Thread by @ls_gibson

A few thoughts about the recent article "Teaching History Is Hard: How to invite students to think for themselves" by Edward Ayers medium.com/new-american-h… that was also featured in the @washingtonpost washingtonpost.com/education/2020…

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As pointed out by @samwineburg in the opening chapter of Why Learn History amazon.ca/Learn-History-… anxiety in the US over students' lack of knowledge of US history (as revealed by national tests like the NAEP and its predecessors) has been ongoing for more than a century.

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The NAEP history test has been criticized by history educators for many reasons.

Shuttleworth and Patterson (2019) criticized the NAEP for using misleading achievement level terms, which led to negative cross-partisan media reports
tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Others including @samwineburg and @SHEG_Stanford researchers illustrate how claims by the NAEP that the US history test measures critical historical thinking & problem solving are inaccurate.
washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sh…

Although I don't agree that the NAEP US history test results are valid enough to necessitate an article about how to improve US #historyeducation, @edward_l_ayers' article raises important points about the aims & purposes of history education and how it might be improved.

There are many things @edward_l_ayers gets right in his article.

1. History teaching is hard. As Alan Sears always says, "history teaching isn't rocket science, it's much harder." Making history meaningful and engaging for students is complicated work.

2. Great progress has been made.
History teachers have found ways ways to inspire their students despite significant obstacles. There has been decades of research in teaching and learning history that has shaped how history is taught and learned.

Different organizations have generated 1000s of digitized primary sources for students to examine and analyze. Document-based approaches have shaped Advanced Placement courses, school curricula, the Common Core, and @NCSSNetwork policies.

Despite this progress, @edward_l_ayers rightly identifies several factors that explain why students don't know US history.

1. History is taught less and less & has been squeezed out by literacy and numeracy.

2. History is taught in elementary schools as "non-fiction."

3. Teacher are too busy and have many other responsibilities, and as a result, history teachers "cover" the required material by lecturing from the textbook to note-taking students. History is still taught this way in the majority of schools as it has been for generations.

4. The gap between academic history and school history has widened in terms of the inclusion of previously excluded subjects of study and methods. Little of this exciting research is reaching K-12 students.

5. Students are taught that historians challenge and revise each other's interpretations because of hidden opinions and biases, not because they have learned new things from evidence or revisited familiar evidence with new questions.

6. Most students see history as the fixed and final end product of historical inquiry as presented in textbooks state curricula, and exams, and as a result think it is boring and useless.

7. Atomizing history into a "bounded field of knowledge" that is "conveyed in stages and steps," "rules or predictable patterns," and "segmented into separate elements" is impossible "without making it die."

I think @edward_l_ayers misses some key issues that explain the current state of US history education.

@lindstorian asked "why Ayers ignored the main reason #historyed looks the way it does: a continuous obsession with instilling patriotism through US history curriculum.

He also did not highlight the lack of qualified history teachers, low teacher pay, the lack of public school funding, narrow history curricula that excludes numerous minorities and does not represent the many students, poor quality teacher training, standardized exams, etc....

Despite these challenges, Ayers discusses several reasons to be optimistic about the future of US history education.

1. Students care deeply about history: their ethnic, gender, & national identities, inequality and injustice in the past & present, etc...

2. Although "dulled and anesthetized in school, history proliferates in popular film and streaming series, memes, in video games, television parodies, Broadway shows, & museums. Ayers says, "Young people love history, just not history as it is forced upon them."

Ayers' solution is to get students to engage with "the unruly history that animates American culture today," the online sources written to engage readers that is presented online by websites like Bunk.
bunkhistory.org

Rather than teaching students to think like historians, Ayers argues that students need to "think for themselves," to think like people who confront history every day in their lives. To understand that historical claims come in many forms from the left, center, and right.

Ayers believes that websites like Bunk help students see why history matters, how it is used every day, & how it takes many forms. It represents the full cast of people who have lived in what is now the United States and embraces students of all backgrounds.

Bunk reveals the force of history in current events, and rests on the simple assumption that students will engage with what interests them and that when they do, they will learn what history is and why it matters.

Here are my overall conclusions:

1. I wish @edward_l_ayers had not used the @NAEP_NCES US History results to frame his article. The kind of historical education he is advocating for is not measured by the test as it currently stands.

2. Ayers draws a false binary between "thinking like a historian" and "thinking for themselves."

#historicalthinking concepts like context, contingency, cause, change, and consequence (amongst others) are essential for helping students make sense of history in all its forms

The goal is not to have students emulate or replicate historians, but to think "like" historians, to use disciplinary tools and methods to make sense of the multiple "uses of the past" and historical narratives they confront in their daily lives.

HT concepts can be used to frame inquiries into the past.
Is this event or person historically significant?
How do we know what we know about the past?
Which interpretation is most plausible?
What caused this event and what are its consequences?

How do we understand different beliefs, attitudes, values, and actions in the past that are often different than today?
How do we respond in the present to injustices in the past?

An important issue that needs to be overcome is how to bridge the gap between academic historians and school history teachers. @chriscmartell, @HSGlobalHistory, and others have done great work in this area, but a more systematic approach is needed.

Also, this gap is not a one-way street where historians inform history teachers how to teach better. It is a collaborative project in which historians stand to learn a great deal from teachers about planning, teaching, and assessment.

3. Ayers assumes that if students engage in what interests them, they will learn what history is and why it matters.

Students need to be provided a choice in pursuing topics of interest, but without support it's less likely they will develop a deeper understanding of history.

As Ayers acknowledges (and @samwineburg argue) historical thinking might be an unnatural act, and if that is the case, leaving students to their own devices to make sense of the past seems problematic.

4. Bunk's a great website & a tremendous resource for teaching #ushist, but if we've learned anything from the history of #edtech it's that technology is a tool that can be used effectively or ineffectively by teachers, but it will not deepen historical understanding on its own.

The kind of history education that @edward_l_ayers is arguing for is similar to a #historicalconsciousness theoretical approach that emerged in German history education. Check out @An_Koer's work as part of the FUER project.

. @ArthurJChapman, @trionacheile, @cpeck3, & I have been meeting about organizing an online series where int'l scholars present different purposes/aims for teaching history We look forward to sharing more details soon.

Ok that's enough for now.

I have more ideas about core principles for a redesigned history curriculum, but I'll save these for another time.