and powerfully. One way in which the team has attempted to rectify this problem is to focus on images and graphic arts. Elementary teachers have found that analyzing an image can often provide a poignant and thorough introduction to a historical subject.

Another approach has been to provide ideas about how to make history interdisciplinary, particularly highlighting its ability to connect to the English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum. In some cases, the district’s ELA coordinator has presented at professional development workshops to illustrate how history can become a focal point for teaching ELA. Other workshops on the elementary level have incorporated math and science skills into a history lesson. By adjusting to the teachers’ constraints in the classroom, the professional development we provided became much more applicable and exciting for the teachers.

Elementary teachers have found that analyzing an image can often provide a poignant and thorough introduction to a historical subject.

Finally, the introduction of “teacher-coaches” to the program has been a great buoy to both the coaches and their colleagues. Among the requirements to become a teacher-coach is an independent original research project conducted in the AAS collections. Each of the coaches presents a workshop based on their research at one of the TAH professional development days. The enthusiasm these teacher-coaches gain for their subject through in-depth research brings energy into their workshops, and their ability to translate the material to classroom activities for their colleagues is greatly appreciated. Teachers have overwhelmingly deemed this an excellent opportunity for both the teacher-coaches and their colleagues.

"Shared authority" is a term often heard in the museum world these days, but I think it should also extend to collaborative programs such as TAH. By sharing authority between cultural institutions, scholars, and teachers, by really listening to each other and adjusting, by understanding each group's strengths and needs, we can create programming that is thoughtful, useful, and effective.

Resources for Units on Early American Government

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Print, Louis XVI, King of France, New York Public Library
Question

As a student teacher, I am planning a unit on a textbook chapter that focuses on the origins of American government (MacGruder’s American Government, Prentice Hall) for a 12th-grade honors class. The chapter is divided into sections that cover such topics as historical documents and types of governments within colonial America, the causes of Independence, the Declaration of Independence, a student's look at the critical period, the Articles of Confederation, and the creation and ratification of the Constitution.


I need to plan a 1.5-2 week unit that assigns students to read the textbook at home, and prepare an interactive and project-based classroom activity that unites the ideas of this unit. Any suggestions?

Answer

There are lots of great resources on the Web for planning a unit on the origins of American government. A good place to start is the National Archives website, which has some excellent resources for teachers. For your purposes, the Teaching with Documents: Images of the American Revolution page is most relevant, while the American Revolution section gives background information, primary documents, teaching activities, and worksheets.

Another good resource for teachers is EDSITEment, a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Their Voices of the American Revolution page gathers resources from a wide variety of websites and includes different activities for the classroom. The Colonial Broadsides and the American Revolution page, though designed for middle school teachers, has resources that could be adapted for older students.

Also consider the colleges and universities that have participated in the Teaching American History program. Many of these schools have web pages where participants post materials and lesson plans. Fitchburg State College, for instance, offers teacher-created plans on the American Revolution that you can browse.

The National Park Service provides great resources for history and social studies teachers. Their Teacher’s Guide to the American Revolution includes five separate lessons as well as primary source documents. Though sometimes lengthy, these units are packed with interesting details and materials.

A peerless source of classroom materials is the Public Broadcasting System. Among PBS web pages that focus on the American Revolution is Rediscovering George Washington, which includes a unit on Washington as military leader during the war for independence. Another excellent site is Africans in America, which comes with a teacher’s guide, complete with lessons, questions, activities, and resources.

Though it doesn't feature lesson plans, TeacherServe, a project of the National Humanities Center, can guide you to useful resources that focus on the Revolution and the Colonial era. Their section on religion, Divining America: Religion in American History, contains essays that offer different perspectives on the importance of religion during the period.

This is a mere sampling of what's out there on the origins of our democracy. Good luck with your unit planning!

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