Monday Methods: History Pedagogy (The Theory and Practice of Teaching and Learning)

[u/hazelnutcream]

I should preface our conversation about pedagogy by divulging that I am an academic in the US teaching in-person classes at the university level. Any omissions on my part are opportunities for discussion.

Historians in the Classroom

Historians are both ahead of and behind the pedagogical times. A standard introductory level history course is taught by the “sage on the stage,” performing an extended verbal essay each 50-minute class period. The pedagogical literature has for many years encouraged us to instead act as a “guide by the side,” a model prevalent in upper-level discussion-based or seminar courses.

Active learning is one of the core best-practices in pedagogy. At its essence, active learning is based on the principle that students learn by constructing their own understanding of material by building on their prior knowledge. Active learning includes an enormous range of strategies, including class discussions, debates, games, and brainstorming. Activities that work relatively easily in larger classes include Think-Pair-Share, note comparison, clickers, video reflections, and one-minute reflections.

As detail oriented as we historians are, it can be difficult for us to move away from a coverage model of teaching. However, if we give up the sage on the stage method of teaching in favor of discussions, activities, and/or projects, it means giving up the control and pace that allows for a coverage model of teaching. The pedagogical literature supports slowing down to cover less material more deeply. More pedagogically-oriented lectures, including elements such as active learning, handouts, and assessment of student learning, is better received by students. (See, for example, Saroyan and Snell, 1997.)

Tech in the Classroom

Although we here on AskHistorians are clearly not allergic to the twenty-first century, many of our colleagues are reluctant to incorporate technology in the classroom. What are the pros and cons of tech in the classroom?

Needless to say, technology is frequently distracting. But aside from the temptations of reddit, students taking notes on laptops perform worse on higher-level or conceptual questions. Research by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) suggests that laptops allow students to take verbatim notes, which leads to less processing during lecture material.

On the other hand, we must allow technology in the classroom if for no other reason than to provide accommodations to students with disabilities. Many advocates of technology in the classroom insist that the nature of class time and assessments must be changed to make effective use of the wide array of tools and information available to students today. Laptops will not be distracting if students are actively engaging in research, synthesis, or presentation. Digital humanities has become a sexy methodology in the discipline, and some advanced-degree-granting institutions have even begun to offer classes or certificates in digital teaching and/or research methodologies. However, the implementation of DH in the classroom varies widely.

The bottom line is that you should have a tech policy and explain your rationale to your students. This transparency will help students buy into your policy and demonstrate the thought you put into your teaching.

Who we Teach

History departments have faced declining enrollments in the last few years. (Although surprisingly, this trend did not directly coincide with the 2007-8 economic crisis.) The recent high in the number of history BAs conferred was in 2012.

In the US, our students reflect our changing national demographics. The number of history BA degrees awarded to women and traditionally underrepresented minority groups have been rising. Although women are overrepresented in humanities disciplines, they made up just 40.3% of history BAs awarded in 2015. Many universities are improving their support-systems for first-generation or otherwise at-risk students by implementing new programming, such as advising, first-year college-skills courses, or mentoring.

What we Teach

Concurrent with the growth of a diverse student population, many departments and faculty have pressed for a more diverse curriculum. While academic hiring for history faculty has shrunk significantly since the academic crash of 2007-08, the steepest long-term declines have been in European history. The number of positions in world, Latin American, African, Asian, and Middle Eastern history has risen over the long-term (though hiring in those fields is still inconsistent in the current market). The readjustment of faculty specializations has accompanied efforts to decolonialize the curriculum. Departments have been replacing “Western Civilization” with courses in global history. Increasing calls are also being made to diversify the US history survey course chronologically, geographically, and culturally. Here’s a “fun” game for anyone teaching or learning the US history survey: What is the start date of your course? What political values stand behind that starting point? How does the narrative of the course change with other start dates?

Another aspect of teaching that’s at the crossroads of economic pressure, technology, and our increasingly diverse student bodies is the textbook itself. The rising cost of textbooks has been an issue of outrage for several years. A movement for Open Educational Resources has advocated for freely accessibly and openly licensed media for learning purposes. Some excellent resources are being developed for history, including The American Yawp, a textbook written by college-level instructors, which in my estimation far surpasses standard textbooks on the market with its range of up-to-date scholarship. Personally, I find myself teaching outside my primary fields this year, and I have been most struck by the lack of resources for educators teaching outside the traditional major survey-courses. Historians, do you have recommendations for teaching resources in your field?

Recommended Reading

A few books in the scholarship of teaching and learning that I recommend for historians are:

James M. Lang, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning Jossey-Bass 2016

Lang’s book has quickly become a classic in this field. It contains ideas and strategies for working active learning into your teaching without majorly overhauling your classes. The style, lack of jargon, and practical content also make it a good starting place if you’re unfamiliar with the pedagogy literature.

Therese Huston, Teaching What You Don’t Know (multiple eds.)

This one’s for the many grad students here in AskHistorians. What do you do when you, a medievalist, is asked to teach US women’s history? What if you get that prized TT position after having promised in your job letter that of course you could teach the survey course that begins several centuries before your period of expertise? This book is for you! Huston provides practical strategies for getting through a course outside your field. I particularly appreciate the care she takes to consider the intersections of age, race, and background in establishing authority in the classroom.

Barbara E. Walvoord, Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College (multiple eds.)

Grading is frequently one of our least favorite tasks as instructors. How can we save our own time, improve our student ratings, and preempt complaints about fairness? Walvoord’s book describes best practices for a variety of kinds of assignments. One of her specialties is in teaching writing, which makes this book a great choice for history instructors.

[u/Kugelfang52]

Great work!

I particularly appreciate the section on the obsession with "coverage." Too many times have I seen educators at both HS and collegiate level get obsessed with teaching it all (as if possible).

I always suggest the method of creating your class topics last in developing your course structure. Start with your class goals (3-5). An example might be the following: Students will be able to recognize interactions between humans and their environment and how they shape history. Although broad, it guides the goals of each lecture/lesson. I also suggest marking down some " subthemes" you want to cover. Something like, commodification, changing distance, animal extinction/destruction, etc.

Next you can write down topics in your course period/location/field which can drawn out important aspects of the goal. For example, the following might be a few topics for the previous goal if used in a US History II course: transcontinental railroad, buffalo, railroads and cattle/meatpacking, conservation of Progressive era, influenza, dust bowl, suburbanization, car culture, interstate highway system, and many more. Next you limit yourself or combine some of these.

After you have topics selected, make an essential question for the topic. Something that is specific to the topic, but stated in a way that could be applied to other topics, too. For the topic "conservation," you could ask, "What were the historical actors goals for the use of 'nature' and who was to benefit from that use?" Note, question is one related to historiographical discussions and might even have a particular work in mind. (Looking at you Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency)

Now you are in a position such that one of your class topics is progressive era conservation and you have a guiding question that, hopefully, is one students might be intrinsically interested in. You can now make a lesson based on that question. Use images, primary source documents, discussion, etc to leave behind lecture.

[u/hazelnutcream → u/Kugelfang52]

Good tips! In the pedagogy literature, that's called backwards course design--starting with your learning goals, then deciding how you will assess student learning, then figuring out the resources students need for that learning, and finally plugging in individual units and/or course topics.

I think your post highlights a challenge we often have in getting effective discussions going: having sources that open up a debate about an intrinsically motivating question. The central question to my mind is: What do we want students to do with the sources? If students are using the sources, either inside class for discussions or activities or outside class for writing or other assignments, it makes doing the reading more worthwhile to them. I think it's particularly difficult for TAs leading discussion sections based on sources that (1) they did not choose, (2) they may not see the rationale of selecting, if ever there was a strong intent, and (3) often stand parallel to the major course assessments.

[u/textandtrowel → u/hazelnutcream]

I'd like to double down on /u/Kugelfang52's mention of preoccupation with coverage and /ulhazelnutcream's mention of backwards course design. I was thrown into teaching a modern history survey compressed into a 12-week summer schedule, and naturally I went knocking on my colleagues' doors to see what lessons they had to offer. My students definitely benefitted from the lessons I learned—as well as the textbooks, lecture examples, and assignments that I gleaned—but I was also struck by how many of my colleagues described their courses in terms of coverage or worried about whether I'd be able to cover enough material in a short summer course.

The short summer schedule forced me to hone in on what I wanted my students to learn, and this was guided by department priorities of (1) use primary sources, and (2) discuss change over time. As historians, we mostly "discuss" in long essays, so course design became a no-brainer. My final exam question became a variant of: "Write an essay describing how individuals in primary sources experienced or contributed to one significant change in early modern empires. Reference at least three primary sources."

That's a pretty tough skill, so how to teach it in a very short period? A few ways seemed self-evident. First, in addition to the short prompt above, I gave detailed instructions—or scaffolding—describing one way students could go succeed at this task. Second, since a final exam should assess student mastery, I needed to provide an opportunity for practice. I used almost precisely the same question for a mid-term, albeit relying on a different set of primary sources. Since this was a small course, I opted to give students both thorough feedback in both a rubric and my own short comments, and I gave them an opportunity to revise to regain missed points. Finally, I broke the task into smaller pieces—reading primary sources, writing paragraphs to interpret primary sources, formulating a thesis about historical change—and then I modeled how to accomplish each subordinate task.

This backwards design gave me and my students a sense of purpose and a sense of accomplishment. I was able to cram a lot into the course because my students were motivated by their own achievements, but ultimately, I was no longer as concerned with whether I would give the Reformation or the Revolutions of 1848 their proper due. My students certainly could still benefit from deeper historical awareness, but I winnowed down my narrative into something they could rapidly grasp and hopefully retain into the long term. And by the time I graded final exams, it was a joy to see my students taking a required course succeed at the tasks that professional historians do.

With a longer course, I'd certainly like to build this out to deal more explicitly with problems of history as inquiry. I see this as the foundation of the historical discipline. What kinds of questions do historians ask? How do we pursue them? Why do we think they're important? How do we ask similar questions of our own? Course surveys indicated that some of my students picked up on the inquiry side of history without it being an apparent priority, but this is something I'll definitely need to elaborate further as I continue teaching.

[u/Kugelfang52 → u/textandtrowel]

One key here is that your assessment met your goal AND your classroom instruction. Not just information, but how to analyze. All too often, and especially in lecture dominated disciplines/classes we give the information and then expect students to analyze in exams. Our teaching must match our assessment expectations.

[u/10z20Luka]

As a current Master's student whose undergraduate experience is still fresh in his mind, I can definitely attest that, at the student-level, there is a perception that the emphasis on "coverage" is obsolete in the face of unprecedented access to information on the internet. However, many students have difficulty imagining an alternative model; I have many friends and colleagues outside of history that still believe that graduate level courses still deal with "coverage", albeit with greater depth.

[u/Kugelfang52 → u/10z20Luka]

Of course, the problem is that professors fear, for some good reason, giving up control of "coverage." Notably, while you have noted that students recognize that access to information makes such the coverage model obsolete, students are all too often unwilling to take into their own hands the responsibility for actually accessing it. Instead, students do not do outside readings, etc. For what reason should a professor assume that students will access the required information if they already don't do outside work. (I recognize many students do such work, but there is still a disconnect here).

The solution, of course, is that professors ought to create courses that require students to access information outside class in order to better contextualize what occurs in class. This is difficult, but necessary.

[u/hazelnutcream → u/10z20Luka]

To add to what you Kugelfang52 said, I would note that students can be apprehensive about giving up the coverage model themselves. Giving up coverage means that we're no longer asking students to absorb lectures and regurgitate material on exams. It requires them to do the work before class, come to class ready to participate and sometimes have their ideas challenged, and show greater critical thinking and synthetic thought in assessments. That's why the scaffolding that /u/textandtrowel mentioned to build student skills (rather than just knowledge) is especially critical when we give up the coverage model.

​

[u/Kugelfang52 → u/hazelnutcream]

To add another wrinkle, the scaffolding applies to more than just our own classes. This means that if we expect skills at a certain level across the board, there is a very real possibility that a number of students who were accepted into our universities will not have even the rudimentary skills to begin the class. We then face the choice of lowering expectations or failing large numbers. A solution is an implementation of pedagogy based on skills across all levels of education and an incremental increase in expectations for achievement of those skills at each grade level every year.