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.
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