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From historical literacy to a pedagogy of history

Philip Roberts Assistant Professor, Teacher Education.

http://www.canberra.edu.au/faculties/education/teacher-ed/historical_learning

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Do we need to move from historical literacy to a pedagogy of history?

•  Fragments •  Questions •  Observations •  Suggestions •  A little libertarianism … but not Answers (that’s what the

symposium is for)

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Historical Literacy Taylor,  T.  and  C.  Young  (2004)  

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Thinking Historically

Memory-History Disciplinary-History

Substantive Knowledge Procedural Knowledge

Procedural Concepts: Historical Significance Continuity & change Progress & decline Evidence Historical empathy

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Benchmarks of Historical Thinking

•  Six historical thinking concepts of: – Historical significance – Evidence – Continuity & change – Cause & consequence – Taking an historical perspective – The moral/ethical dimension

Seixas, 2006 Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness

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How  do  we  teach  them?  

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Challenge the ‘generic’ wisdom Authentic Pedagogy (Newman et al USA)

Productive Pedagogy (Lingard et al Qld)

Quality Teaching (Gore et al NSW)

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A Critical Perspective - The Civics & Citizenship Contradiction

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Pedagogy & History

•  What is the pedagogy of Historical literacy & understanding?

•  If Historical literacy & understanding are unique then surely so is their pedagogy.

•  Mandated curriculum mandates the relationship to the curriculum.

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•  Lee Shulman (1986) argued that teachers subject knowledge and pedagogy knowledge were often treated as mutually exclusive domains.

•  He proposed PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge)

•  ‘The most regularly taught topics in one’s subject area, the most useful forms of representation of those ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations – in a word, the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others’ (Shulman, 1986 p.9)

Pedagogical Content Knowledge

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•  PCK is a subject-specific knowledge that includes: – knowing the structures of the discipline – knowing about the difficulties students come across as

they work with different subject matters – knowing about the ways young people learn a

particular subject – knowing about strategies to assist with and assess

learning.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge

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•  Wineburg and Wilson isolate two broad categories of instructional representation commonly used by history teachers. – Epistemological representations - These model how

historical knowledge is constructed and inquiry is carried out. They connect specific subject matter to wider historical concerns and may include focusing on how to read documents critically, analyse and interpret visual sources.

– Contextual representations - These are presentations of particular events, concepts and ideas grounded in a specific time and place.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge

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•  Taylor and Young argue that ‘Effective teachers: – present history as a constructivist/social activity that

involves students in working with the raw materials historians use when shaping the past and in drawing on the knowledge and understanding historians bring to the history-making process

– understand that constructing the past is an associative, speculative and imaginative process that requires learners to connect and relate various pieces of evidence to build images of the past.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge

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Discussion of effective history teaching has stalled

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Questioning pedagogy & coverage

•  Seixas and Peck (2004) suggest that school history has a distinct purpose: -  the development of critical

skills in students •  Distinct from developing

general historical understanding or even specific content knowledge

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Questioning pedagogy & coverage

•  Confusing the purpose of education with the process.

•  What about our sociological learnings?

•  Not a technical redefinition of the profession.

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Popularity ≠ Quality

•  A belief that as history has grown more popular, and been studied to a greater extend by future teachers at university, that the quality of teaching in schools would subsequently increase – Lévesque

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Signature pedagogies

•  ‘effective teaching results from core values and principles of our courses and our disciplines, rather than from generic views of learning’ – Chick, Haynie and

Gurung 2009.

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Signature pedagogies

•  Understanding of the disciplinary ways of thinking

•  Good teaching extends beyond the generic

•  Humanities complex due to ‘critical thinking’

•  Not about narrowing focus •  Broadening understanding •  Not confining pedagogy

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Decoding the Disciplines

•  Focus on higher order thinking over the last decades has meant a lack of focus on how to teach the important foundational ‘lower order’ skills in each discipline upon which the higher order skills are developed – Middendorf and Pace 2004

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Decoding the Disciplines

•  Reading in history, how is it different? •  Disciplines need to focus more on how people

learn them and that there are different cognitive processes involved in each.

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Time to refocus

•  It is time to refocus the discipline of history and its advocates upon developing disciplinary skills and knowledge.

•  For School or University?

•  Democratic…

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Looking to Museum Education

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Museum Ed Journals •  Articles on:

– visual representation, multimodal displays, art history, structuring exhibits and artefacts, constructivist learning, memory, public history, authenticity, cultural artefacts, local museums in communities.

– methodological issues like narrative and thematic displays.

–  large genre of presenting museum displays using the advances in technology and modern entertainment (and learning) forms

– educational theory and educational theorists. – Much in common with education studies with similar

issues, theorists, pedagogical ideas and learning theories

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Positioning the source

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Positioning the source

Artefact / Source (knowledge)

Content-Meaning

Context

Context

Content-Meaning

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Enhancing everyone's work

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Rethinking history pedagogy – genuinely build knowledge

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Do we need to move from historical literacy to a pedagogy of history?

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A National Symposium Building Bridges for historical learning: connecting teacher education and museum education. 28-29 March 2011 Faculty of Education, University of Canberra

Theme; This symposium aims to start a conversation between teacher educators and museum educators. It is founded upon two premises: 1.  There is still work to be done in the understanding of history education and that while we now know a

lot about historical literacy and historical thinking, how we transfer these to the classroom is still not fully understood.

2.  Teacher educators and museum educators have not traditionally actively shared knowledge, even though they both work to promote historical learning.

The Symposium aims to: •  Facilitate connections between Museum Education and Teacher Education •  Share how each sector goes about teaching historical skills and understandings •  Understand how historical literacy and thinking are taught •  Improve the understanding of history education and its purpose •  Understand how artefacts are used to develop historical understanding •  Assist with decoding the discipline of history •  Assist with the development of the signature pedagogy of history •  Improve the quality of history education provided by schools, museums and other cultural

institutions.

http://www.canberra.edu.au/faculties/education/teacher-ed/historical_learning