Designing a Question-Driven U.S. History Course

Abstract

Going back a century, most history courses, from middle school through introductory college courses, have been designed primarily to cover a broad swath of history—an approach reinforced by content standards that provide teachers with lengthy lists of facts and concepts they must discuss, often in order to prepare students for standardized exams. Unfortunately, as decades of poor test scores and survey results have demonstrated, this approach has proven ineffective at cultivating long-term learning, much less deep understanding. Worse, it perpetuates misconceptions about what it means to study history. (1) If the goal of history education is seen mainly as the accumulation of factual and conceptual knowledge about the past, we miss an opportunity to cultivate students' ability to think for themselves about history and its significance. Learning to think critically about the past is not something that should be left to occasional exercises or to advanced courses. Rather,...