Saturday, January 18, 2014

Emphasizing Historical Concepts and Skills

In Manitoba, we are lucky to have the Big Six: Historical Thinking Concepts included in our curriculum. These concepts emphasize historical perspective,  ethical dimensions of history, establishing historical significance, understanding cause and consequence in a historical context, identify continuity and change, and analysis of primary source evidence. These concepts force students to interact with content. They must gather, analyse, inference, and synthesize information in order to create a finished product to demonstrate their understanding of a given concept. These skills and concepts are the backbone of my teaching, and most importantly the focus of student learning in my history course. Because there are only six main concepts, it allows students to re-visit these concepts multiple times over the course of a semester. By re-visiting concepts it allows me to scaffold student learning, and allows students to formulate more complex understanding of historical events over the course of the semester. Perhaps most importantly, when I assess concepts multiple times throughout the year, I am gathering a variety of data. This leads to more valid assessments and ultimately more accurate grading.

Traditionally, the teaching and learning of history has emphasized content related goals. The end result of emphasizing content in isolation is a number of assessments that rarely rise above lower level thinking (multiple choice, true/false, short answer, etc.). These assessments measure a student's ability to memorize information rather than their ability to think critically. In a world where content is easily accessible through technology, it is logical that we must take advantage of the increased access to content and ask students to do more with this information. By emphasizing concepts and skills, I am forcing students to develop critical thinking skills that are infinitely more important in the long run, than the ability to memorize the facts and figures of historical events.

By providing feedback and revisiting concepts multiple times, ultimately we can hold students to a higher standard because we are supporting the development of the advancement of these skills. This has forced a growth mindset in my history course until the end of each semester. We are never "done" a concept. In a class that emphasizes content, once the unit test is complete, they no longer have to worry about improving their understanding. As my course progresses we are working to constantly advance understanding of the essential concepts. Students are encouraged to use feedback to improve understanding and applying these concepts to new content in order to show an improved understanding. By providing feedback for students as the course progresses, they can further develop their understanding of the major concepts that underpin the history curriculum and ultimately show stronger, more well rounded understanding of history.

@mrridgen













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