Dwight Gibb Home Page
Contrary to lamentations that one can achieve depth only by giving up breadth, it is possible to achieve both, if we orient our work to instilling historical skills, rather than to covering material. What a dull idea - coverage - anyway. Historians dont cover material, they uncover it. That is the whole fun. If we say we want students to learn to think like historians, then we should allow them the same sort of practise that we do, which is to inquire into things.
Ironically, if we configure information in terms of teaching thinking skills, we find we can treat even more material - areas that historians intend to get around to, but too often do not, such as race, muticulturalism, indigenous peoples, gender, children, and the whole realm of environmental history.
Here are two models which break new ground, as a result of experimentations which I have carried out with the assistance of students at Lakeside High School in Seattle over a period of many years. I have benefited from the wisdom of teachers before me, and, now retired, I am interested in sharing what I have developed with those to follow.
For a rough introduction to my approach, you could start with sections 1 - 4, or else go right to the courses.
A detailed treatment of what I intend will appear an article in The History Teacher in February, 2002 under the title, "Teaching Thinking."
The teaching units, which I cast in table form work well, as you can hand them out as assignment sheets and modify them as you go. The format on Netscape is overly expansive, so you might want to copy it to a Word document.
If you are interested in trying one of the teaching units, send me a description of your course, and I can suggest units you might might wish to try. If you like the approach you can build from there, according to your own talents.
Our school is private, with students who read well, so that I have tried a bold combination of sources. I believe the U.S. course (eleventh grade) could be taught as is to most high school sections who read well. The World History course (tenth grade) is a stretch for tenth graders, who develop slowly in their capacity to use abstractions. Although this format assists young students to rise to the challenge, older students would be able to do more with the content from the outset, and I believe that this model could form the basis for a college course.
dgibb@earthlink.net
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A Theory Of History |
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A Method For The Theory. |
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Course Models , Units Of Instruction, And Research Assignments. |
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Pedagogies |
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Comments |
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