Our Approach to History

I: IGL: Inquiry-Guided Learning/Constructivism

Our approach to this class is "inquiry-guided learning" (IGL) [which] "refers to an array of teaching practices that promote student learning through guided and, increasingly, independent investigation of questions and problems for which there is no single answer. Rather than teaching the results of others' investigations, which students learn passively, instructors assist students in mastering and learning through the process of active investigation itself. This process involves the ability to formulate good questions, identify and collect appropriate evidence, present results systematically, analyze and interpret results, formulate conclusions, and evaluate the worth and importance of those conclusions. It may also involve the ability to identify problems, examine problems, generate possible solutions, and select the best solution with appropriate justification. This process will differ somewhat among different academic disciplines." Source of definition: NC State Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning and Hewlett Steering Committee September 2000. IGL is related to the concept of "uncoverage" discussed below.

Our approach also emphasizes active learning which "provides opportunities for students to talk and listen, read, write, and reflect as they approach course content through problem-solving exercises, informal small groups, simulations, case studies, role playing, and other activities--all of which require students to apply what they are learning." [Source: Chet Meyers and Thomas B. Jones, Promoting Active Learning: Strategies for the College Classroom [Jossey-Bass, 1993, p. xi).

If you are taking a classroom course (rather than Internet-based), some of your work may also be collaborative, that is, a group of students will join together to conduct original research. For such projects you will use software called wikis to jointly research, write, and publish your information. The extensive research on collaborative learning shows overwhelmingly positive outcomes, and, I think, you'll enjoy it more than working as the "Lone Ranger." Wikis also facilitate the constructivist approach to learning history, described below.

Why use mostly discussion rather than lecture? Read 15 benefits of discussion and this 1989 report for a full explanation, but, in a nutshell, long-term retention and significant comprehension of information delivered by lectures remain poor. Active learning approaches improve understanding and retention of important information. Countless educational studies have illustrated this problem. Furthermore, an IGL approach facilitates higher levels of critical thinking, as measured through the useful Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Levels. Our goal is for you to function as an intellectual inquirer" rather than a "partisan ideologue." Put another way, we want you to evaluate and analyze evidence, not respond to new information with simplistic, knee-jerk opinion.

Here are two sites with more detailed discussions of IGL: A more detailed look at Inquiry-based Learning and The Inquiry Page at UIUC.

The table below shows where IGL fits into other pedagogical approaches. Notice that IGL steers a middle ground, by involving in equal portions students and the instructor in most of the course activities. The instructor selects topics, questions, and materials (the "guide" part of IGL). Students then construct an understanding of the subject and inductively draw their own conclusions (the "inquiry"). All form part of a learning community.

Varieties of Inquiry Approaches

Who generates the...	Traditional Lecture	Structured	Inquiry-Guided	Student-Directed	Independent Research
Topic	Teacher	Teacher	Teacher	Teacher	Teacher/Student
Question	Teacher	Teacher	Teacher	Teacher/Student	Student
Materials	Teacher	Teacher	Teacher	Student	Student
Procedures/ Design	Teacher	Teacher	Teacher/Student	Student	Student
Results/ Analysis	Teacher	Teacher/Student	Student	Student	Student
Conclusions	Teacher	Student	Student	Student	Student

Source: Adapted from Ronald Bonnstetter, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, "Inquiry: Learning from the Past with an Eye on the Future," in Electronic Journal of Science Education, V3 no.1 (September 1998). See the above article for explanations and examples of the various types of inquiry.

The following table contrasts a traditional, teacher-centered, lecture approach with a constructivist approach. Notice how the constructivist approach shifts much more of the focus, action, and responsibility for learning to the student.

TRADITIONAL PEDAGOGY	CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH
Curriculum is presented part to whole, with emphasis on basic skills	Curriculum is presented whole to part with emphasis on big concepts and questions
Strict adherence to fixed curriculum is highly valued	Pursuits of students' questions is highly valued
Curricular activities rely heavily on textbooks and workbooks	Curricular activities rely heavily on primary sources of data and manipulative materials
Students are viewed as "blank slates" onto which the teacher etches information	Students are viewed as thinkers with emerging theories about the world
Teacher generally behaves in a didactic manner, disseminating authoritative information to students	Teachers generally behave in an interactive manner, facilitating discussions and mediating the environment
Teachers seek the correct answer to validate student learning	Teachers seek students' points of view and understandings  in order to develop subsequent lessons and questions
Assessment of student learning is separate from teaching and occurs almost entirely through “objective” testing	Assessment is interwoven with and reinforces teaching; it  occurs through direct observations and multiple, varied assignments, oral and written
Students primarily work alone	Students often work and interact in various groups

 

Adapted from John Samsel and Darryl Wimberley, Writing for Interactive Media: The Complete Guide, p. 244.Fig. 17.8. Excerpted from "Teaching, Learning, and Reform in the Twenty-First Century Class­room Tech Forum: Year 2000-2003" by Mark E. Gabehart, directory of technology, curriculum, and training for Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, Region 20, Education Service Center, April 21, 1997.

Let's take one more shot at the differences. "Traditional curricula in most countries have emphasized a delivery of content approach. Knowledge is assumed to exist, or be encoded within texts. The role of the teacher is to manage the delivery of this knowledge and the role of the learner is to absorb as much as possible. . . . Whether such a pre-set curriculum and approach to learning were ever fully adequate is debatable. But in today's rapidly-changing world it is clear that they are not. Students today need to learn much more than the knowledge written in a textbook. Instead they need to be able to examine complex situations and define solvable problems within them. They need to work with multiple sources and media, not just the single textbook. They need to become active learners, and to collaborate and understand the perspectives of others. [The following summarizes the key differences; old on the left, new on the right.]

• Solve problems vs ask, formulate, find new problems
• Remember the textbook vs Investigate using multiple sources/media
• Follow directions vs create, engage actively in learning
• Work alone vs discuss, analyze, and collaborate; evaluate diverse views
• "Cover" the curriculum vs reflect, evaluate, Learn how to learn

[preceding from "Using the Web to Support Inquiry-Based Language Learning" by Bertram C. Bruce and Ann P. Bishop]

OK, enough general theory. What does IGL have to do with this specific history course? You will learn about history by doing what professional historians do. You might think of this course as a "workshop." You will analyze a variety of primary sources (historical documents), interpret their meanings, and construct an explanation of the past based on this empirical evidence. The raw material for our inquiry is a variety of primary sources--firsthand accounts written by those who made history. Ours is an inductive approach—-we build an understanding of the past beginning with individual, often fragmented pieces of evidence. It is also a constructivist approach. That is, YOU actively participate in constructing an interpretation of the past, instead of passively accepting and repeating the prepackaged views of previous experts. The "guided" part has two elements. One is that I have selected most of the documents that you will analyze. In the real world of historical work, you would research and uncover your own sources. Second, I guide your inquiry through the use of leading "thought questions" and role playing assignments. You will also check your interpretations against those of other scholars (secondary sources). Read this brief discussion on the differences between primary and secondary sources.

Through thinking, writing, and discussing history, you will learn to construct historical arguments and analyses, rather than merely "consuming" the views developed by others. We'll take historical inquiry out of the black box and make you an active member in the challenging but rewarding task of analyzing events of the past. For further explanation, review your What is History? Page. This approach often requires that you synthesize (combine many different sources of information into a logical whole). To assist you in this task, you may wish to use this Synthesis Matrix.

I concur with the approach recommended by an excellent historian, James Axtell, of the College of William and Mary. He described his role as a teacher and historian this way:

[I have] three working assumptions. The first is that I should treat my students as fledgling historians who must make their own narratives, interpretations, and judgments, rather than as "students" whose immaturity warrants only paternalistic or authoritarian treatment. The second is that I should put into their hands at the earliest and every subsequent opportunity the widest possible range of primary sources left by history's actors and encourage them to do their own historical thinking. And, third, the best, most enjoyable way to develop their historical thinking is to have them produce histories, normally in written (and often illustrated) essays but potentially in film, poetry, or other expressive media.

Our job and the fun have only begun when we start to disabuse our students of the notion that they already know the past through stereotypes and personal identifications. For our task is not only to "alienate the familiar" but to "familiarize the alien," to introduce our classes to the strangers and fellow travelers who once inhabited the worlds we have largely lost. And in meeting both these challenges we are provided with manifold sources of pleasure. Perhaps the most pervasive pleasure we historians enjoy is that we get to call into daily play our imaginations. This cannot be said for all other intellectual disciplines, at least not to the same extent. For in their positive mode, historians have a difficult, twofold job that draws upon the imagination with an urgent frequency that perhaps only anthropologists, novelists, and teachers of foreign languages would recognize. First, we must plunge into the dark recesses of the past, armed with relatively few and weak sources of light, in order to meet and to understand its peoples, societies, and cultures on, and in, their own, alien, terms. Then, after immersion in that ambient strangeness, we must emerge and translate our understanding into modern, though still faithful, terms that our students and readers can comprehend and appreciate.

[Source: "The Pleasures of Teaching History," The History Teacher, Volume 34 Number 4, August 2001]

II. "Uncoverage" and the Essential Facets of Understanding

As far as course objectives and approach, I take as my learning goals for you the six facets explained below. These concepts come from G. Wiggins and J. McTighe, Understanding by Design (1998, pp. 98-106). They form part of an approach to teaching called “uncoverage.” As opposed to trying to “cover” tons of preassigned facts and material, they suggest instead “uncovering” the subtleties, nuances, and interpretations behind the data, “inquiring into, around, and underneath content instead of simply covering it.” “Beyond learning about a subject, student will need lessons that enable them to experience directly the inquiries, arguments, applications, and points of view underneath the facts and opinions they learn if they are to understand them. Students have to do the subject, not just learn its results. . . Students need to experience what scholars know if they are to understand their work: how key facts and principles are the revealed and powerful fruit of pondering, testing, shaping, and rethinking of experience. ” For a history course, this means that you should get your hands “dirty.” Instead of merely memorizing and regurgitating textbook explanations of the past, you will read a variety of the primary sources from which historians build their understandings of the past. You will create your own historical interpretations, directly from the evidence. You will also contextualize your own work by comparing your findings with those of established scholars and thus be able to refine and improve your work as a historian over time. "Uncoverage embraces six facets of understanding. Read about them here.

III: Learning, Thinking, and Critical Thinking

Some students are satisfied to take a course at face value and to perform the tasks required. Other students wish to know more about the "why" of a course. Why do we do what we do? What value is it to you?

1. Education, as opposed to mere vocational training, develops skills, knowledge, and values. These goals interact directly in several respects: (1) research and communication skills are essential to create, discover, and share knowledge; (2) computing and online skills are essential to transform information and experience into understanding; (3) as knowledge and skills improve, they both contribute to understanding and integrating core values that will direct your life. Priorities and choices arise from values--reasons why and how things are done. Bringing values into a context of intellectual inquiry helps us to comprehend better the meanings, consequences, and worth of these matters in our lives and to build our own coherent value systems.
2. OK, how do we all fit into this grand scheme? Together we all constitute a learning community. We each bring different Experiences, Learning Styles, Interests, Ideas, Goals, Commitment, and Information Resources to the course. Together we engage in a process of discovery and problem-solving. Under old pedagogical assumptions, faculty transmitted Knowledge ("WISDOM") to students. In our learning community, Knowledge is jointly constructed by students and faculty. Interaction rules. Instead of playing the role of passive learners or empty vessels, you are are active learners and intellectual partners.
3. As members of a learning community, you accept responsibility for your own learning and for helping to teach others. You will often collaborate with one another. Thus, rather than an instructor, syllabus, content centered-course, I've tried to make this one Student, learning, and process centered.
4. Most of your assignments require active thinking, not mere memorization and recall. "Thinking is the activity of understanding, processing, and communicating information for the purposes of solving problems, understanding experiences, and producing ideas. . . . The type of thinking involved in talking with others, or in writing academic assignments, poetry, or letters makes uses of language. This type of thinking is called verbal thinking" (Jon Stratton, Critical Thinking for College Students, 1999, p. 5). In studying history, we also employ other cognitive skills, notably logical thinking "that seeks and identifies 'fallacies,' specific errors that signal violation of the rules of reason," spatial thinking (as in reading maps or visiting historic sites), and intuitive thinking, "the immediate separation of important aspects of experience from the unimportant." Less frequently, we might employ kinesthetic thinking ("involved with physical movement that is used in athletics and other activities,") scientific, or mathematical thinking (Stratton, pp. 5-10).
5. To revise and refine many of your assignments, you will also hone your Critical Thinking Skills . Experts vary a bit on what constitutes critical thinking, but you'll find some key issues discussed below. As Jon Stratton has written,

   "critical thinking is a particular type of thinking that makes use of other types of thinking to review, evaluate, and revise the way ideas have been understood, processed, and communicated. Critical thinking is the type of thinking we do when we need to correct mistakes, whether they are our own or those of others. (Making mistakes is an unavoidable part of life; the only way to never make a mistake is to stop living!) Critical thinking is the sort of thinking we do when we need to improve the way things are being done and solve problems. Usually, it is verbal thinking and logical thinking that most successfully accomplishes these improvements (Critical Thinking for College Students, 1999, p. 13).

   Using your History Essay Rubric to revise your writing is an example of critical thinking. Checking the validity of one historical document against others and then formulating a logical explanation of past events is another example of critical thinking.
6. Critical Thinking is not
   • the mere acquisition and retention of information alone
   • the mere possession of a set of skills
   • the mere use of those skills (as a plug and chug exercise)
   • about training seals -- but about encouraging creative thinking.
7. Critical thinking is an intellectually disciplined process in which you actively and skillfully
   • find and evaluate evidence [locate data; determine whether it is reliable and valid]
   • conceptualize [put data together with ideas so that it all makes sense]
   • analyze [think critically about the concepts and data; break it all into meaningful pieces]
   • synthesize [shape the pieces into a logical, consistent whole]
   • apply your analysis and interpretation as a guide to belief and action.
8. Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: a set of skills to process and generate information and beliefs, and the practice or habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior.
9. And, of course, a vital part of critical thinking is logical thinking, avoiding logical fallacies. You may examine the varieties of these fallacies at
   • The European Society for General Semantics Fallacies Page
   • Stephen Downes Guide to the Logical Fallacies
   • LEO: Literacy Education Online List of Logical Fallacies
10. OK, enough metacognitives. On to the real stuff of history. However, I hope that by considering "why" I'm asking you to do these tasks, you'll appreciate and excel at doing them. For more information on this approach to learning and pedagogy, check out my Links for Learners and Teachers Page. You'll find further discussions of Critical Thinking, Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Levels. You should also aspire to reach level four of William G. Perry's Model of Cognitive Development, The more you know about your own learning and the expectations and assumptions of a course, the better you'll do. To explore your particular learning strengths and issues, see The Neurodevelopmental Systems, a discussion by Dr. Mel Levine. On learning issues and the "myth of laziness," you'll find more resources at Dr. Levine's All Kinds of Minds website. Finally, visit my Learning Issues and Differences page for some thoughts on maximizing your chances for success in college.

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