Undergraduate L2 students’ performance when evaluating historical sources for reliability

International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

Boxtel

et al. 2020

Self Cite

In a study of undergraduate L2 students participating in a Content and Language Integrated Learning historical reasoning course, we examined students' changing performance on historical reasoning and how this was affected by their English reading and writing proficiency. Students engaged in written historical reasoning when answering a historical question by using sources and heuristics such as historical contextualization and corroboration. The course was designed based on principles likely to enhance historical reasoning and second language acquisition, and included an overt focus on language form. We found that students were able to reason historically at an emerging level of proficiency. The markers of historical reasoning present in their writing were neither significantly flawed nor highly proficient. A latent growth curve analysis was used to investigate the effect of students' English language proficiency on their source-based writing and the changes in their reasoning over the duration of the course. We found that students' English proficiency level did not predict either their reasoning or changes in their performance during the course. Students at differing levels of English proficiency improved similarly.

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical reasoning in an undergraduate CLIL course: students’ progression and the role of language proficiency

Sendur

International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

Boxtel

et al. 2020

Self Cite

“…Historical contextualization has been defined as the reconstruction of the chronology, geography, and social features of the time period in order to situate a source or historical phenomenon (Van Drie & Van Boxtel, 2008;Wineburg, 1991). We also found this difficulty in a previous study (Sendur et al, 2021). One reason for such difficulty may be that many students view the past through a present lens and therefore may experience difficulty in interpreting history from the context of the past (Grant, 2018).…”

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confidence: 74%

“…Studies have investigated different methods of instruction, such as cognitive apprenticeship and direct instruction (De la Paz et al, 2017;Monte-Sano, 2008), as well as the use of heuristics and different ways of presenting information (Nokes et al, 2007). With instruction, students can learn to demonstrate components of historical reasoning, for example, make written claims and support them with evidence (De la Paz et al, 2017), use and evaluate the reliability of sources (Britt & Aglinskas, 2002;Reisman, 2012b;Sendur et al, 2021), and corroborate with multiple sources (Nokes et al, 2007). Many of these same studies, however, also demonstrate that learning to reason in history is difficult for students and that not all students perform well.…”

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confidence: 99%

Historical contextualization in students’ writing

Sendur

Journal of the Learning Sciences

Boxtel

2021

Self Cite

Background: This study focused on undergraduate L2 students' performance in written historical reasoning, particularly written historical contextualization, before and after participating in a historical reasoning course. The Content and Language Integrated Learning course was designed using a cognitive apprenticeship model and was based on principles likely to facilitate students' written historical reasoning. Methods: Conducted as a quasi-experimental study, students in an experimental condition received explicit instruction in historical contextualization and other features of historical reasoning, while those in the control group participated in a version of the course without a focus on historical contextualization. Students' historical reasoning was measured based on their argumentative document-based writing. Findings: Students' in both the experimental and control groups significantly improved in all of the areas of historical reasoning that we measured. There was not a significant difference between the groups in the area of historical contextualization, but a further qualitative analysis demonstrated traces of the instructional approach in students' writing. Unexpectedly, students in the experimental group were significantly better than the control group in terms of writing claims. Possible explanations for this finding are discussed. Contributions: This study makes contributions in terms of operationalizing and measuring written historical contextualization, particularly among L2 undergraduate students.

“…Writing is an important means for expressing historical reasoning (van Drie et al, 2015). Research indicated several difficulties students encounter, such as developing arguments and the use of evidence (e.g., McCarthy Young & Leinhardt, 1998;Nokes & De La Paz, 2018), the contextualization of historical events and persons (Sendur, van Drie, & van Boxtel, 2021) or incorporating specialized historical terms, the substantive concepts and second order concepts (i.e., cause, change) (Stoel, van Drie, & van Boxtel, 2017). However, proficient writing in history requires more than being able to reason historically, as shown in a study by Stoel et al (2017).…”

Section: Effective Writing In Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing students’ writing in History: Effects of a teacher-designed domain-specific writing instruction

Journal of Writing Research

Driel

Weijen³

2021

Writing in history places high demands on students and is a skill that requires explicit instruction. Therefore, teachers need to be able to teach this in an effective way. In this study, the writing-instruction was designed by a teacher, instead of researchers, as part of a professional development program in the Netherlands. The lessons combined writing and historical reasoning instruction, based on principles of effective writing instruction, including strategy-instruction, modeling, prewriting, and peer-interaction. The effects of these lessons were investigated in a small-scale pilot study, which consisted of a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design, in which eighty-nine 11th grade students participated (39 in the treatment condition and 50 in the comparison condition). Dependent measures included text quality, writing process measures, students' knowledge of writing and their self-efficacy. Students in the treatment condition wrote longer and higher quality texts, spent more time writing, paused more while writing and their knowledge of writing was higher at post-test than for students in the comparison condition. No effects were found for selfefficacy. Furthermore, significant correlations were found between text quality and writing process measures, but not for knowledge of writing and self-efficacy. Overall, the effectiveness of this teacher-designed intervention seemed satisfactory, as it resulted in greater knowledge of writing and better-quality writing in his history classes.