Teaching using historiography
While teaching US History in Pitt County Schools from 1998-2006, I struggled with how to cover the vast amount of material required by the state standards (at that time called the NC Standard Course of Study). Exacerbating the problem was the fact that the course had attached to it a high stakes end-of-course assessment that required not only depth of material covered, but also breadth. I had to be sure that my students had been exposed to, were knowledgeable of, and understood the ebb and flow of American history from colonization to present day. When the district shifted to a 4X4 block schedule, this meant that the material had to be learned in a 90 day semester and my difficulties in assuring comprehensive and substantive coverage were multiplied. I, like many of my colleagues, found myself struggling to assure that the most recent years of history (the years typically taught at the end of the term) were merely covered, much less covered with any depth of understanding.
In 2003-2004, as part of a Teaching American History Grant, I attended a workshop conducted by ECU history professor Dr. John Tilley in which Dr. Tilley shared with us an engaging approach to addressing history. In his workshop, Dr. Tilley advocated for the use of an historiographical analysis of historical films to excite and engage students. I was rejuvenated by the workshop and, coupled with my own recent experience with historiography as a history education graduate student, began to see a solution to my content coverage dilemma. Questions like, "If we must look to and understand the historian's own time in reading the history they have written of another time, can we then use that history to teach two time periods simultaneously?" Said more specifically and as an example, I can have my students study works on antebellum slavery where they learn of the history of the "peculiar institution," and by using historiography I can have them also, at the same time, study the time periods in which the works were written. John Blassingame's The Slave Community is as much about the 1960s as it is the 1850s and 1860s when we look at it historiographically. These pragmatic benefits of economic use of time are in addition to the intellectual benefits of using historiography.
My challenge, then, was to create a way to conduct historiographical analysis that was accessible to high school students of all ability levels. In my approach I identified three things I, personally, wanted to accomplish:
In 2003-2004, as part of a Teaching American History Grant, I attended a workshop conducted by ECU history professor Dr. John Tilley in which Dr. Tilley shared with us an engaging approach to addressing history. In his workshop, Dr. Tilley advocated for the use of an historiographical analysis of historical films to excite and engage students. I was rejuvenated by the workshop and, coupled with my own recent experience with historiography as a history education graduate student, began to see a solution to my content coverage dilemma. Questions like, "If we must look to and understand the historian's own time in reading the history they have written of another time, can we then use that history to teach two time periods simultaneously?" Said more specifically and as an example, I can have my students study works on antebellum slavery where they learn of the history of the "peculiar institution," and by using historiography I can have them also, at the same time, study the time periods in which the works were written. John Blassingame's The Slave Community is as much about the 1960s as it is the 1850s and 1860s when we look at it historiographically. These pragmatic benefits of economic use of time are in addition to the intellectual benefits of using historiography.
My challenge, then, was to create a way to conduct historiographical analysis that was accessible to high school students of all ability levels. In my approach I identified three things I, personally, wanted to accomplish:
- I wanted to use historical works of academic significance when possible - real works of academic history. This meant that I would need to use excerpts from texts at times rather than complete historical works to assure the texts were readable for my students.
- I wanted to use the discussions as outlets to talk about multiple decades or time periods simultaneously. My goal was to "pre-teach" the decades of the 20th century while I was teaching decades in the 19th century. I tried to accomplish this by selecting works that spanned decades - one text from the 1930s, another from the 1950s, and yet another from the 1970s, etc.
- I wanted to use the texts and historiographical topics to substantively address marginalized groups in history. I wanted to use this as a way to add depth to the understanding of the role and experiences of Native Americans, for instance, and to generate some discourse about how they have not only been treated historically but how history has treated them.
The steps of historiography for high school students
- Step 1 - Identify multiple historical texts (monographs, biographies, etc.) or resources (films, children's books, etc.) written/produced in different decades about your topic or theme.
- Step 2 - Have the students read the texts or view the resource, looking for language bias and critically evaluating the source (see the OUT strategy shared here for a strategy that can be used to do this).
- Step 3 - Have the students summarize the manner in which the historian describes or treats the subject in each work. Did the historian view the subject favorably or unfavorably? What bias is evident in the work?
- Step 4 - Have students analyze each work – what does the treatment of the subject say about the time in which it was written? Ask questions like, “What factors existed during the time period in which this was written that would limit/skew historian perspectives of this subject?” Here is where you study the social/political conditions of the 1950s in order to understand why a given historian wrote what he did about Native Americans encountered during the Lewis & Clark expedition. You might find at this step that you are actually conducting a short lecturette on the 1950s and the social or political conditions of that period that may have informed the author's perspective on the subject.
- Step 5 - Have students evaluate the accuracy of the claims made by the historian. Here is where you have students answer the question, “Which one (if any) of the interpretations offered by historians is accurate?”
- Step 6 (optional) - Have students write about their thoughts on steps 3-5 above.
For an example of an historiographical assignment using the above process click here. For an additional idea on how to teach historiography to high school students see this article by Caroline Hoefferle.