How are kids taught history? Still in shock.
As part of a postgraduate qualification in Primary Teaching I had the privilege of studying how to teach the humanities and social sciences. As a BA graduate, I was thrilled.
I soon discovered, however, that inquiry-based, constructivist pedagogies were touted by the lecturer as the only acceptable approach to teaching this learning area.
Given the research into the limits of constructivist approaches (especially for novices), this was disheartening…
Not only was the inquiry approach considered the default, it was also touted as “modern”. This is despite its origins in mid 20th century theorists like Piaget and Vygotsky — whose popularity is education faculties is unsurpassed, but not without critics in cognitive science.
At only a few weeks in, my fellow teacher candidates were responding to a question about why the inquiry approach is superior to “didactic” approaches. While in many responses, my colleagues acknowledged the utility of didactic approaches to explain things well, our required readings ignored the fact that other pedagogies even exist for history teaching. Thus, as diligent future teachers, we were encouraged to adopt an essentially constructivist philosophy.
While this may seem unimportant, I work with students who have felt the sting of ineffective, and unresponsive teaching throughout school. Combining these ineffective approaches with personal hardship, learning difficulties, and unforgiving disciplinary policies, my current students ended up excluded from education as early as Year 6, and in and out of the youth justice system by age 15 or younger.
I wanted to add some science to the debate, so I offered the response below. And I wondered if my message would get through…
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Controversies in History Teaching
It has been fantastic to read everyone's responses, and there have been some really great themes coming through. Having read the readings just now, they are fresh in my mind, and they echo the sentiment shared by others that the dominant and presumably "modern" approach to teaching history is the inquiry constructivist approach. I wonder if it'd be helpful in this discussion to consider the evidence for what works best when teaching new content and knowledge... Does anyone have any readings on the inquiry method of teaching history that looks at the empirical research?? I couldn’t find any.
There is an incredibly interesting book out called "the Knowledge gap" (see podcast for free here, where the author is discussing it) which shows how important content knowledge is for students' learning (including historical knowledge). It demonstrates that when comprehension strategies, and inquiry skills are made the focus of our teaching (with content being the background), many students (especially those with learning differences or disadvantaged backgrounds) tend to learn less from these experiences. This is something worth discussing further together, as it's a massive debate, but important for our discussion.
Regarding didactic methods. I thought it was important to note that this term has many negative connotations, and makes most people think back to the stereotypical 1950s dry, boring, and often irrelevant lecturing of students.
So it doesn't sound great!
However, what we have really been talking about is well-structured, engaging, and clear introductions and explanations of content that build from parts to wholes, and help fill in the gaps in students' knowledge.
A better term we could use here is an approach like Explicit Direct Instruction. Far from being a lecture, this approach involves teaching first, then checking for understanding every three minutes of content that you teach. This is through questioning, pair sharing, writing responses on whiteboards, and the teacher calling on responses. In addition to explanation and guided practice, it uses storytelling, and shared text analysis.
It is incredibly engaging, and built around ensuring every student understands, and can apply skills when they start their independent and group work. In these lessons, at every 3 minute point, when the class hasn't grasped it: You reteach!
These strategies are supported by empirical research, but they are quite a different approach to most history classrooms in the English-speaking world. Nonetheless, I personally cannot wait to try out these strategies in my classroom.
While I agree with everyone that inquiry approaches have incredible merit for developing historical understanding and skills (including critical literacy) in our students, what the cognitive science reveals is that if students know little (or nothing) about the topic/content, then inquiry approaches can set them up to fail
This is unless you provide a good introduction and sufficient guided practice. Crucially, this knowledge gap most likely affects children with learning differences, or those who come from families who don't have the time and resources to invest in museum/gallery/overseas/interstate/aquarium visits, and rich literature in the home....
Seems like a pretty big social equity issue to me!
I'd be keen to hear what everyone thinks of this, and whether I'm making sense?
Thanks all!
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Having unloaded, my attention turned to how to get through the assignments.
— They, of course, required an adoption of inquiry-based learning as a starting point. [sigh]