"Someone with like a life wrote it": The effects of a visible author on high school history students.

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of a visible author (one who writes in the 1st person, revealing personal opinions and self) on adolescents reading history textbooks. Six high school sophomores read a passage from a textbook that featured an anonymous author (one who writes in the 3rd person, revealing little about personal opinions and self) and a similar text featuring a visible author. Data from think-aloud protocols and semi-structured interviews were analyzed to understand the impact of these authors on students' construction of historical knowledge and on their attitudes toward the texts and toward the discipline as a whole. Students interacted frequently with the visible author, engaging in mental conversations. These conversations led students to a closer relationship with the information presented in the text. The nature of these relationships, both for the visible text and the anonymous text, is discussed.