The HTP Day 5 and 6: 13 and 14 July 2012

So this ends my postings from THTP. Can I just say what a great opportunity and that Canada is soooo ahead of us in terms of critical thinking! Kudos to Canada! On Friday, as I was finalizing a project with my group on cause and consequence, this came over the LRA list serve:
From the Texas 2012 Republican Party Platform: 

Knowledge based education: “We oppose the teaching of higher order thinking skills (HOTS), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of outcome based education (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

On Friday, we heard from Susan Dion, an Aborigingal from Canada. She talked about Aboriginal and Canadian relationships. She said, in Canadian schools students are taught mostly pre contact and a little bit contact history with Aboriginals. Aboriginals in Canada are either First Nations, Inuit, or Metis. She talked about the reserve system and the history of Aboriginal schooling in Canada. It was interesting. she spoke for about an hour. The rest of the day was spent finalizing our project for Saturday.

On Saturday we presented our final project.

Afterwards, as I boarded public transit to the airport, I reflected on my time at the HTP. It was amazing. We had amazing conversations in our large and small groups. Ontario is incorporating the concepts in their curriculum in the fall and other provinces are also adding them in (some informally). It made me sad that I could not make a presentation to my faculty as we are literacy and do not deal with social studies in our curriculum at USF. However, it got me thinking about the blurb about the HTP: promoting critical historical literacy for the 21st century.could I hold a workshop on the concepts? I'd love to.

Anyway, that's it in a nutshell. When my friend Ian posts the ppt he created about the week, I'll post it for all to see. It was a week I'll never forget.

Steph

The Historical Thinking Project Day 3 & 4: 11 & 12 July 2012

Because I did not blog yesterday, I'm combining posts today to cover day 3 and 4. Yesterday started off with a discussion of cause and consequence. Cause and consequence addresses the question what are the layers of cause and the ripples of consequence associated with an event. You might wonder why we don't say cause and effect. Simply because there can be multiple causes and consequences that are associated with an event.

There are five guideposts involved in cause and consequence.
Guidepost 1:
Change is driven by multiple causes and results in multiple consequences.
Guidepost 2:
Causes that lead to a particular historical change vary in their influence
Guidepost 3:
change results from interplay of 2 types of factors:
a. historical actors--people who take actions that cause historical change
b. social, political, economic, and cultural conditions within which the actors operate.
Guidepost 4:
historical actors cannot always predict effect of conditions, opting actions and unforeseen reactions. These have the effect of generating unintended consequences.
Guidepost 5:
the events of history were not inevitable any more than the future is. Alter a single action or condition and an event might have turned out differently.

This discussion led to the article discussion for the day. Bain's "They thought the world was flat?" article. It's interesting to read and he promotes this idea of "doing" history and the notion that we have myths in our country that we created and continue to teach. What do you think? Do we have historical myths we teach kids?

The afternoon session was a field trip to Kensington Market and Chinatown. We were told to take pictures of things that we could use to teach a historical thinking concept. My group was focusing on cause and consequence with this particular field trip so we did just that. We also looked at immigration in Canada and how the market, which is filled with food, clothing stores, etc from different groups, also has evidence of continuity and change.

That night I went to dinner with some friends-two from BC, one from NS, and one from Ontario. We ate at Kensington Market at a great little restaurant and got back late, hence the lack of a blog.

Today we talked about historical perspective and ethic dimension. There are five aspects of perspective taking.
1. taking the perspective of historical actors depends upon evidence for and inferences about how people felt and thought.
2. the challenge to avoid presentism-the unwarranted imposition of present ideas on actors in the past.
3. recognizing feeling, values, intensions, and ideas are all part of perspective taking.
4. any particular event involves people who may have diverse perspectives on it. Understanding multiple perspectives of actors is key to understanding the event.
5. Through taking the perspective of an actor is sometimes called historical empathy it does not mean identifying with that actor.

We then had the discussion of using the prompt 'Imagine you ......" and is that really effective in the classroom? Or what about those who take their students to a museum and have them assume the name of a person (e.g., someone in the Holocaust). Is this best practice?

What do you all think?

Ethical dimension:
Aspects:
1. making judgments about actors and actions in the past.
2. recognizing the ethical dimension in historical accounts.
3. thinking about responsibilities today for responding to injustices of the past.
4. helping make judgments about contemporary issues informed by history.

The example used here was a drawing from Harper's Magazine from 1865. It depicts a black man and a white man. The white man is dressed nicely, in a top hat, white suit, sitting in the shade. The black man is carrying a hoe and out in the sun, dressed in ragged clothing. The caption says something like "It's your responsibility to get back to work now" and this is the white man saying it to the black man. We saw three transcripts from Canadian youth after this picture. They were asked the question :What do you think this picture is about?

It was interesting to see that they had a lack of understanding about the slavery issue in the southern US. However, many of today's teens in the US also don't understand the Civil War. Out of the three transcripts, one group pinpointed the ethical dimension of the drawing and discussed that in their group. The other two did not recognize the ethical dimension. None of the groups were prompted by the teacher to focus on the ethical dimension so it was good to see that one group did pinpoint that early on in the conversation even though they were not prompted.

The afternoon was spent at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). It's a typical history museum. Although I am a history buff and proud of it, I'm not  a museum person. I do like touring the Holocaust museum in DC--such a great museum and I like visiting forts and battle ships but I don't really like museums.
For the mini project on ethical dimension my group focused on the First Nations. We toured the exhibit on the First Nations and focused on the fact that the information posted was in English and French however, not in any language from the First Nation peoples. Hmm.....

I stuck around the museum for an hour and a half or so and then headed back to my room for a nap. I am now planning on working on some things in my room tonight so I'm not venturing out to see any of the city. I'm tired. It's been a stimulating week thinking wise and my brain is tired.

Tomorrow we have a presentation on Aboriginal Perspectives by Dr. Susan Dion and we are continuing to polish our project that we are presenting on Saturday. We will also talk about one of my favorite articles: Wineburg's "On the reading of historical texts"--amazing stuff.

More later.

S.

The Historical Thinking Project Day 2: 10 July 2012

Today we talked about historical significance and continuity and change. The information posted on yesterday's blog pretty much sums up the aspects of each of those concepts so I'm not going to re-post that info here. Instead, I'm going to talk about the activities we did for each concept.
For historical significance Dr. Seixas had us do a "historical significance freestyle" activity. The directions were to choose 5 to 10 most significant events from world or Canadian history. Present and defend those choices. Also decide on criteria for your defenses.

My group decided to work on world history. Our criteria: an event affecting a large number of people and a turning point in history.

Without further ado, here is our list:
1. Fire!
2. The wheel
3. printing press and the printing of the Bible
4. creation of gun powder
5. Industrial revolution
6. discovery of electricity
7. Wright brothers (flight) and Henry Ford (moveable assembly line and transportation)
8. harnessing the atom and the atomic bomb (manhattan project)
9. computers

I can't remember one of our events...but we had 10. What would be on your list?

Some people in the institute wrote very generic things such as the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, etc and did not name specifics. Others named specifics. It is interesting to note as well that people took various perspectives while completing the assignment. Some wrote about militarism and war, others wrote about social issues, others economic, and others political. Some a mixture of all of the above.

For continuity and change, we were charged with coming up with a handout/worksheet teaching the concept. I don't have our example, because someone else in the group saved it on her laptop and did not email it out.

We also went to Fort York today. Dr. Seixas keeps mentioning the War of 1812 and its importance in Canadian history. The guide at Fort York did as well. It's interesting to note however, that Fort York was not built prior to 1812. It was built in 1814 or so.... so it is interesting to think about how the Canadian government and the people talk about the importance of the fort in the war however, it did not exist at the time. Huh.

We also went to a pub and talked about historical consciousness. It was an interesting discussion which lead to the question, do we have a collective narrative of history in our country? Do we need to teach one to the young people in the country to get them to feel like they are a part of the country?

With that, I'll leave you. Ponder those questions and let me know what you think.

Historical Thinking Project: Day 1: 08 July 2012

A note to the readers: This is mostly my notes from Day 1. Some of it might not make much sense. If you need clarification, comment and I'll respond and clarify.

Today was the first day of The Historical Thinking Project (HTP). I am the only American in attendance (as well as the only literacy person)--we have a few Swedes, one German, and one other European. Everyone else is from Canada. We have 33 participants total. The morning started out with introductions and the sharing of our artifact we brought from home. I brought my copy of "All We Did Was Fly to the Moon" a history of manned spaceflight in America. The book is significant to me because it was one of the first I read when I became interested in the space program. That interest led me to take Astronomy in undergrad and that led me to Brad. :) If you don't know our story, I'll tell you sometime. :)

After introductions, Dr. Peter Seixas of the HTP gave an overview of the historical thinking concepts. He started with this quote: "A foundational idea of historiography--history does not equal the past: interpretation is inevitable." That led to this question: What is the difference between "history" and "the past"?

"History", we discussed, is an interpretation, a selection, it involves meaning making. "The Past" is all inclusive. Someone said, the past does not become history until its written down. That led me to think about this from Van Sledright's The Challenge of Rethinking History Education (which I was reading as I was doing laundry this evening). Van Sledright said a history teacher told him, "the past [was that] temporally vast landscape strewn with its relics and residua. History with a capital h is the official story and histories with a lower case h are the multiple stories one might tell about a nation state. Back to the discussion today.

Seixas then talked about the fact that there are two foundational ideas from history education research also involved in HTP.
1. 2nd order historical concepts or the historical thinking concepts. historical thinking concepts are not about the monarchy or democracy, those ideas are first order . 2nd order lies underneath--the doing of history. We might not see them written out, but they are the framework of doing history. They underline what a historian does.
2. Progression: getting students to move from a  naive notion of the concepts to a more sophisticated.

The historical thinking concepts:
1. historical significance. the problem we face: we can't remember or learn everything that even happened. how do we decide what is important to learn about the past?
Aspects of historical significance:
1. resulting in change
--with deep consequences
--for many people
--over a long period of time
2. revealing: tells us something about human life
3. occupies a key place in a meaningful narrative
Note: significance does not rely in the person or event it's the historian who makes events or people significant in its place in the narrative.

2. primary source evidence. the problem: how do we know what we know about the past? the past is gone.
aspects:
1. contextualization of text
2. purpose and position of authors
3. values and world views of authors

3. continuity and change. the problem: history is more than a list of events. how can we organize it?
Aspects:
1. interrelated
2. progress and decline are ways of evaluating change over time
3. chronology helps to organize our understanding of c and c
4. periodization helps to organize our understanding
5. there are turning points when the pace of change speeds up

4. cause and consequence. the problem: how do we explain why changes took place or why continuities endured over time?
most histories use language of cause and consequence

5. historical perspective taking. the problem: past is a foreign country. they do things differently there.
aspects:
understanding the different social, cultural, intellectual, and emotional contexts that shaped people's lives of the past

6. the ethical dimension
we expect to learn something from the past that helps us in facing the ethical issues of today but we always risk anachronistic impositions of our own standards upon the past.

We then had Dr. Ruth Sandwell from OISE speak about primary source documents as evidence.
3 reasons teachers do not use psd in the classroom:
1. dont' know where to find psd
2. don't know what they are
3. dont' really know why to use them

what are primary source documents: something created by a person at the time you are studying or teaching about.

 Her definition of history was pretty neat: dialogue amongst people about meaningful understandings of the past. She also said everything from the past can be interpreted for its strengths.

The end of the day was spent on our first mini-project on evidence. I'm working with some teachers from Ontario who are doing a PD on literacy and the htc next month for teachers in grades 7-10. They want my literacy help :) We started outlining a potential PD to present to the group on Saturday.

Travel to Toronto

Hello Everyone. :) I made it to Toronto. Sadly, my bag did not. It's still in DC. Let me backtrack and explain. I flew out of Tampa at 2 pm today and arrived in DC around 4. I made my connection at 5:10 pm and flew to Toronto on this tiny Express Jet via United Airlines. After going through the initial Customs, I headed to baggage claim. I waited and waited...no bag.

I went to baggage services and checked in with the lady at the desk. She looked up my info and said my bag was checked in Tampa but never checked in DC, that means it was not put on the plane. She assured me that there were 3 flights from DC to Toronto tonight and my bag would be on one of them.

After I received my paperwork for my missing bag, I got on the Rocket (bus) and headed to Kipling Station to pick up the subway to go to my dorm room in Victoria University at the University of Toronto. The subway was easy to use and only cost me $3.00 to travel from the airport--way out in the suburbs of Toronto to downtown. I got off at Museum Station and found Victoria University. After wandering around for a good 20 minutes, and asking a very unfriendly young man for help and a very nice older man on a bicycle for help, I found the Margaret Addison Residence Hall and checked in. I found out I am staying in Jackson Residence Hall so I headed over there. Once I entered the building, I found my room on the 6th floor and unlocked the door. I'm staying in an apartment of sorts style dorm room--where there are 4 separate bedrooms with a bathroom, living area, and kitchen all there. The room is small-closet, bare walls, twin bed, and desk, with no wireless internet. VU only has ethernet cords. I hooked up my internet, chatted with Brad a bit on FaceTime and now am contemplating going to sleep. The air conditioning is nearly nonexistent here, but I have my window open because I'm on the 6th floor. However it is a bit noisy outside so I might close the window when I go to sleep.

Initial thoughts about Toronto:
I like the public transit system. It's easy to get around (at least from the airport).
My dorm room, ehhh not so much but then again it's about $100 cheaper a night than any hotels around here.

I want to get my bag before tomorrow. I have all these cute outfits planned for the institute and I want to wear them! I don't even have a brush or makeup or anything in my carryon. No toothbrush.....nothing. :(

Anyway, that's all for now. Send positive vibes to United Airlines if you don't mind in hopes that my bag arrives soon. :)

Steph

Nerves

Today I did a dry run--a kind of dry run at least--or a start of a dry run--for one of my questions for my qualifying exam. I then realized I needed to do more thinking and thus took over Brad's white board (with his permission of course) and wrote out my outline for my SSE question again. Then I talked my way through it with Brad. I have my points but need more info in a few areas. I'm nervous to say the least. Tomorrow, I think I'll do this again with my DL question and then see if I need to add anything else to my thought process. Then my methodology question. I'm nervous because it's early June and the exam is this month. Eek! Positive vibes much needed. :) Listening to Zac Brown Band and Jimmy Buffett have helped calm me down considerably though while thinking through some key points on my SSE topic.

Historical Thinking is Unnatural

As I start to prepare to review for my exam today, after getting ready to teach Children's Literature tonight, this quote from Sam Wineburg keeps going through my head: "In its deepest forms, historical thinking is neither a natural process nor something that springs automatically from psychological development. Its achievement goes against the grain of how we ordinarily think, one of the reasons why it is much easier to learn names, dates, and stories than it is to change the fundamental mental structures we use to grasp the meaning of the past. Mature historical thinking teaches us to go beyond our own images, to go beyond our brief life, and to go beyond the fleeting moment in human history into which we've been born."
From Wineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts: Charting the future of teaching the past. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

This quote pretty much sums it up to me. We need to teach kids how to "do history", not simply memorize facts and regurgitate them back on a multiple choice tests. Students should wrestle with the past and come to their own interpretation of what has occurred. After all, history is interpretative and unlike other disciplines such as science where we can recreate an experiment to see what happened and verify the results, we cannot recreate something in the past. Unlike what people have said, history cannot repeat itself. The events are already over with and cannot be directly observed or repeated. A similar event might occur but it will not be the same as the event before it. Therefore, historians and students of history must interpret the past (history) using the artifacts and sources provided to us.

Dawson (1986) and Wineburg (2001) noted there are four levels of historical conceptualization starting with "just because"--i.e. history happens just because it happens all the way to history is viewed in context. Those two stages in between are as follows: level two: history is viewed as a preexisting puzzle where things fit together in a particular order like puzzle pieces and level three states that history is selective--we teach about who we want to teach about, certain events, as well as leave out certain people, places, events. This notion goes along with the collective memory notion of history or collective narrative where we have one narrative that we teach in the schools and leave out others. This is not doing history. Putting history into its proper context, viewing documents, analyzing sources--that is doing history.

As I continue to delve into these topics for my qualifying exam, this notion of doing history is part of one of my topics, I continue to think back to my high school and middle school experience in history. Did we "do history"? I don't think we did. We listened to lecture, took down notes, and spit back out information on tests. I can see why so many students hate history class.

As one of my undergrads said in her "My Life in Books" assignment this past week, she hates reading about history. It's boring to her. It's just a bunch of facts and nothing more. And from a textbook.  It's in the past. When I read her essay, I about cried.

This is what I think is the problem in so many of our schools. History is presented, in textbook form, to students as a survey course where they spend in grade 8 learning US history from the colonial period to the end of the Civil War and in grade 11 US history starting at reconstruction and going as far as they can into the present. It's skimmed over and viewed as "fact". These things happened, they happened this way, and we are telling you what really happened. Should we take the textbook for face value and not question it? I believe the answer is "NO" and that goes back to the notion of "doing history" versus sitting in a history classroom and partaking in facts. A teacher at a school I worked at covered from essentially the 1950s until 1980s in class using the song "We Didn't Start the Fire" see here .

Students need to learn that the view in the textbook is just that, an established view of a historian/textbook company and not the only view of what happened out there. Think about the Boston Massacre for example. The colonists have one view of what happened, the British another. But if we don't look at both views and interpret and draw our own conclusions of what could have happened, we might only teach one side of the story. I'm not saying though that all facts can be disputed. We know, for fact, that Kennedy was assassinated in Nov. 1963 and MLK, JR and Robert Kennedy in 1968. Those are facts that cannot be disputed. However, examining the documents regarding the assassinations of each of these men can lead to certain interpretations.

Any thoughts out there?

I think I've done enough rambling on for today. Although my rambles have me pumped for my studying for my exam.

As I end this post, I'll leave you with this...to make learning authentic, teachers must provide students the skills and resources necessary to create and interpret history.

Steph