pedagogical value of comics in the history classroom: historical creativity

The Pedagogical Value of Comics in the

History Classroom: An Exploratory Case-Study

Introduction: The Problem with Comics In Literature

They are thrice damned

“Damned as culture, being popular not ‘high’

“Damned as a medium, being neither art nor literature but some perverse hybrid, at best suitable only for children (and retarded adults), at worst positively harmful

“Damned as a genre, being the most outlandish fantasy involving absurd characters acting in the most bizarre fashion – the very antithesis, one might think, of plausibility.”

Our Failed Classroom Experiments

How to Use Comics in Class

Student-generated SBQs

General literacy, specific medium literacy, metacognition, reading and writing vs. specific history use

Comic List

Methods & theoryExpressive Constructivism (Millwood & Riley, 1988)

a. Knowledge is a mental representation.

b. It is not passively received but is actively built up.

c. The function of cognition is adaptive. Does it fit? Is it viable? Is it right? This is frequently experienced but is not necessarily linguistically.

d. Cognition organizes the person’s experential world. It is not about the discovery of an objective ontological reality.

Using Cartoons to Enhance Historical Creativity

Research Question : How do students design their own historical cartoons? What is it’s pedagogical value? How do students experience it?

Methodology: (Next slide) Sample size/description: 6 Sec 1 classes (240

students) Semi-structured interviews & student group

and individual work

Using Cartoons to Enhance Historical Empathy

Adapted from interpretations of Argyris's writings: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm and http://bsix12.com/double-loop-learning/

Local history examples

Punchlines Everyday

inspiration Prior knowledge

Stage 1 Group Work Inquiry question Avatar Creation Sources/

Problem/ Resolution

Teacher Comments

Drawn/ electronic

Stage 2 Templated

cartoons and scripts

Tr feedback Stage 3 Individual

Work

Using Cartoons to Enhance Historical Creativity/ Methodology

Importance of prior knowledge & avatar creation

Limited value of problem-resolution

In P5 and P6 social studies. They talk a lot about coolies.

Internet: I was on the internet and some people claim to see weird things like UFOs. It could be fake but I thought I would include that just for fun.

History Book: For the background I was like looking at the sources in the history book. I noticed certain styles that I could take note of like the building having like curves.

Literature: We got some inspiration from the Street of the Night Market because it was our Literature text and set around this …People struggling to get jobs and money to pay rent

Group Work: I also remembered the previous group work.


Role of inspiration from the moment, loose-ness/ creativity & punchlines

Jobstreet.com


1. Historical visualization through storiesSometimes teacher will say, “Can you try and visualize what their life is like?”. And then you realize that that’s all you can think of. But when we did this, this opened our mind . So this really help (us) visualize a lot.

2. Historical agency/ ownership through creativity “Historical agency brings out the relationship between structural forces and the historical actors to the forefront of the historical event. … That is, human beings as autonomous agents with abilities to affect change, yet there are social structures that constrain and limit what individuals can do” (Damico, Baildon & Greenstone, 2010)

3. Affective/ Motivation value"“It was vey fun. After doing it, I was very proud of what I had done. I kept looking through it. It makes me real proud that I had created and something and it is something I have never done before.”

4. Means to An End

Micro-HistoryTechnologyContextJigsaw


Using cartoons to understand Historical reliablity

Comics/Graphic Novel as alternative text

Generation of more interest Teaching of historical concepts –

Reliability, Empathy, Perspective Deepening of contextual

knowledge Self-directed learning 21st Century Competencies –

Knowledge construction & Collaboration

Other History-based Graphic Novels

Conclusion

Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud

Area of focus and interplay

Any artist creating any work in any medium will always follow these six steps whether they realize it or not, and that their order is innate.

All aspects of comics have the potential for self-expression but the more a creator learns to command every aspect of their art and to understand their relationship to it, the more likely they can focus on innermost aspects.

An artist’s skill is fundamentally related to the depth of their understanding in relation to these layers.

For Historical EmpathyFor Historical CreativityFor Historical Reliability

Gravett, Paul. (2005).Graphic Novels: Stories to Change Your Life. New York: HarperCollins.

Carrye Kay Syman, Carrye Kay & Weiner, Robert G. (2013). Graphic Novels and Comics in the Classroom. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc.

Damico, J.S., Baildon, M., & Greenstone, D. “Examining How Historical Agency Works in Children’s Literature,” Social Studies Research and Practice 5, no. 1 (2010), 1-12

Eisner, W. (1996) Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative. Florida: Poorhouse Press

Clark, J. Spencer Clark .(2013). Encounters with Historical Agency: The Value of Nonfiction Graphic Novels in the Classroom. The History Teacher, 46 (4).

Tatalovic, M. (Dec, 2009.) Science comics as tools for science education and communication: a brief, exploratory study. Journal of Science Communications. 8 (4).

Bickford III , John H. (2010). Complicating Students’ Historical Thinking through Primary Source Reinvention. Social Studies Research and Practice, 5,2.

La Paz, Susan De La Paz and Felton, Mark K. (2010). Reading and writing from multiple source documents in history. Contemporary Educational Psychology 35 (2010) 174–19

McCloud, S. (2000). Reinventing Comics. New York: Paradox Press.

Websites http://www.madehow.com/Volume-6/Comic-Book.html/ http://www.scholastic.com/graphix/scholastic_bonediscussion.pdf

Selected readings

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-6/Comic-Book.html

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-6/Comic-Book.html

http://www.scholastic.com/graphix/scholastic_bonediscussion.pdf

http://www.scholastic.com/graphix/scholastic_bonediscussion.pdf