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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
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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. |
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. |
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). |
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