Running Head: LEARNING HISTORY BY LEARNING LESS FACTS

Learning History by Learning Less Facts Teaching History Techniques to Prepare Students For College Michael D.W. Liegey Manhattan College

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History has always been stigmatized by students as a useless and tedious subject. Along with trigonometry, historys usefulness has always been questioned. The cause of this stems from the stagnate signature pedagogy which focuses on the memorizing and regurgitation of fact, dates, people and events. However, history is far more than that. History has an element of discovery and adventure that has been ignored by high school social studies teachers. The usefulness of history lies not in the what was learned but how one learned it. In other terms, history is more than simple facts but the discovery of those facts and process of how the evidence and arguments became facts. Teaching history as a medium to learn research techniques, evidence analysis, and argument presentation, rather than simple memorization of facts, is the best signature pedagogy to meet the New York State standards for college and career readiness. Lee S. Shulman created the idea of signature pedagogies in his 2005 paper Signature Pedagogies in the Professions. In the paper, Shulman explains how signature pedagogies are used to train professionals. To illustrate what signature pedagogies are, Shulman references the law profession, the medical profession and the engineering profession. Shulman explains how for each profession, there is a different style or method of teaching these professionals called signature pedagogies. Furthermore, Shulman explains that for each profession there are different values, knowledge, and manner of thinking. For example, Shulman identifies the differences between the signature pedagogies in the law profession compared to the signature pedagogies in the engineering field. In this example, Shulman identifies the differences in values between the two signature pedagogies by explaining the different methods used to train professionals. To illustrate the different methods, Shulman explains the individual questioning methods in the law

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classrooms and compares it to the peer collaborative method of the engineering classroom (Shulman, 2005). With respect to the high school social studies classroom, its important to understand the expectations of teachers. Furthermore, national and state policy has called for uniform expectations of students and teachers to ensure college and career readiness. These expectations have been set in the most recent review of New York States Common Core 9-12 Social Studies Framework. College and career readiness is one of the first standards to be mentioned is. The signature pedagogy of a high school social studies teacher should be designed in part with this standard in mind. Furthermore the methods used to teach social studies and history should value college and career readiness. These standards for college and career readiness have been broken into two anchors in reading and writing. Within these anchors, the standards call for teacher to teach students to be able to read and write at a college level by the end of their time in high school. Standards of these anchors include obtaining key ideas and details, structure interpretation, and integration of knowledge in clear, purposeful, researched arguments (New York State, 2011). It is in these standards where the current signature pedagogies in social studies and history fails. History and social studies has the greatest potential to fulfill the New York State standards for college and career readiness. Unfortunately, the current signature pedagogy in high school history has been simple memorization and regurgitation. History, a deep and complex subject, has been dumbed down in the name of mass assessment. Lendol Calder, a professor of history at Augustana College, has described his students attitude to history by quoting one of his student saying, First you listen to a lecture, then you read a textbook, then you take a test (Calder, 2006). However, there is so much more to history than simple memorization and

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regurgitation. Calder goes on to explain how he changed his college United States history survey to a more useful course. In Calders course, students were taught to implement research techniques usually reserved for higher level history majors. Calder felt the current history pedagogy failed to teach the useful aspects of history. To create a more useful history survey, Calder instituted a new signature pedagogy which he refers to his class as a research seminar (Calder, 2005). From this new signature pedagogy, Calder taught student how to learn instead of the original signature pedagogy where students were taught what to learn. Furthermore, Calder asks his students to ask themselves the questions What is history? Why study it? What problems trouble historical knowledge? What stories, tropes, and patterns do people typically see in the past? (Calder, 2005). From these questions, Calder was able to preserve, the inquiries, arguments, assumptions, and points of view that make knowledge what it is for practitioners of our discipline; the cognitive contours of history as an epistemological domain (Calder, 2005). As a result of this new signature pedagogy, Calder noticed with proper scaffolding, peer review, and rigorous routines, student writing improved dramatically compare to the classes where he used the classical history signature pedagogy (Calder, 2005). In addition, Calder found students were more fluent in asking questions of their own. This helped spark more curiosity in formal research. In conclusion, Calder found with the new signature pedagogy, unfolded from big questions that students are likely to find meaningful, questions that are useful for uncovering how expert practitioners in a discipline think and act (Calder p.1368). In addition, Calders classroom was not simply one of lecturing facts and dates but a place to develop basic writing skills used by not only historians but any academic writer. Lendol Calders experimentations in his introductory level United States history class proved to better pupils understanding of key ideas in readings, structure of sources, and

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researched arguments. This new signature pedagogy is applicable to high school students as well. Lendol Calders new signature pedagogy fit into the New York State Standards for college and career readiness by improving students reading and writing skills. These are important anchors to the standards and provide useful tools for learning history and social studies. Calder explains how creating a meaningful and useful history class better engages, a wired student generationtap-tapping their laptops, MP3 players, and PDAs in battles against classroom tedium (Calder, 2005). Furthermore, Calder discredits the current pedagogy by stating, Checking email in class is rude and immature, but it is also a predictable response to a worn out pedagogy that no longer has a place in the history survey (Calder, 2005). Essentially, Calder believes the current pedagogy simply is no longer engaging to the current generation of students. Calders claims are supported by Doctorate work by Sandra R. Pound who found that the number one problem high school teachers face with high school seniors was a dont care attitude (Pound, 2011). In her paper titled, A Case Study Analysis of One Suburban High Schools College Preparation Program Dr. Pound found that 59% of teachers number one problem with high school seniors was a dont care attitude also known as senioritis (Pound, 2011). It is with no doubt that the cause of this dont care attitude stems from under stimulating course work with no relevance to college work. On top of that, teachers have to fight to keep students with graduation in sight engaged in the lessons. Yes, all this makes motivating students extremely difficult. However, this provides an opportunity for a teachable moment to prepare students for life after high school. By teaching Calders new signature pedagogy in high school classrooms, particularly senior classrooms, students could learn techniques that will help them in college or their careers. In history, teaching research techniques leads to an increase in students abilities to identify

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credible sources. Moreover, teaching proper research techniques could better prepare students to find, understand and comprehend the key ideas in credible academic literature. In addition, teaching evidence analysis could prepare students to weigh arguments presented in the academic literature they read. Lastly, teaching students how to properly present coherent, evidence based arguments will help them with any paper they will write in any major they go in. Within creating coherent arguments, students will learn how to cite and refer to credible evidence. This new pedagogy adds a new useful dynamic to a stagnant subject which has been deemed useless by many students by providing techniques and thought processes that will further the students achievements in college or future careers. To fulfill the New York States standards for college and career readiness, high schools should assure that students have written a paper that is acceptable at the freshman college level before they graduate. This measure would assure a feeling a familiarity to the processes of writing college level papers before being overwhelmed by collegiate expectations. To aide students in this task, high schools should provide teachers with a college approved style guide to citations to familiarize students with the formal processes of citing evidence. Also included in the style guides should be the proper formatting of papers. These style guides should be as widely available as reference tables in a science classroom. Using this new pedagogy takes focus off the facts and puts more focus on the process of establishing facts though coherent, evidence based arguments. While this sounds counterintuitive, to take focus off historical fact, creating these arguments and presenting them with evidence and research in a coherent fashion is more in the spirit of what the study of history means than naming all fifty states and their capitals. In conclusion, teachers should have students recognize that these are the practices college

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professors expect no matter the subject. In return, teacher will have motivation to have students invest themselves into the class once again, even with graduation in sight.