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OVERVIEW OF OUSD HISTORY STANDARDS
I. INTRODUCTION
Why Standards?
A committee of Oakland teachers, grade K-12, was charged with the responsibility
of developing districtwide standards for history instruction. Underlying
this charge was the belief that standards are an important cornerstone
upon which to build a districtwide history curriculum and assure its instruction.
The goal of the committee was to develop standards which would:
- provide continuity for students as they move between grades;
- provide a common point of reference so that student learning, districtwide,
can be measured;
- serve as concrete guides for teachers as they develop curriculum
to help students meet the standards set out by the district
- promote educational equity through a set of common goals and expectations
for students in classrooms throughout the district.
This introduction provides an overview and discussion of
the standards, as developed by the committee of teachers, for districtwide
history instruction. The teachers represented schools throughout the district.
What Are Standards?
History instruction in Oakland, K-12, has been guided by the district's
Core Curriculum. This curriculum's content is based upon the scope and
sequence for history education outlined in the California "HistorySocial
Studies Framework." This outline provides a detailed description
of topics to be covered in grades K12. For example, the Framework's discussion
of what students should study in the 5th grade (United States History
and Geography: Making a New Nation) includes "The Land and People
Before Columbus" and "The War for Independence." In the
10thgrade (World History, Culture and Geography: The Modern World), the
Framework includes such topics as "Unresolved Problems of the Modern
World" and "The Rise' of Imperialism and Colonialism: A Case
Study of India."
The Core Curriculum and the State Framework outline what students should
learn about history. But the study of history includes more than just
learning what happened; it is also being able to critically examine historical
evidence, to compare conflicting historical accounts, and to weigh the
meaning of past events for the present. Fundamentally, history is a learning
process that involves more than just memorizing specific facts, dates,
names, and Places. Yet students, and many adults, often think of history
in exactly those terms. It is critical that Oakland's teachers of history
help their students move beyond this narrow, sterile conception. With
this goal in mind, and to help assure this broader conception, Oakland's
History Standards stress the development of historical thinking as a means
to historical understanding.
What is Historical Thinking?
A focus on historical thinking, in conjunction with the required topics
of study, is important if students are to successfully inquire into the
meaning and significance of historical events and individuals. Historical
thinking requires students to go beyond their textbooks so that they may
examine, for themselves, traces of history, artifacts, and other primary
sources. It is a thoughtful process that requires students to think critically
about the meaning and significance of historical evidence. Thus, historical
thinking in conjunction with historical content can provide concrete goals
for teaching and learning. These achievements have been identified as
elements of historical thinking, or historical literacy.
In addition, a focus on historical thinking is essential to helping Oakland
teachers work effectively with their diverse student populations. Historical
thinking, by its very nature, invites students to cross cultural borders.
Working with multiple perspectives, developing historical empathy, and
making moral judgments are central to the study of history. For students,
learning and thinking about people in the past in this way, rather than
just memorizing names and dates, makes history a compelling topic. These
practices require students not only to make use of their own personal
and cultural knowledge, but also to move beyond their own specific perspectives
to consider other points of view. The following two quotes both illustrate
and represent this challenge.
The first is from the multicultural educator James Banks, who writes,
"The challenge that teachers face is how to make effective instructional
use of the personal and cultural knowledge of students while at the same
time helping them reach beyond their own cultural boundaries." If
we apply this idea to the study of history, it becomes clear that this
is a challenge historians undertake as they research, narrate, and interpret
the events and people they identify as historically significant.
The second quote, from the historian Lawrence Levine, supports this idea
and connects it to the study of history. "We must prepare ourselves
for the possibility that these people whose lives we are sharing for the
moment are not necessarily earlier versions of ourselves ... To attempt
to capture their [his emphasis] way of doing things, their consciousness,
their world view, is the stuff of history, the quest that gives historians
purpose."
II. AN OVERVIEW OF FIVE HISTORICALTHINKING STANDARDS
The committee has identified and defined five broad categories
of historical thinking around which to focus our instruction and district
standards. It is important to understand that as teachers, from kindergarten
to 12th grade, begin to work with these standards, they will apply them
in ways most appropriate to a particular grade level. In addition, more
detailed descriptions will be developed as assessments of historical thinking
and understanding are implemented. Below are brief outlines and summaries
of the standards.'
Final Note References |
1. Chronological/Spatial
Thinking
At its most basic level, historical thinking requires
students to be able distinguish the past, the present, and the future.
Without a strong sense of chronology knowing what events occurred and
in what sequence it is impossible for students to examine relation ships
among those events or to explain historical causality. (National Standards,
p. 20).
In addition, knowing that historical events took place in a particular
place is also essential to understanding what happened and why. Supporting
these elements of historical thinking requires the construction of time
lines, maps, and historical narratives that locate historical events and
individuals in specific times and places. This is especially crucial in
the primary grades, as students begin to develop a sense of the past as
different from the present.
In addition, this standard requires that students are able to recognize
that over time, as some things have changed, some things have stayed the
same.
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2. Examining
Evidence
- examining primary sources (such as photos, artifacts, & documents)
- understanding the relationship between primary sources & historical/
geographical content
- author's intention / perspective
If history is to be more than just the recording of names and dates,
then students need to confront questions of historical methodology: How
do we know about the past? What do historians do? These questions focus
on how students work with evidence from the past. Helping students understand
how to respond to these questions is key to the development of their historical
understanding.
With this in mind, it is important to help students begin to understand
the relationship between evidence and historical understanding, as they
learn more about the people, events, Place, and time period that produced
the evidence. Learning about the society that produced a document is essential
if a student is to use that document to make inferences and assertions
about a particular time period. In addition, understanding a time period
requires that both the background and the evidence students encounter
reflect multiple perspectives on a particular event or issue. Connected
to this encounter with multiple perspectives is the understanding that
the authors of documents and historical accounts, existing in a specific
place and time, brought specific intentions to their work. A student's
ability to identify an author's intention is connected to his or her ability
to understand that author's work and perspective. |
| 3.
Diversity : Multiple Perspectives
- influences (such as location, race, gender, class, age, sexual orientation)
- empathy
In Oakland we work with populations of students from communities whose
history has, historically, not been included in the narratives presented
in schools, textbooks, and the popular media.
Central to the study of history and the development of historical understanding
is the need to seek out and consider multiple perspectives such as race,
class, gender, and geographical location. For example, a unit on World
War II should include primary sources that relate how the experiences
of African - American soldiers differed from the experiences of Japanese-
American soldiers and how both differed from the experiences of European
- American soldiers. A unit on the - American Revolution should include
primary sources which relate the experiences and viewpoints of women and
African -- American s, as well as the experiences and viewpoints of the
individuals included in the traditional narrative of our nation's origin.
It is through the consideration of multiple perspectives that students
begin to appreciate the challenge historians face as they attempt to understand
and reconstruct the past.
Empathy, in terms of history, is both essential to the development of
historical understanding and an achievement of that study. To say a student
has empathized is to say that he or she, through a process of reconstructing
the past, is in a position to consider a set of beliefs, values, and experiences
not necessarily his or her own. It also is to say that a student has gained
an understanding of a historical period by learning about people in the
past who may have different beliefs, values, and experiences. In the California
"HistorySocial Studies Framework," discussion of historical
literacy, historical empathy was listed first among goals for students.
The Framework described it as, "...the imaginative reconstruction
of the past ... the student should have a sense of what it was like to
live there, to realize that events hung in the balance, that people in
the past did not know how things ultimately would turn out."
Entertaining the beliefs, goals, and values of other people, in other
places, and other societies can be a difficult intellectual task. It means
considering ideas that are not one's own and may be disagreeable or disturbing.
However, when students consider ideas in their historical context it will
help them to better understand the beliefs and actions of people in the
past.
Teachers face a dilemma in helping students achieve historical empathy.
They want to help students understand that they shouldn't judge people
in the past by our present day values and perspectives, but they also
know that history cannot be value free and students can use their study
of the past to help shape their own beliefs and values about the world
today. |
4. Historical
Interpretation
Written historical accounts can never be the same thing
as the past itself, they cannot include everything that happened from
every perspective. Historians construct interpretations based on the questions
they ask and the evidence they gather. For this reason, they are constantly
challenging, revising and rewriting historical accounts. Some historians,
for example, understand the events leading up to the Civil War as a moral
conflict, while others stress the economic nature of the divisions between
the North and South as the key to understanding what led to the conflict.
In addition, interpretations of the past are also subject to influences
that reflect the historian's own particular time and place. For example,
many historians in the past have seen American westward expansion in the
19th century as a sign of progress. Today, environmental historians view
this period less optimistically.
The goal of this particular standard is for students to be able to understand
how historians construct history and to construct coherent historical
narratives of their own as they work with evidence, accounts, and other
historical narratives. It is also for students to understand the similarities
and differences among histori-ans' accounts of the past, and those of
novelists, filmmakers, storytellers, and others.
Constructing and comparing historical accounts often involves making moral
judgments. As Peter Seixas, a history educator, points out, " ...
our ability to make moral judgments in history requires that we entertain
the notion of an historically transcendent human commona-ity, a recognition
of our humanity in the person of historical actors, at the same time that
we open every door to the possibility that those actors differ from us
in ways so profound that we perpetually risk misunderstanding them."
Grappling with the vital moral and ethical issues illuminated by the study
of history provides an opportunity for students to better understand themselves
and their present conditions. They get to see how people worked for, or
against, change. They examine actions inspired by ideals of equality and
social justice, as well as self-interest and greed. They see the constraints
on people's decisions and the intended as well as the unintended cons-quences
of their actions. All of this helps students to gain perspective and understanding,
to help them make crucial decisions about their participation as citizens
in their own commu-nity.
As students construct coherent narratives, the multiple viewpoints within
a student popula-tion is also an important component of study-ing history.
For example, because many of our students come from families that recently
emigrated from Southeast Asia they may provide a different perspective
on the Vietnam War than students whose families were in the United States
during the war. If historical understanding requires the consideration
of a variety of perspectives, then a classroom's diversity can be an important
part of that process. Multiple perspectives on the meaning and significance
of historical events and indi-viduals can emerge through the diverse views
and interpretations students develop as they discuss and write about the
history they encounter. |
5. Determining
Historical/ Geographical Significance
What is Important in the Past and Why?
• connecting past, present, & place
• causation
• evaluation
• location
If history is the reconstruction of the past and a product of present
interests and concerns, key questions for students become who were the
significant people, what were the significant events, and how did their
significance connect to their location? For historians, teachers, and
students, these questions raise additional questions. How is this identification
of signifi-cance made and on what basis? How do these events and individuals
connect to larger themes and ideas? Rather than just reciting a list of
important terms and individuals, students should be able to develop and
express criteria for determining an individual or event as historically
significant.
The ability to establish historical significance is dependent on being
able to sort and sift through pieces of historical evidence and explain
their connection to a certain theme, idea, event, or place. This means
that students move beyond a recitation of events and people involved in
a particular historical period towards an evaluation of which of these
indi-viduals and events were most important in determining what happened.
This process requires of students the act of evaluation. For example,
students might be asked two very basic questions. First, "Which event
during a particular time period had the most effect in determining what
happened?" Second, "Did an individual make, in your judgment,
positive or negative contributions to their society/ community at that
time, or to the development of their society/ community over time?"
A thoughtful response to these questions requires that students grapple
with the problem of identifying and explaining an event's or individual's
historical significance.
In addition, teachers are always trying to connect the past and the present.
Throughout this process teachers are explaining and highlighting historical
significance for their students. In other words, this event or person
is important because of a connection to our present concerns and interests.
The Oakland History Standards highlight historical thinking because they
provide students the opportunity to determine significance and evaluate,
as part of the district history curriculum, the past for themselves. |
III.
FREQUENTLY USED TERMINOLOGY
2. Examining Evidence > EVIDENCE :
When primary sources are used to support a historical argument or account,
they become evidence. Without evidence, there are no grounds for our believing
a person's account of the past.
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2. Examining Evidence
> PRIMARY SOURCE : A primary source is a document
or artifact which existed or was created at the time in the past which
we wish to study. Sometimes called traces, primary sources are one of
the fundamental sources of knowledge about the past.
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3. Diversity: Multiple Perspectives > PERSPECTIVE
: To speak of the perspective of a person is to recognize that he
or she had a particular set of assumptions and a limited way of seeing
the world. To understand a person's perspective is to be able to see
where the person is standing as they look outward. To talk about a person's
perspective is value-neutral, and thus different from talking about
their bias, which has a negative connotation. We can also speak of the
perspective of a document or a group of people.
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| 3. Diversity: Multiple
Perspectives > HISTORICAL EMPATHY : : Historical
empathy is the ability to understand what the world looked like from the
perspective of a person who lived in the past, in very different circumstances
from our own.
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| 3. Diversity: Multiple
Perspectives . MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES : To consider
multiple perspectives of individuals or groups of people in the past is
to recognize that people had different assumptions, interests, beliefs,
and points of view. The best understanding of history comes from considering
the multiple perspectives of those involved in any event.
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| 4. Historical Interpretation
. ACCOUNT / NARRATIVE : An account of the past is a narrative
or a story telling how things happened. Accounts are more than lists of
events: an account provides answers to the questions, "How and why
did x I happen?" They may also include a moral judgement. Historians,
textbook writers, novelists, and filmmakers frequently offer different
accounts of the same event, because they ask different questions and bring
different assumptions to their work. Thus every account is also an interpretation.
Good historical accounts are based on evidence.
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5. Determining Historical
/ Geographical Significance . SIGNIFICANCE : We can't
know everything about the past, and what's more, we're not interested
in everything about the past. Historical significance is a way of talking
about what is worth knowing about the past. There are different kinds
of reasons for a particular event or person being historically significant.
- They may have affected large numbers of people (like the dropping
of the atomic bomb).
- They may have had important consequences for us today (like the Bill
of Rights). Different events may be significant for different people
or groups or they may be significant in different ways. Thus judgements
of significance are like accounts, interpretations.
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IV.
REFERENCES
Final
Note: We developed these subdivisions (chronology
and spatial, evidence, diversity and multiple perspectives, interpretation,
and significance) so that teachers could work to develop students' capacity
in each area. However, in reality these categories often overlap and are
sometimes hard to distinguish from each other. Nevertheless, the creation
of these categories should help teachers develop a more systematic way
of teaching and assessing students' ability to think historically.
References :
Ashby, Rosalyn and Lee, Peter, "Children's Concepts of Empathy and
Understanding in History," in The History Curriculum for Teachers,
Portal, Christopher, (Philadelphia, Falmer Press, 1987 pp. 62-87.)
Banks, James, "The Canon Debate, Knowledge Construction, and Multicultural
Education," Educational Researcher, June-July, 1993, pp. 4-13.
California State Board of Education, History Social Science Framework,
1987.
Geography Education Standards Project, National Geography Standards
1994, (National Geographic Research and Exploration, Washington, C.D.,
1994).
Levine, Lawrence W., "The Historian and the Icon: Photography and
the History of the American People in the 1930s and 1940s," in Documenting
American, 1935-1943, Carl Fleischhauer and Beverly W. Brannan eds.
(Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988, pp. 15-42.)
National Center for History in the Schools, National Standards for
History Education: Exploring the American Experience, (University
of California, Los Angeles, 1995).
Portal, Christopher, "Children's Conceptions of Empathy and Understanding
in History," in The History Curriculum for Teachers, Portal,
Christopher, (Philadelphia, Falmer Press, 1987, pp. 89-99.)
Seixas, Peter, "Conceptualizing the Growth of Historical Knowledge,"
in The Handbook of Education and Human Development, Olson, David
and Torrence, Nancy, eds. (Oxford, U.K., Blackwell, 1996, pp 765-783). |