Concept- and Strategic-Knowledge Development in Historical Study: A Comparative Exploration in Two Fourth-Grade Classrooms

VanSledright, Bruce A.; Frankes, Lisa

doi:10.1207/s1532690xci1802_04

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…A good measure of their success in circumventing the issues has come from effectively avoiding not the study of the past per se but the practice of historical investigation. Research in classrooms where history is taught indicates that the primary concern there is with consuming and reproducing events and details found mostly in books, as though interpretive practices, be they engaged in by historians, teachers, or students, simply did not exist (see Barton, 1996;Cuban, 1991;Goodlad, 1984;Levstik, 1996;Seixas, 1999;VanSledright, 1995VanSledright, , 1996VanSledright & Frankes, 2000). The standard textbooks, combined with lectures delivered by teachers, are considered definitive.…”

Section: Investigating the Past And Practicing History In Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting History’s Interpretive Paradox While Teaching Fifth Graders to Investigate the Past

VanSledright

2002

American Educational Research Journal

118

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This article reports on one facet of a researcher-practitioner project undertaken with class of 23 diverse fifth graders. The project was rooted in taking recent history education reforms seriously. It was premised principally on reforms dealing with teaching practices found in the history standards and the research literature. As the researcher-practitioner, the author engaged the students in historical investigations to help them learn to think historically and better understand the past. He operated from a theoretical framework based on how he believed historical thinking and understanding occur for such novice learners. During the first three lessons, on Jamestown's "Starving Time," the author and class encountered history's interpretive paradox. The article begins with an analogy drawn from the discipline of history. It then describes classroom events. The analysis focuses on a teaching dilemma that the encounter with the paradox provoked and conveys how the author's pedagogical thinking and decision making were influenced by that encounter. The discussion of the dilemma suggests how research and reform in history education and the theories that underpin them mingle, in promising but unpredictable ways. VanSledright 1090 cluded that Davis's efforts in Martin Guerre took her well beyond the interpretive boundaries long regarded as sacrosanct in the historical profession. Davis (1988) responded in the main by defending her treatment of the Martin Guerre case as an attempt to create an account that could be read as detective work, paralleling the way in which the story unfolded in 16thcentury France. She added that this entailed using a form of conjectural logic because the so-called facts of the case were and continued to be in dispute. She noted that there were differences between Finlay's and her own "mental habits, cognitive styles, and moral tone" (p. 574). She observed, "I see complexities and ambivalences everywhere. . . . Finlay sees things in clean, simple lines; he wants absolute truth, established with no ambiguity. . .; he makes moral judgments in terms of sharp rights and wrongs" (p. 574). In effect, Davis argued that their divergent readings of the case and their differing interpretive stances, which had produced those readings, accounted for the dispute about the evidence. She spent the better part of the rest of her essay describing those differences.This exchange is one of many that expose the epistemological turmoil in the historical profession during the last decade or two. The recent flap over Dutch, Edmund Morris's 1999 biography of Ronald Reagan, is only the most recent. This particular brand of contentiousness has to do with the relationship between the putative facts at historians' disposal from evidentiary documents, records, and artifacts, and the interpretations of the pastor histories-that result from the analysis of those facts. Although the issues raised by the Finlay-Davis exchange are not new to the historical profession, they have taken on a certain urgency, as recent criticism ...

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Section: Investigating the Past And Practicing History In Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting History’s Interpretive Paradox While Teaching Fifth Graders to Investigate the Past

VanSledright

2002

American Educational Research Journal

118

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“…Wineberg 1991) and historical understanding (e.g. Lee and Ashby, 2000;Van Sledright, 2000). In the paper I show how linguistic analysis makes it possible to describe the kinds of written texts that are typically required by secondary school history curricula.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning the language of school history: the role of linguistics in mapping the writing demands of the secondary school curriculum

Coffin

2006

Journal of Curriculum Studies

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“…Although it is by now generally agreed that learning history implies more than learning facts about the past, different terms are used to describe the aim of history education, for instance, historical literacy (e.g., Lee 2004Lee , 2007Perfetti et al 1995;Roderigo 1994), historical thinking (e.g., Husbands 1996;Schreiber et al 2006;Seixas 1993, Spoehr andSpoehr 1994;VanSledright and Frankes 2000;Wineburg 2001), historical consciousness (e.g., Goegebeur et al 1999;Jeismann 1997;Von Borries 1997), and historical reasoning (e.g., Kuhn et al 1994;. Some authors relate historical thinking and reasoning to historical consciousness or literacy.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical Reasoning: Towards a Framework for Analyzing Students’ Reasoning about the Past

2007

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This article explores historical reasoning, an important activity in history learning. Based upon an extensive review of empirical literature on students' thinking and reasoning about history, a theoretical framework of historical reasoning is proposed. The framework consists of six components: asking historical questions, using sources, contextualization, argumentation, using substantive concepts, and using meta-concepts. Each component is discussed and illustrated by examples from our own research. The article concludes with suggestions on how to use the framework both in future research and in educational practice.

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Concept- and Strategic-Knowledge Development in Historical Study: A Comparative Exploration in Two Fourth-Grade Classrooms

Cited by 28 publications

References 8 publications

Confronting History’s Interpretive Paradox While Teaching Fifth Graders to Investigate the Past

Confronting History’s Interpretive Paradox While Teaching Fifth Graders to Investigate the Past

Learning the language of school history: the role of linguistics in mapping the writing demands of the secondary school curriculum

Historical Reasoning: Towards a Framework for Analyzing Students’ Reasoning about the Past

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