To what extent do history/social studies teachers use primary sources in their classrooms? What impact has the availability of Web-based primary sources had on their practice?

To find out, David Hicks and Peter Doolittle of Virginia Tech University and John K. Lee of Georgia State University surveyed 158 high school history teachers. Their study revealed that even though most teachers used primary sources, there was no consensus about how to use such documents. Is the purpose of using primary sources to reinforce what is taught in the textbook, or is it to teach historical thinking? Are Web-based primary sources the same as text-based ones? And finally, how can teachers be well prepared to use primary sources?

It is well known that primary sources are important for teaching historical thinking skills. Many teachers find them useful for engaging students in such tasks as historical interpretation. More frequently, however, documents are used to enrich a textbook account or to help students focus on essential facts and concepts. This study sought ways that teachers could work together to devise new approaches to using primary sources, including teaching historical thinking.

Many of the teachers surveyed were unfamiliar with several well-developed and notable digital resource centers. Most teachers, for instance, were unaware of sites like the Library of Congress’s American Memory site, the digital National Security Archive, History Net, and the Census Bureau’s American FactFinder. In addition, most had never used videos or photographs available from internet resources, primarily because they were unsure how to find them. This highlights the need for better dissemination of information to help teachers locate useful (and usable) primary sources.

Most teachers said they needed no additional training on how to use or locate primary sources, or in understanding the unique aspects of Web-based sources. Still, many indicated a desire for assistance in helping students develop historical thinking skills, and some teachers didn't consider the Web to be an organized repository of primary sources. Based on these responses, the study authors wanted to know how administrators could support history/social studies teachers in terms of ongoing training and professional development. When it comes to using primary sources to teach historical thinking and locating primary sources on the web, what specific things might help teachers enhance their skills?

In "Just Another Emperor," Peter Lee, Alaric Dickinson, and Rosalyn Ashby studied how students explain the actions of historical figures. Understanding how people from the past thought and believed, and relating that to the actions historical figures took, is central to the discipline of history. These authors wanted to know if elementary and middle school students were up to the task.

For a project funded by Great Britain's Economic and Social Research Council, Lee, Dickinson, and Ashby worked with 320 children aged 7–14. The kids were shown an illustrated story of the Roman invasion of Britain and asked to explain what led Emperor Claudius to invade Britain. They were given a host of reasons why the invasion was more trouble than it was worth, from the cost of the invasion to the resistance the Romans encountered, and then told Claudius had gone ahead and invaded anyway. How would these young students explain his actions?

This is what they found: Rather than answering that Claudius invaded Britain because he wanted to, most of the children, regardless of age, chose to offer explanations for his behavior.

The students' answers were grouped into three main categories.

• Basic answers that explained Claudius’s actions in personal terms, i.e., Claudius was a man who wanted power.
• Context-aware responses that focused on the fact that Claudius was an emperor who invaded Britain due to his leadership position.
• Complex explanations that rested on a specific understanding of the situation in which Claudius operated. Such explanations recognized contextual problems or opportunities that Claudius faced, noting not only his title of emperor, but the fact that he was a particular emperor in a specific situation. These students saw the past as a different kind of world and sought to understand it.

Older middle-school students relied less on personal explanations and more on situational analysis. In other words, Claudius’s actions were shaped more by historical context than individual desire. This was less true for younger students, who were more likely to rely on personal explanations. This told the researchers that understanding how historical context influences people's actions is learned over time, as students developed and practiced the skills of historical thinking.

Despite the fact that students aged 7 and 8 relied more on personal explanations, at a certain level they were still able to understand historical actions. Young children possess everyday knowledge of how people behave; even elementary-age children can come up with simple but plausible reasons for someone's behavior. These explanations can provide a jumping-off point for thinking about motives in a historical context.