Agent ontologies and the history classroom: a more-than-human experiment

The notion of historical thinking has in recent years become popular in research on history education, particularly so in North America, the UK and Australia. The aim of this paper is to discuss the cognitive competencies related to historical thinking, as expressed by some influential Canadian researchers, as an history educational notion from two aspects: what is historical thinking and what does it mean in an educational context, and what are the consequences of historical thinking for history education? Our discussion will focus on possible implications of this approach to history education regarding what should be taught in history classrooms and why. By focusing on the notion of historicity, we want to argue that while a focus on a more disciplinary approach to history education is welcome, we think that more attention should be given to what could qualify as a disciplinary approach. We further argue historical thinking and the history educational challenge should be understood as wider and more complex than what history education informed by historical thinking entails.

The history of history education, past and present, often resembles a history of contestation, in which rival and polarized understandings of the meanings of 'history' and 'history education' vie for dominance (Nakou and Barca, 2010). A common polarity in debates on history curricula is the opposition between 'knowledge' and 'skill', an opposition that has had considerable currency in recent curriculum reform processes in England which have emphasised 'core knowledge' (DfE, 2013). Drawing on examples of classroom practice (Chapman, 2003; Woodcock, 2005; Buxton, 2003) and on systematic research and theorizing (Shemilt, 1983; Lee and Shemilt, 2009) this paper aims to destabilize such binary talk and to explore the ways in which 'first order' knowledge and understanding about the past and 'second order' or metahistorical knowledge and understanding of how the discipline of history works are both logically inter-related and inseparable in practical terms. The notion of historical 'enquiry' (Counsell, 2011) is explored as a pedagogic tool for the simultaneous development of these inter-related dimensions of historical thinking.

The history of history education, past and present, often resembles a history of contestation, in which rival and polarized understandings of the meanings of 'history' and 'history education' vie for dominance (Nakou and Barca, 2010). A common polarity in debates on history curricula is the opposition between 'knowledge' and 'skill', an opposition that has had considerable currency in recent curriculum reform processes in England which have emphasised 'core knowledge' (DfE, 2013). Drawing on examples of classroom practice (Chapman, 2003; Woodcock, 2005; Buxton, 2003) and on systematic research and theorizing (Shemilt, 1983; Lee and Shemilt, 2009) this paper aims to destabilize such binary talk and to explore the ways in which 'first order' knowledge and understanding about the past and 'second order' or metahistorical knowledge and understanding of how the discipline of history works are both logically inter-related and inseparable in practical terms. The notion of historical 'enquiry' (Counsell, 2011) is explored as a pedagogic tool for the simultaneous development of these inter-related dimensions of historical thinking.

The purpose of this study was to explore history teachers’ inclination toward the goals of teaching disciplinary history, active teaching methods, and their experiences with historical thinking skills during their college education and their classroom practices. The qualitative thematic analysis explores how secondary school history teachers’ beliefs and background knowledge about their subject matter influence classroom practices. It focuses on their conceptions of history and historical thinking, teaching goals, teaching methods, and instructional materials. The results revealed that teachers’ educational training and history courses significantly influence their disciplinary knowledge and teaching practices. In the quantitative phase, the findings reveal that the status of teacher experiences and efficacy with all the historical thinking skills indicators, namely, sourcing, contextualization, corroboration and explicit instruction, varies as revealed in the result section. To address this issue, the researchers suggested the need for teachers to update their professional development and incorporate historical thinking skills into classroom activities, fostering engagement and agency, and intensive training for in-service history teachers. In this preliminary phase, we use these exploratory findings and research on teachers’ conceptions of their discipline and practices of historical thinking skills to propose an interventional framework for teaching history.

Promoting historical thinking using the explicit reasoning text

This essay argues that the current crisis in history education at the K-12 levels requires creative interventions and interdisciplinary collaborations. It also offers a series of strategies for teaching critical historical thinking skills to young people. Drawing on the author's recent collaboration with a theater educator, the essay examines the radical potential of one pedagogical method in particular—a theater-based strategy called “process drama.” A philosophical and experiential approach to teaching and learning, this method draws on theatrical ideas to trouble the traditional dynamics of the classroom and provoke students into critical investigation. The author roots her reflections on the power and potential of process drama for history education in a lesson she developed for a group of public school teachers from the Bronx. Interested in introducing these teachers to a diversity of visual primary source documents and in complicating the story of the Civil Rights movement, she asked participants to use a series of theater exercises to examine a set of photographs taken at civil rights protests. This work, the author argues, suggests the power of critical and creative pedagogies in the history classroom; demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary instruction, even at the K-12 levels; and offers a model for social justice history education that does not ignore the practical demands that weigh heavy on classroom teachers in this current standards-saturated public school educational climate.

Understanding history can be an intellectually challenging task for many students in schools. It requires students to contemplate issues, events and people who had lived in the distant past and who are often far removed (from them) in time and familiarity. Such challenges, however, have seldom been satisfactorily addressed in many history classrooms in Singapore. Where historical instruction in schools takes on a heavily content-transmission approach, students are more likely to conceive history learning as the uncritical absorption and memorisation of knowledge that has little bearing to their everyday lives. This is especially so when the existence of a prescribed textbook and a pre-selected content is viewed as sufficient learning materials for direct historical instruction. Additionally, the attention spent on developing methods to train and prepare students to answer examination questions has reduced historical thinking and reasoning to sets of somewhat rigid, algorithmically-devised skills-related procedures (Afandi & Baildon, 2010). While these may help build students’ capacity to deal with the requisite assessment objectives tested in the examinations, they do little to build student’s knowledge of history. Amidst a schooling context that places emphasis on rigid procedures to produce “the right answers” and driven by a strong purpose to meet assessment requirements and accountability in the examination, it is unsurprising if many believe that history teaching need not go beyond simply the transfer of (historical) knowledge or content. This, however, should not be confused with learning history. As Lee (1991: pp. 48-49) maintained, [it is] absurd … to say that schoolchildren know any history if they have no understanding of how historical knowledge is attained, its relationship to evidence, and the way in which historians arbitrate between competing or contradictory claims. The ability to recall accounts without any understanding of the problems involved in constructing them or the criteria involved in evaluating them has nothing historical about it. Without an understanding of what makes an account historical, there is nothing to distinguish such an ability from the ability to recite sagas, legends, myths or poems. Implicit in Lee’s assertion is the suggestion that acquiring the kind of knowledge that is deemed historical goes beyond information acquisition and rote memorisation of facts; it must equip students with “more powerful” ways of understanding history and the historical past (Lee & Ashby, 2000, p. 216). Among other things, this would involve getting students to come to grips with the disciplinary basis of the subject and having them understand how knowledge about the past is constructed, adjudicated and arbitrated.

This study analyzed the viewpoint of history teacher and history textbook, especially focused on democratization and industrialization of Korea. The viewpoint of history textbook is in other words that of author’s. In history teaching, viewpoint of the ‘subject’ is very important. Historical interpretation, description and historical thinking are based on the viewpoint of the ‘subject’.<BR> E. H Carr said, ‘History is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the historian and the past.’ There need two subjects in Interaction or communication. Also in classroom, dialogue goes on between teacher and student, author and student, historical person and student.<BR> In history textbook, author concealed himself behind facts, The viewpoint of author is not exposed. Historical persons don’t’ have their voice in the body of history textbook. But reading materials, historical sources included the voice of historical person.<BR> In history classroom, interaction and dialogue take place between teacher, student, author of textbook and historical person. So history teachers should be aware the ‘subject’ of dialogue. If history textbook expose the voice of historical person, it promote the interaction between historical person and student.

The Burden of Historical Representation:Race, Freedom, and “Educational” Hollywood Film Stoddard Jeremy D. (bio) and Marcus Alan S. (bio) When asked to describe a recent use of Hollywood film in her U.S. history class, one teacher responded, "I use Glory every year to reinforce the role of African Americans in American history." Depending on this teacher's specific classroom practices, this statement is both promising and problematic. On the promising side is the indication that the teacher is including the stories and roles of African Americans in her class. The teacher's use of Glory (1989) also needs to be problematized, however, and forces us to ask several key questions. What else is being reinforced when films portray stories of groups traditionally marginalized in history? What are students learning about the history of African Americans and their role within U.S. history when films like Glory are used as part of the curriculum—and how does this align with one of the core goals of social studies—to develop citizens for a pluralistic democracy? The teacher's statement quoted above was representative of the responses collected as part of a recent survey of eighty-four Wisconsin and Connecticut U.S. history teachers.1 In addition to the open-ended descriptions of classroom practice with film, we also asked the teachers to report which films they were using in their classes overall, how they were using the films as part of their instruction, and why they chose those films and methods. The two films identified as being used most often were the aforementioned Glory, a film about the all Black Massachusetts 54th regiment that fought during the U.S. Civil War, and Amistad (1997), a film about a group of African slaves who revolted against their captors aboard ship en route to a slave market and ended up fighting for freedom in the U.S. Court system during the 1830s. Both films were created by large studios with big name actors during the late 1980s through the 1990s, a period that saw a cultural and economic demand for stories and films about and for African-Americans.2 As the number of days of school is extremely limited, and the time it takes to view a feature length film significant, there is a large burden placed on these films and the manner in which they represent Africans and African Americans and their roles in the history of the United States. Of particular importance is how Glory and Amistad characterize the concept of freedom in relation to Africans and African Americans given freedom's importance in the films' narratives, its prominence in national and state U.S. history curriculum standards, and its status as a fundamental theme in the development of democracy and our nation. Here we consider what students can learn about Africans and African Americans in U.S. history from viewing Glory and Amistad, with a particular focus on the themes of race, racism, and freedom.3 Building off of the survey data, literature from history and film studies, and a new look at the films, this analysis will examine how effectively these two films help to fill the gaps that traditionally exist in the U.S. history curriculum and challenge the dominant historical narrative through including the stories and perspectives of Africans and African Americans and their complex role in the history of the U.S. As part of our analysis we also address the larger issue of what role feature films should have in history classrooms, within the larger goals of social studies education, and explore specific pedagogical practices with film that might help teachers to better fulfill the standards of the burden of historical representation. Glory and Amistad have already undergone significant analysis and critique by historians, film critics, and others. Given the frequent use of these films in the classroom, we seek to draw from and build on this previous work and reflect on the films in the context of the secondary history classroom. [End Page 26] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Purpose for Classroom Use of Glory and Amistad Teacher Practices, the Burden of Historical Representation, and Freedom Fifty...

The history of history education, past and present, often resembles a history of contestation, in which rival and polarized understandings of the meanings of ‘history’ and ‘history education’ vie for dominance (Nakou and Barca, 2010). A common polarity in debates on history curricula is the opposition between ‘knowledge’ and ‘skill’, an opposition that has had considerable currency in recent curriculum reform processes in England which have emphasized ‘core knowledge’ (DfE, 2013). Drawing on examples of classroom practice (Chapman, 2003; Woodcock, 2005; Buxton, 2010) and on systematic research and theorizing (Shemilt, 1983; Lee and Shemilt, 2009) this paper aims to destabilize such binary talk and to explore the ways in which ‘first order’ knowledge and understanding about the past and ‘second order’ or metahistorical knowledge and understanding of how the discipline of history works are both logically inter-related and inseparable in practical terms. The notion of historical ‘enquiry’ (Counsell, 2011) is explored as a pedagogic tool for the simultaneous development of these inter-related dimensions of historical thinking. Introduction As has often been the case around the world (Carretero, 2011; Nakou and Barca, eds., 2010; Taylor and Guyver, eds., 2011), recent public discussions of history curriculum and pedagogy in England have tended to be structured through overdrawn dichotomies – between ‘content’ and ‘skills’, between ‘traditional’ and ‘progressive’ and between ‘child-centred’ and ‘subject-centred’ pedagogies (Lee, 2011, pp.132-134). This paper aims to demonstrate the emptiness of these oppositions through discussion of a key aspect of historical understanding – historical explanation. It will argue that these oppositions present us with fallacious choices that restrict options to ‘either / or’ where, in reality, more complex choices, including ‘both / and’, are possible and desirable and, very probably, inevitable.

Immersive Virtual Reality (iVR) is increasingly being used in education for its ability to recreate vivid, realistic environments that enhance engagement and motivation. In history education, iVR is often addressed when fostering emotional connection and empathy. However, its potential to support critical historical thinking, such as analysing sources, evaluating perspectives, and understanding bias, is less often addressed. This study contrast emotional and analytical uses of iVR in the history classroom. It investigates teachers’ perceptions of iVR in history education, with a focus on how those perceptions shape pedagogical goals, motives, and implementation strategies. Guided by Affordance Theory and Leontiev’s Activity Theory, the research adopts a qualitative design based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with twelve history teachers who have implemented iVR in their classrooms. Participants were selected based on their expertise in history education, experience with iVR for teaching, and alignment with competency-based curricula. Through thematic analysis, the study found significant variation in teachers’ strategies and aims, closely linked to their digital competence and the perceived affordances and constraints of iVR. Teachers with higher competence aimed for more complex tasks, such as student-led content creation and applied knowledge, while others focused on motivation and visualization. Some educators expressed concerns that poorly scaffolded iVR content risks oversimplifying historical narratives and promoting passive learning. The findings suggest that the effective use of iVR in history education depends less on the technology itself and more on how it is contextualized, critically framed, and pedagogically enacted.

History teachers’ epistemological beliefs are considered to be greatly influential on their instructional practice and a necessary requirement to foster their students’ historical thinking skills. In examining this relationship, two issues arise. First, adequately capturing teachers’ epistemological beliefs remains a challenge as existing instruments appear not to be always valid and reliable. Some researchers suggest to distinguish between formal and practical epistemologies, which requires different measuring instruments. Second, it remains unclear how teachers’ epistemological beliefs influence their teaching practice as several studies found there is no straightforward relationship due to the influence of other beliefs. At the same time, the role of teachers’ own understanding of historical thinking in fostering this thinking among their students has not been extensively studied. Through a qualitative research with 21 history teachers, this study examines the relationship between teachers’ formal and practical epistemologies, their understanding of historical thinking and their instructional practice. It thereby reflects on methodological issues related to mapping teachers’ epistemological beliefs. Data analysis shows that teachers’ epistemological beliefs remain difficult to capture, due to inconsistencies in and between measuring instruments. It could be concluded, nevertheless, that, while most teachers acknowledge the interpretive and constructed nature of history, they generally do not include this in their own descriptions of historical thinking. The research supports the idea that nuanced epistemological beliefs are required for interpretive history teaching, but are not a sufficient precondition. While other beliefs and contextual factors are indeed at play, it also appears necessary to support teachers’ competence in designing materials to foster their students’ historical thinking, including epistemological reflection. The article reflects on the implications for teaching training and professional development programs.

This study aims to identify the meaning of history teaching theory and to characterize classroom practices with the application of newer theories of history teaching. Recent research reveals that teachers have made a great deal of endeavors to renovate their own teaching including developing alternative instructional materials and collaborative classroom observations. National History Curriculum also put emphasis on the use of primary sources in order to develope historical thinking. However, the Curriculum materials seem not to provide structured and systematic guidelines for the readers of the Curriculum to be able to generate their own curricular to realize in history teaching. Theories of teaching and learning history would be able to play their roles in explaining general features of diverse classroom practices and in providing applicable guidelines only when the theories are paralleled with research on teachers’ practices and students’ learning. With regard to ‘historical thinking’, history educators in Korea need to speculate the way in which students are able to participate in inquiring the constructive nature of historical knowledge as well as understanding specific historical contents using this kind of methodological knowledge.

The latest approach to History Education requires student not to be a passive recipient of encyclopaedic knowledge but as empowered individual that plays an active role in the knowledge generation process. This can be achieved by teaching students how to generate historical knowledge through historical sources. Therefore, digital primary sources (DPS) that refer to primary sources that are in electronic format are very important in History Education. DPS encourage students to relate it in a personal way to past events and promote a better and deeper understanding of past events. However, DPS is underutilized in this digital age, it has not yet been fully accessed and used in a meaningful way. Therefore, this paper presents the definition of DPS and the importance of using DPS in history learning process. Our purpose of this paper is to present a clear review of literature concerning the potentials of using DPS in fostering students’ historical thinking skills, fostering students’ historical inquiry, encouraging students to view a historical event in a multi perspective way, helping students to gain a deeper understanding of a past event and motivating students to learn history. We further provide suggestions of the implementation and alteration of DPS platforms for various authorities, as well as how educators can use and take advantage of DPS in history teaching and learning process.

ABSTRACTA critical pedagogy stance involving reflexivity and critique of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history curriculum informed a participatory action research methodology of problematised history pedagogy (PHP). Conceptualised as layered and reciprocal, the PHP was nested as a ‘case’ of action research at the heart of narrative inquiry. The PHP was situated in a year’s curriculum course in secondary teacher education, and activated participants’ phenomenological empathy, genealogical disclosure, and discursive self-fashioning. This involved life-storying, critical discourse analysis of history texts, and PHP interventions with students in history classrooms. A dismantling analysis deconstructed participants’ historical thinking and revealed something of their discursive production. Recognition of pedagogic identities, embodiment, and the seeking of authentic selves played out through the critical project. As a professionally challenging process, the PHP depended on mutual goodwill and careful reading of participants’ readiness, attitudes, and unique capabilities. The research was also dependent on the professional expertise of colleagues in schools. My interpretive authority as a researcher involved multiple selves as teacher, advocate, and writer. The provoking of more critical approaches in what we do and why in history pedagogy, and the enhancing of practitioner capabilities, supports the PHP as a useful research methodology in initial teacher education.