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Historical Thinking and Inquiry Learning (Kamloops, 2014)
- 1. Historical Thinking and Inquiry Learning Kelowna, Kamloops, 2014 Tom Morton www.bcheritagefairs.ca 1
- 2. Learning Intentions: • Understand better how historical thinking and inquiry learning fit togther • Identify some concepts and skills to teach • Have some clear ideas about how to teach these concepts and skills www.bcheritagefairs.ca 2
- 4. “Histories are the stories we tell about the past... But the past is gone. By definition it is no longer present, so we can’t observe it directly. We have a need for meaningful, coherent stories about what came before us. Yet a gap exists between the present we live in and the infinite, unorganized, and unknowable ‘everything that happened.’ How we overcome that gap gives rise to history.” (Seixas and Morton, 2012) www.bcheritagefairs.ca 4
- 5. Six Concepts of Historical Thinking 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Historical significance Evidence Continuity and change Cause and consequence Historical perspective-taking The ethical dimension www.bcheritagefairs.ca 5
- 6. No Frills Inquiry: • Establish curiosity – « some perplexity, confusion, or doubt » (John Dewey) • • • • Develop questions Pose first hypothesis and reflect on certainty Explore further evidence Refine hypothesis and so on as time and interest permit www.bcheritagefairs.ca 6
- 7. Introduction to the Concept of Evidence and Inquiry: I Left a Trace 1. Jot down everything that you have done in the last 24 hours. (that would be appropriate for discussion.) www.bcheritagefairs.ca 7
- 8. 2. Make a list of traces that might have been left from your life during those past hours. 3. Check ✓ those that were likely to have been preserved. www.bcheritagefairs.ca 8
- 9. 1. How well could a biographer 50 years from now write the story of your 24 hours based on the traces you left? How much of what happened would be left out? What aspects of the story might the biographer miss? 2. Where else could he or she turn for evidence? 3. How could readers of the biography know if it was an accurate account? 4. What does this exercise tell us about the challenges historians face when writing histories? www.bcheritagefairs.ca 9
- 10. ―the past as a series of events is utterly gone . . . some remnants remain like litter from a picnic, but these material remains never speak for themselves. In fact they are inert traces until someone asks a question that turns them into evidence.‖ - Joyce Appleby, ―The Power of History‖ www.bcheritagefairs.ca 10
- 11. Working with evidence involves • • • • • Making inferences Using context Sourcing Developing questions for further inquiry Corroborating/cross-checking www.bcheritagefairs.ca 11
- 12. Working with traces from the past can both develop the concept of evidence and build curiosity for a more in depth inquiry such as a Heritage Fair project. Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps. Photographer: UNDETERMINED Date: [186-] Photo C-06124 courtesy BC Archives www.bcheritagefairs.ca 12
- 13. Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps, also known at the time as Sir James Douglas' Coloured Regiment. Photographer: UNDETERMINED Date: [186-] Photo C-06124 courtesy BC Archives www.bcheritagefairs.ca
- 14. Visual Analysis: Inferencing What can we infer from this trace of the past about the historical context, the photographic situation, and the situation of Blacks in Victoria at this time? Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps. Photographer: UNDETERMINED Date: [186-] Photo C-06124 courtesy BC Archives www.bcheritagefairs.ca 14
- 15. Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps, also known at the time as Sir James Douglas' Coloured Regiment. Photographer: UNDETERMINED Date: [186-] Photo C-06124 courtesy BC Archives www.bcheritagefairs.ca
- 16. Question Generation 1 – Question Formation Technique (AKA: Brainstorming) • Ask as many questions as you can. • Do not stop to discuss, judge, or answer the questions. • Write down every question exactly as it is stated. • Change any statement into a question. (Rothstein and Santana, Make Just One Change) www.bcheritagefairs.ca 16
- 17. Question Generation 2: Brainstorming with Prompts 1. Brainstorm a list of at least 12 questions about the topic or source. Use these question-starters to help you think of interesting questions: – – – – – Why…? How is this connected to…? What happened as a result of…? What kind of a change was...? How should we remember...? www.bcheritagefairs.ca 17
- 18. 2. Review the brainstormed list and star the questions that seem most interesting and important. Then, select one or two starred questions and be ready to present these to the class. 3. Reflect: How do you know you have a good question? Would it make a good Heritage Fairs project? What possible answer do you have to your question? Where could you go to learn more and test your answer? www.bcheritagefairs.ca 18
- 19. Criteria for Good Inquiry Questions • They are worth answering (lead to deeper understanding of history; authentic; historically significant) • They are broadly engaging (for teacher inquiries) • Students care about them – they see the purpose in answering them • They can be answered, though maybe the answer will be contested or difficult www.bcheritagefairs.ca 19
- 21. Ways to Support Students to Generate Questions: • • • • • • • • Look at models, e.g., museum exhibits or www.bcheritagefairs.ca portfolio Supply prompts Use engaging sources to build curiosity, e.g., mystery artefact Brainstorm questions Give or create criteria on which to choose the most powerful questions Make a Wonder Wall of Questions Plan for peer and teacher feedback Practise with small inquiries www.bcheritagefairs.ca 21
- 22. No Frills Inquiry: • Establish curiosity – « some perplexity, confusion, or doubt » (John Dewey) • • • • Develop questions Pose first hypothesis and reflect on certainty Explore further evidence Refine hypothesis and so on as time and interest permit www.bcheritagefairs.ca 22
- 23. Reflection on Certainty: Clothesline How certain are you about your answer/hypothesis? CERTAIN? UNCERTAIN? www.thinkinghistory.co.uk © Ian Dawson 2009 23 23 www.bcheritagefairs.ca
- 24. How certain are you about your hypothesis? Maybe What words do Not sure students need to use? Possibly Perhaps Most likely What phrases? This source suggests… This photo confirms the idea that… I chose these two pictures to show… 24 24 www.bcheritagefairs.ca
- 25. Contextualizing and Building Connections: Enhanced Timelines www.bcheritagefairs.ca 25
- 27. Guideposts to Understanding Evidence • History is intepretation based on inferences made from primary sources. Primary sources can be accounts, but they can also be traces, relics, or records. • Asking good questions about a source can turn it into evidence. • Sourcing often begins before a source is read, with questions about who created it and when it was created. It involves inferring from the source the author’s or creator’s purpose, values, and worldview, either conscious or unconscious. www.bcheritagefairs.ca 27
- 28. • A source should be analyzed in relation to the context of its historical setting: the conditions and worldviews prevalent at the time in question. • Inferences made from a source can never stand alone. They should always be corroborated— checked against other sources (primary and secondary). www.bcheritagefairs.ca 28
- 29. Concept: Historical Significance The problem: We can’t remember or learn or cover everything that ever happened. How do we decide what is important to learn about the past? ―Historical significance‖: the principles behind the selection of what and who should be remembered, researched, taught and learned about the past. www.bcheritagefairs.ca 29
- 30. Question Stems for Historical Significance (aka: so-what or whocares questions): • • • • What was so special about X? Why should everyone remember X? Does X deserve to be famous? Why was X forgotten? www.bcheritagefairs.ca 30
- 31. Should the Victoria Pioneer Rifles be in our textbooks? On what grounds? www.bcheritagefairs.ca 31
- 32. Working with historical significance: Diamond Ranking Most Least www.bcheritagefairs.ca 32
- 34. Who were the most historically significant during British Columbia’s Gold Rushes? • • • • James Douglas Amelia Douglas Matthew Begbie Chief Spintlum • Royal Engineers • Victoria Pioneer Rifles • Hurdy Gurdy Girls • Billy Barker www.bcheritagefairs.ca 34
- 35. Other Historical Thinking Concepts: • • • • Continuity and Change Cause and Consequence Historical Perspective-Taking Ethical Dimension www.bcheritagefairs.ca 35
- 36. Reflection Tomaloo (Tu as mal où?): What are the pain points in implementing historical thinking? Activities: • I Left a Trace • Visual Analysis • Question Generation • Clothesline of Certainty • Enhanced Timelines • Ranking Significance www.bcheritagefairs.ca 36
- 39. Historical Thinking Project The website features news, descriptions of the key aspects of each of the six concepts, graphic organizers, sample tasks and a searchable database of over 75 lesson plans. http://historicalthinking.ca/ www.bcheritagefairs.ca 39
- 40. Videos on Concepts: TC2 Take 2 videos: Thinking about history http://tc2.ca/teaching-resources/online-resourcecollections/special-collections/thinking-about-history.php www.bcheritagefairs.ca 40
- 41. TC2 Primary Source Collection History Docs is a searchable collection of carefully selected sets of primary and secondary source documents about peoples, places, things and events in Canadian history. http://sourcedocs.tc2.ca/history-docs/about-historydocs.html www.bcheritagefairs.ca 41
Editor's Notes
- Welcome. Tomaloo and the challenges of inquiry and project-basedlearning. We all have points of pain whenwetry to implement a new approachthatitsignificantlydifferentfromwhatwe are used to. (Tell story) Pleasefeel free à un moment donné to tell us où tu as mal. Myreferenceswillbe to both HF and HT. I am the provincial coordinator. Photos willbefrom HF projects and students.
- Myanswerswill not be conclusive. Good historyeducationlike good historyis more of a conversation than a conclusion. Christopher Moore sayshistoryisless a conversation and more an argument about the past. The sameapplies to teachinghistory! Historyeducationlike the discipline of historyis about debateso I wouldbe happy if youagreedwitheverything I presenttoday, but I wouldalsobesurprised.
- Generally, educators have been content withtellingthese stories. Thenhavingstudents tell them back whether in essays or HeritageFair displays. On the other hand, the HistoricalThinking Project tries see how thesehistorical stories are constructedthrough the lenses of six concepts and have studentsconstructtheirown stories.
- These concepts give a framework to help studentssee how historianstransform the pastintohistory and beginconstructinghistorythemselves. The concepts do not functionindependently; rather, theyworktogether.
- Hereis a basic outline of the steps in an inquiry. The overlapwith HT isclearlywith Evidence, but alsowithHistoricalSignificance.
- Let’sstartwithour first activity.
- Manystds show an unexamined faith in the trustworthiness of a source like the textbook or Wikipedia. I argue thatour goal shouldbefor students to understand the differencebetween the past and history. The past is everything – every event, thought, belief, vibrating atom, and tree falling in the forest while no one was there. History is a selection of the past, made real by interpretation. As Ruth Sandwell puts it, “History is someone’s attempt to make sense and order out of the chaos of everything-ness” and its based on traces, whatever ones that survive and most don’t.
- .My purpose for this activity was 1)to give an example of students making meaning by connecting to students’ experiences as they study history and 2) to establish a foundational idea for teaching history: “History” does not equal “the past.”Therefore: interpretation is inevitable
- I want to focus on inferencing, contextualizing, and developing questions.
- The problem: the past is gone. How do we know what we know about the past?One of the basic ways that we can get to know anything about a past which is no longer here, is by examining the traces, the things that were created in the past and still remain.I would like to do a few activities that I did with mixed grade 4 to 7 classes during Black History month in February.
- The first stepis to just look. So ask « What do yousee? » or « What do you notice? » Everystudentcan have someanswer to « What do yousee? »Do notask « What’sgoing on? » becausethatlaunchesyouintointerpretation and theymaybequitemuddled. You want to emphasize observation and inferencing.Take time– maybe a minute. To scan left to right, top to bottom, diagonally.
- Whatdoesthis tell you? Face value,e.g., thereweresoldiers in Victoria in the 1860s. It wasmuddy in Victoria. Etc.Whatdoesitsuggest? Inferencing, e.g., therewas a war. There weremany Blacks in Victoria. Go back on slide and do a Think-Pair-Share.
- Let’s return to The Pioneer Rifles and generating questions, especially important for project and inquiry-basedlearning.
- Another important activity to establishcuriosityis the generatefurther questions. By asking good questionse wewant to takethat « litter from a picnic”, the traces, and turn it into evidence.
- With the intermediate gradestudents Iused question prompts to encourage and guide responses. Unlike the first approachthisenouragesdependence on the teacher but it guides learning and is a time-saver.
- The thirdelement –students care about them – is central to makinghistorymeaningful. HeritageFairsbecausestudentschoose the topic or soitisassumed. It cantakesome time to arrive at a question thatwill carry themthrough a long-termproject.The fourthelementisalsokey. If theycan’tfindanswers or canreachonly tentative conclusions, inquirycan have a paralyzingeffect. You willwant to startwithsmallinquiriesbeforetaking on a large scaleproject.
- Did the relationshipbetween Champlain and the Huron (Wendat)benefitbothequally? Tell story.Studentsneed to know thatthere are some questions to whichwecan’tfindanswers, or there are questions to whichanswers do not come easily. I will come back to this.
- Let’sspend a little time with the thirdstep, posing a hypothesis and seeking corroboration aka cross-checking. I wantyouwithyourpartner to suggest an answer to the question: Why are these Black soldiersthereatthis place and time? What are theydoing in a militia?
- I learnedthisexercisefrom Ian Dawson. It is an application to history of an oldco-operativelearning structure. It is a way to address the challenge for somestudents of the anxiety of the difficultanswerthat the grade 4 studenthad. It alsohelpsteach corroboration and the nature of historicalknowledge.There is a differencebetween science and history in the nature of knowledge. There are no controlledexperiments in history, onlyevidence, imaginative interpretation and lots of debate. In historythere are onlydegrees of certitude.
- Forinquirywewant to foster the habit of not lavishingtoomuch affection on one’s conclusion. Doubtis the handmaiden of on-goinginquiry.Wealsowant to givestudents the scaffolding in the form of vocabulary to support doubt and corroboration.
- Timelines « typicallyconnect one thingthatstudentsdon’t know much about – dates – withsomethingelsetheydon’t know much about – wars and politics. » So to makethemmeaningful, wewant to expand the content and makethemvisual. On the leftsideis a HeritageFairstimeline for a projectcalled « Explosions of Equality », a grade 7 student’sproject on women and World War One. The right hand is on Roberta Bondar.
- This grade 8 student’stimeline of 19th century Canada is more wideranging: along the line are typicalpoliticaleventssuch as the War of 1812 and the assasination of D’ArcyMcGee. The bottomrow, however, are elements of social historysuch as large family size, the popularity of corsets, and the dominance of farming, social historythatisoftenomittedbecauseitis not tied to a single event but isnonetheless important.The unexaminedtimelineis not worthmaking. Ask questions such as « What story doesyourtimeline show? Whydidyouchoosethatevent? Whyhaven’tyouincluded…? That bunching up atthat bit suggests speed! » A timelineshouldneverbeboring,… itshouldbe a REVELATION. »Class time linescangive a purpose and public audience much as HeritageFairs do:If a studentfindssomethingat home that relates to history, invite them to addit to the line. A dynamic, messy, full-to-the-brimtimelineis a sign of a class that’sengaged in history full-tilt. »
- Let us take a quick look atanotherhistoricalthinking concept.If nothingelse, to makehistorymeaningfulweshouldexplain to students the reasons for whatweaskthem to research and learn. Betteris for them to discover for themselveswhatotherssuch as a textbookauthor, web site creator, or politicianthinksishistoricallysignificant and maketheirownassessment of theirselection. Even more sophisticatedis to see how significance changes over time and isdifferent for different groups.
- Choose one and then do spinner.
- Published by Nelson.Also in French.