ETEC 500- Forum Post: Sandwell's Approach Changes my Perspective on Teaching & Learning History
I have had many moments in my MET experience in which an article, activity, assignment or the shared thoughts of a classmate have changed my own thinking in radical ways. The artifact that I have included here captures one such learning moment for me. Going into this particular module of ETEC 500, I absolutely had preconceived notions and strong beliefs about history. The significant way in which my perception changed as a result of this learning task reiterated for me the fact that we form opinions and attitudes about things based upon our own realm of experience. I went into this week of course work feeling one way about history, but my thoughts on the matter by the end of the unit of study were entirely different. Below are my thoughts and a portion of the post that I shared in the discussion forum surrounding this topic.
I love to solve mysteries, complete puzzles, as well as embrace opportunities to use reason and logic to arrive at conclusions, but I have never really enjoyed learning history… until now. This module was one of my very favourite parts of the course. We were provided with links to historical pictures that we were then expected to examine with very little text to accompany them. We all recorded the information that we were able to glean from them. It was fascinating to read the variety of details that were noticed by my classmates, as well as the very different ways in which certain details were interpreted by all of us even though we were looking at the same pictures and had been provided with the same limited context surrounding them. I loved this! It was a great learning experience and what a brilliant method to use to ‘hook’ learners at the beginning of units and for individual lessons too. The power of using primary documents in the classroom was very apparent.
The ideas of Ruth Sandwell that were expressed in her article "Using Primary Documents in Social Studies and History" have had a great impact on me. I am looking forward to teaching the Social Studies curriculum this coming school year with this new approach. The use of primary documents in the teaching of Social Studies and History could (and will, I think) change not only the way in which I teach these subject areas to my students, but it will also change the way in which my students engage in our lessons. Although I currently try to engage my students with historical stories, lively debates and examinations of how the past has led us to where we are today, many of my students groan when our Social Studies periods arrive. If I had been taught history in high school the way that Sandwell proposes it should be done, I am certain that I would have enjoyed it more, learned more and pursued it as a further area of study by choice in my future educational endeavours. I hope that I can make my own students fall in love with Social Studies and History by changing the way that I am teaching it.
I have included a portion of my post on this topic below. Here are my thoughts after completing the photograph analysis activity with Sandwell’s approach in mind:
Going through this process reminded me of my own education. In high school, all of my history courses were basically the same format; here’s what happened, memorize what I’ve lectured to you about, and regurgitate the important information on the test. This is maybe why I did not pursue any history courses other than those that I had to for my teaching degree, in my post high school education. If my teachers had approached history as Sandwell proposes, as a critical inquiry opportunity, I think that I would have been very much onboard. Sandwell’s article reminds me of many of my anthropology and archeology professors that I had in university. These two subject areas were what I filled up all of my elective subject spots with throughout my studies. I loved them all! Now that I have read this article, for the first time I am realizing that what I loved about them was that those courses were not at all based on the question ‘is this true’ and instead were all about searching for the answers to ‘what does this mean?’ Based on my own experiences, I think that Sandwell’s ideas for a history teacher’s approach to teaching the subject is a very valuable one. In my past elective course work, we were constantly digging up additional information from a variety of sources to piece together our interpretation of archeological and anthropological data. We were engaged, and very much actively involved in constructing our own learning. I felt a little of that same energy as I examined the photographs for this task and was really, really wishing that I had much more to sink my teeth into to come up with my interpretation of ‘what does this mean?’
I think that as time goes on, the historical waters will continue to muddy making it a great challenge to future researchers who are tasked with investigating the past. Humans now have the ability to basically document every day of their lives digitally and some do (how many people do you know who ‘follow’ people on their own devices, or watch the lives of youtube vloggers unfold each day?). I would imagine that as long as the digital data from the present is still available in the future, researchers will be wading through overwhelmingly large quantities of data to arrive at their answers in regard to ‘what does it mean?’ Analysing and drawing conclusions from any video, photograph, or piece of writing is subjective in some way and as Sandwell reminds us, historians have traditionally decided what is valuable and worth recording for future generations. One shift in society today has definitely been that the individual and not just the historian, is deciding what is worth recording and preserving for future generations. The world is definitely changing and the way in which we define and record history will continue to change with it.
Before reading the ideas of Sandwell, I do not think that I fully realized just how subjective history really is. It was initially mind blowing for me to think about the fact that each historical account that I have ever read is essentially just a historian’s interpretation of what took place. Hopefully, the accounts that have shaped my historical understandings were thorough and adequately triangulated for accuracy. I have always considered history to be a static, established body of knowledge, but I now see that it can be dynamic too in many ways.
References:
Sandwell, R. (2008). Using primary documents in social studies and history. The Anthology of Social Studies, 2, Issues and Strategies for Secondary Teachers, 295-307.
The ideas of Ruth Sandwell that were expressed in her article "Using Primary Documents in Social Studies and History" have had a great impact on me. I am looking forward to teaching the Social Studies curriculum this coming school year with this new approach. The use of primary documents in the teaching of Social Studies and History could (and will, I think) change not only the way in which I teach these subject areas to my students, but it will also change the way in which my students engage in our lessons. Although I currently try to engage my students with historical stories, lively debates and examinations of how the past has led us to where we are today, many of my students groan when our Social Studies periods arrive. If I had been taught history in high school the way that Sandwell proposes it should be done, I am certain that I would have enjoyed it more, learned more and pursued it as a further area of study by choice in my future educational endeavours. I hope that I can make my own students fall in love with Social Studies and History by changing the way that I am teaching it.
I have included a portion of my post on this topic below. Here are my thoughts after completing the photograph analysis activity with Sandwell’s approach in mind:
Going through this process reminded me of my own education. In high school, all of my history courses were basically the same format; here’s what happened, memorize what I’ve lectured to you about, and regurgitate the important information on the test. This is maybe why I did not pursue any history courses other than those that I had to for my teaching degree, in my post high school education. If my teachers had approached history as Sandwell proposes, as a critical inquiry opportunity, I think that I would have been very much onboard. Sandwell’s article reminds me of many of my anthropology and archeology professors that I had in university. These two subject areas were what I filled up all of my elective subject spots with throughout my studies. I loved them all! Now that I have read this article, for the first time I am realizing that what I loved about them was that those courses were not at all based on the question ‘is this true’ and instead were all about searching for the answers to ‘what does this mean?’ Based on my own experiences, I think that Sandwell’s ideas for a history teacher’s approach to teaching the subject is a very valuable one. In my past elective course work, we were constantly digging up additional information from a variety of sources to piece together our interpretation of archeological and anthropological data. We were engaged, and very much actively involved in constructing our own learning. I felt a little of that same energy as I examined the photographs for this task and was really, really wishing that I had much more to sink my teeth into to come up with my interpretation of ‘what does this mean?’
I think that as time goes on, the historical waters will continue to muddy making it a great challenge to future researchers who are tasked with investigating the past. Humans now have the ability to basically document every day of their lives digitally and some do (how many people do you know who ‘follow’ people on their own devices, or watch the lives of youtube vloggers unfold each day?). I would imagine that as long as the digital data from the present is still available in the future, researchers will be wading through overwhelmingly large quantities of data to arrive at their answers in regard to ‘what does it mean?’ Analysing and drawing conclusions from any video, photograph, or piece of writing is subjective in some way and as Sandwell reminds us, historians have traditionally decided what is valuable and worth recording for future generations. One shift in society today has definitely been that the individual and not just the historian, is deciding what is worth recording and preserving for future generations. The world is definitely changing and the way in which we define and record history will continue to change with it.
Before reading the ideas of Sandwell, I do not think that I fully realized just how subjective history really is. It was initially mind blowing for me to think about the fact that each historical account that I have ever read is essentially just a historian’s interpretation of what took place. Hopefully, the accounts that have shaped my historical understandings were thorough and adequately triangulated for accuracy. I have always considered history to be a static, established body of knowledge, but I now see that it can be dynamic too in many ways.
References:
Sandwell, R. (2008). Using primary documents in social studies and history. The Anthology of Social Studies, 2, Issues and Strategies for Secondary Teachers, 295-307.
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