Overview
This module will carry you through an introduction to historical narrative as an important literacy genre in history. The module will present some basic information about the genre, explain the importance of the genre in the study of history, present some research and pose some challenges associated with using this genre in history classrooms, provide some strategies that will help in teaching the genre to high school history students, and offer some “hands-on” examples of how these strategies might be employed in your own history classroom.
Historical Narrative in History
“A bit of romance, poetry, anecdote, or story will often throw more light upon a historical situation, or let you deeper into a man’s heart and life, than a page of careful analysis. The story of Alfred and the cakes, of Bruce and the spider, of Sidney and the cup of water, of Marion and the sweet potatoes, are not thoroughly characteristic, but they tell us more than a laborious description” (Hinsdale, 1893, p. 48).
“History in general is rich in story material, because persons, action, events, achievement, make up so much of history; and persons in action, participating in events and shaping achievement, appear as the controlling factors in every story” (Wayland, 1927, p. 128).
“The concrete historical experiences are not to be consciously memorized. They are to be lived. A mental residuum then grows up which is normal and healthy. If experiences are abundant and vivid, memories will be normally abundant” (Bobbitt, 1923).
Simply stated, historical narrative is the story surrounding a historical event. In most cases the people and places are true but the events are written as a story allowing personalities, emotion, interpretation, and even conjecture to enter into the telling. Two of the most common types of historical narrative are biography and autobiography. Historical fiction, both in print and on the screen, is also a type of historical narrative. As evidenced by the quotes above, history teachers rely on historical narratives because they bring history to life, giving seemingly dull happenings depth and feeling.
Importance of Historical Narrative in Teaching History
It is important to understand the differences in the two primary types of historical narratives – historical fiction and biography/autobiography. While the former certainly captures the imagination of the audience with sometimes honest and other times fanciful accounts of historical events, the latter illuminates for the reader the important nuances of learning history. Though there is great support for the use of historical fiction in the classroom (see http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/why-how-i-teach-historical-fiction and http://teachinghistory.org/issues-and-research/roundtable-response/25287) this module will focus on using biography and autobiography to teach history.
First, to classify historical narrative as simply story-telling is to trivialize a very important part of a historical whole. Bordwell and Thompson’s (1990) definition of narrative in film is a helpful way for the historian to view the complexities of using narrative to teach history as they argue, “Typically, a narrative begins with one situation; a series of changes occurs according to a pattern of cause an effect; finally, a new situation arises that brings about the end of the narrative” (p.90). Usually a narrative includes the elements of Kenneth Burke’s pentad: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose (1969). This foundation in dramatism allows the historian to attempt to arrive at a rationale for why people do the things they do in history by looking for motive in their actions and discourse. Furthermore, by using the elements of narrative, including causal conditions and story schema like dramatism, history teachers are able to better help students remember events/stories. Research has suggested that defined elements of narrative like Burke’s pentad have a “psychological reality” and if these schema and the essential components are present and in proper order, they remember the story better (Mandler, 1984). When these elements are not present, difficulty in processing and recollecting tend to follow.
Barton and Levstik (2004) believed narrative history to be significant enough to include three different approaches of narrative history among the six primary tools for learning history. They believed historical narrative provided a format for structuring historical information (p.11). They also believed that two specific types of narratives – (a) those focused on individual motivation and achievement and (b) those focused on the story of American progress – to be particularly important in teaching students to think of events at both a micro (individual) and macro (society) level. Of these three approaches, the use of historical narrative to focus on individual motivation and achievement is particularly compelling for the novice teacher. By using narratives of individual achievement and motivation through biography and autobiography, novice teachers can build upon “students’ prior experience in making sense of human behavior, motivate(s) them to learn about distant time periods and remote events, and alert(s) them to the role of human agency in historical developments” (p. 150). As Barton and Levstik noted, this latter point is of great significance because it allows history to make it to the personal level of the student by aiding them in seeing the influence that individuals have on the course of history. At a time when history teachers strive to make history relevant to students, historical narrative provides a conduit for building relevancy.
First, to classify historical narrative as simply story-telling is to trivialize a very important part of a historical whole. Bordwell and Thompson’s (1990) definition of narrative in film is a helpful way for the historian to view the complexities of using narrative to teach history as they argue, “Typically, a narrative begins with one situation; a series of changes occurs according to a pattern of cause an effect; finally, a new situation arises that brings about the end of the narrative” (p.90). Usually a narrative includes the elements of Kenneth Burke’s pentad: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose (1969). This foundation in dramatism allows the historian to attempt to arrive at a rationale for why people do the things they do in history by looking for motive in their actions and discourse. Furthermore, by using the elements of narrative, including causal conditions and story schema like dramatism, history teachers are able to better help students remember events/stories. Research has suggested that defined elements of narrative like Burke’s pentad have a “psychological reality” and if these schema and the essential components are present and in proper order, they remember the story better (Mandler, 1984). When these elements are not present, difficulty in processing and recollecting tend to follow.
Barton and Levstik (2004) believed narrative history to be significant enough to include three different approaches of narrative history among the six primary tools for learning history. They believed historical narrative provided a format for structuring historical information (p.11). They also believed that two specific types of narratives – (a) those focused on individual motivation and achievement and (b) those focused on the story of American progress – to be particularly important in teaching students to think of events at both a micro (individual) and macro (society) level. Of these three approaches, the use of historical narrative to focus on individual motivation and achievement is particularly compelling for the novice teacher. By using narratives of individual achievement and motivation through biography and autobiography, novice teachers can build upon “students’ prior experience in making sense of human behavior, motivate(s) them to learn about distant time periods and remote events, and alert(s) them to the role of human agency in historical developments” (p. 150). As Barton and Levstik noted, this latter point is of great significance because it allows history to make it to the personal level of the student by aiding them in seeing the influence that individuals have on the course of history. At a time when history teachers strive to make history relevant to students, historical narrative provides a conduit for building relevancy.