Teaching Historical Thinking

Authors Peter Seixas and Tom Morton provide a guide to bring powerful understandings of these six historical thinking concepts into the classroom through teaching strategies and model activities. Table of Contents Historical Significance Evidence Continuity and Change Cause and Consequence Historical Perspectives The Ethical Dimension The accompanying DVD-ROM includes: Modifiable Blackline Masters All graphics, photographs, and illustrations from the text Additional teaching support Order Information: All International Based Customers (School, University and Consumer): All US based customers please contact [email protected] All International customers (exception US and Asia) please contact Nelson.international@ne lson.com

Becoming a History Teacher is a collection of thoughtful essays by history teachers, historians, and teacher educators on how to prepare student teachers to think historically and to teach historical thinking.

Effective Australian history education has never been more important for the development of critically aware and thoughtful young people. History fosters important skills in reasoning, historical consciousness and empathy; and an appreciation of history is crucial to the development of students' understanding of the very nature of our society. This edited collection comprises contributions from leading historians, educators and practising teachers, and surveys Australian history teaching today, from the development of the national curriculum to fostering historical thinking and promoting effective engagement in the history classroom. The book begins with an analysis of the principles underlying the drafting of the national curriculum and features insights from the writers of the curriculum themselves. It focuses on the curriculum from primary- and secondary-school teaching perspectives. Part 2 examines the teaching of historical expertise including historical thinking and value formation, as well as productive assessment and the important role social history can play in the classroom. Part 3 concentrates on specific approaches to history teaching including teacher talk; the use of historical fiction and film; digital technology and the internet; as well as museums as a teaching medium. Part 4 analyses key aspects of Australian history teaching including Indigenous perspectives, teaching citizenship and assisting the pre-service teacher in their transition to becoming a professional. Rich with insights into historical skills, historical concepts and critical thinking, as well as practical guidance on translating principles into engaging classroom approaches, this is an essential reference for both pre-service and in-service history teachers and educators.

Although the Common Core and C3 Framework highlight literacy and inquiry as central goals for social studies, they do not offer guidelines, assessments, or curriculum resources. This practical guide presents six research-tested historical investigations along with all corresponding teaching materials and tools that have improved the historical thinking and argumentative writing of academically diverse students. Each investigation integrates reading, analysis, planning, composing, and reflection into a writing process that results in an argumentative history essay. Primary sources have been modified to allow struggling readers access to the material. Web links to original unmodified primary sources are also provided, along with other sources to extend investigations. The authors include sample student essays from each investigation to illustrate the progress of two different learners and explain how to support students’ development. Each chapter includes these helpful sections: Historical Background, Literacy Practices Students Will Learn, How to Teach This Investigation, How Might Students Respond?, Student Writing and Teacher Feedback, Lesson Plans and Materials. Book Features: Integrates literacy and inquiry with core U.S. history topics. Emphasizes argumentative writing, a key requirement of the Common Core. Offers explicit guidance for instruction with classroom-ready materials. Provides primary sources for differentiated instruction. Explains a curriculum appropriate for students who struggle with reading, as well as more advanced readers. Models how to transition over time from more explicit instruction to teacher coaching and greater student independence. “The tools this book provides—from graphic organizers, to lesson plans, to the accompanying documents—demystify the writing process and offer a sequenced path toward attaining proficiency.” —From the Foreword by Sam Wineburg, co-author of Reading Like a Historian “Assuming literate practice to be at the core of history learning and historical practice, the authors provide actual units of history instruction that can be immediately applied to classroom teaching. These units make visible how a cognitive apprenticeship approach enhances history and historical literacy learning and ensure a supported transition to teaching history in accordance with Common Core State Standards.” —Elizabeth Moje, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, School of Education, University of Michigan “The C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards and the Common Core State Standards challenge students to investigate complex ideas, think critically, and apply knowledge in real world settings. This extraordinary book provides tried-and-true practical tools and step-by-step directions for social studies to meet these goals and prepare students for college, career, and civic life in the 21st century.” —Michelle M. Herczog, president, National Council for the Social Studies

A look at how to teach history in the age of easily accessible—but not always reliable—information. Let’s start with two truths about our era that are so inescapable as to have become clichés: We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percent of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-meaning but ignorant. Some of it is deliberately deceptive. All of it is pernicious. With the Internet at our fingertips, what’s a teacher of history to do? In Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone), professor Sam Wineburg has the answers, beginning with this: We can’t stick to the same old read-the-chapter-answer-the-question snoozefest. If we want to educate citizens who can separate fact from fake, we have to equip them with new tools. Historical thinking, Wineburg shows, has nothing to do with the ability to memorize facts. Instead, it’s an orientation to the world that cultivates reasoned skepticism and counters our tendency to confirm our biases. Wineburg lays out a mine-filled landscape, but one that with care, attention, and awareness, we can learn to navigate. The future of the past may rest on our screens. But its fate rests in our hands. Praise for Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) “If every K-12 teacher of history and social studies read just three chapters of this book—”Crazy for History,” “Changing History . . . One Classroom at a Time,” and “Why Google Can’t Save Us” —the ensuing transformation of our populace would save our democracy.” —James W. Lowen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Teaching What Really Happened “A sobering and urgent report from the leading expert on how American history is taught in the nation’s schools. . . . A bracing, edifying, and vital book.” —Jill Lepore, New Yorker staff writer and author of These Truths “Wineburg is a true innovator who has thought more deeply about the relevance of history to the Internet—and vice versa—than any other scholar I know. Anyone interested in the uses and abuses of history today has a duty to read this book.” —Niall Ferguson, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, and author of The Ascent of Money and Civilization

New technologies have radically transformed our relationship to information in general and to little bits of information in particular. The assessment of history learning, which for a century has valued those little bits as the centerpiece of its practice, now faces not only an unprecedented glut but a disconnect with what is valued in history education. More complex processes—historical thinking, historical consciousness or historical sense making—demand more complex assessments. At the same time, advances in scholarship on assessment open up new possibilities. For this volume, Kadriye Ercikan and Peter Seixas have assembled an international array of experts who have, collectively, moved the fields of history education and assessment forward. Their various approaches negotiate the sometimes-conflicting demands of theoretical sophistication, empirically demonstrated validity and practical efficiency. Key issues include articulating the cognitive goals of history education, the relationship between content and procedural knowledge, the impact of students’ language literacy on history assessments, and methods of validation in both large scale and classroom assessments. New Directions in Assessing Historical Thinking is a critical, research-oriented resource that will advance the conceptualization, design and validation of the next generation of history assessments.