Researching History Education: Theory, Method, and Context [1° ed.] 0805862706, 9780805862706

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Researching History Education

"The authors' research is well known and among the most important American work being done on how children learn history. It is thus a great idea to gather this pivotal research in one place. The volume offers a new perspective through the authors' reflections on the research process. It is profound without pomposity, ideal for the intended audience; the tone is just right. There really isn't another book that does what this one does. " Stephen]. Thornton, University of South Florida

Researching History Education combines a selection of Linda Levstik's and Keith Barton's previous work on teaching and learning history with their reflections on the process of research. These studies address students' ideas about time, evidence, significance, and agency, as well as classroom contexts of history education and broader social influences on students' and teachers' thinking. These pieces . widely cited in history and social studies education and typically required reading for students in the area-were chosen to illustrate major themes in the authors' own work and trends in recent research on history education. In a series of new chapters written especially for this volume, the authors introduce and reflect on their empirical studies and address three issues suggested in the title of the volume: theory, method, and contcxt. Although research on children's and adolescents' historical understanding has been the most active area of scholarship in social studies in recent years, as yet there is little in-depth attention to research methodologies or to the perspectives on children, history, and historical thinking that these methodologies represent. This book fills that need. The authors' hope is that it will help scholars 9raw from the existing body of literature in order to participate in more me·aningful conversations about the teaching and learning of history. Researching History Education provides a needed resource for novice and experienced researchers and will be especially useful in research methodology courses, both in social studies and more generally, because of its emphasis on techniques for interviewing children, the impact of theory on research, and the importance of cross-cultural comparisons.

Researching History Education

Theory, method, and context

Linda S. Levstik University of Kentucky Keith C.Barton University of Cincinnati

First published 2008 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, axon OX 14 4RN Routledge ;s an imprint o( the Taylor & Froncis Group, an in(orma business Transferred to Digital Printing 20 I0

© 2008 Taylor & Francis Typeset in Baskerville by Book Now Ltd, London All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloguing ;n Publication Dota Levstik, linda S. Researching history education: theory, method, and context / linda S. Levstik, Keith C. Barton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. I. History-Research. 2. History-Research-Methodology. 3. History -Study and teaching. I. Barton, Keith C. II . Title. D 16.L58 2008 907.I-dc22 2007031879 ISBN I 0 :0-8058-6270-6 (hbk) ISBN I0: 0-8058-6271-4 (pbk) ISBNIO: 1--4106-1676-2 (ebk) ISBN 13: 978-0-8058-6270-6 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-8058-6271-3 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-08881-5 (ebk) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

Contents

List if illustrations Priface Acknowledgments 2

Narrative as a primary act of mind?

Vlll X

XIV

2

LINDA S. LEVSTlK

2

The relationship benveen historical response and narrative in a sixth-grade classroom

10

LINDA S. LEV S TlK

3

Building a sense of history in a first-grade classroom

30

LINDA S. LEVSTlK

4

Visualizing time

61

K E ITH C. BARTO N

5

"Back when God was around and everything": Elementary children's understanding of historical time

71

KEITH C. BART ON AND LIND A S. L E VSTIK

6

"They still use some of their past": Historical salience in elementary children's chronological thinking

108

LI N DA S. LEVSTIK A N D KEITH C. BA RTO N

7

Making connections KEITH C. BARTON

148

vi

8

Contents

"Bossed around by the queen": Elementary students' understanding of individuals and institutions in history

159

KEITH C. BARTON

9

Narrative simplifications in elementary students' historical thinking

183

KEITH C. BARTON

10 "I just kinda know": Elementary students' ideas about historical evidence

209

KEITH C. BARTON

11 What makes the past worth knowing?

228

LINDA S. LEVSTIK

12 "It wasn't a good part of history": National identity and students' explanations of historical significance

240

KEITH C. BARTON AND LINDA S. LEVSTIK

13 Articulating the silences: Teachers' and adolescents' conceptions of historical significance

273

LINDA S. LEVSTIK

14 Challenging the familiar

292

KEITH C. BARTON

15 A sociocultural perspective on children's understanding of historical change: Comparative findings from Northern Ireland and the United States

300

KEITH C. BARTON

16 "You'd be wanting to know about the past": Social contexts of children's historical understanding in Northern Ireland and the U.S.A.

333

KEITH C. BARTON

17 Border crossings LINDA S. LEVSTIK

355

Contents

vii

18 Crossing the empty spaces: Perspective taking in New Zealand 366 adolescents' understanding of national history LINDA S. LEVSTIK

19 Digging for clues: An archaeological exploration of historical cognition 393 LINDA S. LEVSTIK, A. GWYNN HENDERSON, AND JENNIFER S. SCHLARB

Mterword

408

Index

414

Illustrations

Figures 3.1 4.1 5.1 a 5.1 b 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8

15.1 15.2

Word web Rejected photograph from study of children's understanding of historical time 1956. Teenagers at a drive-in restaurant [1950s] Hank Walker/Time & Life 1886. Family and covered wagon on the prairie [West] Courtesy National Archives 1924. Men and women in bathing suits in front of a car [1920s] Courtesy Library of Congress 1837. Political cartoon of an urban scene [Antebellum] Courtesy Library of Congress 1939. Family reading and sewing at home [Depression] Courtesy Farm Security Administration 1772. Fort with soldiers and Native American Indians [Colonial] Courtesy Library of Congress 1899. Schoolroom with teacher and children [1899] Courtesy Library of Congress 1993. Large, modern building with cars and people [Modern] Courtesy Keith C. Barton 1967. Demonstrators and police at a protest at the Pentagon [1960s] Courtesy U.S. Army Pictures used in Barton (1996) and Barton and Levstik (1996) Courtesy of Library of Congress and National Archives Pictures used with students in Northern Ireland Reproduced with the kind permission of the Trustees of the Museum and Galleries of Northern Ireland, Record No. lC/High St. 184, Record No. W04/1316

44 67 101 101 102 102 103 103 104 104

105 312 313

Illustrations

ix

Tables 12.1 12.C 12.D

Pictures chosen as historically significant Grade level of students interviewed Interview responses by gender and grade level

245 270 271

Preface

In this book, we bring together several of our previous studies of teaching and learning history, and we also reflect on the process of research. Such efforts, we think, are too rare in our profession. Educational scholarship can be thought of as a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) whose members share certain norms and standards-a community in which newcomers are apprenticed into their roles by more experienced, knowledgeable, and established practitioners (Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989). But compared to those in many other walks of life, educational researchers are not always proficient at developing and maintaining their community: Their scholarship is scattered across hundreds of journals and countless books and reports, and faculty and graduate students often find themselves working or studying in settings with few colleagues who can directly mentor or support them. As a result of this fragmentation and isolation, important achievements may be ignored or forgotten (Barton, 2005), and even the most successful researchers may rely on knowledge that is largely tacit (Tschannen-Moran & Nestor-Baker, 2004). These weaknesses in the community have important consequences for the status of our work. Educational research is often derided as unsystematic, noncumulative, and of limited use for improving schools. Although such criticisms may be wildly overstated, the isolated nature of much educational research may contribute to the seeming credibility of these claims. Scholarship progresses by building on previous work, and conclusions are always strengthened when findings can be compared to those of other studies. The fragmented nature of research on teaching and learning, however, can make it difficult even for experienced scholars to locate relevant studies-and becoming familiar with decades of research may seem like an insurmountable task for newcomers. If educational scholarship were less scattered, it might be easier to make connections to related work, and we might all be able to take part in conversations that have greater coherence-and that perhaps lead to cumulative bodies of knowledge. The patchy nature of educational research also has consequences for individual careers. Because most colleges of education are organized around

Preface

xi

teacher preparation programs rather than areas of research expertise, graduate students may have little access to mentors who can fully assist in their efforts. A doctoral candidate in secondary social studies education may have a fine scholar as her advisor, for example, but while she may be interested in students' thinking, her mentor may specialize in curriculum theory or teachers' attitudes. Although faculty can certainly mentor students outside their immediate area, their effectiveness necessarily diminishes as the gap between students' needs and their own experience widens. Once new members of the profession secure their own positions, the situation is little different. Although they may be surrounded by knowledgeable coworkers, their colleagues are likely to be distributed across subject areas and grade levels. As a result, a new faculty member may find no one whose background is close enough to her own to stimulate continued professional growth. Outside North America, such isolation may be even more extreme: One European colleague of ours, for example, began her career as the only specialist in the pedagogy of history in her entire nation. Without ongoing conversations about the conduct of investigations, scholarship can become a lonely endeavor, and research may begin to feel like more of a burden than a vital part of one's career. Universities are not the only sites in which scholars develop and maintain communities of practice, of course. The journals and annual conferences of professional organizations, as well as the numerous academic works published in our field, offer important opportunities to connect with those who share our interests and can inspire our efforts. But these venues are limited by a curious imbalance: Although there are innumerable books, articles, and presentations on the conduct of educational research, these typically focus on areas such as social interaction, program evaluation, or the societal and institutional context of schooling; relatively few sources deal with the nature of research on students' or teachers' thinking. Those who study such topics are more prolific at publishing their findings than discussing their methods. Even when researchers do address methodological issues, they tend to explain technical issues-procedures for implementing stimulated recall, for example, or how to get the most out of a concept map. Rarely do they reflect on the successes and limitations of their work, and seldom do they address larger issues such as the rewards and challenge of collaboration, the process of writing and publication, or the development of a research agenda. This knowledge remains largely tacit, yet it constitutes a critical aspect of success in our profession (Tschannen-Moran & Nestor-Baker, 2004). We have brought together this collection of articles and essays in hopes of addressing some of these shortcomings in the profession. First, by assembling much of our research into a single volume, we hope that we will make life easier for readers who are interested in the substance of work on history education. These chapters include studies of students' ideas about time, evidence, significance, and agency, as well as of classroom contexts of history education and

xii

Preface

broader social influences on students' and teachers' thinking. These studies account for only a portion of our published research, but we have chosen them to illustrate major themes in our own work and, to an extent, patterns in research on history education. Although some of these studies have been easily available, others have appeared in books with limited circulation or in journals that are not widely accessible, particularly outside North America. In reproducing these studies, we have resisted the temptation to reanalyze our data or reinterpret our findings; our research appears here as it did in its original form, and readers can rely on these chapters for results and conclusions just as we originally presented them. (VVhen more than one chapter derives from the same study, however, we have omitted duplication of the methods section of the original articles. We have also updated citations when necessary, revised some chapters to conform to APA style and U.S. spelling and punctuation, and cleaned up a few grammatical and typographical issues.) Because we always have tried to be conscientious in citing studies that parallel our own, these chapters should also lead readers to many related works by other researchers. We hope this effort will help scholars draw from the existing body of literature so that we can all take part in more meaningful conversations about the teaching and learning of history. In addition, we have written six new essays in whieh we reflect on our empirical work, and these chapters address three issues suggested by the title of the book~theory, method, and context. Theory is an indispensable part of any study, yet published articles sometimes devote insufficient attention to its role in research. Occasionally, researchers fail to include any explicit mention of their theoretical perspective. More often, they touch briefly on theory, but they face space limitations that prevent fuller discussion of how theory influenced their selection of research questions, development of methods, or interpretation of findings~much less why a given theory was chosen over the alternatives, or how the author's theoretical perspective has changed over time. Researchers may simply assume that readers understand the theoretical literature well enough to know where the present study is positioned in the field~an assumption that is not always well grounded, especially for newcomers. We hope that our discussions of theory in upcoming chapters will help readers better understand how theory influences research, as well as how researchers go about selecting theoretical perspectives. The essays in this volume also address the methods we have used in our research. Although published articles invariably include methodology sections that explain and justify instruments, sampling procedures, and methods of analysis, these techniques are usually presented as highly rational and even unproblematic: An interview technique is described as the best way to collect certain data, or the population and setting for a study are described as though they were the only logical choices. Such justifications make it appear that empirical work is a purely instrumental process, one in which procedures and theories are chosen because of their direct and self-evident fit for a given

Preface

xiii

project. Rarely do we share stories of our hesitancy and doubt, of false starts and failures, of serendipity and compromise. Yet we probably would be better researchers if we could learn from the messy complexity of each others' experiences. (For examples of such cxpcricnccs, see the collection of essays in Barton, 2006.) In these chapters we describe such complexities in our own work, not because we think we've solved the problems of research on thinking, nor because we believe these studies should be models for how to conduct such research, but in hopes that others may gain insight into aspects of the research process that often appear oblique. Perhaps by reflecting on our work, we may inspire future research-not only on history education, but on teaching and learning more generally. Finally, these essays address the larger context of our work-where our studies fit within the academic landscape, how they relate to current teaching practices, and how they reflect our individual interests and experiences. To some extent, our discussions of context deal with personal aspects of research that are more often discussed in private conversations-the nature of collaboration, for example, or the role of our background and personality in selecting projects. In order to address such topics, wc have relied on a greater degree of narrative than in most of our published research. \,Ve generally adhere to the belief that a research report should be an analytical argument-a series of related propositions and supporting evidence-rather than the story of an investigation. Given that belief, there is normally little reason to explain how we became interested in a topic, how questions changed over the course of a study, or how we established access and rapport. Unless those topics provide evidence to support an argument, they are simply irrelevant in a published study of students' or teachers' thinking. Yet these are precisely the kinds of topics that we think deserve a place in our field's public discourse, and we think one of the best ways to reflect on them is through narratives that recount our experiences. We hope that this volume may encourage other researchers to find a place for their own stories.

References Barton, K. C. (2005). Mary G. Kelty: The most important social educator no one has heard of? In L. M. Burlbaw and S. L. Field (Eds.), Explorations in curriculum history (pp. 161-84). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Barton, K. C. (Ed.) (2006). Research methods in social studies education: Contemporary issues and perspectives. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Brown,]. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18,32-42. Lave,]., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press Tschannen-Moran, M., & Nestor-Baker, N. (2004). The tacit knowledge of productive scholars in education. Teachers College Record, 106, 1484-1511.

Acknowledgments

Chapter 2, "The Relationship between Historical Response and Narrative in a Sixth-grade Classroom," reprinted from Theory and Research in Social Education, 14, 1-19, copyright 1986, with permission of the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies. Chapter 3, "Building a Sense of History in a First Grade Classroom," reprinted from]. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in Research on Teaching: Vol. 4. Research in Elementary Social Studies, pp. 1-31, copyright 1993, with permission of Elsevier. Chapter 5, "'Back When God was Around and Everything': The Development of Children's Understanding of Historical Time," reprinted from American Educational Research Journal, 33, 419-54, copyright 1996 by the American Educational Research Association. Reproduced with permission of the publisher. Chapter 6, "'They Still Use Some of their Past': Historical Salience in Children's Chronological Thinking," originally appeared in Journal qfCurriculum Studies, 28, 531-76, copyright 1996 by Taylor and Francis. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, http://www.tandf.co.uk. Chapter 8, "'Bossed Around by the Queen': Elementary Students' Understanding of Individuals and Institutions in History," reprinted from Journal qf Curriculum and Supervision, 12, 290-314, copyright 1997 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Reprinted by permission. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development is a worldwide community of educators advocating sound policies and sharing best practices to achieve the success of each learner. To learn more, visit ASCD at www.ascd.org. Chapter 9, "Narrative Simplifications in Elementary Children's Historical Understanding," reprinted from]. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in Research on Teaching: Vol. 6. Teaching and Learning in History, pp. 51-83, copyright 1996, with permission of Elsevier. Chapter 10, "'I Just Kinda Know'; Elementary Students' Ideas about Historical Evidence," reprinted from Theory and Research in Social Education, 25,

Acknowledgments

xv

407- 30, copyright 1997, with permission of the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies. Chapter 12, "'It wasn't a Good Part of History': National Identity and Ambiguity in Students' Explanations of Historical Significance," reprinted from Teachers College Record, 99, 478- 513, copyright 1998, with permission of the publisher. Chapter 13, "Articulating the Silences: Teachers and Adolescents' Conceptions of Historical Significance," reprinted from P. N. Stearns, P. Seixas, and S. Wineburg (Eds.), Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History, pp. 285- 305, copyright 2000, with permission of New York University Press. Chapter 15, "'You'd be Wanting to Know about the Past': Social Contexts of Children's Historical Understanding in Northern Ireland and the United States," reprinted from Comparative Education, 37, 89- 106, copyright 200 I by Taylor and Francis. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, http:/ / www.tandf.co.uk. Chapter 16, "A Sociocultural Perspective on Children's Understanding of Historical Change: Comparative Findings from Northern Ireland and the United States," reprinted from American Educational Research Journal, 38, 881-913, copyright 200 I by the American Educational Research Association. Reproduced with permission of the publisher. Chapter 18, "Crossing the Empty Spaces: Perspective Taking in New Zealand Adolescents' Understanding of National History," reprinted from O. L. Davis, E. A. Yeager, and S. J. Foster (Eds.), Historical Empatlry and Perspective Taking in the Social Studies, pp. 69-96, copyright 2001 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., with permission of the publisher. Chapter 19, "Digging for Clues: An Archaeological Exploration of Historical Cognition," reprinted from R. Ashby, P. Gordon, and P. Lee (Eds.), International Review qfHistory Education: Vol. 4. Understanding History: Recent Research in History Education, pp. 37-53, copyright 2005 by Taylor and Francis. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, http://www.tandf.co.uk.

Chapter I

Narrative as a primary act of mind?

Linda S. Levstik

While wandering around the internet I bumped into several versions of a story that goes something like this: A genealogist discovered that his great-great uncle was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. The sole photograph of his ancestor showed him standing on the gallows. The caption read: "Remus Starr; horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged 1889." In developing his family history the disappointed genealogist cropped, enlarged, and edited the photograph so that only Remus's head remained. The accompanying biographical sketch explained that Remus Starr was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to service at a government facility, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed. (Teff,2007) I love this story because it captures a part of what motivated my own interest in the impact of historical narratives on historical thinking- competing family stories. I grew up surrounded by histOlY. Of course we all do, at least to some extent, but in my family, history was an explicit part of the curriculum. My father regaled us with stories of his misspent youth, bouts in the military, work as a labor organizer, and adventures as an air traffic controller at LaGuardia airport-stories that made me cautious about both history and flying. My mother and assorted other relatives added carefully edited stories about ancestral heroes, heroines, and villains back at least to the U.S. Civil \tVar. My extended family commented on and argued about the historical interpretations

2 Linda S. Levstik my siblings and I brought home from school. Their disputes often countered the tidy consensus history of my early school years and, over time, supported a burgeoning interest in social and intellectual history, at least until I applied those interests to the various family histories I encountered. Not surprisinglyin retrospect- revisionism was not fully appreciated. What seemed to me interesting connections to immigration patterns, the differential impact of the Depression, World War II, or moving into one of the first post-war planned communities seemed to some family members the equivalent of sharing an unedited picture of Remus Starr at a family reunion. My narratives weren't comfortable or particularly comforting, even when evidence-based and especially when embedded in a research paper for a graduate history class. Perhaps I should have stopped there. Instead, I became fascinated with the power of narratives to shape individuals' sense of personal identity and, more broadly, to shape historical thinking. The Ohio State University proved a remarkable place to explore these interests. The literacy and history programs were strong, bringing in students and visiting scholars from different parts of the world, affording me the opportunity to study with one of the leading figures in children's literature, Charlotte Huck, and with Robert Bremner, a social historian who wrote widely on the history of childhood. Both became important and exacting mentors, offering up exhaustive bibliographies, challenging courses, and the kind of questions that I still ask myself about the nature of history, historical narratives, and children's response to both. Unlike my experience in history and children's literature, where I was surrounded by faculty and other doctoral students with similar interests, no faculty worked in elementary or middle-level social studies. When assigned to teach the elementary methods courses my first semester as a graduate studentwith one week's notice and no model syllabi-I scoured the library shelves and went knocking on doors in Humanities Education, where secondary social studies was housed. Ray Muessig piled all sorts of resources in my lap- a pattern repeated a number of times over the ensuing years-and agreed to advise me. Among the first books he gave me was Alan Griffin's dissertation, an extended musing on the nature of teaching and learning history-and an introduction to the intellectual lineage that characterized OSU's social studies program. An intellectual lineage is not incidental to a researcher's development, although I don't think I r eally understood that at the time. I stumbled into a world in flux: More historians and educators were paying attention to marginalized groups. New books, ideas, and arguments sped among faculty and students. OSU's College of Education experimented with alternative tracks for teacher education, including Educational Programs in Informal Classrooms (EPIC) based on the British Informal School model (Weber, 1971). Offered the opportunity to coordinate EPIC, two other teaching assistants and I involved our students in the kinds of reflective inquiry we'd tried in our own classrooms

Narrative as a primary act of mind?

3

and read about in the literature. ''\Ie followed our students into like-minded schools, observing young children engaged in various investigations, immersed in literature, sharing their work with interested adults in their school and community. And, while we could identify a rich body ofliterature for many of the children's investigations, I struggled to find accurate, well-written literature that interpreted the world beyond U.S. borders, or presented the historical experiences of women and girls in any kind of depth . At the time, a growing body of children's literature addressed issues of racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism within U .S. borders, but there was considerably less attention to introducing young readers to cultures outside the United States. To some extent, this literary "in-country" emphasis reflected civil rights and feminist movements in the United States. Ohio State, for instance, hired historians specializing in Black history and women's history; other departments offered courses and speakers in what became known as Black studies and women's studies. Student and faculty activism also pushed the university to assume a more activist role in the surrounding community. Even before I started the doctoral program, our oldest child attended a preschool run jointly by the university and a feminist cooperative, and my husband and I p articipated in preschool parent group discussions about sex and gender that were variously interesting, amusing, frustrating, thought-provoking, and counter to parenting narratives prevalent in both our extended families. Later, our second child attended an international preschool where competing cultural narratives further propelled me into a search for literature that might help children make sense of cultural variation. There wasn't much, and too much of what I d idfind reinforced rather than challenged stereotypes. Even in this post-Vietnam War era, American children's literature really did not attend much to the rest of the world. Not for the last time, frustration drove my research interests. Early in my doctoral program, I began the historical investigation of the literary worlds presented to children and adolescents that eventually led to my dissertation and related publications (Levstik, 1983, 1992). What themes and topics appeared in children's literature at different historical moments? What ideologies underlay these themes and topics? What images of the world, and their place in it, might children take from this body ofliterature? \Vhile I enjoyed the historical and literary work for my dissertation, I also wanted to know what sense students made of these books. When I began my work as a new faculty member, I sought out access to children engaged with historical texts, and searched, too, for techniques for accessing their thinking. When I first considered investigating what Louise Rosenblatt (1938, 1978) called the transaction between child and text, prevailing ideas about literate behavior and an emerging constructivist approach to cognition informed my work at least as much as theories of history or historical thinking. At the time, I found the work of Rosenblatt and Margaret Donaldson particularly appealing. Donaldson's (1979) work argued for the significance of situated cognition, though that was not the term she used. In her research she examined students'

4 Linda S. Levstik

responses to Piagetian tasks recast in narrative frameworks. Students performed considerably better with narrative rather than non-narrative versions of the tasks. Given Donaldson's results and Rosenblatt's transactional theory, I wondered how the structure and aesthetics of a story might mediate readers' response to history. When encountering history in the context of a story, for instance, what content "stuck," what was abandoned, misconstrued, or rejected? Just about everyone writing about historical literature in the curriculum then (and now) thought that reading biographies, historical literature, and historical fiction was good for children. They-and I-made claims about why narrative was, as Barbara Hardy (1978, p. 12) argued, "a primary act of mind."1 Nonetheless, there wasn't much empirical evidence for those claims and, from my perspective, most of them failed on two grounds. First, the claims weren't particularly historical and second, they rarely focused on engaging children with competing historical narratives. Instead, advocates for historical literature for children concentrated on the power of narrative to motivate identification with people from other times and places, generate interest in the past, or elicit a moral response to historical and persistent inequities. Considerably less attention focused on the breadth, depth, or accuracy of the history that readers encountered or that they recalled in the process. But that was what I wanted to study: children engaged in literate activity where history wasn't just the backdrop but the main event. This turned out to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. Social studies receives so little time in elementary classrooms that Tdespaired of finding any place where I could observe literary engagement with history. I finally identified a cadre of teachers who taught history, most often in the context of thematic instruction. Their students read a rich array of historical literature, appeared to enjoy learning history, and comfortably interacted with a variety of adults in their classrooms. I spent long periods of time in these settings, documenting teachers' and students' activities, historical discussions, and use of literature; collecting classroom projects; observing interactions among teachers, students, and guest experts; interviewing students and teachers about their ideas about teaching and learning history; and writing about the impact of narrative on children's historical thinking. These experiences also taught me a good deal about conducting research in elementary and middlelevel classrooms. Perhaps the most important thing I learned was to look for history in unusual places- in language arts (genre studies often included historical literature), in thematic units (units labeled community, joumrys, and even seasons sometimes include historical content), and even in the pernicious holiday curriculum that so plagues social studies in elementary schools. Much of the history in the sixth-grade study that follows took place during language arts classes, and in the first-grade study, history teaching and learning occurred in the context of units on Black History or Women's History, as well as during a seasonal unit. When I r ealized that an upcoming unit in the first grade would

Narrative as a primary act of mind?

5

focus on apples (it was autumn), though, I groaned. I'd seen too many hours wasted on decorating themes at the expense of (what I considered) important content and I quailed at the thought of documenting time spent counting apples or making applesauce. While the first-graders certainly did count and cook apples, they also investigated the Johnny Appleseed story, debated the historical accuracy of the tale, considered competing narratives, outlined the difference between "for sure" facts and not-so-sure information, and drew moral implications from their historical work. I was stunned. Had I followed my initial inclination and gone home, I would have missed it all. In addition to looking for history in unexpected places, Ilearned to seek out active classrooms. Classroom-based research relies on there being something to observe. For the most part, silence is not a r esearcher's friend. There may be all sorts oflearning going on in quiet classrooms, but we can't access it as easily or unobtrusively as we can in active classrooms. Tests and writing samples only take us so far, and then we need to see thinking-in-action, joint construction of knowledge, negotiation between and among teachers and students, opportunities for students to think out loud and at length, not just with each other or their teachers, but with us. If we really want to know what kids are thinking, we need to ask them, but in interesting, safe, and supportive ways. The good news is that children and adolescents generally want to be heard and willingly share their ideas when they trust adults to take them seriously. Spending long periods of time in classrooms facilitates that trust. Students see you wandering about the place, interact with you on an informal basis, and decide if you are worth talking to. Curiosity helps a great deal here. Students want to know what you're doing in their classroom and what you're writing in your field notes, and they often want to comment on those notes. I keep two-column field notes with observations in one column and questions to myself, sketches of room arrangements and the like, and reminders in the other. I hadn't anticipated student interest in my notes, but when asked about them, I shared what I had written and discovered a wonderful gateway activity. Students in both the classes in these studies began discussing my notes and questions and, once in awhile, even sent me written suggestions or responses to the questions. By the time I began formal interviews they were invested in making sure I "got it right," as one student explained. I remember leaving those first interviews elated by students' enthusiastic and thoughtful responses and convinced that interviews worked best when there was something interesting for the students to do-in this case, to make sure the interviewer "got it right." Over the course of several studies I experimented with "interesting historical things to have kids do." I asked students to explain a project they were working on, evaluate books or class activities, work with historical sources- and I kept thinking about developing richer stand-alone activities that would fit in the space of a single interview rather than in longer term studies. A colleague in literacy, Christine Pappas, and I d ecided to use well-written, content-rich illus-

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Linda S. Levstik

trated historical fiction to pull children into discussions about history and the past (Levstik & Pappas, 1987). At the time, literacy researchers were making good use of retelling in studies of comprehension and we decided to see if that helped. Did story elements that appeared in students' retellings focus on character, plot, or historical context? How did those elements vary relative to Piagetian stage expectations? We were both pretty sure that a Piagetian approach to historical thinking wasn 't very helpful, but we wanted to make sure, so we matched the age of our interview groups to the Piagetian agel stage formulation. We also wanted to scaffold the retelling in some way. In retrospect, we made the same mistake literacy researchers had madewe asked students to participate in an inauthentic task. Since we read the story to them, there was really no reason for them to retell it. We were fortunate that the narrative engaged them. At the time, however, I was enamored with activity-based interviews. What if we provided props? Could they better sustain a narrative if they had props to help them? We developed a set of laminated cut-out representations of story elements (characters, settings, artifacts) and, after reading the story, asked each child to use the props to retell the story. This worked, although not in the way we intended. Few of the children actually used the props to act out the story; instead, they spread them out on the table and pointed to them during their retelling, or held them up when they had a question about something involving a particular character or another element of the story. Essentially, props gave them something to look at (beside the interviewer), and something to do with their hands (hold the props, push them around as they thought about what had happened in the story). Given that we were conducting "cold" interviews- we hadn't met the students prior to meeting them in one-on-one interview settings- we were grateful for the way the props eased children into this strange setting. What the props did not do, however, was scaffold historical thinking. They reproduced illustrations students had already seen as we read the text- perhaps reminded them of story elements-but did not provide any new information. Despite this, students graciously and enthusiastically participated in the retellings and interviews and provided us with rich data about how narrative shaped their historical thinking. Chapters 2 and 3 combine a number of the elements I've already discussed- a literature-mediated approach to history, history in the context of theme study, opportunities to interview students in the context of an activitybased curriculum, analysis of historical narratives-with some added twistsan emphasis on non-fiction, and on what Keith and I have more recently labeled a moral response stance towards history (Barton & Levstik, 2004). In the first study I followed Louise Adams (a pseudonym) and her sixth-grade students during a three-month combined language arts and social studies unit intended to prepare students for History Day. Louise was (and is) a force to be reckoned with. Two days after I moved to Lexington to begin my appointment at the University of Kentucky she dragooned me for a state-level curriculum

Narrative as a primary act of mind?

7

committee, provided contacts for an after-school program for my children, recommended a travel agent, asked for book recommendations for an upcoming unit in world history, and invited me to observe in her classroom. I took her up on her invitation to observe and found myself fascinated by the intensity of her work with her students. I was particularly intrigued by her plan to develop an individualized reading program in her language arts class as a way to generate research topics for the upcoming History Day competition. Fortunately, Louise wanted feedback on the program and invited me into her classroom as a researcher. The second study (Chapter 3) took place over an academic year in a classroom setting where a remarkable teacher mediated engagement with historical content and historical literature among first graders in one of the city's lowest performing schools. As is the case in these and my other classroom studies, this first grade cannot be construed as typical. I met the teacher, Ruby Yessin (not a pseudonym), while I was supervising field placements at her school. Over time I found myself dropping into her classroom whenever I could. If I became depressed by the dismal state of social studies instruction, I slipped into Ruby's class and reassured myself that good things were happening, even in difficult circumstances. I wasn't alone in finding this classroom something of an academic oasis. Students, parents, guardians, the occasional professor, and an ever-changing parade of visitors all felt welcomed into the learning community. Ruby organized her instruction around an "integrated language" approach that emphasized reading for authentic purposes, including reading historical fiction and non-fiction (Pappas, Kiefer, & Levstik, 1990). In fact, the degree of engagement with historical literature struck me as remarkable in a first grade class. As Ruby and I talked about her work I began thinking about a long-term study. Because history didn't happen in a compact time-slot, but threaded though different experiences over the course of a day, I needed long, flexible blocks of time during the school day and afterwards. A sabbatical afforded that flexibility, and I began a year-long journey that, along with my earlier work in Louise's class, shaped a good deal of my thinking about how literary texts and literature-intensive, purposeful teaching mediates historical thinking. Indeed, when I reread both studies in preparation for writing this book I was reminded of the origins of several themes that have appeared in my individual as well as collaborative work, including the importance of purpose in directing student engagement with history, the power of age- and experience-appropriate historical inquiry, developing civic responsibility, and the challenges of empathy. Perhaps most importantly, revisiting these two classrooms cautions me against too-easy assumptions about how history teaching and learning happen in elementary schools. The teachers in each of these classrooms were very different in some ways. Louise's instruction more closely approximated a disciplinary approach, Ruby put more emphasis on civic responsibility. This distinction, however, oversimplifies the teachers' perspectives and students' experiences. As you read each study notice that both assume that academic

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Linda S. Levstik

engagement begins with a perspective of care and that care is deeply linked to living in a pluralist democracy. Ruby encourages her students to care about "all living things." Louise, too, draws student attention to issues of social justice. In the end, their differences may relate more to the age of their students than to fundamental differences in purpose. In the Cross-Talk portion of the first-grade study, in which Jere Brophy, editor of the volume in which the chapter originally appeared, poses questions for authors, the issues arises as to whether Ruby's approach is "good" history teaching. I side-stepped that question in the article. Students had a number of interesting experiences with different forms of history in each of these classrooms; I would have been pleased had either teacher taught my own children. Had I been the teacher in either class I might also have done some things differently. Nonetheless, I admire these teachers and their students for their commitment to "ambitious" teaching and learning (Grant, 2003). It seems to me more useful to consider what teachers and students attempted and why, and the affordances and constraints represented in those attempts rather than to argue that either is unilaterally "good." Unlike the adage about happy families being all alike, good classrooms are remarkably variegated and we need considerably more research focused on their variety and complexity if we intend to encouragc appropriate variety rather than unnecessary conformity.

Note 1. In Levstik (1984) and Freeman and Levstik (1988), I argued for the benefits of using literature in combination with more traditional sources in teaching history, though I also raised concerns about too heavy a reliance on literature.

References Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Donaldson, M. (1979). Children's minds. New York: Norton. Freeman, E., & Lcvstik, L. S. (1988). Recreating the past: Historical fiction in the social studies curriculum. Elementary SchoolJoumal, 88, 329- 37. Grant, S. G. (2003). History lessons. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hardy, B. (1978). Narrative as a primary act of mind. In M. Meek, A. Warlow, & G. Barton (Eds.), The cool web: The pattern of children's reading (pp. 12-23). New York: Atheneum. Levstik, L. S. (1983). I am no lady: The tomboy in children's literature. Children's Literature in Education International OJiarterfy, 14( 1), 14- 20. Levstik, L. S. (1984). A child's approach to history. The Social Studies, 74,232-36. Levstik, L. S. (1992) From the outside in: American children's literature from 1920-40. Theory and Research in Social Education, 20, 369-85. Levstik, L. S., & Pappas, C. C. (1987). Exploring the development of historical understanding.Journal q[Research and Development in Education, 21, I-IS.

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Pappas, C. C., Kiefer, B. Z, & Levstik, L. S. (1990) An integrated language perspective in the elementary classroom: Yheory into action. New Yark: Longman. Rosenblatt, L. (1938). literature as exploration. New Yark: Appleton-Century. Rosenblatt, L. (1978). Yhe reader, the text, and the poem: Yhe transactional theory qf the literary work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press. Teff, H. (2007). Remus Starr. Retrieved February 15, 2007, from http://web.ukonline. co. ukl thursday .handleigh/humour I gen-humour Iharse-thief.htm

Chapter 2

The relationship between historical response and narrative in a sixth-grade classroom Linda S. Levstik

Recent research on the development of historical understanding has focused on secondary students. For several decades research has rested on the premise that historical understanding is demonstrated in the ability to analyze and interpret passages of history- or at least passages containing historical names, dates, and events. The results have indicated that if historical understanding develops at all, it does not appear until late adolescence (Hallam, 1970, 1979; Peel, 1967). From the perspective of those who work with younger children, however, this approach reflects an incomplete view of historical understanding. The inference often drawn from the research is that young children cannot understand history; therefore history should not be part of their curriculum. Certainly, surveys have shown that young children do not indicate much interest in history as a s chool subject. Yet teachers and parents know that children evince interest in the "old days," in historical events or characters, and in descriptions of everyday life in historic times, such as Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books (e.g., 1953). Children respond to history long before they are capable of handling current tests of historical understanding. The research, however, has not taken historical response into account in the development of mature understanding. The research on children's response to literature provides some guidelines for examining historical response. Research by Applebee (1978), Favat (1977), and Schlager (1975) suggests that aspects of response are developmental. Other scholars (Britton, 1978; Egan, 1983; I Rosenblatt, 1938) extend that suggestion to historical understanding, arguing that early, personal responses to historyespecially history embedded in narrative- are precursors to more mature and objective historical understanding. Little has been done to study the form of such early historical response. Kennedy's (1983) study examined the relationship between informationprocessing capacity and historical understanding, but concentrated on adolescents. Reviews of research on historical understanding also fail to uncover studies of early response. There is nothing describing how children respond to historical material in a regular classroom setting. How do children respond on

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their own, or in contact with peers? What forms of history elicit the strongest responses? How do children express interest in historical material? Does the classroom context influence response? What teacher behaviors inhibit or encourage response? These are important questions for the elementary teacher faced with a social studies curriculum that continues to emphasize history, as well as for the theorist interested in the development of historical understanding. Yet these questions cannot easily be answered by traditional empirical models. Research needs to be extended to include focus on the range of evidence available through naturalistic inquiry.

Using naturalistic inquiry to study historical response Classroom observation suggests that narrative is a potent spur to historical interest. Teachers note the interest exhibited by students in such historical stories as The Diary ofAnne Frank (Frank, 1952) and Little House on the Prairie (Wilder, 1953) and in the oral tradition of family history (Huck, 1981). Research in discourse analysis and schema theory suggests that narrative may help children make sense of history. White and Gagne (1976), for instance, found that connected discourse leads to better memory for meaning. Such discourse provides a framework that improves recall and helps children recognize important features in a text (Kintsch, Kozminsky, Streby, McKoon, & Keenan, 1975). DeVilliers (1974) and Levin (1970) found that readers processed words in connected discourse more deeply than when the same words appeared in sentences or lists. Cullinan, Harwood, and Gaida (1983) suggest that readers may be better able to remember things in narratives where the "connected discourse allows the reader to organize and interrelate elements in the text" (p. 31). One way to help children understand history, then, may be to use the connected discourse ofliterature. Such an approach also allows the researcher to focus on response as the ongoing construction of meaning as children encounter history in literature. The following study investigated children's responses to a literature-based approach to history.

The study The study was conducted through participant observation in a sixth-grade class using a literature-based approach to history. The site was selected on the basis of the availability of an appropriate program and a teacher willing to work with a participant observer. The study was limited by the length of the programthree months during the second semester of the school year-and by departmentalization for instruction. I could observe only during the almost daily language arts and social studies periods and during those after-school hours

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when children stayed to work on related projects-an average of six hours per week. The school selected for the study is a middle-to lower-class school in a medium-sized metropolitan area in the upper South. New, lower income housing and redistricting have affected the economic character of the neighborhood and of the school. Some children are bused in from more affiuent areas of the city. The majority of pupils, both in the school and in the sixth grade, is White. All those in the observed class read at or above grade level, based on their performance in the Houghton Miffiin Reading Series (Durr, 1981 ). The teacher, Louise Adams,2 has been working at the school for 3 of her II years as a teacher. She works with the nearby university as a cooperating teacher for field placements and student teachers and is active in several professional organizations, including the National Council for the Social Studies. Mrs. Adams has major responsibility for both social studies and reading/ language arts. This dual responsibility allowed her to take advantage of an upcoming unit on research skills in language arts and a social studies History Day 3 project to involve children in an individualized reading program. She also wanted feedback on the program from someone outside the school setting and so was willing to allow a participant observer to enter the classroom for an extended period of time. Methods used to collect and analyze the data were those of field studies in the ethnography of schooling (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984; Pelto & Pelto, 1978; Popkewitz & Tabachnick, 1981; Spindler, 1982; Wolcott, 1975) and in children's response to literature (Cullinan et aI., 1983; Hickman, 1979). The primary data collection mode was observation. Along with keeping a daily log, I collected papers passed out in class, lists of books and materials, and copies of student journals and other writing documenting the relationship between narrative history and response. I also transcribed teacher and student comments-sometimes summarized, but usually verbatim . I conducted both informal and structured interviews. My ability to move around the room for substantial portions of the observation period and my seat near the bookcase where students often congregated provided many opportunities for informal comment and discussion. Some of these were brief (e.g. , S- "Do you know this book? It's neat. You can look at it," [moves off to get another book]). Others involved lengthy discussions ofliterary techniques and historical accuracy. I also checked initial perceptions with the teacher and sometimes with the school librarian, asking what kinds of books were shared during the library periods, and what did students select. Structured interview opportunities were provided as a regular part of the program. I met with individuals and small groups so that by the end of the study each child had been interviewed at least once, and several had become key informants. Individual interviews were structured to sample the range of student reading, from those reading most, to those least involved in reading; I

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based these assessments on teacher report, student report, and observation. Small groups were selected on the basis of their interest in a particular topic or book. As small group discussions were a regular part of class instruction, children did not hesitate to p articipate, nor did interviews disrupt the class.

The program Several concerns generated the approach adopted by Louise Adams. 1.

2. 3. 4. S. 6.

Most of the children in the language arts class were competent, fluent readers. They were, Louise said, a good class. The children appeared capable of handling a high degree of independence and, their teacher thought, might benefit from a more challenging approach than the basal reader provided. The children had expressed interest in the History Day program, and Louise was interested in having them participate. Before allowing children to select History Day projects, Louise wanted students exposed to a variety of topics. Louise wanted to encourage student interest in biography and historical fiction. Because of the district's requirement for accountability in reading, Louise needed a system that would generate records tracing student progress. There were instructional objectives that Louise intended to incorporate, including extending children's reading and speaking vocabularies and expanding their voluntary reading.

Mrs. Adams initiated the plan for individualized reading by bringing a collection of books into the classroom. She next solicited suggestions for topics from students and took a committee to the public library to check out additional titles. This classroom colleclion formed lhe basis of the program. Though students could read books on any historical era or event during the reading period, assignments during social studies were topic specific. The greater latitude of choice during language arts made that period richer in data for this study.

Analyzing the data An observer has access to features of response that are publicly expressed. Analyzing data, then, becomes a process of identifying response behaviors and charting patterns and variations. Categories based on these analyses aid in understanding the variety of events recorded in the field notes; Categorization also directs attention to events that might otherwise be overlooked. The categories of response drawn from the class under study are listed next, in order of frequency of occurrence. These are followed by a discussion of conditions

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affecting response events and by a description of categories important in analyzing historical response. Categories of historical response observed in this context include the following: 1.

Selecting and reading history attending to recommendations; expressing a need to know about a topic; selecting books that explore border areas- the unwished-for worst and hoped-for best; losing selfin book- absorption; Reading with a peer.

2.

Oral response statements of personal identification with historical characters or fictional characters caught in historical circumstances; elicited discussion statements; freely offered discussion statements.

3.

Sharing expertise sharing elicited by teacher or other adult; sharing elicited by peers; sharing volunteered.

4.

Listening elicited-children directed to listen; spontaneous--children listen in without direction.

5.

Writing statements of personal identification with historical characters of fictional characters caught in historical circumstances; sense of audience- adopting the narrative voice; subjective reporting.

6.

Research using classroom reference materials; using outside sources such as community experts; using library resources outside the classroom.

7.

Developing projects selecting and researching a topic; building a display- home and school work; attending History Day-local and state.

Some of these categories might have been expected, given the program's heavy emphasis on reading and writing activities. There would have been no way,

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however, to predict the power of students' expressed need to know, the personalization of written and oral response, the interest in the border areas of human experience, or the impact of shared expertise. As pervasive features of historical response in this classroom, and because there is often little opportunity for any of these responses in traditional classroom settings, each is elaborated. First, however, a framework is provided, establishing the conditions affecting response events: the sequence of events, time effects, and cumulative effects.

Sequence of events The frequency of response events was determined to some extent by teacher assignment. The children were required to read for certain periods and to write daily. Although children could browse through books and talk to each other during the reading period, the teacher monitored their behavior and the time spent browsing or talking. If a student browsed too long, or engaged in conversation unrelated to the reading assignment, Mrs. Adams redirected the activity. She also insisted that students participate in almost all categories of response. Though not all students participated in all subcategories and students had choices within categories, the list provides an overview of both the frequency of occurrence and an approximate order of events. A list, however, does not show the interrelatedness of events. Listening, for instance, occurred simultaneously with oral response and shared expertise. For an event to be considered sharing, a receiver must be available-either teacher, peer, or observer. The opportunity for such interaction and the sequence of response, especially between peers, can be seen in a series of events taken from the daily logs. The following excerpts begin with a student reading Anne Frank: The Diary qfa Young Girl (Frank, 1952).4 JAN. 14 Diane has just finished Anne Frank. She closes book and looks

over cover, turns book over, and scans (reads?) the back cover. To Anne: "You've got to read this." Anne picks up book ... JAN. 24 Louise calls up Anne's group [includes Diane]. They are to discuss

books on holocaust. Enthusiastic response to grouping. Pull chairs in circle. Several run back to get books. ANNE [describing Anne Frank): I would have run away! Why didn't they

run away? DIANE: I would have been terrified! [nods of agreement from group].

Peter reads excerpt from an informational book on World War II, section on Hitler. He asks for the meaning of several German words. Louise calls Jennifer to group: 'jennifer, you've lived in Germany. Can you help us here?" Jennifer helps, returns to own reading.

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JAN. 26 Journal entries reflect interest in holocaust. Jane writes that she got

so angry she wanted to "walk right up and punch Hitler in the face." Several write: "I just didn't know how bad it was." "The book made me glad I live here, and not back then. I'm lucky." "I don't understand how this could happen! It's like prejudice against Black people." Another small group forms, with several new members, to discuss Friedrich (Richter, 1970). I recount story of acquaintance who was in a concentration camp. General classroom hum ceases. The whole class is listening! Leaning forward to hear better. As story concludes, there are audible sighs. LOUISE: If you are interested in the Nazis, there will be a TV show

on ... All the books on World War II are checked out. Students asked librarian for others. Angela tells me she checked a copy of Friedrich (Richter, 1970) out of the public library "because she Uane] has the only copy, and she isn't done yet." JAN. 31 Robert is reading a psychological biography of Adolf Hitler (Klein &

Klein, 1976). Louise reports that Robert doesn't do much regular classwork [observed last week avoiding spelling test because "I can't find my pencil"]. Other teachers are discussing retention. Louise thinks he is very intelligent, but unhappy. Threatened suicide recently. [There is always a stack of books on his desk, and he does appear to read them]. FEB. 9 Robert participates in class discussion of Hitler. LOUISE: What kind of man do you think Hitler was? RESPONSES: ')\wful," "Horrible," "Insane," and so forth. ANNE: I think Hitler was brave to think he could conquer the world.

There is a great deal of discussion. ANNE: Brave doesn't have to mean good ...

Robert begins to talk about his book. Two girls who began the same book, but did not finish, grimace. "That book was nasty!" they say. "It talks about sex and that kind of stuff." Robert disagrees ... "That stuff helps explain ... " The girls shake their heads, "no." Later, in a separate interview, Robert explains the importance of understanding Hitler: LINDA: Why did you choose this book? ROBERT: I've been fascinated by Hitler, you know. H e got to be so powerful.

And why did he kill those people?

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LINDA: Why did he?

He was prejudiced. The way he was raised, he just didn't like some people. There was this scene in the book. He's at a meeting, and they're saying to join Austria, Germany, and another country. And he jumps up and says that's impossible. It'll never happen. He really wanted power, and he would do anything to get it. At the end he knew he was going to lose so he killed himself The book says he bit down on a poison capsule and shot himself in the head [Robert demonstrates]. I could not devote myself to killing and war like he could. He had a very messed up mind. He was very confused.

ROBERT:

Toward the end of the observation period Anne and Diane ask Jennifer for assistance with several German words-blitzkrieg, kristallnacht. Louise asks Jennifer to talk about what Germany was like when she lived there. In her journal entry, Jennifer discusses Gentlehands (Kerr, 1978) [first evidence of interest in holocaust literature] "''''hen I read Gentlehands, I realized why people joined Hitler's cause. I had thought that anyone to join Hitler must have been mean. I realized that it must have been appealing and also that people often feel that they should do whatever their leaders tell them, even if it is wrong." Robert is asked to join a small, teacher-led discussion group to share some of what he has learned about Hitler. He brings the book and refers to it throughout.

FEB. 10

ANNE: See, in Robert's book, Hitler is brave, but it is insane bravery.

Peter joins the group in order to confirm dates. LOUISE:

Peter can help us with this problem ...

At the end of the study, children were asked to write about the books they most enjoyed or those from which they learned something. Once again, many referred to the holocaust books: "I loved this book because it sees through the eyes of this person. I never knew how hard people had it. This book is so real. I find this period especially interesting for some reason 1 don't know about." "I think it is interesting to know how the people hid from the Germans and Hitler. 1 never knew Hitler tried to kill the jews." "I learned about the World War II in two books. I couldn't believe how cruel Hitler was to the Jews .... 1 enjoyed reading about WW II and will try and read more." "I think this book is worth reading because for one thing, its well written, and for another, it tells just how the Jews were treated ... " "I enjoyed this book very much and picked this book because it is about

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linda S. Levstik a jewish girl whose family had to go into hiding during World War II. I have become very interested in World War II, Hitler himself, and especially what happened to theJews and I want to find out more about these things."

Many of those writing about the holocaust books reported that they "wanted to do something" about the books after they read them, as if the events were current, or they could exact retrospective justice. Robert went on to develop a History Day presentation in which he performed the roles of American, Russian, and German soldiers, expressing their fears, discontents, and views of war. In an interview, he explained that his study had been worth doing, even though some of the reading was difficult, and he had not understood all the terminology. "Now," he explained, "I know the truth."

Time effects: reencounter Although all students did not participate in this entire sequence of events, it is representative of response patterns. Other sequences involving biographies of women, the American Civil War, and English and European history ran concurrently with or succeeded interest in World War II and the holocaust. In each case, time was important. Rarely was a response event a singular occurrence. Rather, students read, discussed, and then had time to reflect before regrouping. An issue could be reencountered from several perspectives over time. A student would propose a thesis (e.g., "Hitler was brave .... "), listen to peer response, read and think more, and return to the issue (e.g., "Hitler is brave, but it is insane bravery."). Reencounter also meant that students could join in along the way, as Robert andJennifer did.

Cumulative response Response can also be seen as cumulative in this sequence. A single student opportunity to share a well-liked book resulted in several students seeking "more like this." Diane, for instance, did not ask for others "like this" until her friends suggested she read Gentlehands. Shortly, the group enlarged beyond friendship affiliations, and more books were added, including biography and informational books. The initial personal identification ("I would have been terrified!") expanded to include consideration of the morality of events and the nature of bravery and responsibility (e.g., What should Friedrich's friend have done when the Jewish boy was forced from the air raid shelter?). Student interest did not flow chronologically. Rather, it was triggered by the students' perceived need to know, by peer or teacher suggestion (e.g., "You've got to read this."), by a powerful interest in what Hardy (1978) calls "the unwished-for worst," and what might be characterized as the hoped-for best, as well as by an interest in sharing with peers.

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These factors did not emerge as clearly during the regular social studies period when students followed a common, chronological curriculum. The social studies curriculum may have satisfied the students' need to know, as well as their desire to explore the border areas of human experience. It may also have provided less opportunity or necessity for expressing such interests or concerns. Given a context in which choice was encouraged, however, children tended to express their interests through these related factors: (a) the need to know, (b) personal identification (e.g., "How would I have behaved in like circumstances?") and (c) the exploration of the border areas of human experience.

The need to know In interviews, children reported overwhelmingly that they loved the opportunity to choose their own books, to explore topics in depth, and to work independently. They talked about being moved, inspired, and angered at times by what they read, and they frequently added that they had learned something they described as the truth. Observation and interviews provide some background for this response, beginning with the students' need to know. In part, this was a creation of the teacher. Mrs. Adams explained that she purposely worked to build an environment in which both asking and knowing were important. In another sense, her arrangement may have freed children to do what several scholars suggest is the task of the beginning adolescent- the exploration of possible adult roles (Meek, Warlow, & Barton, 1978). A clear example of this behavior can be seen in the reading and discussion patterns of one group of girls. Each girl had read at least one biography of a woman who had lived an unusual life. In interviews the girls were explicit in describing their reasons for selecting these books. They wanted, they said, to read about successful women. As one of them explained: [Amelia Earhardt] did what she wanted to do .... I would never have the guts to fly a plane across the Atlantic alone. Also, I would not die to make a record ... but Amelia Earhardt has taught me that if you want to do something, go for it. Don't wait until the last minute. You can be anything you want to. Don't be a nurse if you want to be a doctor. Stick to your opinions and rights. Another adds: I know now that I will be a doctor no matter what. I can do that [struggle as Elizabeth Blackwell had] too. Using a variety of biographies, these girls went on to discuss possible adult roles

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and debated the relative merits of careers m medicine, physics, computer science, and translation: I want to be a surgeon . . . You want to cut people up? I'd rather be a nurse, then you could help people without all the blood and stuff. JA YNE: Oh, yeah? What about the icky stuff nurses do? [passage from Blackwell biography]. KA TE: Or working with computers. That would be a good thing ... SUE [referring to another book]: And foreign language- you could be an interpreter at the U.N. MARIA:

ALICE :

In a journal entry, one member of this group, Kate, speculated on a woman president [written prior to the nomination of a woman vice presidential candidate]. I think a woman has never been voted into the Presidential office because Americans portray females as the weaker sex. A typical family is the nuclear family, a mother, a father, and a child. Through the media and movies, we hear about the man working, the woman the housewife. Today things are changing: Latch-key children, single-parent families , or both parents working. Another factor in this issue is that women aren't even trying to be nominated, much less setting their goals as high as becoming President. Many women have been raised to think that men will rule the roost after marriage. Also, in some cases, they have been trained to think that they aren't capable of such a job; At the moment, I cannot think of a woman that might run for president and win. When I become of voting age, I would vote for a woman president not just to help her along. I would vote for her because she has the qualifications, has the stamina, and was willing to take on the responsibility of running a country with success. Note: Recently, I discovered if we had a woman president, we would announce her as Madam President. In a later, separate interview, Maria, another of the girls discussing careers, elaborated on the need to know. She began by explaining that she was willing to read books described as slow such as a biography: I like books that move fast and capture your attention in the first two chapters. Well, I like fact, too. And they don't always get exciting right away. I read that Elizabeth Yates book, and I liked that. LINDA: It wasn't exciting? MARIA: No, but it was good .... I think that, well, its fact, you know; it's alright if it's a bit slow. Real life is like that. But if it's fiction , ... the author ought to make it more exciting.

MARIA:

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Other students reported a willingness to tolerate more difficult reading if they thought the result would be knowing. Robert needed to know what motivated Hitler; later he read a thick volume on coping with divorce because "I needed to know, and 1 didn't want to bother my mother about it." Scott reread one book four times because he "wanted to know about the blitz." Jennifer "liked the times and maybe needed to know some of my heritage." Chris knew "for a fact about World War II and the Jews and Hitler." The need to know was generally synonymous in the children's conversation with a search for truth. Students explained that they knew the truth after reading, that they wanted to "know what really happened," or wanted to understand something from the past. This was particularly true in those instances where humans responded with extraordinary bravery or outrageous inhumanity.

Personal identification Rather than searching for general historical information, the sixth graders in this study looked for topics with emotional relevance to their own lives. They compared literary characters to themselves (e.g., "If that were me, I would .. . . " or "I would have felt .... "). In Literature as Experience, Rosenblatt (1938) suggests that readers experience empathy with characters that allows them to test themselves against real and fictional circumstances. Responses in the class under study corroborate Rosenblatt's claim. Children asked about motivation (e.g., "Why did the people let Friedrich die?" or "Weren't they frightened? They were so brave to hold out and not give up!"). In journal entries, they discussed the corollary to their interest in historical motivation: personal comparisons and testing. "I wanted to be there to see what was happening and put a stop to it all. ... I fclt 1 was in Ilse Kohen's place." "When I read Helen Keller it really made me want to be like her because she was so determined whenever she wanted something, and she wanted to learn and read everything. 1 thought maybe 1 could do that too." Children might read a book because a friend recommended it or because the title and cover were attractive, but they liked or disliked it for quite personal reasons. "I just wish [Helen Keller] was still alive so I could meet her." "I didn't like Songfor a Dark Q¥een (Sutcliffe, 1979). 1 didn't like her killing herself ... nothing to live for."

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"This was about a boy who played a violin. I wanted to take violin but my mother wouldn't let me. I really liked this book." Overall, however, the most compelling books for this group of children explored the border areas of human experience.

Exploring the unwished-for worst and the hoped-for best Kieran Egan (1979) argues that history, especially history as narrative, is appropriate content in the elementary school because it deals with basic and powerful emotions familiar even to young children. Although other forms of literature for children also have emotional power, the reality of history seemed to appeal to these sixth graders. Children demonstrated continued interest in history as it relates to human response to fear, discrimination, and tragedy. History provided them with real instances of human bravery or tragedy within a relatively safe framework. Even historical fiction, because it posited an individual response to a real event, and encouraged children to speculate about their own abilities to handle real-life dilemmas. This, Hardy (1978) claims, is one of the functions of narrative or story: In order really to live we make up stories about ourselves and others, about the personal as well as the social past and future. (p. 13)

Not all students, however, displayed interest in this kind of history or literature. Six children read none of the books that might loosely fall into this category. Instead, they read standard youth biographies such as Young Man from the Piedmont (Webberly 1953) or informational books such as the English Ladybug series (e.g., Peach 1966). Although the subject matter in either could be made emotionally powerful, none of the students reading these books discussed them in the personal response pattern most common with their peers. Instead, they repeated information gathered, without noting any individual human consequences or identifying with the characters: "It's very educational. ... It tells the history of how man found out how to fly, and told everything that happened up to that moment." "I learned about the first battle of ironclads on the Potomac River during the Civil War." For others, interest changed when it was time to begin the History Day projects. Three students developed a project based on the class' social studies unit on Egypt, even though all three had concentrated most of their reading on Nazi Germany. A core of students, though, did develop projects that grew from their

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reading. Robert's performance on World War II soldiers was one example, but others worked on Jacques Cousteau's pioneering efforts to develop undersea diving equipment, Elizabeth Blackwell and the entry of women into medicine, Pearl Harbor, and the Battle of Hastings. None dealt directly with the holocaust. In interviews, three students mentioned that they did not think the holocaust had been a turning point in history, the History Day theme. They had interpreted turning points to be positive events. Other responses did not fall into any identifiable pattern. In each case, where students wrote reports to accompany projects based on their reading, their reports demonstrate the influence of the literary introduction. Instead of reports that read like encyclopedias, the papers reflected how the writers felt about the subject. For instance, the paper on Elizabeth Blackwell includes this description of Blackwell's medical training: When she arrived she was greeted cordially, but soon all the fun went away. The students were friendly, but some of the professors were obnoxious. When studying childbirth she was asked to leave the room, on one occasion they took a corpse apart and she was asked to leave, but instead of leaving she sat in her seat. The professor grew red and angry, but to everyone's surprise at the end of the class she had taken apart and labeled every organ correctly. (And didn't get SICK!). The semester went by and soon it was time to graduate. Elizabeth graduated at the top of her class with honors. The young author of the Cousteau report was equally enthusiastic about his subject. As he described the impact of water pressure on a diver going below a certain point, he wrote, " ... he would be CRUSHED!" Capitals punctuate the report, as does approval of Cousteau. The student had come to know his subject, and as with his peers he incorporated details that particularized the magnitude of accomplishments or problems and passed on knowing: the age of a sunken ship, the depth of a dive, the effects of pressure. As writers, the children adopted the storyteller's voice rather than the more distant and impersonal reportorial tone. They attempted to engage their audience with the same elements that had first appealed to them- a more personal narrative structure. The children also addressed their audience with the recognition that writing could be a conversation with an unknown listener (cf. Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod, & Rosen, 1975): Hi, I'm Golda Mabovitche and I was born in Russia, but moved to America early this summer. Today was the first day of school and I don't know anyone. Mama walked me to school today to show me where it was, but tomorrow I'll go by myself ... I felt so weird sitting in class and not knowing what people were saying. When someone said something to me all I could say was something in Yiddish. Well, I guess it wasn't that bad I made a new friend and found my way home!

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Shared expertise: A teacher-manipulated context The various responses to history observed in this classroom were nurtured by a specific classroom context, including specific choices on student access to information, the exercise of authority, and the encouragement of peer interaction. In some classrooms, teachers sanction only information from approved textbooks. The textbook becomes gatekeeper and arbiter, limiting access to information and serving as final authority when a question is raised. Information is controlled by an authority rooted outside the classroom whose author and sources are invisible to students and unavailable for discussion. Mrs. Adams' approach was quite different. Rather than single sources, she encouraged reference to multiple sources. Rather than simply accepting the information or interpretation offered in a textbook, Mrs. Adams encouraged critical analysis of sources and asked students to make judgments about what they were learning. Like a cogwheel, Mrs. Adams transferred power to her students, who, in turn, moved their peers. Within this classroom context, each student was a potentially active part of the community of learners. Scott explained, "You work hard, and sometimes I wish I was smarter, but it's the best class yet. She doesn't put you down, or tease .... " Instead, Mrs. Adams' classroom roles may be categorized as follows.

Selecting and suggesting resources In addition to providing various references and literature in the classroom, Mrs. Adams also assisted children in using community resources. An excerpt from the field notes demonstrates the process: 8:45 A.M.

[Peter and Gary engaged in heated argument]

PETE [waves reference book on oceanography]: But it says so right here! GAR Y:

SO what? My book is by Jacques Cousteau, and he should know!

Louise intervenes. Argument concerns the speed of sound waves in water. Louise helps outline plan for solution. Peter and Gary leave for library. Boys return with more possible answers. Louise has them check copyright, authors' credentials. Narrows field to three possibilities. I I :20 A.M. Louise arranges for Peter and Gary to call physics professor. He explains factors affecting velocity. Boys write report on their work and display it for the rest of the class.

8:55 A .M.

9: 15 A.M.

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25

Organizing formal sharing opportunities Formal sharing includes journal writing, whole class and small group discussions, individual conferences, book reviews, and a final project. Each opportunity for sharing also involves an audience.

Organizing an audience for student work Mrs. Adams responded to journal entries with suggestions for further reading or thinking, compliments, and comments: "Interesting point of view .... There are usually two sides to an issue." "This [reminds] me of the play we saw Thursday. Did you think so?" "You will be a good resource person .... I would really appreciate your reading [this]. Mrs. Adams also set up student audiences. Book reviews were arranged so that peers could use the reviews in selecting a book to read. Group discussions also provided a forum for sharing, as did History Day.

Providing reading time There was an established policy in the class, allowing reading time during every language arts period.

Clear expectation that students would participate and do quality work Mrs. Adams did the kind of coaching Adler recommends in The Paedeia Proposal (1982). There was continuous input as children worked, both from peers and from the teacher: "The word interesting is not sufficient. What makes it interesting?" "There's your word. See if you can find out what it means. Put it on the board when you find it." Encouraging peer experts

As children read and studied and talked with the teacher, Mrs. Adams kept mental track of student interests and referred students to each other. This was

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the hub of the cogwheel, as experts were created and encouraged to share with their peers. 'jennifer has been reading in that area. Why don't you check with her?" "Paul, didn't you just write about that?" "Perhaps you should sit in on this discussion." "Ah! Good question! Let me know when you find out!" During discussion groups a student expert might be called on to clarify a point or provide needed information. Children might not know the answers, but they usually attempted to find out or suggested where their classmates could find out. Soon reference to student experts did not require teacher suggestion. A student who wanted help in an area went to the person with the expertise.

Praising and attending Mrs. Adams praised good work and attended to student needs and interests. She was able to put discussion groups together based on those interests or on particular needs she perceived as important, such as the creation of student experts or the possibility of encouraging further reading on a topic. She also pointed out good work to other adults in the classroom-student aides and student teachers, other teachers, and me. In each of these roles, Mrs. Adams directed students to be agents of their own learning and aids to their peers. She manipulated the context to take advantage of the motivating power of literature to spur historical study and provide a setting for historical response.

Conclusions The data clearly indicate that these children were interested in history and that interest and response were influenced by the teacher's manipulation of the classroom context. This raises several issues. First, the emotional impact of history as literature can be problematic. Literature raises issues in an emotionally charged context. In another context, children might never move beyond their initial emotional response to an examination of the different perspectives involved in any values issue. The availability of a variety of books, as well as time to encounter and reencounter ideas in a variety of contexts-reading, discussing, writing- appeared to be an important factor in this class. Second, literature did provide information to children. Further, the information was strongly colored by the author's point of view and the reader's identification with particular characters. Although mature historical under-

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27

standing may be more analytical and objective, children at this stage do respond to the subjective nature of history as literature. These children engaged in further exploration of topics, but their later reports retained a subjective dimension. Also, their research was not spontaneous, but an outgrowth of the teacher-directed context. In the same way, only a few children were spontaneously critical ofliterary sources. Even though they could explain the difference between fiction and nonfiction and did spontaneously critique books as literary creations, they tended to accept the history content as unimpeachable. Criticism directed at the veracity or accuracy of the created world remained a function of teacher suggestion and classroom protocol, especially as developed through the use of classroom experts and constantly re-forming discussion groups. The students' expressed need to know made it difficult for children to question the veracity of a book they had felt deeply. Third, by changing the environment through who participated in discussion groups, what journal topics were assigned, and what books were made available, the teacher influenced historical response. There were numerous rewards for pursuing interest in history, both from peer interaction and teacher support for curiosity, inquiry, and expertise. The opportunity for continued encounters with content allowed time for response to occur. Such connections between historical response and classroom context bear continued research. Finally, the strength of children's identification with historical characters or events demonstrated an interest in a particular kind of history. Children wanted to know about the world, about how people in the past had lived, and about the possibilities for their own futures. History and historical fiction provided a reality base for testing the possibilities for human behavior. Whether this interest is a phenomenon of early adolescence, a developmental stage preceded by other kinds of response, a common response pattern during the elementary years, or an artifact of a particular teacher or group of children remains to be researched.

Notes I. Although Egan (1983) does not accept Piagetian descriptions of cognitive development applied to history, he does posit a curricular sequence beginning with narrative structures and characterized as accumulating history. 2. Louise Adams is a pseudonym. I have used the first name in the data to reflect the relationship between teacher and researcher, the last name is used in the narrative text to reflect the title used in her professional role, and Mrs. rather than Ms. as it is the form of address used in the school. 3. History Day is a national program intended to encourage student research in history. 4. All student names are pseudonyms; all transcriptions are rendered with student errors uncorrected.

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References Adler, M. (1982). The paideiaproposal. New York: Macmillan. Applebee, A. (1978). The child's concept qf story: Ages two to seventeen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Britton,]. (1978). The reader. In M. Meek, A. Warlow, & G. Barton (Eds.), The cool web: The pattern qfchildren's reading (pp. 7~ II). New York: Atheneum. Britton,]., Burgess, T., Martin, N., McLeod, A, & Rosen, H. (1975). The development qf writing abilities: 11 ~18. London: Macmillan Education. Cullinan, B., Harwood, N., & GaIda, L. (1983). The reader and the story: Comprehension and response. Journal qfResearch and Development in Education, 16(3), 29~ 39. Devilliers, P. A (1974). Imagery and theme in recall of connected discourse. Journal qf Experimental Psychology, 61, II O~ I 7. Durr, W. K , Windley, V. 0., & Earnhardt, K S. (1981). Impressions. Boston: Houghton Miffiin. Egan, K (1979). What children know best. Social Education, 43, 130~39. Egan, K (1983). Accumulating history. History and Theory, 22, 66~80. Favat, A (1977). Child and tale: The origins qfinterest. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Frank, A (1952). Anne Frank: The diary qfayounggirl. New York: Modern Library. Goetz, ]. P., & LeCompte, M. D. (1984). Ethnography and qualitative design in educational research. New York: Academic Press. Hallam, R. N. (1970). Piaget and thinking in history. In M. Ballard (Ed.), New movements in the study and teaching qf history (pp. 162~ 78). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Hallam, R. N. (1979). Attempting to improve logical thinking in school history. Research in Education, 21, I ~23. Hardy, B. (1978). Narrative as a primary act of mind. In M. Meek, A Warlow, & G. Barton (Eds.), The cool web: TIle pattern qf children's reading (pp. 12~23). New York: Atheneum. Hickman, ]. (1979). Response to literature in a school environment: Grades K-5. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus. Huck, C. (1981). Literature as the content of reading. Theory into Practice, 16, 363~ 71. Kcnnedy, K J. (1983). Assessing the relationship between information processing capacity and historical understanding. Theory and Research in Social Education, 11(2), 1~22.

Kerr, M. E. (1978). Gentlehands. New York: Harper & Row. Kintsch, W., Kozminsky, E., Streby, W. J., McKoon, G., & Keenan, J. M. (1975). Comprehension and recall of text as a function of content variables. Journal qf Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 196~214. Klein, M. C., & Klein, H. A (1976). Hitler's hang-ups: An adventure in insight. New York: E. P. Dutton. Levin,J. R. (1970). Verbal organizations and the facilitation of serial learning. Journal qf Education Psychology, 61, I I O~ I 7. Meek, M ., Warlow, A, & Barton, G. (Eds.). (1978). The cool web: The pattern qf children's reading. New York: Atheneum. Peach, L. D. G. (1966). Cleopatra and ancient Egypt. Loughborough, England: Willis & Hepworth.

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Peel, E. A. (1967). Some problems in the psychology of history teaching. In W. H. Burston & O. Thompson (Eds.), Studies in the nature and teaching qf history (pp. 159- 90). New York: Humanities Press. Pelto, P.]., & Pelto, G. H. (1978). Anthropological research: TIe structure qfinquiry (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Popkewitz, T. S., & Tabachnick, B. R. (Eds.). (1981). TIe study qfschooling: Field-based methodologies in educational research and evaluation. New York: Praeger. Richter, H. P. (1970). Friedrich. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Rosenblatt, L. (1938). Literature as exploration. New York: Appleton-Century. Schlager, N. (1975). The significance of children's choices in literature: New insights based upon a developmental viewpoint. In M. P. Douglass (Ed. ), Reading the teaching learning process: 39th Yearbook qf the Claremont Reading Conference (pp. 64-73). Claremont, CA: Claremont Graduate School. Spindler, G. (Ed.). (1982) Doing the ethnography qf schooling: Educational anthropology in action. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Sutcliffe, R . (1979). Songfor a dark queen. New York: Crowell. Webberly, L. P. O. (1953). Young manfrom the Piedmont. New York: Ariel Books. White, R. T., & Gagne, R. M. (1976). Retention of related and unrelated sentences. Journal qfEducational Psychology, 68, 843- 52. Wilder, L. 1. (1953). Little house on the prairie. New York: Harper & Row. Wolcott, H. F. (1975). Criteria for an ethnographic approach to research in schools. Human Organization, 34,111 - 27 .

Chapter 3

Building a sense of history in a first-grade classroom

Linda S. Levstik

It is 10:00 a.m. on a blustery March morning as the first grade begins social studies. "Right now we're doing some traveling," the teacher says, and the class calls out, "to China?" "to Ethiopia!" "to Mrica!" A child whispers to a visitor, "We cooked chicken from Nigeria!" Two months later, the first grade has "traveled" all the way from China and Nigeria to Australia. They gather in a semi-circle on the floor as their teacher reads a story that introduces some of the history of the Australian rain forest. As she reads, the bell rings, and several students sigh. A boy says, "I hate when it's time to go. I'djust like to stay and stay." Too often, elementary social studies is not where young children would like to "stay and stay." Rather, it is "conceived narrowly in terms oflirnited content that. . . may appear to teachers unrelated to the rest of their program, an unwelcome add-on subject competing for time with the required 'basic skills'" (Martin, 1990, p. 306). Many curricula appear to underestimate children's ability to understand any but the most concrete representation of social studies content, interspersed with information related to national holidays (Brophy, 1990; Goodlad, 1984; Thornton, 1990). Martin characterizes this type of social studies as emphasizing "the obvious, the cheerful, and the stereotypical" (Martin, 1990, p. 306). Such curricular patterns have been subject to increasing criticism for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most publicized is test data indicating that American children have not learned the kind of history, geography, and civics measured on standardized tests (cf. Hammack et ai., 1990; Ravitch & Finn, 1987). Some critics have argued that declining test scores reflect curricular inattention to social studies content (Bradley Commission, 1988; Howard & Mendenhall, 1982). Others (Downey & Levstik, 1988; Egan, 1979; Joint Committee on Geographic Education, 1984; Thornton & Vukelich, 1988) suggest that the focus of attention should be on the kind of instruction students receive under the rubric of social studies. In the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessment of U.S. history (Hammack et ai., 1990), for instance, students reported themselves more likely to have been

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assigned textbook readings, memorization, and movie watching than the use of documents, written reports, collaborative projects, class discussion, or field trips to places of historic importance- instructional approaches that might be expected to encourage them to seek out, interpret, and apply their historical knowledge (Hammack et aI., 1990). The problems of thinking and learning in social studies are compounded in the elementary school by both the traditional expanding-environments curriculum that emphasizes the young child's immediate environment and theories of cognition that posit global-stage constraints and suggest that much of the content of social studies requires cognitive skills well beyond those possessed by young children (Laville & Rosenzweig, 1975; Hallam, 1974; Peel, 1978). This combination has led to reluctance to introduce a significant portion of content from the social studies in the early elementary grades. More recent research on domain-specific cognition and schema development, however, raises questions about the context for learning social studies content (Carey, 1985a, 1985b; Gelman & Baillargeon, 1983; Doyle, 1983). As researchers have investigated cognition in specific domains (roughly, topics or content areas), they have challenged the Piagetian notion that general stages of learning apply across domains. In studies of young children's thinking in such disparate domains as friendship, biology, number, and measurement (Carey, 1985b), knowledge acquisition is seen as dependent on the acquisition of specific concepts and integrations of these concepts, rather than on the child's logical capabilities per se (Carey, 1985a, 1985b; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1987). Keil (1984) suggested that learners assume-and look for-the presence of underlying structures that are causal in nature. As learners become more knowledgeable in a domain, they build more sophisticated theories and become increasingly dissatisfied with the notion that meaning (or a concept) is merely a set of characteristic features that happens to be associated with a class of things. Rather, the inferences a learner makes are based more on how concepts are structured and organized in a domain. In this view, children come to understand a domain at least in part because they develop schema or frames of reference through meaningful engagement with specific content (Carey, 1985b; Gelman & Baillargeon, 1983; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1987). Accordingly, it is possible for children to operate in a domain more expertly than could be explained by theories that describe development in terms of broad stages characterized by qualitatively distinct structures. A domain-specific view also implies that educators may have considerably more influence over children's cognitive development than global-stage theory assumes. This is particularly important in thinking about elementary social studies. If prior knowledge and extensive experience in a particular domain are major influences on knowledge restructuring and theory building in younger children, then educators need to think carefully about how to facilitate that engagement. Overall, there is a relatively small body of research on how young children

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think and learn in domains specific to social studies (cf. Shaver, 1991). While a number of curricular suggestions have been made, few have been carefully researched. Some of the more well-known proposals advocate greater attention to history and, especially, to narrative history (e.g., California's History-Social Science Framework; Bradley Commission on History in the Schools; National Commission on Social Studies: Charting a Course). Yet, relatively little attention has been focused on the ways in which history is organized and structured in particular contexts, or on the ways in which children respond to that structure. In the following sections of this chapter, I look more closely at these issues as they relate to practice in a first-grade setting.

Old Town Elementary Old Town Elementary SchooP is located in a midsize metropolitan area in the upper South. The neighborhood surrounding Old Town has a variety oflowincome rental property. There are some small factories at the north end of the neighborhood, and a "gentrified" area of Victorian homes, restored shops, and moderately expensive rental property to the east and south. The school's population is one of the poorest in the city, making it eligible for special programming aimed at helping at-risk children. There are 19 children in the first-grade class discussed here: 6 girls and 13 boys. Six of the boys are Mrican American; the rest of the students are White, as is the teacher. The majority of students in the class receive free lunches and all are identified by their teacher as low SES. The teacher organizes her class around the literacy processes characteristic of a "whole language" or "integrated language" perspective. She encourages children to use their own language for authentic purposes across the curriculum, and organizes instruction around broad themes or topics drawn from social studies and science (Pappas, Kiefer, & Levstik, 1990). While this cannot be construed as typical, it does provide an opportunity to observe a primary classroom that emphasizes social studies, and particularly history, to an at-risk population and regularly incorporates a variety of historical literature into the curriculum.

First grade history Teachers structure the content of history and its appearance in the classroom most powerfully through the tasks that they set for students. These tasks are influenced by teachers' beliefs about the purposes of schooling, their knowledge of history and of available resources and methodologies, and their perceptions of time, administrative, and collegial constraints (Levstik, 1989b; Shaver, Davis, & Helburn, 1980; Thornton & W enger 1990). Thornton (1991) characterizes this as a "gatekeeping" function with powerful implications for the kinds of encounters children have with history.

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Teacher purposes In the first grade at Old Town, one of the explicit purposes of history instruction is to provide children with role models of courageous people, or people who have solved problems or done their part to make a better world. The first-grade teacher, Ruby, feels very strongly that young children, especially those whose lives outside of school often put them in contact with the worst of human nature, should be exposed to positive models. She generally omits references to violence and selects topics that have apositive "moral" or point to be drawn. The teacher operates from what Gilligan, Ward, and Taylor (1988) label a "perspective of care." That is, she structures historical content to emphasize students' personal responses, their growing ability to find answers to important questions, and the development of ethical! moral sensibilities. She explains teaching as "a way of wanting to learn, a discovery of the joy of learning and exploring." It is "a series of relationships, not something you do to someone else. Iwould be teaching the same way if I were working with twelfth graders- building responsibility. No one is born responsible. That is what teaching and learning can do." Ruby sees herself as mediating between children and a harsh environment. She explains: "We need to do something about these children now. They are our most precious possession, and we are throwing them away. I think I can make a difference. I don't know if! could have done this for 30 years, but it was the right time for me, and I can see myself here for a long time .... I want them to see themselves as successful. I try to fill in the void that may occur before they ever come to school. First grade is the most important schooling a child gets. Dropouts start here. Success and failure start here. I prefer success. We can change children and if we can do that, we can change society." A perspective of care operates on several levels in this classroom. First, the teacher's management system emphasizes sharing, cooperation, consideration, participation, gentleness, and a good attitude. These behaviors are woven throughout instruction, and influence both the teacher's interactions with students and the way in which material is presented. In a unit on explorers, for instance, Ruby began by reading the class a book describing Columbus' voyage to the Americas. She introduced a globe, where the children found points of departure and arrival and traced sailing routes across the Atlantic. The class looked at pictures of what different points on the route looked like and spent a great deal of time poring over globes. By the next day, the class was anxious to continue their work. Ruby pulled out a b eautifully illustrated pop-up book of sailing ships, explaining that she had been told that first graders could not handle such a delicate and intricate book, "but then I thought about this first grade, and I knew that you could be very gentle, and I knew you would really want to see the kind of ship that brought Columbus on his voyage. " With this, she slowly opened the book, and as the children leaned forward to see b etter, an early sailing vessel rose from the pages of the book. For almost 20 minutes, she and the children carefully examined the sailing ships, discussing what it

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would have been like to make a long voyage in each of them. Finally, a ship such as Columbus sailed appeared, complete with string riggings, portholes through which the children could see the cargo hold, and sailors doing their work. Next, the children engaged in a variety of extension activities linked with reading, writing, and math, and dependent on participation and cooperation: Ruby calls the children's attention to the big box by her side. She asks two "good participators" to "help us here." The box is opened, and the children pull a large globe from the box. It is a particularly attractive globe, lit from inside, and has a sliding viewfinder that allows viewers to look at pictures through portholes in various locations on the globe. Oooh! What do we use globes for? C: SO we can see the world. T: We need to find a country. Can anyone think what country we might want to find today? C: Spain. T: Let's write that on the board. How do we spell Spain? [At this point, the teacher helps them sound out the word, and reminds them that country names are capitalized.] MITCHELL: We just found Spain! T: Are you sure? This group look on this globe. The other groups use that one. [At each globe, children search for countries starting with "Sp".] C(HILD):

T(EACHER):

As the children worked, they discussed where Columbus was going, checked the flat map on the wall showing Columbus' first voyage to the New World, and then plotted the route on each globe. Next, Ruby led them into constructing a math problem to find out "how long it has been since Columbus first came to America." The problem was a difficult one, and she assured them that "soon you will find even really big math problems easy!" After a break for a fire drill, the class returned to become shipbuilders. They were to work in small groups to build model ships using patterns provided by the teacher. Later, they dictated and transcribed a report based on their shipbuilding experience. First, however, materials were passed out, and Ruby asked what directions they thought would come first, second, and third, and listed these on the board: I. color, 2. cut, 3. assemble. The class talked about what "assemble" meant, and then returned to the purpose of the directions: T: And then? We talked about this when we looked at the book on ships? DARREN:

Building!

T: Darren, that's really good thinking. Today we are going to be shipbuilders.

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We will be making our ships so that they pop up, just like we saw in our book this morning. As the children worked, Ruby and the student teacher moved through the room, providing assistance and encouragement, and stressing team work and the need to be able to depend on the people on your team . They congratulated children for showing cooperation, sharing, or thinking about something someone else in the group might need. These behaviors were also linked with doing careful work: Ruby has passed out writing paper in addition to the shipbuilding directions, and talked about the care with which a shipbuilder must work, to keep explorers as safe as possible. Some of the children, including Jay, draw ships at the top of their papers, despite instructions for building a three-dimensional model. When one of the boys begins to complain that Jay is not following directions, Ruby responds: T: That is just what shipbuilders do! They make diagrams of their ships

so they will know just how to build them. That is an important part of making a good ship, and Jay will be a careful shipbuilder, won't he? Jay, of course, was both pleased that he was a "careful shipbuilder" and aware that he was expected to use his diagram to construct a three-dimensional ship. Ruby maintained the momentum of the activity, preserved Jay's dignity, and added new information to the concept of shipbuilder. In the excerpt above, Ruby also utilized historical analogies as she related careful shipbuilding in Columbus' time to the students' own work. Later, as part of a thematic unit on inventions, the class studied George Washington Carver. Any number of inventors could have served as examples, but Carver provided an opportunity for a multilayered analogy. The teacher introduced Carver and helped the children develop a list of "Questions About Inventors." She asked the children: "How can we find answers to our questions?" When encyclopedias were suggested, a child was dispatched to find the appropriate volume, and Ruby read an excerpt from the entry on Carver. She then led a discussion to see if the excerpt had answered any of the questions already listed. So far, the children had not seen a picture of Carver. Next, Ruby introduced an illustrated biography of Carver: T: Let's read the title: A Weed Is a Flower. I think I am going to show the

illustrations this time, because they are so beautiful. [As she reads, T edits some of the text, stopping often for commentary and discussion.] ... George Washington Carver had no hope for the future. [pauses and asks the class to mime the emotions of Carver.] Look like there's no hope.

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Now, look hopeful. Good! In this class we are hopeful about the future, just as George Washington Carver becomes hopeful for his future. [Reads section on his having influenced the entire world ~ refers to globe.] One man invented something used across the whole world. [Shows picture.] DARREN: I didn't know he was Black! T: This is his story DARREN: He wrote it? T: Some of you will have biographies written about you, because you will also do important things. T: Some people in this room remind me of George Washington Carver. They are inquisitive people who always ask lots of questions and are interested in all sorts of things! MARTY: Darren! T: You thought of Darren! I thought of all of you. We came up with all sorts of questions I couldn't answer (refers back to questions they had written earlier about things they wanted to know about Carver.) T: [Describes all the work Carver did in order to earn money for his schooling-cooking, cleaning, sewing, and so forth.] Could we do any of the things that George Washington Carver did? C: Yes! [Children forward suggestions.] T: We could certainly bake bread. We've done that before! c: And we can make clothes, and chop wood [class adds to the list of things they could do to earn money for schooL] T [Reads on]: George always tried to do things c: Right! T: Yes, he worked hard to do good things, just like we do in this class. And he saved for college until he was 30 years old, because he knew you were never too old to get a good education. Listen to the things he could do. H e was a piano playcr, a singer, a painter.... George was so smart, so he decided to be ... c: Rich. T: There are three people in this room with the same job. c: Teacher? T: Yes, he became a teacher. In a similar sequence, the children discussed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The student teacher shared an article about Dr. King that included his "I Have a Dream" speech; the teacher invited the children to close their eyes and "dream, too." They all shared their dreams, and the teacher said: T : When you closed your eyes and you had a dream, Dr. King also closed his

eyes, but he dreamed not so much for himself, but for other people. He saw things that weren't right, and he didn't say he had a good life, and he couldn't help.... He decided that his dream was for other people, and he

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thought of ways to make things better. Lots of people heard, and lots of people listened. Some people didn't listen. Even today, some people don't listen. Hold up one finger. One person can make a difference. So you, as one person, can make a difference in a lot of people's lives. Do you think he made a difference? Yes.

At this point everyone in the room stood in a circle, joined hands, and sang "We Shall Overcome." The children spent time over the next several days making mobiles expressing their dreams for their community, their country, and the world. They ended their study of Dr. King with a pledge that they could take home and sign if they wished. It read as follows: I promise to work harder at finding peaceful solutions to problems at home and at school. I also promise to not judge other people unfairly and to help in making Dr. King's dream a reality. Out of this study, Darren and Catrina created a poem about helping the homeless to find shelter, and Mitchell wrote, "When I am a millionaire, I will give all my money to the poor people." Jay used Dr. King's formula to write "the longest story in the whole class": I have a dream to help people and clean up the rode [sic] I have a dream to be a nice friend. I have a dream to help people and build nice things for the poor people. I have a dream to help poor people and get some thing to do for them. These experiences, while interesting in themselves, did not end when the study concluded. Rather, they became part of a body of reference available to the teacher and the children throughout the year. Historical lessons became touchstones that reappeared in other contexts. Dr. King became a reference point in order to make sense of the concept of civil rights and, again, in a discussion of conflict resolution: T: We can still disagree, but we can live in peace and harmony. We can

promise to work toward peaceful solutions. We would talk together. Dr. King worked for brotherhood. Similarly, Columbus was invoked during this interchange regarding constructing an imaginary island: T: Make an island [shows fist] Now, show water all around. Pretend that you

have a secret island. Close your eyes . . .. Mason, what did you hear?

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MASON:

Water.

T: Oh, I love water sounds!

A captain talking on a ship. Talking about treasure. Water and birds and boats, and I saw a treasure. T: Could you hear Columbus' ship? C: I heard him talking. POLL Y: I am exploring. T: Exploring! Polly, tell us about that word. What does exploring mean? CATRINA: It was like when Columbus and all them crossed the Atlantic ocean exp ... [can't quite reconstruct the word] MICK: I heard Columbus on the Santa Maria, and saw him talk to the natives [there are some other comments here, mostly about treasure]. EVAN: I was Columbus, and I saw the night sky, and the moon, and I saw the stars come together and make things. RITA: I saw Columbus come to America. ANTWAN: I saw the shoes he had to wear. ANTWAN: CATRINA:

In using this perspective, the teacher intended to make history meaningful for the children: "If you don't make it personal, and make the connections to their lives, what's the point? They'll never remember it." Therefore, she structured history in terms of relationships- Dr. Carver or Dr. King caring enough to sacrifice in order to make a difference, explorers from Columbus to modern astronauts seeking to "find out" about the world, a local separatist community (Shakers) trying to build a good society. Over the course of the year, the world is represented through history as a place with problems to be solved, heroes and heroines to be emulated, and individuals who can make a difference. Darren's poem of relationship with and responsibility for the homeless hangs on the blackboard, next to his portrait of Dr. King, while the teacher continues to point out the ways in which individuals help and are helped by the group, and to make explicit the similarities between historical behavior and the behavior of these first graders. Historical content becomes a vehicle for inspiring a sense of efficacy in children who have more experience with being acted upon, rather than acting. In her study of adolescent moral development in relation to history, Bardige (1988) noted that the personal response that may inspire action is sometimes lost when history instruction emphasizes more abstract and "objective" stances. In Bardige's view, separating the personal from historical response can lead to a feeling of impotence: If we are to meet the challenge of educating in ways that help our children ... become more human, then we must attend to and build on the "finely human" aspects of their thinking. As we help them to see and understand the realities, complexities, and laws of the world, we must also help them to hang on to their moral sensitivities and impulses. (p. 109)

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Of course, these children are first graders, not the adolescents of Bardige's study, but the teacher's purpose is the same. She wants to help children to develop mature historical understanding, without losing sight of the power of the individual-indeed, the responsibility of the individual- to care about the effects of historical and current events. As a result, historical content is basic to many of the themes in the class.

Selecting historical content Four factors influenced the selection of historical content in this class. First, Ruby arranges her curriculum to include the district requirements. The district curriculum for first grade is built around such concepts as "self," "family," and "neighborhood" and suggests that teachers provide an international perspective on these concepts. Ruby takes this, and the further suggestion that the social studies curriculum "contain many additional skills, concepts, and enrichment topics" seriously. As a result, children study a topic or theme over a fairly long period oftime. Second, content is selected and organized to focus on the "moral sensibilities" implicit in historical events. To the teacher, historical understanding involves not so much the ability to see different sides or interpretations of a historical event as the development of empathy, usually with a historical figure (cf. Egan, 1979). In Bardige's research on historical thinking, she noted that the development of empathy appears crucial to students' sense of efficacy in the face of injustice. By itself, "multiple-lens morality"- the ability to recognize various points of view relative to a moral issue- can lead to a tendency to "rationalize inaction, evade decisions or shrewdly manipulate others into complacency in the face of evil" (Bardige, 1988, p. 108). Levstik (1986, 1989a) also noted the power of personal response in the development of historical understanding in early adolescents. In these studies, students reported being moved, inspired, and sometimes angered by their studies of history, and frequently added that they "needed to know" something they labeled "the truth." In discussions, they compared themselves to characters from historical fiction and biographies and wondered about the choices they might have made under similar circumstances (Levstik, 1986): "When I read Helen Keller it really made me want to be like her because she was so determined ... I thought maybe I could do that too." "I felt I was in lise Cohen's place." "I never knew how hard people had it". Third, content is selected to serve as a foundation for future learning. A number of topics are introduced in order to spark interest in material that will

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be reintroduced in later grades. The children are not formally tested for the recall of specific historical information related to these topics. Unlike the heavy emphasis on memorization tasks reported by students in the NAEP assessment (Hammack et aI., 1990), memorization tasks of any kind are minimal in this class. Children memorize the words to songs and some stories representing the different time periods and cultures that they study, but these are songs and stories used repeatedly in the classroom. They are sung and read so often that almost everyone knows them all. Fourth, children's interests influence the structure of history. The children sometimes bring up historical problems related to current concerns~racism, usually. Their teacher may discuss these things briefly, but they are deemphasized or transformed into lessons for current behavior: T: In this room we don't treat each other like that. EVAN: It doesn't matter what color your Mom and Dad are as long as you

love each other. T: You are all special because there is nobody else in the world quite like you,

but we all have something in common, too. We are all ... ? CLASS: Human beings!

Sometimes, however, a child will persist in wanting more information. One boy wanted to know if Dr. King's assassin had been caught. In an ensuing discussion, he said he hoped the murderer would be killed. When it was suggested that that would violate Dr. King's plea for peace, he thought for awhile, and then said, "Well, Idon't know about that." At other times, children express interest in a topic and are allowed to pursue it at length. In one instance, the class had been following the researcher's trip through Scotland and England. As arranged with the teacher, postcards had been sent from historic sites in both countries and the class followed the trip on a map, wrote stories about what the postcards showed them , and looked up some information on each country. The class is putting the finishing touches on a story about things to see in Scotland and England. They are anxious to see if! have brought anything back with me, so Ruby suggests we share pictures, books, and some artifacts (hats, brass rubbing kits, coins). DARREN: What is this book about? LINDA: Vikings. It comes from an excavation of a Viking village.

The teacher allows several students to work with English money. Jake and Angel try counting out money: ANGEL: Did you buy these things with this money? LINDA: Yes. You can't use American money in English stores.

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Could you use this here? [He j oins Jake and Angel as they continue to try to count the money, reminding themselves of what each coin represents: "That's like a dime."]

MITCHELL:

Six other children have gone to the back of the room to work on brass rubbings, and Erin wants to know if he can show Ms. Jones's class the Bobby's hat he is wearing. Another group gathers around a pile of books, pictures, and magazines the teacher had been sharing. She adds the new brochures, and the group begins to discuss the age of some of the buildings: Some of those are real new, they just make them look like real castles. LINDA: Well, we do that in this country, don't we. The one you're looking at is pretty new. It's only 150 years old. CATRINA: One hundred fifty years! That's old! MITCHELL: The Vikings are older than that. T: How long ago were the Vikings? Does anyone remember? [No one can recall. They think it was "long, long ago, back when they had those ships."] DARREN:

Darren is working on his own, again, reading the Viking activity book, and carefully copying something on a large sheet of manila paper. Look what I've done. [Shows how he has written his name using the Viking alphabet.] ROGER : Let me see that. [He tries his name, too.] DARREN:

Others gather around to see the writing. Within minutes, about half the class is trying to write in the Viking script. Darren has moved on to discover a plan for building a Viking village. DARREN :

Mrs. Y, you should run this off.

T: All right, we'll see if we can get copies. [The Viking writing group

decides it would also like copies.] T: Would everyone like to do this? We'll run enough copies.

By the end of the day, all but three students have constructed models of houses fromJorvik and made a background scene of a Viking waterfront. They have all sorts of questions about what would have been in the village. The teacher arranges to show slides ofJorvik, a r ceonstructed Viking settlement. The next day, students view slides ofJorvik. Showing 10 slides takes the larger part of I hour, as the children ask about details in each slide and concentrate on the archaeological dig that uncovered the original site. They calculate how long ago the village was lived in, and talk about how

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the Vikings were explorers like Columbus. Roger has turned in all his work with his name in Norse. Catrina and Aggie are discussing the way in which the Vikings used animal skins, antlers, and so forth. They made their ships look like dragons to scare their enemies. When they sailed across the ocean ... the head come up, and it was all kinds of colors. [Evan spends his work period drawing a Viking ship in great detail. It looks largely like thc pictures he has seen, except that the sails boast a skull and crossbones.] DARREN: What did you say they called when they threw the garbage out the windows? LINDA: That was later, in York. MITCHELL: Yeah, something 100.

EVAN:

During this same period, all the children try making brass rubbings, look through pictures of English monuments, and discuss the kings and queens represented in the rubbings: This one is a king. He's a knight, cause he's got a sword, see? ERIN: Yeah, but there's a ... see, down by his feet. AGGIE: A lion. ERIN: Uh, huh. That lion means he's a king. Kings get lions. [This had been a small note on a picture seen in November.] CATRINA: The lady's got something. JAKE: A dog. CATRINA: Yeah, a dog. She's not a queen, I don't think. ERIN:

DAVID:

Darren and Roger label their rubbings in Norse. Abby turns her rubbings into stick puppets, and several others follow suit. Daniel decides to cut each of his figures out, and paste them on a different background. Throughout this sequence, groupings remained fluid, children invented some tasks for themselves, organized resources, and requested assistance as they felt they needed it. While relatively few instructional sequences were quite this student-directed, most involved some opportunity for students to make choices about how they would participate in a task. The frequency and order of tasks was determined to some extent by teacher assignment. The children were required to read or listen to someone else read for certain periods, and to write daily, for instance. At the beginning of the year, the students engaged in classcomposed writing about ongoing themes (i.e., The Work of Shakers, or Explorations to the New World). By midyear, more and more of the children composed their own theme-related writing (i.e., using the "I Have a Dream" formula to construct an essay on ending poverty). The discovery that they had the power to compose their own texts was a powerful one, as an excerpt from the field notes demonstrate:

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Darren is annoyed with the class-composed writing, and begins muttering that he would rather write his own story. DARREN [stands up, leaning towards the teacher]: Can we just write our

own story? T: Of course you can. DARREN (eyes wide with surprise): Have I been able to do this all along? T: Of course. DARREN: Then I'll only write my own stories from now on.

Cumulative effects Of course, events in classrooms tend to overlap each other. Listening occurs simultaneously with discussion, and discussion flows through most events. In this first grade, few tasks were solitary and, often, several tasks occurred simultaneously. Students collaborated regularly, drew on each other's expertise, and had access to a variety of adults who moved in and out of the classroom. 2 Although all students did not participate in each sequence of events, there were multiple opportunities for students to become involved, either in a complete sequence or in particular portions of a sequence. Tasks extended over a period of time that allowed students to read or hear, discuss, and then reflect. As a result, an issue could be encountered from different perspectives at different times. In addition, there was often opportunity to watch peers work on a task before trying it oneself. Whether a task was largely teacher directed or student selected, however, most involved some opportunity for students to answer questions independently.

Answering questions independently "Let's find out" was a familiar phrase in this first grade, generally linked with "What do we already know?" Students and the teacher frequently created a "word web" on the blackboard early in a thematic unit. After a field trip to a "Dinosaurs Alive!" exhibit, the children used the web (shown in Figure 3.1) to discuss what they already knew about dinosaurs, to clear up some misconceptions (one child was reluctant to enter the exhibit because "dinosaurs stinked!"- a misunderstanding of "extinct"), and as a basis for discussing what new information they had acquired. The teacher began the discussion by calling the children's attention to the web they had constructed prior to the field trip. The class added some new information acquired at the exhibit and began to discuss the information on the web: T: And when they died of extinction, what changed?

At this point, there is considerable discussion of environmental changes that might have led to the death of the dinosaurs:

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The weather changed, and all the flowers died, and the plants got frozen . T: And do we know this for a fact? MICK : No. T: No, we think that's a very good RITA: Idea. MICK: I think what happened is that the small dinosaurs died, maybe got eaten by rats and all, and they didn't grow up, and then the parents died and there was nobody left. EVAN : They couldn't adapt. T: What a wonderful word! Let me write that on the board. BRADLEY: They were hungry. T: Yes, It doesn't feel good to be hungry [tells about an Asian refugee who was hungry because of war in her countryJ. BRADLEY: And your belly's empty. T: If the dinosaurs could have helped each other, but they couldn't grow their own food. RIT A:

In this excerpt, the teacher uses several techniques. First, she establishes a beginning: "What we already know." Second, she solicits new information that the children have gathered as a result of a reference source- the exhibit. Third, she asks for and honors their interpretation of that information- what changed in the environment. Fourth, she suggests that this is speculation- "good ideas" but not known "facts." Fifth, she emphasizes specific terminology and concepts important to the discussion. Sixth, she clarifies the term "extinction" without pointing out the original misunderstanding of the term. Finally, she relates the topic to being hungry and helping each other.

plant eater, meat eater

legged hide hide legslegs

fossils-reconstruct

xtinction" xtinction" hide legs

fossils-reconstruct bones four legged two legged Figure 3.1 Word Web

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In addition, Ruby reinforces these more abstract discussions with a variety of concrete activities. In order to understand fossil remains of prehistoric periods, the class observes real fossils collected on a walk; they make plaster "fossils" and simultaneously talk about "imprints," build a model of the layers of the earth, and put their fossils in the model. With the teacher next door, the class also makes "Magic Finger Jello," a solution that allows them to read a recipe, measure ingredients, estimate the number of dinosaurs a batch of jello would produce, label the dinosaurs, and, finally, eat them. Each step in this process requires "researchers": T: We need to know more about the earth. How do you think we can learn

more about the earth? If we wanted to cook, we'd go to .... ?

c: A restaurant. T

Uaughs): What else might we use?

c: Cookbook

T: And if we wanted to learn about the earth, we'd use ...

C: An earthbook. [Several children pull out informational books, and Aggie

finds one entitled Earth.] T: I guess Aggie will be our researcher.

CLASS: Hi, researcher! [Two other children are selected to help Aggie go to

the back table and look through books for "good information that will help us learn about the earth."] At the library on the same day, several of the children searched for books to bring back, and were congratulated on their finds: "That's a wonderful book for us to use this afternoon!" They were encouraged to make use of other people in the school, and guests were brought in for them to work with. Work periods generally started with these questions from the teacher: "What do we need to know?" "What is our question?" and "How can we find out?" Ruby encourages the development of classroom "experts"-students who have "found out" information or have expertise that other students can use (cf. Levstik 1986). Questions are answered not only by the teacher: "You came up with a lot of questions I couldn't answer." Often, when a question is raised, it is referred to the student expert or posed to the entire class. When Mitchell wants to know what a "custom" is, Ruby asks if anyone in the class can help him. The teacher may also request that a student become an expert on a topic that the class will need to know about. For instance, Mitchell is encouraged to read a book on geology in order to help construct a model of the different layers of the earth. To further support this diffusion of expertise, Ruby arranged for a "partner class" of fifth graders to come and read with the first graders on a regular basis. Other older students provide assistance in a variety offorms. One day, a fifthgrade girl and boy came to the class to share information on a topic related to Thanksgiving. They presented their information and then stayed to help the

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first graders with a follow-up activity. In another instance, several sixth graders developed a mural to be shown to the first graders. In each case, the message was transmitted that learners of all ages have areas of expertise, questions are important, and there are a variety of ways to find answers. This pattern also means that children regularly contribute to the knowledge base of the class. "I don't expect it will all stay. These are pieces that can be recalled. The child will remember some of it and think 'I want to know more.' They will be interested."

Building interest Although there are variations in how interest is built, typically, Ruby encourages interest in a new topic by linking it to previous studies. At the beginning of a new unit on Asia, for instance, Ruby invites children to come to the front of the room: "You are going to travel far across the world," she says. She puts on a record they have used many times over the year, and the children sing "We all live in a neighborhood." She stops at different points in the song so that children can identify their home address, the name of their city, state, country, continent, and world. MITCHELL: We on the planet earth. T: We will be going on a journey, and in order to get there we will weave a

magic carpet. We're getting ready to go to another continent. DARREN: We talked about Europe. There was people who wanted freedom

and talked funny on the radio. T: This time we're going to pretend visit a country on another continent. If

we went to China, what would we need?

c: Passport C: Permission T: Mitchell, find China on the globe. MICK: We have to go over the Pacific Ocean. T: Pacific Ocean to get to the continent of ... listen, I'm going to trick you. C: Atlantic. C: Europe! T: We're going to travel to the continent of Asia, and we're going to visit

China. This afternoon we are going to do a word web for China, and we'll learn about some Chinese customs. What do we already know? At this point, the children discussed what they already knew about China. Mitchell says he has been to China, but he does not remember it because he was not born yet. Another child says she thinks a favorite story, Tikki. Tikki. Tembo, is from China. As the unit progressed, it included language and counting in Chinese, and a New Year's celebration complete with dragon, newspaper articles about Asia, and information about Chinese history. The first graders appeared to enjoy the information they gained, and brought in any books they

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could find on the topic. Earl kept an encyclopedia on his desk, just to look up new information because "I need to know about this." The use of "let's find out" works in part because students have something to do with the information once it is "found out." Whether it is Mitchell helping his peers construct a model of the earth that shows surface changes as well as layers of sedimentation and rock, Earl bringing the encyclopedia to a group, Mick sharing carvings from Kenya to supplement a visit by a guest from Ethiopia, or Catrina wanting to use the researcher's jewelry as "an artifact," sharing what has been found out is valued in this classroom. Angel, who rarely says a word, sums up the class's response: "Isn't school fun?"

Historical discourse The excerpts above demonstrate some of the activity and discussion revolving around history in this classroom. A large part of the structure of history is the discourse within which it is embedded. As has already been mentioned, the most common forms of historical discourse reported in U.S. classrooms are lecture and expository text. While there is great variation in the degree of discussion involved in lectures and in the style of individual lecture discourses, this pattern tends to have the teacher doing most of the talking and thinking about a domain. In contrast, students in this first grade engaged in extensive cross-peer and student-to-teacher discussion. In addition, the participation of adults other than the teacher in the classroom provided opportunities for students to talk about history with several adults, often over content-related literature. Other studies ofliterature/history connections have emphasized the possible impact of historical fiction, biography, or autobiography on the development of historical understanding (Bardige, 1988; Levstik, 1986, 1989b; Taxel, 1983). While Ruby exposes her students to a wide variety of fictional texts, she emphasizes nonfiction in relation to content areas.

Literary frames for historical discourse As part of incorporating nonfiction into the curriculum, Ruby spends time talking with children about genre clues that will let them know what they can expect of a book. Nonfictional texts are mediated in ways very similar to the kinds of mediation described in whole-language classes relative to fictional texts (i.e., Routman, 1988). Children do not get dittoes with paragraphs of information. Rather, the teacher or a child brings a book to the group, and the book is shared. Generally, if the book is brought by a child, the child stands next to Ruby. Leaning into the curve of the teacher's arm and warmed by her encouragement, the child talks about what has been found. Such shared texts form the basis of the second hour of the morning, when illustrations are discussed, facts checked, and questions asked. Another child may be called upon to check with the librarian for further information, or to locate one of the reference books in

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the classroom. Children keep reference books at their desks and are allowed to read them during "free time." Ruby explains that one of the nicest things to have happen is to find a child so engrossed in one of these books that s/he is distracted from the ongoing class. Thus, an incident that in another class might be a punishable offense-not paying attention-is considered, in this context, a sign of intellectual growth. Ruby will tell the child that she knows the book is wonderful and hopes it can be shared very soon, and then ask the child to put it away for the time being. The message is clear that the child is legitimately torn between two valued activities, and that the teacher respects both the child's interest in continuing to read and his or her need to attend to the ongoing class activity. Her students regularly check out informational books during their library time. Many of these books are difficult for the children, but they read as much as they can and allow the teacher, their partners, or other adults to help them understand the rest. Ruby talks about the children's "hunger to know" and their appreciation for whatever experiences she "puts in their way." In addition, the majority of student writing is nonfiction, usually about what they are studying in science and social studies. Sometimes, they write recipes or directions for activities that then are used by another class. During a study of the Shakers, the children "became" Shakers, and each day wrote about their work: "We are weavers" or "We are broom-makers," with an explanation of what they had done and how it related to the Shakers. In her study of child writers, Dyson (1989) suggested that "children's growth as literate people [is] linked to the social practices that surround them, that is, to their discovery of literacy's rich relevance to their present interactions with friends and to their reflections on their experiences" (p. 276). In this context, informational writing supports interactions with a number of audiences, including classmates and older students in the school. Ruby explains that her extensive use of informationalliterature is part of the "web of meaning" that she and the children are building to support learning, not just in this class but also in the children's future engagement with content. Because "finding out" is so highly valued, there is plenty of incentive for making use of nonfiction, for trying challenging literature, and for classroom discussion to be content centered. This is particularly interesting in view of the current emphasis on narrative approaches to history. One of the concerns raised by reliance on narrativesespecially fictional narratives - is the finding that while historical narratives may inspire children to have a greater interest in history, and to be more critical of more traditional sources of information, including textbooks, it does not appear that children are spontaneously critical of the world created through the narrative. Without teacher intervention, the young reader takes the narrative world as "the truth," and uses that as the standard against which other information about the historical event, era, or personage is judged (Levstik, 1986, 1989b). Perhaps particular mediations of nonfictional texts could help foster a more balanced response to historical interpretations. There is also an increasing body of fine informational literature for children to use-well

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written with lively text, careful illustrations, and beautiful formatting. Such books may eventually change the way in which teachers use and children respond to informational texts, and change the way we think about the primacy of narrative in children's ways of thinking. Finally, however, literature is not the most important form of discourse in this classroom, or in the children's construction of historical understanding. Rather, children are immersed in language of all sorts. In one sense, this is a form of "un coerced communication" in which children are free to discuss both their "truth-seeking" and their "truth construction" (Elshtain, 1981). By immersing children in the kind of talk about history that invites them to make direct analogies with their own lives, and by rarely silencing a child's musings (the language of violence being an exception), Ruby presents children with multiple opportunities to make history their own. By encouraging children to extend their historical imaginings into possible futures, she also makes history part of self-discovery and provides a foundation for envisioning alternatives to current situations. As Dyson (1989) notes, "Literacy that helps children to articulate their todays and to make ongoing connections with others may be more likely to grow with them into their tomorrows" (p. 276).

Conclusion Several years ago, having concluded a study of the connections between narrative and historical understanding in a sixth-grade classroom (Levstik, 1986), I wondered if the form of the sixth graders' historical interest was a phenomena of early adolescence. I also wondered about the impact of a charismatic teacher. In continued research in this area (Levstik, 1989b, 199Gb), I found some striking features of children's historical interest at different age and grade levels, and of the impact of particular teacher perspectives. Ruby's example demonstrates that a teacher's conception of history can affect the form and structure of history instruction. She also demonstrates how even very young children can begin developing the interest and understanding that may lead to more mature historical thinking. Her classroom also suggests that: 1. Even quite young children express interest in social-studies topics, including history. Levstik and Pappas (1987) found that children as young as second grade knew something about history, and expressed interest in historical topics. Other studies (Levstik, 1986, 1989b) suggested that linking historical study with well-crafted narratives elicits strong responses from elementary-age children. Ruby's class reinforces both these findings, and further suggests that well-crafted nonfictional historical literature can also evoke a strong response from children. In fact, the first grader's responses to nonfiction indicate that this area requires considerably more investigation. 2. The cycle of subjective response, generating questions and seeking information, and providing opportunities for students to reinterpret information in art and writing and share their work in meaningful ways, appears important in

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sustaining long-term interest in and understanding of history (Levstik, 1986, I 990a, I 990b). It is not enough to say that Ruby personalized history. She began there, but she used children's personal responses to both foster empathy with more distant people and build a vision of a better personal and communal world. Three things appear to be crucial parts of this process. The first is inquiry~building on the children's expressed "need to know"; The second is providing multiple ways to "find out"; the third, providing opportunities to share what is discovered, understood, or misunderstood. 3. In their studies of secondary history teachers, Wilson and Wineburg (1988) argued that disciplinary perspectives matter. Studies of elementary classrooms suggest that a sense of purpose may be at least as important (Shaver et aI., 1980; Thornton, 1991). In studies of first-, fourth-, and sixth-grade classrooms (Levstik, 1986, 1989b, 1990b), the teacher's perception of the purposes of social studies, and particularly of history, shaped content selection, instructional discourse, and methodology. Ruby had a store of historical knowledge. She took graduate classes in the content areas and was active in several professional organizations, attending meetings and collecting material to improve her teaching. In addition, however, her sense that history provided models of human behavior led Ruby to select content that fit her purposes, decide on appropriate methodologies, and allow children a high degree of intellectual freedom. A high school history teacher once said that the most difficult question students asked was, "Why do I need to know this?" A teacher able to answer that question has a basis for curricular decision making not available to the teacher who sees history and the social studies as peripheral to the real business of teaching and learning in an elementary school. 4. Children respond positively to history when it is presented as a human enterprise that can be related to in both personal and ethical terms (Bardige, 1988; Levstik, 1986, 1989b). This approach appears to encourage children's interest in history, both by supporting their identification with historical figures and by encouraging them to view current concerns in some historical perspective. Perhaps when Goodlad (1984) noted that most of the life had been drained out of the elementary social-studies classrooms he had studied, they had been drained also of any sense of human relationship~not just the "Great Men" and "Great Events" approach but also a sense that any of this touched on the lives of real people, on their relationships with each other, or on the shape of current events. 5. Finally, Ruby also reminds us of the power of a charismatic teacher with a sense of mission. When asked whether she has a job, Ruby replies, "No. Teaching is much too important to be just a job. What you do is so important! People remember the experiences they had in school because it makes a difference in their lives." She projects into the children's futures, hoping to help break the cycle of powerlessness and poverty for these children. From Ruby's perspective, history provides more than an interesting- way of understanding

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how we came to be what we are today. History empowers children by providing useful information on the possibility of changing the status quo. This is, of course, only first grade, and these children may not encounter another such classroom again. It is worth considering, however, how they might fare if this approach were sustained over a period of years.

Notes I. Identifying names of places and children are pseudonymous. 2. In addition to the regular classroom teacher, a reading specialist worked with two groups of from five to seven children, three student teachers rotated into th e room over the year, one practicum (field placem ent) student per s emester worked in the class for two full days each week, three parents visited at l east weekly, and various observers appeared, on average two per week. There were also specialists who appea red sporadically for programs on drug and alcohol abuse, self-esteem enhancem ent, special education evaluations, and the like.

Refer-ences Bardige, B. (1988). Things so finely human: Moral sensibilities at risk in adolescence. In C. Gilligan,]. V. Ward, &]. M. Taylor (E ds.), Mapping the moral domain (pp. 8 7- 110). C ambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bradley Commission on History in Schools (1988). Building a history curriculum: Guidelines for teaching. In P. Gagnon and the Bradley Commission on History in Schools (Eds.), Historical literary: 77ze case jor history in American education (pp. 16- 47). New Y ork: Macmillan. Brophy,]. (1990). Teaching social studies for understanding a nd higher order applications. Elementary SchoolJournal, 90, 351 - 417. Carey, S.(1985a). Conceptual change in childhood. Cambridge, J'viA: MIT Press. Carey, S. (1985b). Are children fundamentally different kinds of thinkers and learners than adults? In S. B. Chipman,]. W. Segal, & R. Glaser (E ds.), 77zinking and learning skills: Research and open questions (Vol. 2, pp. 485- 517). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Downey, M., & Levstik, L. (1988). Teaching and learning history: The research bascoIn ]. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook if research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 400- 10). N ew York: Macmillan. Doyle, W. (1983). Academic work. Remew ifEducational Research, 53, 159-99. Dyson, A. H. (1989). M ultiple worlds if child writers: Friends learning to write. N ew York: T eachers College Press. Egan, K. (1979). What children know best. Social Education, 43, 130-39. Elshtain,]. B. (1981). Public man, private woman: Women in social and political thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gelman, R., & Baillargeon, R . 1983). ( A review of some Piagetian concepts. In]. H. Flavell & E. M. Markman (Eds.), Handbook ifchild psychology: vol. 3. Cognitive development (pp. 167- 230). New York: Wiley. Gilligan, C., Ward,]. v., & Taylor, ]. M. (Eds.) (1988). Mapping the moral domain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goodlad,]. (1984). A place called school. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Hallam, R. N. (1974). Piaget and thinking in history. In M. Ballard (Ed.), New movements in the stutfy and teaching rfhistory (pp. 162-78). Bloomington, IN: University ofIndiana Press. Hammack, D. C., Hartoonian, M., Howe,j.,Jenkins, L., Levstik, L. S., MacDonald, W. B., Mullis, 1. V. S., & Owen, H. (1990). The u.s. history report card. Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department ofEducation. Howard, j., & Mendenhall, T. (1982). Making history come alive: The place rf history in the schools. Washington, DC: Council for Basic Education. Joint Committee on Geographic Education (1984). Guidelines fir geographic education: Elementary and secondary schools. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers and National Council for Geographic Education. Keil, F. C. (1984). Mechanisms of cognitive development and the structure of knowledge. In R. j. Sternberg (Ed.), Mechanisms rf cognitive development (pp. 81-99). New York: W. H. Freeman. Laville, C., & Rosenzweig, L. W. (1975). Teaching and learning history: Developmental dimensions. In L. Rosenzweig (Ed.), Developmental perspectives on the social studies (pp. 54--66). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Levstik, L. (1986). The relationship between historical response and narrative in a sixth grade classroom. Theory and Research in Social Education, 14, 1-15. Levstik, L. (1989a). Historical narrative and the young reader. Theory into Practice, 28, 114--19. Lcvstik, L. (1989b). Subverting reform in the social studies: A fourth grade case study. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. Levstik, L. (1990a). The research base for curriculum choice: A response. Social Education, 54(7), 442-44. Levstik, L. (1990b). Research directions: Mediating content through literary texts. Language Arts, 67(8), 848-53. Levstik, L. S., & Pappas, C. C. (1987). Exploring the development of historical understanding.Journal rfResearch and Development in Education, 21, I-IS. Martin, A. (1990). Social studies in kindergarten: A case study. Elementary SchoolJournal, 90,305-17. McNeil, L. A. (1988a). Contradictions of control, part I: Administrators and teachers. Phi Delta Kappan, 69,333-39. McNeil, L. A. (1 988b). Contradictions of control, part 2: Teachers, students, and curriculum. Phi Delta Kappan, 69,432-38. McNeil, L. A. (1988c). Contradictions of control, part 3: Contradictions ofreform. Phi Delta Kappan, 69,478-85. Pappas, C. C., Kiefer, B. Z., & Levstik, L. S. (1990). An integrated language perspective in the elementary school: Theory into action. New York: Longman. Peel, E. A. (1978). Some problems in the psychology of history teaching. In W. H. Burston & D. Thompson (Eds.), Studies in the nature and history of teaching (pp. 159-90). New York: Humanities Press. Ravitch, D., & Finn, C. E. (1987). Mlhat do our 17-year-olds know? A report on thefirst national assessment rfhistory and literature. New York: Harper & Row. Routman, R. (1988). Transitions: From literature to literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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Shaver,]. (Ed.) (1991). Handbook qfresearch on social studies teaching and learning. New York: Macmillan. Shaver,]., Davis, O. L.,Jr., & Heilburn, S. (1980). An interpretive report on the status of pre-collegiate social studies based on three NSF-funded studies. In What are the needs in precollege science, mathematics and social science education? Views from the field. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation. Taxel,]. (1983). The American revolution in children's fiction: An analysis ofliterary content, form, and ideology. In M . Apple & L. We is (Eds.), Ideology and practice in schooling. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Thornton, S. (1991). Teacher as curricular-instructional gatekeeper in social studies. In ]. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook qf research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 237-48). New York: Macmillan. Thornton, S., & Vukelich, R. (1988). Effects of children's understanding of time concepts on historical understanding. Theory and Research in Social Education, 15, 69-82. Thornton, S., & Wenger, R. (1990). Geography curriculum and instruction in three fourth-grade classrooms. Elementary SchoolJoumal, 90, 515-3 1. Vosniadou, S., & Brewer, W. F. (1987). Theories of knowledge restructuring in development. Review qfEducational Research, 57, 51 - 67. Wilson, S. M., & Wineburg, S. S. (1988). Peering at history through different lenses: The role of disciplinary perspectives in teaching history. Teachers College Record, 89, 525- 39.

*** Cross-talk You note that Ruby omits riferences to violence and presumab!J other negative content. Is this good? Would not she be more realistic in covering the down side if the human condition while still placingjust as much emphasis on strivingfor ideals? lfshe did, would it enhance or detract from her social studies teaching? Since several questions addressed Ruby's decision to omit or deemphasize violence and unpleasantness in her teaching, I will take up this issue first. To begin with, Ruby does not see her role as sheltering her students from the knowledge that evil exists in the world. Her students have overwhelming personal evidence that evil in some of its most violent forms exists. Instead, Ruby argues that it is part of her role as a teacher to present alternatives to violence and the despair that she sees as a concomitant of poverty. While she recognizes that violence exists, and there is some discussion of unpleasant aspects of history, Ruby focuses on human responses that overcome violence, poverty, and tragedy (George Washington Carver becoming a scientist and teacher despite the loss of his parents; emphasizing Dr. King's legacy rather than his death). This focus on positive models and morals is generally linked to specific kinds of behavior and supported, at least in part, by the "perspective of care" discussed in the paper. In other words, when Ruby presents individuals who overcome adversity, she may discuss their behavior in terms of individual

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action but she is most likely to present it in terms of relationship and responsibility. For instance, in the class discussion of Martin Luther King, Ruby points out that one person can make a difference but she immediately places that individual in relationship to others: "Dr. King ... dreamed not so much for himself, but for other people .... He decided that his dream was for other people, and he thought of ways to make things better." In their description of the origins of morality in early childhood, Gilligan and Wiggins (1988) discussed the impact of the young child's awareness of self in relationship to others and of attachment to specific others. "In the context of attachment," they argued, "the child discovers the patterns of human interaction and observes the ways in which people care for and hurt one another" (pp. 114-15). Ruby's intention is to strengthen the children's awareness of and responsibility for others as well as to help them form healthy attachments. This theme runs throughout her class and is underscored by her admonition to the children, "We do not hurt living things." There are several reasons this may be an appropriate strategy in this case. First, these children are, after all, only six, seven, and eight years old. Given the extensive violence to which they are exposed, both personally and through the media, perhaps it is not unreasonable to want to balance that with a view of human beings that is based on a sense of connection with others. As Gilligan and Wiggins (1988) pointed out, the moral implications of an approach such as Ruby's are generally overlooked in theories of moral development (p. 115). As a culture , we tend to value self-sufficiency and independence and to see progress toward individuation and detachment as signs of moral development. Resisting detachment is seen as naive and unrealistic. On the other hand, we might consider a morality of detachment potentially cynical and dangerous. Lacking a sense of connection with others, might we also lose the empathy that supports moral action? Ruby's approach may, on the other hand, provide her students with a powerful alternative to a violent world and a beginning point from which to construct a different "reality" from the one in which many of them exist. In any case, Ruby cannot shield her students from the more violent aspects of history. It appears that even quite young children make connections between history and violence. As an example, in a study I conducted with Christine Pappas (Levstik & Pappas, 1987) we asked children a number of questions about history. We asked second, fourth, and sixth graders to tell us what they thought history was and how something became history. Their answers were quite interesting for a number of reasons, including the regularity with which they identified history with, as one child reported, "dying in a famous way." For a number of these children, history was predominantly violent. I recognize that there are a number of reasons for students to associate history with violence, not the least of which is the historic propensity of human beings to engage in violent behavior. Nonetheless, it is disturbing that children know Dr. King or John Kennedy, or Abraham Lincoln, not for their lives but for their

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deaths. Ruby's approach at least provides children with some evidence that there is more to history than eulogies for slain leaders. Given all that, I still have reservations about the degree to which the less savory aspects of life are omitted from this classroom. Basically, I think that children can handle a more balanced approach. The tendency to oversimplify history too often results in misunderstandings and mythologized information. Children learn little more about such a complex figure as, for example, Abraham Lincoln, than that he freed the slaves (although he only freed those in rebelling states), was honest, and was later assassinated. The man is lost in the myth. When Ruby omitted the section that described Night Riders killing George Washington Carver's parents in A Weed Is a Flower, I was disturbed, especially since Carver was then taken in and raised by a White family. First, I think it left children to wonder how Carver suddenly became a foster child to White parents. Given the experiences these children have had with foster care, it seemed to me that the logical conclusion would be that Carver's parents were unfit to care for him. Second, this historical event-a racial murder-could have provided an opportunity to discuss current events in their own community. I think it is both possible and desirable to deal with such events with young children. In addition, I think it can be done without stripping them of hope for their own future. My work with elementary children has convinced me that we do a serious disservice to students by not presenting information as accurately as we know how. These children were serious seekers of knowledge; they were already familiar with the perversity of the world. My conversations with several of them convinced me that they could have handled a fuller treatment of some issues. In fact, I think that Ruby's perspective of care and insistence on treating others humanely could have provided an excellent context within which to discuss inhumanity. In sum, I think Ruby could have accomplished her goal of providing positive models while more fully acknowledging the down side of the human condition. Having said all this, I respect Ruby's position as one come to after much soul searching and taken after careful consideration of alternatives. It is not a posture I would take; it is, however, wholly consistent with Ruby as a person. I also find it less disturbing in a first-grade classroom than I would in, say, Mary Lake's fifth-grade classroom. The logical next question, then, is, "At what age level will the more unpleasant aspects of reality be included?" There is no easy answer to that question, at least for me. My question, in return, would be, "Whose reality?" As one of my fourth-grade respondents once told me, some things can be good for me but not for somebody else. Additionally, there is not a precise age for unpleasantness. Rather, it seems to me to be a function of what unpleasantness is involved and how it is handled. To use the Holocaust as an example, it is the difference between instruction concentrating on the multiple tortures employed by the Nazis or concentrating on the ways in which "ordinary" people acquiesced to, or ignored, the plight of those they saw as "other." The first seems to

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me inappropriate at any age; the second has universal as well as specific application. Both involve some of the most horrific examples of callous indifference to violence and suffering. The first, 'however, is dehumanizing; the second has the potential to increase sensitivity to the common humanity of all people. The second example also helps address my first question, "Whose reality?" If handled by a skillful teacher, the second approach could present multiple perspectives without losing the importance of the moral issue represented by the historical event.

f!Vhat role should multiple-lens moraliry play in the teaching qf history? Do Ruby's approach and an emphasis on empathy, imply teacher imposition qfmoraliry? In analyzing the emphasis on morality in Ruby's classroom, I relied rather heavily on recent work that posits alternative moral perspectives to the hierarchical models suggested by Piaget and Kohlberg. In particular, I am interested in a theory of moral development that better encompasses the moral lives of girls and women and better explains some of the literary and historical discussions that have arisen in my work with elementary students. In relation to these issues, I am also concerned about what happens between the time when students express interest and concern about the world, when they tell me they "need to know the truth" about the world and want to "do something" about injustice and inhumanity, and the point at which so many of them-especially young women-apparently lose the sense of efficacy that might make them more active participants in public life. Bardige's work, cited in my paper, provides some clues to what may be happening. She suggested that our educational emphasis on moving toward abstraction and impersonal analysis has moral costs as well as benefits. Moving toward a "multiple-lens" morality that encourages people to see an issue from different perspectives has obvious advantages. It allows us to understand why different people may see the world quite differently. It can help us avoid stereotypes and prejudice. On the other hand, Bardige suggested that it can also leave children unable to take a moral stand because all points of view are seen as equally good. Further, multiple-lens morality can end up by objectifying others, thus allowing the viewer to disconnect and feel no responsibility toward those others. All this does not, however, imply that education should keep students in a "face value" morality stance or limit historical thinking to empathetic response. Rather, the challenge is to help students retain their sense of connection while enabling them to use a multiple-lens perspective to analyze historic (and more personal) issues. I do think that such an approach begins with some empathetic understanding, In other words, it is unlikely that students will develop more sophisticated approaches to historical thinking if they have never come to care about the content of history. Empathy, then, seems to me to be both the beginning of historical thinking and a component of mature historical understanding.

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The ways in which Ruby frames history provide a foundation for historical thinking by doing three things. First, she asks students to imagine themselves in historic roles and situations. This empathetic switch in perspective may be a precursor to a less problematic multiple-lens morality. Second, she connects history to students' lives in order to nurture a sense of efficacy. Third, she encourages a different way of knowing by introducing the language of connection and interdependence into the moral discourse of the classroom. This provides a second moral frame , more common in what Belenky et al. (1986) called "women's ways of knowing" than the justice perspective that predominates in most theories of moral development. Does such an approach imply teacher imposition of morality? Of course. Every approach to teaching implies some moral stance, whether acknowledged or not. It is particularly odd to think of morally neutral history. History is enveloped in at least two social systems- the system operating at the historic moment and that within which the historian works and constructs his or her interpretation. School history is framed by a third context that includes the social system of the school and community and the relationship between the teachers' and the students' moral worlds. Given these "multiple lenses," it makes more sense to think about how teachers and students can best deal with moral issues. Saying that, however, does not diminish the dangers inherent in the moral worlds that could be constructed in classrooms. The power that Ruby exercises to forge connections between her students and the world could be used for very different purposes. In addition, as a society we have very different and often conflicting ideas about the moral role of public education. This accounts, in part, for the current battles over social studies curriculum. The battle is less over whether or not to teach history and geography (although that is also at issue) than over who controls the political and moral messages that can be transmitted through social studies content.

Were there significant weaknesses or omissions? Were some of her lessons or activities illconsidered or iniffictivery implemented? Either in general or with regard to social education purposes and goals in particular, are there wqys that Ruby could improve her teaching? No teacher, Ruby included, is uniformly wonderful, and no teacher touches every child under his or her tutelage to the same degree. One of my questions when I entered Ruby's classroom was how someone who was so apparently disorganized could be as successful as she was reputed to be. To put this into context, I visited Ruby's class just before the opening of the school year following my observations. There were piles of books and materials everywhere. Tissue paper costumes hung from the ceiling and last year's bulletin boards still graced the walls. Ruby had just returned from a spur-of-themoment trip to eastern Europe and was excited about what she had seen and learned. She glanced around the room in some despair and jokingly suggested that the solution to her organizational problem was to throw sheets over everything and begin the year with a unit on mountain climbing.

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There were times during the year of my observations when the accumulation of student projects, science collections, books, and papers made it difficult to locate materials. A few observers have commented that they thought her students would have difficulty adjusting to a more tightly managed environment. This has not been the case, insofar as I can see. I have regular opportunities to work in this school and have observed Ruby's former students as they moved into second and third grades. Teachers in the primary unit are generally consistent in managing children and the students appear to adjust to differences in organizational style. The problem that I see with this is not children's inability to adjust to differences in teacher style. Rather, the downside that I observe is that class activities sometimes get derailed. Elementary classrooms are amazingly interruptible. This phenomenon is one I have compared with some alarm to my own years as a classroom teacher when my time was generally inviolate (fire drills being an exception). Ruby's day is constantly interrupted by specialists of one sort or another coming in to discuss a child or family situation, by public-address announcements, fire drills, drug awareness programs, police good neighbor programs, other teachers borrowing materials (hard to find independently in the general confusion in the room), and so forth. These would be difficult enough for someone more orderly. For Ruby, it sometimes means that something is lost in the interim, the students lose focus or time slips away before she gets to the point she was aiming for. They also take more time because she can rarely find what is being requested, whether it is the form that was due that morning or the Cuisenaire® rods needed by another teacher. What saves her is her ability to turn distractions into teachable moments, and the students' general enthusiasm for what they are doing, but she still loses valuable teaching time. There were also moments when I wanted to see a topic pushed further, to go beyond the sometimes celebratory presentation of historic figures. In dealing with Columbus, for instance, I wanted Ruby to move beyond the role of explorer and ask the children to consider the impact on native peoples of "discovering" an already inhabited "new world." Ruby's intention in discussing Columbus was not to emphasize culture contact and conflict as much as the concept of exploration, but I think the unit would have been stronger in terms of accuracy and depth if the study had not stopped at the shores of the Americas. When we discussed this point, Ruby noted that she had spent more time on Native American perspectives in past years and that that had slipped through the cracks this year. Finally, Ruby struggles with a persistent problem related both to the nature of the community in which she teaches and to her management style. In the community serving the school, there is a strong thread of traditional rural and Appalachian attitudes toward women. In some of these households, men and boys eat first and separately from the women and girls. Males hold the conversational floor in mixed-sex gatherings and there is explicit denigration of things considered "womanish." This translates into the classroom in several ways.

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First, the boys repeat many of the comments they have heard at home. It requires consistent teacher intervention to involve some of the boys in activities they perceive as feminine. One boy initially refused to participate in a dance that involved putting his hands on his hips because that was "the way women stand." Second, the girls have absorbed the cultural expectation for silence in mixed gatherings. While some were quite verbal and all would speak in allfemale gatherings, many were reluctant to publicly disagree with a boy and were unlikely to volunteer comments in a mixed group. Added to this behavior pattern is a general assertiveness displayed by boys in the school and neighborhood. In the classroom, boys relate to each other through loud and sometimes violent language. Physical aggressiveness is a frequent part of interactions between boys. It is common for an activity to involve a fair amount of physical and verbal jockeying for position. Ruby deals with this behavior in several ways. First, she constantly reinforces the general behavior patterns undergirded by the rule that "we do not harm living things." Children talk through problems and Ruby generally finds some positive way to deflect arguments and move children back into acceptable activities. Second, Ruby involves the children in high-energy activities. They talk, construct, research, read, and engage in drama, dance, and song. There is always something to do to funnel all that energy in constructive ways. Written work is often a communal activity so that the inevitable talk is focused on school work. Ruby has a "with-itness" that allows her to pick up on conversations that verge on argument and turn them back to the task at hand. There is much to commend in Ruby's approach to dealing with a very real issue in her classroom and school. Management is positive and reinforces academics; problems can be transformed into useful discussions. The difficulty lies in the gender differences in the classroom. By concentrating so much energy on deflecting male assertiveness into positive academic behavior, by virtue of there being so many more boys than girls in the class, and because of community gender-role expectations, girls sometimes get lost in the shuffle. The most assertive girls were heard, but girls' comments were more likely to be missed and girls were too often silent in group activities. In a couple of cases, Ruby silenced the entire class, sat with her arm around a girl who was reluctant to speak and made space for her comments. In these instances, the other students listened attentively, but in the general give-and-take of classroom conversations it was often difficult for some of the girls to have a voice. While Ruby is aware of the problem, she has not found an approach that she sees as satisfactory.

On the whole, your account tends to stress the affictive dimensions qf the curriculum while Jane White emphasizes the cognitive. Moreover, you do not explicitfy lay out what ''good teaching" is-though you impfy it in places. Is there a difinition qfgood teaching that would include both Ruby's and Shearer Rumsry's (White and Rumsry, 1993) approaches? I think that the "affective" dimensions described in my account are crucial to cognition in social studies. What you describe as affective is, in my view, the

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context for cognition-the warp against which children weave meaning. It is what makes content compelling enough for children to engage in it so thoroughly. What I attempted to show was how a teacher with particular social and affective aims linked those aims to a social studies content. Against that backdrop, then, I think most of the distinctions drawn between "affective" and "cognitive" are artificial. Good teaching occurs in the intersection of process, content, and context where teachers and students work together to expand their view of the world. From my perspective, that means intellectual empowerment--children acquire the means to learn, material to learn about, and the desire to use what they know and can learn to take intelligent action in the world. I think that description suggests some problems in finding a definition that includes both Ruby's and Shearer Rumsey's approaches. I am not convinced that the lesson on the fall line is a particularly good lesson, although it certainly provides an interesting look at how children attempt to make sense of geographic information. There really is not enough information (nor was thatJane's point in her paper) (White and Rumsey, 1993) to decide what the context for the lesson was. Why the fall line? What larger question or questions are children studying that would make this piece of information worth the time and effort it took to teach it? What can children do with this concept? Will Ms. Rumsey ask them to put it to use in some other activity? One of my problems with single lessons is that they lend themselves to lecture/recitation rather than reflective inquiry. I realize that there are a number of reasons to present information as efficiently as possible, but I think this works best when the learners need the information in order to do something they perceive as important. If Ms. Rumsey's lesson was intended to do that, it could be consistent with the working definition I gave for good teaching. If, on the other hand, it is simply information for information's sake, it is less likely to fit that definition. By this, I do not mean to imply that information is unimportant, but rather that "knowing" is more likely to occur if the learner perceives some purpose to knowing. I think a whole-Ianguagelintegratedlanguage perspective embedded in reflective inquiry is more likely to provide that purpose.

References Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R., & Tarule,]. M. (1986). Women's wqys qfmowing: the development qfself, voice, and mind. New York: Basic Books. Gilligan, C., & Wiggins, G. (1988). The origins of morality in early childhood relationships. In C. Gilligan,]. V. Ward, &]. M. Taylor (Eds.), Mapping the moral somain (pp. 111-38). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Levstik, L. S. , & Pappas, C. C .(1987). Exploring the development of historical understanding.Journal qfResearch and Development in Education, 21, 1- 15. White,]. j., & Rumsey, S. (1993). Teaching for understanding in a third-grade geography lesson. In]. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on f£aching: Vol. 4. Case studies qf teaching and learning in social studies (pp. 33-69). Greenwich, CT:JAI Press.

Chapter 4

Visualizing time

Keith C. Barton

When I was 8 or 10 years old I watched a television program in which everyone but a single person disappeared from Earth. The lone remaining character looked at a clock but found the hands missing, and so there was no way to tell the time. I didn't understand, but my older brother (a college student already) explained that without people, there is no time: Time doesn't exist in nature, he told me, it's something people invent. I was just old enough to make sense of this explanation, and the episode has stayed fresh in my memory. It was probably my first exposure to the idea that our perception of the world comes not just from direct experience but from the culturally created concepts we use to make sense of those experiences. In modern industrial society, time is a particularly useful concept for making sense of the world. Appointments, opening hours, production schedules, and workdays all depend on some consensus about time. Minutes, hours, and days are useful because we agree on what it means to say "Be there at 11," or "Open 7 Days a Week," or "The game starts in 10 minutes." In cross-cultural settings, on the other hand, we may notice assumptions about time that differ from our own. Businesspeople working in another country may realize that "I'll see you at two o'clock" or "Let's meet for a few minutes" require different concepts of two o'clock or a.few minutes than they're used to. Similarly, foreign students in the United States sometimes find that "I'll call you later" carries a different meaning of later than they expected. When our assumptions about time are challenged, we realize how much we depend on social conventions to make sense of the world. Teaching and parenting, meanwhile, alert us to how long it takes children to master concepts of time and how much variation occurs in their understanding. Young children often do not distinguish between seconds and minutes, and they have unrealistic expectations about how quickly hours should pass. By the primary grades, most children understand distinctions among seconds, minutes, and hours, but while some can finely calculate the amount of time until recess or lunch, others move through a haze of temporal confusion, with little apparent understanding of the day's schedule or any recognition of where

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the present moment fits into those activities. Teachers of young children are keenly aware of the need to develop time concepts, and a significant portion of their curriculum involves extending children's understanding of clocks and calendars. During my career as an elementary and middle school teacher, I noticed that students' understanding of time was both incomplete and uneven, but these concerns were hardly foremost in my mind when I began doctoral study at the University of Kentucky in 1990. In fact, I told the department's Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) that I was primarily interested in how writing could be used as a tool for learning. Because Linda was one of the resident experts on language arts-she had just co-authored An Integrated Language Perspective in the Elementary School: 7heory into Action (Pappas, Kiefer, & Levstik, 1990)-the DGS suggested that I ask her to serve as my advisor. This was not my first time in a doctoral program (I had been in UCLA's program in anthropology before becoming a teacher) and so Iknew something about how academia works. Before my appointment with Linda, then, I did what I assumed all beginning doctoral students do when meeting with faculty for the first time- I looked up her publications to see what kind of work she did. In addition to her studies of narrative, I found Linda's review article in Social Education (Downey & Levstik, 1988), a forerunner to the more widely known chapter on history education in Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning (Downey & Levstik, 1991). The Social Education review noted the critical need for more research on elementary students' understanding of history, and so when I met with Linda, I naturally said, "I'd like to do research on elementary students' understanding of history." Linda warned me she was the wrong advisor ifI wanted either to do a quantitative dissertation or to finish my studies quickly, and she agreed to work with me only when I assured her that neither of those conditions applied. During my first year in the program, she introduced me to theories that were framing her work at the time, p articularly schema theory and the idea of domain-specific cognition. At the time, Linda's interests were increasingly focused on the nature of students' engagement with history, and as she notes in Chapter I, she was convinced that Piagetian stage theory had little application to historical thinking. Much of my initial reading, then, involved works that took children's thinking seriously while rejecting the idea of universal stages (particularly Donaldson, 1978, and the extensive review in Gelman & Baillargeon, 1983). Linda and I began to discuss how this research might apply to history. One aspect of historical thinking that Linda had become interested in was students' understanding of time. In hcr study of children's retelling of historical narratives (Levstik & Pappas, 1987), she and Christine Pappas had found that elementary students used language related to historical time, particularly by referring to broad categories such as long ago, in the old times, or simply the past. Although these categories seemed to become more refined with age, the study did not focus specifically on concepts of time, and so it was difficult to draw firm conclusions about the development of children's understanding.

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During the second year of my doctoral program, Linda suggested we investigate this topic in more detail. Although there was a body of scholarship in the area- the field had just been reviewed by Thornon and Vukelich (1988)- we found previous work unhelpful for two reasons. The first was its reliance on a theoretical perspective that collapsed all of students' ideas about time into a single developmental sequence. Although most researchers had not explicitly connected their findings to Piaget's stages, they nonetheless combined a variety of potentially discrete concepts into a more comprehensive (or "global") view of temporal understanding. These researchers seemed to assume that students first had to learn that breakfast comes before lunch, then to tell time from a clock, then to use a calendar, and finally to understand historical time. But this perspective ignored the fact that systems of time are human constructionsand indeed, that they are multiple and parallel constructions, not a single entity with "levels" of understanding that build on those before. As we note in Chapter 5, we could not think of any reason why students must know the months of the year before recognizing that an image of Colonial America is older than one of the 1950s. Not only was this approach inconsistent with our theoretical orientation toward domain-specific cognition, it also bolstered school practices that we found distasteful. One of these was the dominant "expanding horizons" sequence in social studies. Like research on time, this curriculum assumed that students should first learn about themselves and only gradually move outward; in practice , this meant that students in the primary grades had few chances to learn about history. In a similar way, teachers frequently told us (and still do) that history can't be taught in the primary grades because "children aren't ready yet." In some cases, this assertion may simply serve as an excuse not to bother with the subject; other times, it may be the unfortunate result of inadequate preparation. Most methods textbooks, for example, limit their treatment of time to a few creative lesson ideas, and while these lessons may be engaging, they are not grounded in a systematic research base, and so thcy probably do little to challenge teachers' ideas. Perhaps more disturbingly, teachers may encounter advice that reduces the complexities of children's understanding to simplistic formulas- thus teachers sometimes mistakenly believe that children aren't "capable" of understanding dates before age 9 (o r 10, or II, or 12, depending on the author they've read), or that teaching young children about historical time should be limited to helping them learn the meaning of bifore and cifter. Not only is such advice lacking in evidence, it oversimplifies complex processes and serves as a barrier to introducing history in the early grades. Rather than yielding to these problematic and untested assertions, we wanted to find out for ourselves what children could do when working with historical time. We suspected they might be capable of more than researchers, curriculum designers, and teachers had thought possible. We also were troubled by the substantive conclusions of much previous research. Somc researchers had argued, for example, that only by age 6 could

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children recognize the difference between time and distance; only by age 7 could they recite the days of the week in order or sequence generations of family members; only by age 8 could they use terms such as night, tomorrow, and morning to describe a point in time; and only by age 9 could they order the holidays in a calendar year (Thornton and Vukelich, 1988). Both Linda and I had worked with young children in schools, and each of us had children of our own, so we considered these findings blatantly invalid. In our experience, most children know the days of the week before age 7, can use words such as night and tomorrow before age 8, and know that Thanksgiving comes before Christmas or Hanukkah before age 9. We suspected something was wrong with those studies other than their theoretical framework; maybe the data itself was limited. In designing our study, then, we not only wanted to avoid a theoretical position that assumed limitations in students' ability to think about historical time, we also hoped to develop a task that would provide more valid data than measures used in previous research. We believed that one important limitation of this research was its reliance on instruments that asked students to fill in blanks, answer multiple-choice questions, or provide written explanations. Although such tasks can play a role in revealing what students know about some topics, we considered them ill-suited for investigating children's understanding of historical time. We knew that studcnts rarely studied history before fourth or fifth grade, and so we suspected they wouldn't be comfortable responding to questions phrased in the formal discourse of schools. In addition, the format of such instruments limits the questions that can be asked. Matching, blanks, and multiple choice items rely on questions with identifiable right and wrong answers, and we were skeptical that we could create a test that would measure the range of children's thinking about the subject. Constructed written responses, meanwhile, depend on students' ability to put their ideas into coherent prose, and this is an obvious limitation for younger children. We decided that face-to-face, open-ended interviews would be more productive than further paper-and-pencil measures. Such interviews not only would allow us to use a different type of task but would permit us to probe students' answers until we felt sure we had tapped the full extent of their understanding. Although such interviews require a great deal of time-and thus limit the number of students who can be interviewed- they are indispensable in studies of children's thinking because they allow children to explain their reasoning. Open-ended interviews also provide a chance for researchers to explore novel or unexpected responses that arise during interviews. (A number of other researchers in history education were conducting similar interviews with students at about the same time, for much the same reason.) In addition, we hoped that interviews might establish a level of rapport that would encourage more elaborate and thoughtful responses than those produced by highly structured instruments. Each of these considerations led us to expect that our findings would be more trustworthy than those in some previous studies of students' understanding of time.

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Lest the process of designing research appear too linear, though, we should point out that our choice of methods, then and now, depends in part on what we like to do with our time-and what we like is talking with students about their understanding. Scoring written instruments and analyzing numerical data has limited appeal for us, and so our research doesn't usually involve those procedures. In fact, rather than saying that we choose our methods based on whether they provide the best data for the questions we're interested in, we might just as well say that we choose our questions on the basis of whether they provide the best opportunity to collect the kind of data we like. It was prudent for Linda to warn me that she was the wrong mentor if! was interested in quantitative research, and in a similar way, I counsel my doctoral students to consider how they want to spend their time: Observing classrooms? Talking with teachers? Interviewing students? Scoring tests? Everyone knows there must be a match between question and method, but what is less often acknowledged is the need for a match between method and researcher. Once we had settled on interviews as our means for collecting data, we still had to decide what should take place during those interviews. We didn't want to construct oral versions of written tests; there didn't seem much point in asking for dates of famous events or quizzing students on how long ago World War II was. Nor could we just ask, "What do you know about time?" When dealing with topics that students (or teachers) have little experience discussing, something more is needed-some means of eliciting ideas they may never have articulated before (Johnson & Weller, 2002). Linda's experience with props (described in Chapter 1) suggested that letting students manipulate objects would put them at ease, but we wanted objects that would do more than simply relax students. We wanted these objects to be the vehicle through which students expressed their understanding, at least in part, so that their linguistic abilities would not be so much of a bottleneck. We thought visual images might be a productive resource for eliciting students' ideas. Instead of asking students to take a paper-and-pencil test, what if we asked them to put a series of visual images in order? Moreover, what ifinstead of using images of famous people and events-we chose pictures of everyday life, with a variety of clues as to their age-clothing, technology, architecture, social roles, and so on? In addition to proving an alternative to written measures, a task like this had the advantage of moving away from simply quizzing students on their knowledge of traditional political and military history, and it also allowed us to separate students' knowledge of specific dates from their ability to sequence historical times. We then had to locate a variety of historical images to use in the interviews. Today, that would take no more than a few hours downloading images from the internet and using a laser printer to make reproductions on glossy paper, but 15 years ago it was a more time-consuming chore. We searched through books, slide collections, and other instructional materials to find appropriate images; we had each of our final selections professionally reproduced; and

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finally we laminated each picture using an antiquated technology found only in the resource rooms of colleges of education. Because we wanted to give students maximum opportunity to show what they knew, we decided to limit our choices only to black and white pictures (so they wouldn't be confused by color) and only to those from about the last two centuries. And because we were uncertain how children would respond to the task, we decided to field-test the photographs with students in our university methods courses. This field-testing proved to be crucial, because although our pre-service teachers had no overall problem sequencing the pictures, they encountered difficulties with certain images-notably, any that included ethnic minorities. The photograph in Figure 4.1 gave them particular trouble: Students had trouble reconciling the subjects' ethnicity and the picture's obvious antiquity with their formal dress and middle-class home. Some students were convinced the subjects must be slaves, because they thought a long time ago all Mrican Americans were slaves, but they suspected slaves wouldn't be dressed so well. Others reached just the opposite conclusion: Because the subjects were well-dressed, the picture must be fairly recent. If an image caused this many problems with adults, we feared it would do the same with children, and so we ultimately settled on a set wc fclt would be less confusing and that would give children the best chance of showing what they knew. In order to avoid overwhelming students, we also decided to present pictures one at a time, rather than all at once, and to limit the total number of images to 9-although the reason we settled on 9 rather than 8 or 10 has disappeared into the abyss of memory. Some colleagues have questioned whether our set of images was a "valid" measure of students' understanding; after all, we selected the set precisely because we thought it would provide the best chance of sequencing the images correctly. This concern, however, shows how difficult it can be to make the conceptual leap from quasi-experimental or survey research to the kind of cognitive investigations that we prefer. To ask about the validity of a task is to assume that its purpose is to measure a stable trait-whether knowledge, skills, or attitudes-and that the task consists of a representative sample of items selected from the larger universe of potential items related to that trait. Our purpose in this study, however, as in most of our work, was not to measure students' understanding but to describe it-that is, we wanted to know what happens when students of different ages work with historical materials and are asked to do activities related to time. As a result, any set of images would have equal validity, for any set would allow us to describe what students did in those circumstances. But because of the prevailing assumption that young children could do so little with historical time, we wanted to maximize the chance that they could demonstrate any facility they might have-and if it turned out that they could do little with the set we chose, then there would hardly be any point pursuing the matter further. Our study, then, was an example of what is sometimes referred to as an "existence proof" -we wanted to know if students could do anything at all with historical time and if so, what that looked like.

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Figure 4.1 Rejected photograph from study of children's understanding of historical time

We thought the best way to find out how students worked with historical time was to expose them to historical materials, and so we omitted anything related to clocks, calendars, and daily routines. In addition, because we rejected the developmental assumptions of Piagetian stage theory, we also decided to give the same task to students from Kindergarten through grade 6. These choices were consistent with theories of domain-specific cognition, which hold that students may think differently about different topics and are not necessarily limited by global stages of development. Otherwise, however, our research design was largely inductive: We wanted to know what happened when students worked with historical materials, and we had few expectations for what that would look like, other than an idea that students could probably do more than they had previously been given credit for. This kind of approach is most appropriate when little is known about a topic or when, as in this case, researchers suspect that previous conclusions are misguided. Our approach paid off by providing a great deal of information on what students at various ages were capable of. Our most notable finding, for example, was that even the youngest students knew a great deal about historical time. This challenged the widespread notion that students in the primary grades didn't know enough about time to study history meaningfully, and we

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believe that our research has played a role in expanding the possibilities for learning history in the early grades. However, there are limitations to research that lacks a more complete theoretical framework. Chapter 5, for example, provides a great deal of description but little explanation. Although we found that students encountered history in a variety of settings, we learned little about how specific experiences with the past promoted or hindered their understanding of time. And although we found variations in understanding at each age, we had no way of accounting for those differences. Nor were we able to explain why some pictures were more confusing than others, or why students' use of dates developed as they did. As a result, the conclusions and implications we discuss are largely speculative. Our study was effective at identifYing what children can do-that's the purpose of an existence proof-but it neither explained their abilities nor provided direct information on how to develop those in instructional settings. Our need for a more specific theoretical framework was especially apparent when we began analyzing aspects of students' responses that did not relate solely to understanding time-their ways of talking about the past, interpreting historical images, and explaining prior experiences with history. We realized, in particular, that we needed to consider more fully the social context of his torical understanding-a concern that has been central to all our work since. We turned first to semiotic theory, which allowed us to describe how students made connections among images and with their own experiences, both in and out of school (Chapter 6). This was an important step toward broadening our understanding of how students think about the past and a way of moving beyond the concept of "historical thinking" as an autonomous and self-contained cognitive process. Ideally, though, theories should do more than enable better description: They should suggest explanations for students' thinking and learning. In Linda's and my later work we have continued to search for more complete theoretical explanations of our findings. In my subsequent study of children's understanding of time (Barton, 2002), for example, Wertsch's (1998) theory of mediated action allowed me not only to describe students' responses more precisely (thus clarifYing the discrete components of "understanding historical time") but to suggest explanations for why they interacted with the materials as they did. Similarly, in the study found here in Chapter 12, Linda and I used theories from sociology and anthropology to explain why students considered events historically significant. Both studies resulted in more substantial and convincing conclusions than we could have produced without such explanatory frameworks. Moreover, because we were better able to explain students' thinking in this later work, we were also better able to suggest practical implications. Only when researchers identify theoretically grounded explanations for their findings can they provide convincing suggestions for practice, because without such explanations there is no way of knowing how students' thinking

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comes about. As Kurt Lewin famously declared, "There is nothing as practical as a good theory" (Lewin, 1951, p. 169). Unfortunately, not all studies of history education use clear theoretical frameworks . Over a decade ago, Peter Seixas referred to the field as "in-searchof-theory" (in Barton et al., 1996, p. 408), and the situation has not changed much since. Some studies of students' and teachers' ideas about history are descriptive ones that simply report what participants say, without systematically attempting to explain why they hold such ideas or why concepts differ among groups or individuals. Although our research in the early 1990s was primarily descriptive, today the research base has expanded to such a point that such studies are less necessary. The field would be better served by research that asks questions derived from specific theoretical frameworks and that interprets findings in light of such theory. Good research requires good methods and good theory. The following two chapters present the results of our research into students' understanding of time. We realized early on that our data were too complicated to mold into a unified analysis or present in a single article, and so we divided the study into two parts. I took primary responsibility for analyzing the elements of students' responses that related to their understanding of time, while Linda focused on aspects that students considered salient in making sense of the task and our interview questions- hence I appear as first author on Chapter 5 and Linda is first on Chapter 6. We both contributed to the overall analytic framework of each article, though, and both of us wrote portions of the background and discussion sections of each-and we certainly shared a great deal of feedback on each others' interpretations. T his established a pattern of collaboration that continues to this day, as Linda and I work together on developing ideas and perspectives, divide up responsibility for analysis and writing, and then come back together for a new round (or rounds) of mutual interpretation and critique. The following two chapters also illustrate a device for titling our work that we have used repeatedly over the years: Begin with a quote from students that sums up, as much as possible, a key element of our analysis. By beginning with students' words, we hope to keep attention focused on the nature of their ideas- the central concern of most of our empirical work.

References Barton, K. C., Downey, M. T., Epstein, T. L., Levstik, L. S., Seixas, P., Thornton, S.]., & VanSledright, B. A. (1996). Research, instruction, and public policy in the history curriculum: Asymposium. Theory and Research in Social Education, 24, 391-415. Barton, K. C. (2002). "Oh, that's a tricky piece!": Children, mediated action, and the tools of historical time. Elementary SchoolJournal, 103,161-85. Donaldson, M. (1978). Children's minds. New York: Norton. Downey, M. T., & Levstik, L. S. (1988). Teaching and learning history: The research base. Social Education, 52, 336-42.

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Downey, M. T., & Levstik, L. S. (1991). Teaching and learning history. In]. P. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook qf research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 400- 10). New York: Macmillan. Gelman, R., & Baillargeon, R. (1983). A review of some Piagetian concepts. In]. H. Flavell &. E. M. Markman (Eds.), Handbook qf child psychology: Vol. 3. Cognitive development (pp. 167-230). New York: Wiley. Johnson,]. C., & Weller, S. C. (2002). Elicitation techniques for interviewing. In]. F. Gubrium &]. A. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook qfinterview research: Context and method (pp. 491-514). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Levstik, L. S., &. Pappas, C. C. (1987). Exploring the development of historical understanding.Journal qfResearch and Development in Education, 21, I- IS. Lewin, K. (1951) Field theory in social science: Selected theoretical papers. New York: Harper & Row. Pappas, C. C., Kiefer, B. Z., & Levstik, L. S. (1990). An integrated language perspective in the elementary school: Theory into action. New York: Longman. Thornton, S. ]., & Vukelich, R. (1988). Effects of children's understanding of time concepts on historical understanding. Theory and Research in Social Education, 16, 69-82. Wertsch,]. V. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 5

"Back when God was around and everything" Elementary children's understanding of historical time

Keith C. Barton and Linda S. Levstik

Although educators and historians frequently assert that an understanding of time and chronology is essential to learning history, little research has been conducted on the development of children's perception of historical time. Moreover, the small body of research that docs exist~most of it over three decades old~ofte n suffers from inadequate conceptualization or reporting. In particular, much of this research has focused on young children's lack offamiliarity with dates or f amous people and has thus led to the unfortunate conclusion that they are incapable oflearning history. Thornton and Vukelich (1988) have noted the serious limitations of these findings and have called for a reconceptualization of children's understanding of time. Our research responds to that call by investigating how children make temporal distinctions among visual image s~rather than by attempting to quiz them on their specific knowledge of dates or people. In open-ended interviews with children from kindergarten through sixth gradc, wc found that even the youngest make basic distinctions in historical time and that these become increasingly differentiated with age. Perhaps most important, this research indicates that children d evelop significant historical understandings prior to---and to some extent independent of~their use of dates and other aspects of adult temporal vocabularies. Such findings necessitate a r ethinking both of the virtual absence of history instruction before fourth grade and of the central role afforded dates and chronology once students begin their formal study of the topic.

Research on understanding of historical time The recently issued national standards in United States and world history identify chronology as a basic component of historical thinking (National History Standards Project, 1994a, 1994b), and educators concerned with the teaching of history routinely assert the fundamental necessity of an understanding of time (e.g., Diem, 1982; Poster, 1973; Saxe, 1992; Sleeper, 1975; Spieseke, 1963; Zaccaria, 1978). B ecause that assertion appears to have such obvious

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validity, it is rarely accompanied by a developed rationale; since history is so clearly concerned with the past, it hardly seems necessary to explain why students must first understand time. As a result, the connection between the development of historical thinking and temporal understanding has never been fully elucidated; indeed, the school curriculum rarely addresses chronology or historical time in any systematic way (Muir, 1990). Moreover, empirical research has yet to provide any clear direction in helping explain the relationship between children's developing understandings of history and of time. Based on their review of research on the topic, Thornton and Vukelich (1988) conclude that at ages 8 and 9, children begin to master historical dates and are able to estimate how long ago events took place, to place events in sequence, and to associate dates with particular people and events; this mastery is complete by age 11, and from ages 9-11 children begin to label periods of time such as the Colonial Era. They call attention, however, to the small amount of published work on the topic and note that most research on the understanding of time has focused either on the perceived duration of timethe ability to identify the passage of a minute without looking at a watch, for example, or to estimate how long it would take to walk around a room-or on clock and calendar time-the ability to tell time and to name the days of the weeks or the months of the year (e.g., Fraisse, 1963; W. Friedman, 1978, 1982). Research on the development of historical time-which Thornton and Vukelich characterize as the ability to "depict a person, place, artifact, or event in the past using some form of time language" (p. 70)-is much more limited. Their review, in fact, is based primarily on four studies (Bradley, 1947; K. Friedman, 1944b;Jahoda, 1963; Oakden & Sturt, 1922), and we were able to locate only seven others that directly report empirical research on the development of understanding of historical time (Downey, 1994; K. Friedman, 1944a; Levstik & Pappas, 1987; McAulay, 1961; Poster, 1973; Saxe, 1992; West, 1978, 1981, 1982). Few conclusions about the nature or significance of children's understanding of historical time can be drawn from this body of research; its usefulness is limited more by its methodological shortcomings than by its small size, and many studies are reported in only the most general terms. Some researchers provide only minimal descriptions of their procedures and, thus, make it difficult for the reader to know exactly what they asked students to do. (See, particularly, K. Friedman, 1944a, 1944b; Poster, 1973.) Results tend be even more haphazardly reported. As W. Friedman (1982) notes, several studies report only the average scores of a heterogeneous set of items; K. Friedman (1944b), for example, combines the scores for 17 separate items-making it impossible to determine what students knew and what they didn't. Other investigators devote even less attention to their results and provide little or no evidence for their frequently sweeping conclusions (e.g., McAulay, 1961; Poster,1973; West, 1978, 1981, 1982). These studies do not include the kind of systematic discussion of methods, materials, or results that would enable the reader to judge the

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soundness of their conclusions. Without more complete description, such investigations remain suggestive at best. A second drawback to much of this literature is its failure to take seriously the understanding of historical time possessed by children under the ages of 8 or 9. Thornton and Vukelich (1988) note that many researchers believe skills involving personal, calendar, and clock time are prerequisite to an understanding of historical time. Oakden and Sturt (1922) and Bradley (1947), for example, asked children younger than 8 only token historical questions ("Robin Hood lived in 1187. Was your mother alive then? Was your grandmother?") and reserved the remainder of their extensive battery of procedures for older students. Similarly, Friedman (1944a, 1944b) asked students in kindergarten through third grade questions about clock and calendar time, and those in Grades 4 and above questions about historical time; Saxe (1992), meanwhile, limited his investigation to students in fifth grade and above. As far as we are aware, however, no one has established any empirical or theoretical connection between the ability to name the days of the week in order (or any other aspect of personal, clock, or calendar time) and the ability to make temporal distinctions in the past. All forms of time are cultural constructions, and different types of time-keeping serve different functions in society. Identifying the mastery of some forms as prerequisite to the understanding of others implies a sequence of cognitive stages; yet it seems more likely that children are simultaneously developing their facility with parallel cultural constructions. We see no reason to think that a child must be able to name the months of the year before he or she can recognize that a picture of Colonial America is older than one from the 1950s. Indeed, those studies that have focused attention on younger children have uniformly reported some understanding of historical time, including the ability to distinguish among historical time periods. Oakden and Sturt (1922) found that two thirds of the 5-year-olds (and half of the 4-year-olds) knew that their mothers weren't alive at the time of Robin Hood, and McAulay (1961) concluded that second graders could correctly sequence American Indians and White settlers; Downey (1994) found an even greater range of generally correct chronological information among third and fourth graders. West (1978, 1981, 1982) also noted that students as young as 7 were able to recognize historical pictures and place them into an accurate sequence of "first," "last," and "in the middle," and Levstik and Pappas (1987) found that second graders used broad categorical distinctions such as "long ago." The studies by West and McAulay may be too limited to lead to confident conclusions, but, when taken together with the more thoroughly reported work by Downey, Levstik and Pappas, and Oakden and Sturt, such research belies the assertion that understanding of historical time resides only in children in the fourth grade and above or requires a prerequisite mastery of clock and calendar time. The third-and perhaps most serious- shortcoming of previous work is its narrow conception of what constitutes understanding of historical time. Most

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studies have equated this understanding with the ability to sequence dates, to place famous people or events in time, or to identifY the characteristics of conventionally named time periods. Oakden and Sturt (1922), for example, engaged students in a wide battery of tests, including asking them to write in chronological order a set of names based on three sentences written on a blackboard ("Attila lived in Hungary in 438 AD, Philip lived in Spain in 1585 AD, Nero lived in Rome in 50 AD," p. 316); sequence a set of names (Julius Caesar, King Alfred, Robin Hood, Charles I, Tennyson, and Admiral Beattie) without dates supplied; sequence pictures of Charles I, ancient Britons, and a tournament in the time of Richard I; identify "temporal absurdities" in a written passage about Julius Caesar (e.g., references to top hats and Jesus); and complete sentences about aspects of life, such as food, homes, and religion, at the time of Charles I and the time of the ancient Romans. Bradley (1947) used slightly modified versions of the same "order of dates" and "temporal absurdities" tasks, while McAulay (1961) used similar measures in an American context- asking students to sequence people and events ~ashington or Lincoln, American Indians and White settlers, statehood of Pennsylvania and Alaska), to explain what they knew about the times when Lincoln, Washington, and others were alive, and to estimate how long they thought their state, town, and school had been in existence. K. Friedman (1944a, 1944b) asked students to explain the meaning of terms such as century and Be, to translate dates into centuries, to sequence people such as their mother, Lincoln, Washington, and Columbus, and to place given events on a timeline. Saxe (1992) asked students to supply dates for indefinite expressions such as in pioneer days, in the late sixteenth century, and in ancient times. Some of these measures-putting dates in order, translating dates into centuries-test whether students understand the numerical meaning of dates. Given the prevalence of dates in school history courses, such research may contain some valuable insights; Saxe, for example, was primarily interested in helping teachers realize how diverse their students' responses to the same indefinite expressions were and how they might address students' misconceptions. A student who does not know that 1066 was in the eleventh century will no doubt be confused when such terms are used interchangeably. Such measures do not by themselves, though, indicate an understanding of historical time. A student might well be able to arrange dates in perfect order (as some 5-year-olds can do) without having any sense of what any of those dates mean. This kind of purely numerical reasoning can hardly be equated with an understanding of historical time. Most tasks used in previous research, on the other hand, test students' knowledge of specific historical time periods. Asking students to identify temporal absurdities, for example, or to explain what they think life was like when Lincoln was alive, assesses whether they know that there were no top hats at the time of Julius Caesar, or electricity at the time of Lincoln. Similarly, sequencing tasks measure whether students happen to know that Columbus

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lived before Lincoln or King Alfred before Tennyson. In essence, these tasks quiz students on their knowledge offamous people: They assess whether children happen to know who lived first or what inventions existed at the same time as a given person. But, if understanding historical time means being able to "depict a person, place, artifact, or event in the past using some form of time language" (Thornton & Vukelich, 1988, p. 70), then such tasks provide a very indirect measure of that understanding; putting Lincoln and Washington in sequence does not test whether a student can use time language to depict things in the past~it only tests his or her knowledge of Lincoln and Washington. In most of the studies cited above, if a student happens not to know the particular people, events, or periods presented to her, it will appear as though she has no understanding of historical time~when, in fact, she may simply have no specific knowledge of King Alfred or Admiral Beattie. Such a student might well be able to place other people, events, or periods in time, even though he or she could not do so with the particular ones chosen by the researcher. The result has been a deficit model of children's understanding of history in which their temporal perspective is evaluated by its conformity to what a given researcher considers historically significant: If children don't know particular dates or famous people, then they appear not to know about historical time. Most research on the understanding of historical time, then, lacks serious attention to the kinds of temporal distinctions children make and their reasons for making them. Although the people, events, and dates that historians or educators categorize as historically important may constitute one element of children's understanding, it is unlikely to be the only one~and thus measures that are limited to the traditional content of school history are unlikely to reveal the full range of children's understanding. Although previous studies have pointed out that students frequently give interesting, humorous, or reasonable explanations for their incorrect responses~sometimes including a separate coding category for "absurd" answers~few studies accord such explanations the kind of systematic attention that would provide insight into children's thinking. The focus on numerical data in studies like that of Oakden and Sturt obscures their occasional, suggestive observations~that children conceive of the past as maximally different from the present, that they chunk together different time periods, and that they use fashion as index of antiquity. Rather than taking the arrangement of dates or the recognition of famous people and events as the hallmarks of historical time, research should endeavor to elicit the kinds of temporal understandings that children do have and to examine how these understandings change over time. Among previous investigations of historical time, only those by Downey (1994) and Levstik and Pappas (1987) have included the kind of in-depth, open-ended interviews that allow the researcher to probe students' reasoning. In his interviews with third and fourth graders, for example, Downey found that students relied heavily on visual clues (particularly fashion and technology) in trying to establish chronological sequence~an observation that would not have been possible had he only been

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interested in whether they got the sequence correct. Similarly, Levstik and Pappas found that second graders used very broad designations for historical time (such as "long ago") and that these became increasingly differentiated among fourth and sixth graders- another finding that would have been lost had they concerned themselves only with students' use of dates or other aspects of the adult temporal vocabulary. In the present study, we try to build on the insights of previous work and to avoid some of its limitations. In this research, we asked children from kindergarten through sixth grade to arrange a set of visual images from different periods of American history in chronological order and to talk about their reasons for placement. We hoped that visual images would provide students a substantially greater range of stimuli than the exclusively language-based measures used in most previous studies- a supposition substantially supported by the work of Downey and of West. Our foremost concern was to explore the kinds of temporal distinctions children made and to examine how those distinctions changed with age. In this report, then, we focus attention more on the kinds of explanations students gave and the way those explanations accord with adult understandings than on children's knowledge of particular dates, facts, or people.

Method Population We collected data from 58 children at seven grade levels (kindergarten through sixth grade) and from a variety of geographic settings (urban, suburban, and rural) in northern and central Kentucky. We interviewed eight children in each grade (four females and four males) in kindergarten and Grades 4-6, and 26 children (12 females and 14 males) in the equivalent of Grades 1-3. (Most children in the latter group were in nongraded primary settings, and their gradeequivalence was obtained by matching their age to an approximate grade level.) Thirty percent of the children were African American, and less than 4 per cent were members of other ethnic minorities. Most children attended schools in predominately lower or middle socioeconomic neighborhoods (as indicated by the percentage of children receiving free or reduced meals), although a minority attended schools that drew primarily from upper middle class neighborhoods. Except for kindergartners, all children were in classes with ongoing social studies programs, and teachers were asked to identity children representing the range of performance in social studies in their classrooms.

Materials, task, and procedure Working from several sets of historical pictures, we selected those that we thought most adults easily could arrange in chronological sequence. In general,

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we chose pictures we thought would closely match well-known periods of American history~such as the Colonial Era, the Depression, the 1950s~and that contained a variety of clues that might be considered salient (including fashion, technology, architecture, and social interaction). \'\Ie limited our selections to post-contact American history in order both to simplify our task and to help ensure that participants would have some familiarity with their content. After selecting several sets of such pictures, we tested them with approximately 90 college students who had completed their general studies requirements (including at least one, and usually two, university history courses). We narrowed the pictures to one set, based on the following responses from these test students: Traditional political and diplomatic images (e.g., war scenes or presidents) generated little conversation or debate about placement~they were either known or not known-and thus were eliminated as unproductive for this study. Images that included racial or ethnic diversity were extremely difficult for test students to place in time and thus were eliminated in favor of a narrower set of images (against which further work, using more diverse images, might be compared). Twentieth-century images and those more closely spaced in time generated more richly detailed conversation and revealed a wider range of associations beyond those immediately present in the pictures; as a result, we included several pictures from the twentieth century in our final set. After selecting the pictures, we reproduced the set of nine images as black and white glossy photographs, individually mounted them on heavy stock poster board, and laminated them so that children could handle the pictures without damaging them. (See Appendix A.) The list below provides the order in which we presented the pictures, the actual date of each, and brief descriptions oftheir contents; expressions in brackets denote the shorthand descriptions that we have employed in this article. la 1b 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1956 Teenagers at a drive-in restaurant [1950s] 1886 Family and covered wagon on the prairie [West] 1924 Men and women in bathing suits in front of a car [1920s] 1837 Political cartoon of an urban scene [Antebellum] 1939 Family reading and sewing at home [Depression] 1772 Fort with soldiers and Native American Indians lColonialJ 1899 Schoolroom with teacher and children [1899] 1993 Large, modern building with cars and people [Modern] 1967 Demonstrators and police at a protest at the Pentagon [1960s]

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We interviewed children by using an open-ended protocol. (See Appendix B.) After explaining the interview process and obtaining their assent, we showed children the West and 1950s picture simultaneously and asked them to place the one from "longest ago" on one side and the one from "closest to now" on the other. We presented each of the other pictures one at a time and asked children whether each belonged between two others, before the others, after the others, or at about the same time as any of the others. By using the sequence above, we initially presented children with what we considered an easy choice, followed by pictures for which correct placement necessitated placing some before, some after, and some between others. For each picture, we asked children to explain why they put the pictures where they did, and we frequently probed their explanations. After they had placed all the pictures, we asked when they thought each picture was from. Finally, we asked a series of questions designed to explore children's conceptions of history and the past and their own experiences with history. (See Appendix B.) We designed this set of images based largely on the extent to which they were familiar to adults, and we did so because we wanted to maximize children's ability to complete the task and discuss their reasoning. On the one hand, this strategy mirrors previous work in the field: Students were asked to sequence pictures recognizable by adults in the same way other students have been asked to sequence the names of famous people. Although we think it would be an interesting project to select a set of pictures completely at random and present them to students, we were more concerned with trying to ensure that they would have something to say-and, if our university students had nothing to say about a picture of Susan B. Anthony, we thought it even less likely that elementary children would. We used more images from the twentieth century, then, because as adults we have more categories for the twentieth century than others. (Most of us undoubtedly have more sharply differentiated mental images of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s than we do of the 17 40s, 17 50s, and I 760s.) But this task also differs from the work reviewed earlier in two important ways. First, we chose our pictures on the extent to which they were empirically familiar to our university students, not on a priori grounds of importance. As educators, we would undoubtedly have developed a different set of imagesreflecting what we considered important historical themes in politics, the economy, or race and gender relations, for example-and the study then might have demonstrated that these children could or could not accurately sequence Harriet Tubman and Mother Jones in the same way previous children did with Lincoln and Washington. But our university students were much more adept at sequencing pictures with clothes and technology than those with famous political figures. We hoped, therefore, that such images might give children a chance to demonstrate a wider range of temporal understanding than in previous research. Of course, children's responses were still in important ways being determined by adult expectations, but in this study those expectations

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arose from empirical testing rather than our individual predilections as educators. Second, we were not exclusively concerned with whether children got it right. Although previous researchers have typically categorized students' responses as right or wrong (or sometimes "absurd"), we wanted to establish just what kinds of temporal distinctions they did make and how they made them. Several investigators have made suggestive claims about students' tendency to lump together several different time periods, to think of the past as maximally different than the present, or to rely on clothes as the chief index of chronological order. Rather than relegating such observations to the margins of our work, we placed them at the center. In the following pages, then, we have not only attempted to catalog children's increasing familiarity with dates and other aspects of adult temporal vocabularies but to describe children's developing time awareness as much from their own perspectives as our interview results would allow.

Analysis

of responses

We transcribed interviews and developed a set of coding categories based on our initial impressions of children's responses; categories included use of technological clues, use of social clues, use of general time categories, and so on. We had little success attempting to code the interview transcripts using these categories, because it was the overall pattern of individual children's responsesrather than discrete sentences-which provided the greatest insight into their thinking. As a result, we abandoned the attempt to narrowly and precisely code transcripts in favor of a strategy of holistically analyzing each interview and generating inferences based on the trends in each student's responses. In many cases, relying on a purely quantitative coding scheme would have misrepresented the nature of students' responses. As a result, we have endeavored to characterize students' thinking as completely as possible by analyzing the entire record of their interviews. Consider the following examples of the ways in which quantitative precision can give a misleading image of children's thinking. Even children in second grade and younger typically placed each picture in a linear sequence, but their explanations often failed to indicate any clear differentiation of pictures from those that surrounded them. In some cases, children simply worked outward from the first two pictures: They placed pictures they considered close to now on one side, pictures they considered long ago on the other side. More frequently, children placed pictures in a variety of placesbefore, after, or between those they had already placed-but, instead of explaining why they were older or newer than the others, either simply described the pictures or compared them to the present. First grader Jameela, for example, placed the 1899 picture next to the Depression picture, but she did not compare it to any of the others; she explained her placement simply by describing it: "It has kids, and it has grown-up teaching class. It's got sticks,

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kids, teachers, chalk." Similarly, second-grader Christine placed the 1960s picture between the 1899 and Depression pictures, but she only noted, "Lots of people are having a war, and they're fighting and all that." More frequently, children explained their placements by comparing pictures to thc present day, rather than to the other pictures in the sequence. Bambi laid most of the pictures in linear order, for example, but simply explained how they differed from now rather than establishing their position relative to each other. She placed the Antebellum picture after the West picture "because the people had like big ships and trains back then and they had buildings and not houses like us"; when asked why she thought it was newer than the 'West picture, she did not respond. Neither describing a picture nor comparing it to the present establishes its location in the sequence; thus, although linear placement gave the illusion of differentiation, children's explanations indicated that they simply were placing pictures into a general time period together with others they considered to be from about the same time. Children may, of course, have understood more about the relative position of the pictures than they were able to explain; but, since a single child sometimes did differentiate a picture from those that surrounded it and sometimes did not, we took failure to do so as an indication that the image did not represent for the child a distinct temporal period but rather another example of a previously identified period. We frequently probed children's responses in order to try to get them to make more complete differentiations- we asked them, for example, how the features they described helped them know when the picture was from or how they knew it was older or newer than the pictures on either side- but these probes were almost always met with silence, and children often appeared so uncomfortable with the question that we abandoned it for fear they would stop responding altogether; we took this as further evidence that students did not perceive temporal differences among some pictures. Because of the intricacies of students' responses, then, we have relied on holistic analysis of their answers rather than on a narrower set of coding categories that might mask the inferences we found it necessary to make. W e should also point out that some kindergartners and first graders gave explanations so sparse, unclear, or fanciful (albeit entertaining) that we gained little insight into their understanding of historical time . Kindergartner Vicky, for example, placed the West picture before the 1950s picture but explained her placement only by saying, "Cause it's old"; she then placed the 1920s picture between the other two and said simply, "It's new"- and then declined to do any more. Kindergartner Carrie worked through the entire set but explained all her placements simply by describing the people in them: She thought the West picture was older, for example, because it has "men and ladies and horses and a boy and a little girl," while the 1950s picture was newer because "it gots people and girls." First-grader Jonah, meanwhile, made up elaborate stories- replete with names- about the people in all the photo-

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graphs and later noted the task was easy because he 'just guessed all this." The lack of explicit comparison between the pictures- or even any clear reference to the content of the pictures- prevented these responses from providing much insight into children's understanding of the past. By second grade, however, all students gave answers that directly responded to the demands of the task and that allowed us to make more extensive inferences about their temporal understanding.

Results All children were able to make at least some temporal distinctions and explain them in a simple way; every child interviewed, for example, placed the West picture before the 1950s, and nearly every child gave an explicit comparison of the two. First-grader Bambi noted that "I think this [West] would go first because they had horses and carriages and long dresses back then, and this would go now because they don't." Even kindergartner Anthony, whose responses were generally too unrealistic to provide any clue as to his understanding of chronology-he consistently pointed to the "colors" in these blackand-white photos as the reasons for his placement-did note that the 1899 picture was "a little closer to now [than the West picture] . .. because we're in school" and that the Modern picture "is now." Our research generally confirmed the suggestions found in earlier studies that younger children use relatively broad categories of historical time and that these become progressively differentiated with age.

Children's temporal distinctions Kindergarten through Grade 2. The most basic temporal distinction children made was that between long ago and close to now. A minority of kindergartners and first graders explicitly or implicitly categorized all pictures as belonging to one of these two times. Kindergartner Monte, for example, placed the West and Antebellum pictures together and noted that "They're both old." Kindergartner Anthony, after laying out the entire set of pictures, noted that "All of these [older pictures] are back in the old days, and these [newer pictures] are back in the new days." These children often used features from the present with which they were familiar to explain why pictures were newer and used features no longer found in the present as evidence of the pictures' being from long ago. First-grader J ameela, for example, placed the Depression picture closer to now because "they have shoes, they have socks, they have shirts, they have sheets." Similarly, she considered the 19605 picture closer to now because "we still have guns, we have people, we have trees and buildings." She thought the Antebellum picture was older, though, because "they don't have no shoes, they have different flags," and she similarly noted that in the

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Colonial picture "they ain't got any shoes on, they have different.kinds oftrees, they have wooden houses." First-grader Candi exhibited this dichotomous categorization more clearly than any other child. For each picture, she explained either why it was in "the olden days" or what feature we have now that they didn't have "in the olden days." For her, the 1899 picture was from now because "there wasn't any schools in the olden days, they just had to do work in the olden days"; similarly, the Antebellum picture was from now because "there wasn't no city in the olden days," and the 1960s picture was from now because "there wasn't war in the olden days, and there was war now, and in the olden days there was peace, now there's not." For Candi, only the West and Colonial pictures were from the "olden days," the former because "there's a carriage, and the people are wearing old clothes from the olden days" and the latter because "they didn't have the building, now, they had to build them in the olden days." This dichotomous characterization of time-with the past's being perceived as lacking all features present now- lends some support to Oaken and Sturt's claim that young children lump the past together into an undifferentiated time, maximally different from the present. Most children's categorizations were not as simple and straightforward as this, however. Several kindergartners and first graders- and all second graders- divided the pictures into more numerous categories by explaining not simply how they related to the present but how they related to each other. Although these children continued to place many pictures together, they appeared to have broken down the categories of "close to now" and "long ago" into somewhat more finely differentiated periods. In particular, children recognized some pictures as being either older than the other old pictures, newer than the other new pictures, or between the old and new pictures. Most children made more than one of these differentiations. Many children recognized one picture- usually the Colonial- as being older than the others. First-grader Bambi, for example, who had failed to distinguish between the Antebellum, West, and Depression pictures, nonetheless explained that the Colonial picture was older than all the others "because they're wearing rags, and not like clothes that everybody else in the pictures do." Similarly, kindergartner Mickey pointed out that the Colonial picture was older because "they don't got nothing" to wear 'cept those clothes." First-grader Mindy, meanwhile, explained that the Colonial picture was oldest "cause there isn't anything to move and they walked all the time" and the houses are "kinda open." And first-grader Francie explained, "Oh I think that goes waaay down there, cause these people [in more recent pictures] are wearing clothes all over their bodies, but these are wearing one clothing that goes across their waists like this." Many children also noted that the Modern picture was more recent than the others, and several of them explicitly identified it (especially because of the cars) with the present. Kindergartner Mickey, for example, pointed out that it was the most recent "cause they got new cars." First-grader Mindy also pointed out

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that it was the most recent "because the cars look a little bit more like they do now than these other pictures [1950s and 1920s]." And first-grader Francie explained, "This is like the Herald-Leader [the building in the picture]. We have that right now, like our kind of thing. The cars, they're like these cars, and those cars are old cars [1920s and 1950s], but this is a Toyota." Others children recognized that the 1920s picture occupied a middle position between the West and the 1950s. Having in most cases already explained that a picture with a car is newer than one with a horse and buggy, these children typically noted that the car was different than the one in the 1950s picture. Kindergartner Melody, for example, explained that the 1920s pictures goes in between because the car in it is "really old," while the 1950s one is '1ust old." First-grader Mindy also noted that the 1920s picture is older because the car "looks different, and the wheels are different," and second-grader Darrell explained, "This is an old car; between this car and this car, this one seems old."

Grades 3 and 4. While children in kindergarten through second grade usually made one, two, or three distinctions beyond long ago and close to now, by third grade nearly all children made at least three distinctions-and two thirdgraders also differentiated the oldest three pictures from one another. Like younger children, though, third graders failed to distinguish several pictures from the others and resorted to description or comparison to the present. By third grade, then, a clear pattern had emerged: All children differentiated an "older" from an "old" category, a "now" from a "close to now" category, and a "middle" category between "old" and "close to now." Although some children differentiated the "old" category even further, no children attempted to differentiate the pictures in the "middle" category. All children at this age continued to employ broad categories of historical time in which some pictures-West and Antebellum, 1899 and 1920s, Depression and 1950s, or some other combination-were lumped together without explicit comparisons and either simply described them or compared them to the present. Some fourth-graders continued to exhibit this pattern of differentiating categories in the middle and at each end but lumping together other pictures. Others, however, attempted to make more differentiations than younger children had-a pattern that would continue through the upper grades. These children compared pictures with one another much more frequently than third-graders, although their comparisons often were vague or imprecise. Amber, for example, not only distinguished among each of the three oldest pictures but tried to differentiate the 1899 picture from the Depression picture by noting, "There are newer classrooms." Similarly, she placed the 1960s picture between the 1920s and 1950s pictures "because that picture kinda looks like that one, and that one." Cathy explained her placement of the 1960s picture by saying, "Well, because they have big buildings just like these [in the Modern picture], and I don't really think they really had them big like that

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around these two [Depression and 1950s], so 1 think it came before that, and the guns and the men right there ... they just look like they've been, this one's been, more recent than these two before." Other times, children's attempts to compare pictures resulted in little more than description. Deanna, for example, explained, "I think this one, the one with the horses, came a little bit before this one [Antebellum] because, well actually, they came about the same, but they have basically the same clothes, but I think it's a little bit longer, I m aen, after this one, because they have a bottle of ginger ale, and they have a parade back here, and it looks back here like a gambling or an auctioning off or something, and it looks like this, it's more a city." Although her explanation did not differentiate the pictures very clearly, this child was nonetheless concerned with making a temporal distinction; the amount of background knowledge that she could employ explicitly, however, was not adequate to the distinction she wished to make. Some fourth graders also seem to have realized that simple descriptions or comparisons to the present were insufficient to establish a picture's place in the sequence and thus were more likely not only to attempt comparisons but to say "I don't know" when questioned about why they placed a picture where they did.

Grades 5 and 6. The concern with comparisons increased among fifth- and sixth-graders, as many children attempted to differentiate all or most pictures. Rather than the general or vague observations offourth-graders, though, fifthand sixth-graders frequently used specific historical information to compare pictures. Fifth-grader Greg, for example, placed the Antebellum picture after the West because "there's buildings in it, and this is when the people were moving west, and this one would be after, because they didn't make gin until after they had settled down." Fifth-grader Evan, on the other hand, placed the two pictures in the opposite order because "the photographs came in the 1840s or '50s or '60s, and the paintings are back before that." And fifth-grader Tina explained her placement of the 1899 picture by noting, "I don't have the [American Girls doll's] desk, but Samantha was in the very early 1890s, and she had a desk like that. It was about 1907. And also the way that they're dressed the same, the girls are wearing long dresses with stripes, and the boys the same thing." Children's background knowledge was not always accurate or relevant, but such references-rare among younger children-were a nearly constant feature of the responses of most fifth- and sixth-graders. Many children by fifth grade also used dates- especially names of decades and centuries-to compare pictures. Fifth-grader Rodney compared the 1920s and 1950s pictures by observing that "in the thirties and twenties, that's when the cars like these start coming out, and these cars come out in the sixties"; he later explained his placement of the Depression picture by noting that "this one is mostly in the fifties and forties cause that's when they had radios, and they would be either knitting like the mother's doing in the picture, and the father would be reading a n ewspaper, and they [the children] would be like reading

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the funnies paper." Sixth-grader Patricia first put the 1960s picture between the 1920s and 1950s pictures and explained, "Well, it looks like that there's a lot of chaos going on, and it looks like it's probably like a scene from about the sixties or the fifties, during like Vietnam time." She then changed it to after the 1950s picture "because this one looks like it's not as old as this one, because it looks like it's in the sixties, and that one looks like, the other pictures looks like it's from the fifties." For these children, the use of dates substituted for direct comparisons between pictures: Once a child established one picture as "the sixties" and another as "the fifties," no further comparison was necessary to establish their relative position. Despite their use of explicit historical knowledge, however, many fifth and sixth graders still failed to make explicit comparisons between pictures. Sixthgrader Trent, for example, placed the Antebellum picture before the West "because this looks like something that happened in the east or something, and then this looks like they're going on the Oregon Trail or something like that." But then he placed the Colonial picture at the same time as the Antebellum "because of the slaves, like right there, they're gonna collect slaves or something." Moreover, Trent maintained that the 1899, 1920s, Depression, 1950s, and 1960s pictures were from the same time despite probes as to whether he thought some might be a little before or a little after. He gave reasons such as, "because like their styles of clothes, and like the designs of the furniture and stuff," "because of their styles of clothes, and the classroom," "because it looks like the war in Germany or something-like that, it looks a little bit more like after Vietnam or something like that, or the war in Germany, World War II." Although he appeared to possess significantly more background knowledge than younger children, his differentiation of time categories was little more specific than the very youngest.

Summary. All children interviewed made some temporal distinctions, and the number and complexity of these increased across grade levels. Although some young children lumped all pictures into general categories of "old" and "close to now," many made further distinctions- distinguishing some pictures as older than others, some as newer, and some as in-between. By third grade, nearly every child made all these distinctions and thus displayed evidence of temporal categories that may roughly be labeled as "oldest," "old" "inbetween," "close to now," and "now." Fourth graders attempted to make even further distinctions, though their comparisons were often very vague and exhibited limited background knowledge. Most fifth and sixth graders distinguished all or most pictures and made use of extensive background knowledge in doing so. These findings, however, should not be interpreted as indicating a strictly age-related developmental sequence, for at both ends of the grade spectrum some childrcn dcviated significantly from this pattern. One kindergartner, for example, divided the nine pictures into seven distinct categories, while one

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sixth grader lumped all pictures from 1899 to 1950 together into one period. Perhaps most important, this research examines children's interaction with only one specific set of pictures from American history; other sets of imagesincluding, for example, pictures of pyramids or knights in armor- might yield substantially different results. Time vocabulary

Children had difficulty describing historical periods with any precision. Across grade levels, children showed an increasing ability to draw on specific background knowledge in assigning dates to pictures, but this ability lagged far behind their ability to differentiate the periods of time themselves. By third grade, for example, nearly all children differentiated at least five broad categories of historical time, but few could associate dates with any except the two most recent. As one fourth grader put it, "The easy part was just putting them in order; the hard part was trying to decide what years and when they happened."

Dates. Children in kindergarten through second grade rarely used dates spontaneously when discussing the pictures, and their unfamiliarity with them was apparent when we explicitly asked when they thought each picture was from. Many children either refused to participate in that part of the interview, said they didn't know, or gave only general responses (such as "long ago" for all but the most recent picture). Children who were asked to begin with the most recent picture and work backward participated somewhat less reluctantly, but those who were asked to begin with the oldest picture and work forward found the task so difficult that we abandoned that strategy early in the research. Most children at this level who were willing to assign dates appeared to be guessing, and the dates they assigned for most pictures seemed to be chosen at random. Few children at this level linked the pictures with knowledge of particular dates, nor did they take into account the relative temporal distance between pictures. One kindergartner, for example, identified the oldest three pictures as 1493, 1390, and 1493 again, while a first grader worked backward and assigned the dates 1991, 1990, 1889, 1552, 1551, and 1668. Another first grader confidently identified the 1960s picture as being from 1993 but simultaneously noted that it was from a "long, long time ago." Some students appeared to misunderstand the numerical basis of dates. A kindergartner, for example, identified the contemporary picture as 1993 but then gave future dates (1995, 1996) for the older pictures. Others assigned dates that did not go in order. W e took these responses as an indication that students did not understand that dates in the past are smaller than the present date or that dates from later in time must be larger than those longer ago. Given the fact that children at this age are still learning the meaning of numbers, it is hardly surprising that many did not understand this. Interestingly, though, all

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students who were willing to assign dates had internalized enough conventional terminology always to assign dates with four digits and always to express those dates by using two 2-digit numbers-"fifteen fifty-two," for example. By third grade, all children who were asked for dates were willing to assign them, and almost no one gave dates that contradicted qualitative descriptions or that did not follow in order. Only one child appeared to guess numbers at random, and most took their previous estimates into account in making each new designation. In addition, children at this level most often estimated dates by naming decades or centuries ("the 1950s" or "back in the 1800s") rather than the more specific but seemingly random guesses ("1522") of younger children. Finally, fifth and sixth graders often identified a range of possible dates for pictures and frequently used conventional historical terminology such as "the late 1800s" and "late forties or early fifties." Children understood the mathematical meaning of dates, however, before most of them were able to relate those dates to specific historical information. Thus third and fourth graders rarely assigned dates spontaneously, and, when explicitly asked for them, their estimates did not usually draw on explicit background knowledge: Rather than linking dates to specific periods represented by the pictures, many began with the most recent picture and worked backward in standard increments of time-increments which ranged from a few years to 2 decades. Like younger children, they did not take into account the relative temporal distance of the pictures and thus assigned the same approximate interval to each. One child who separated each picture by only a few years, for example, was led by this strategy to place the Antebellum picture in 1967 and the Colonial picture in 1965; similarly, another who counted backward by 1 or 2 decades for each picture placed the West picture in 1920 and the Colonial picture in 1900. Other third and fourth graders followed this spacing strategy for the most recent pictures and then recognized that some of the older ones were separated by much larger increments. One third grader, for example, worked backward by decades but then skipped to "the 1800s" for the Antebellum picture, "1770" for the West picture, and "the zero year" for the Colonial picture; similarly, another third grader identified the 1899, Antebellum, and 1920s pictures as "the 1700s"; the West picture as "1600"; and "something Be" for the Colonial picture. Another placed each picture approximately 20 years apart but then skipped to "1720" for the Colonial picture. At all grades except kindergarten, however, some children assigned specific dates to each picture rather than simply spacing out their estimates in a systematic way. Even in the earliest grades, many children identified the contemporary picture with a date from the early 1990s (and most of those who did not use a date used qualitative descriptions that indicated their understanding of its time- "right now," "not very long ago," or "February"), and, by third grade, all children who were asked to date the contemporary picture said it was from the early 1990s or the late 1980s. In addition, a few of the youngest children,

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about half of the third and fourth graders, and nearly all fifth and sixth graders confidently identified the 1950s pictures as being from the 1950s or 1960s. By fourth grade, several children related many pictures to independent background knowledge rather than guessing randomly or using a standard interval, and these children came very close to the actual dates of the pictures. One fourth grader estimated each picture to within 10 years of its actual date (except the Colonial, which he reasonably placed in "the 1600s"), and other answers were nearly as accurate. By fifth and sixth grade, children's accuracy and confidence had improved greatly: They consistently identified the four most recent pictures to within a decade of their actual date, most placed the 1899 and 1920s pictures within 2 decades, and only one failed to place the West picture in the 1800s (usually in the 1870s or 1880s). The Colonial and Antebellum pictures still prompted the greatest uncertainty, with dates ranging from the 1500s to the l800s for the former, the 1700s to 1915 for the latter.

Qj1alitative descriptions qf time. From kindergarten through second grade, children's qualitative descriptions of time periods were very general: The most common expressions for periods in the past included "the old days," "a long time ago," and "back then." When children tried to differentiate these categories further, they created extemporaneous distinctions like "really old" and 'just old," "sort of old, but not really" or "a long time ago," "a long, long time ago," and "a long, long, long time ago." Third and fourth graders continued to use such general expressions and added others-"old-fashioned," "modern," "ancient," and "something Be." A few also used expressions that associated pictures (sometimes inaccurately) with specific periods in history; these included "when the cowboys were around," "the old West," "the rockin' fifties," "before there was independence," "around when Columbus got here," "before the Civil War," "close to when Martin Luther King was," and "back when God was around and everything." Fifth and sixth graders also used expressions such as "like something you'd see on Happy Days," "it seems like that was Woodstock and everything," "like something out of Little House on the Prairie," "from the Civil War," "during slavery," and "back from the Revolutionary War." They rarely used the general terms-such as "back then" - that still predominated among third and fourth graders (except "modern," which they used even more frequently); their use of these general terms was replaced by the use of specific dates rather than qualitative descriptions of time periods such as "Antebellum" or "Colonial." These conventional periodizations were almost completely absent- a rare exception being sixth-grader Nedra, who noted that the Antebellum picture looked "Victorian": "I read some books about it, the American Girl books, and I have a Victorian dress at home." Summary. Children's understanding of dates improved considerably across grade levels. From kindergarten through second grade, children rarely demon-

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strated any knowledge that would allow them to assign dates to pictures, and some misunderstood the arithmetical meaning of dates. This arithmetical confusion had disappeared by third grade, but most children were still unable to draw on background knowledge to assign dates-although several recognized that some pictures were separated by a larger numerical interval than others. Children in fourth grade and above usually attempted to assess the dates of pictures by referring to specific historical knowledge, and fifth and sixth graders were adept at doing so. The ability to link pictures to this independent background knowledge occurred first with reference to the Modern and 1950s pictures, both of which children frequently identified with reasonable dates even before third grade. Use of qualitative descriptions of time, meanwhile, began as very general expressions and, in fourth grade and above, were replaced with either dates or associations with specific periods. These qualitative categorizations, however, were generally linked with the elements of popular culture rather than periods that historians or textbooks might use.

Order

of placement

Although we are primarily concerned with the way children conceptualize historical time rather than their ability to order specific historical periods accurately, the question inevitably arises, "Did they get it right?" Phrased this way, the query is unanswerable: Because children placed pictures according to their own conceptualizations of time, comparing specific placements to adult standards is meaningless. If a child has only two temporal catcgorics ("long ago" and "close to now"), the placement of any individual picture cannot be construed as correct or incorrect-only as a manifestation of that child's temporal understanding. Failure to place the 1920s picture between the West and 1950s picture would not necessarily constitute a failure to recognize that it comes between but rather would represent the child's lack of an "in bctwcen" category. It is the categories themselves, rather than the order in which pictures are placed, which most productively can be compared to adult expectations. That is not to say, however, that children's responses provide no insight into what they know or don't know about historical periods; indeed, two important aspects of their responses shed light on that understanding. First, responses can be compared to one another; consensus in placing a single picture indicates a shared body of temporal understanding, while diverse placement indicates differences in understanding. Second, when children make explicit comparisons among pictures (rather than lumping them together), those distinctions can be compared to the actual chronological order of the pictures; when children's distinctions do not match that order, it may indicate either a lack of knowledge about historical periods or an alternative means of conceiving their relationship. As previously noted, all children made a distinction between the first two pictures-1950s and West-and every child identified the West picture as

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being older. Although not all clearly placed the 1920s picture into a separate category, nearly every child who did so placed it between the first two. Children also showed widespread agreement on the Colonial picture: at all grade levels, it was placed with the oldest pictures, and when it was differentiated from them it was usually identified as the oldest. There was even more consensus on the Modern picture: It was always placed with pictures closer to now, and when differentiated from the others was always identified as the most recent. All these placements, of course, conform to the actual temporal order of the pictures. It should also be noted that children never placed any of these pictures in ways that adults would consider wildly inappropriate: The Colonial picture was never placed with or after a picture with cars, for example. Thus, for pictures that fell into these general time categories-"oldest," "older," "in-between," "close to now," "now"- children's placements showed substantial agreement with one another's and with the correct chronological order. Children also displayed consensus on the Depression picture, although they generally did not differentiate it as completely as adults would. A few (particularly before third grade) placed it in a middle category with the 1920s picture, but most considered it "close to now" and did not distinguish it from the 1950s picture. Several children noted that it had to be close to now because the people in the picture had newspapers, comics, or clothes like ours. Third-grader Thomas said, "It goes at the end because it looks like now, 'cause I do that at home a lot ... I like to read the comics with my brother, and my mom and dad watch the TV and read the newspaper." A few children, however, noted that it was not completely modern: First-grader Bambi observed that they don't have electricity, while second-grader Johnetta thought it was "sort of old, but not really." By fifth and sixth grade, several children had begun to identify the picture as specifically predating the 1950s picture. Fifth-grader Evan, for example, noted that "I think this was like in the 1930s or '40s just because of the clothes and ... their shoes and their sewing machine," while sixth-grader Nedra noted that it went between the 1920s and 1950s pictures because "it looks like it's from World War II. It looks like pictures of things from that time, the way the kids are dressed, the shoes." Slightly less consensus existed with the 1899 picture. Although this picture of a schoolroom regularly elicited a great deal of interest and frequently revealed specific background knowledge, children rarely explained clearly where the picture went or what differentiated it from surrounding pictures. Before third grade, most children placed it into an undifferentiated middle category with the 1920s picture, and older children either placed it with the Antebellum or West pictures or between those and the 1920s picture. Thirdgrader Thomas, for example, placed it with the Antebellum picture because "they're all dressed up, and they had to dress up in school and look good, and in this picture [Antebellum] there's a lot of dressed-up people." Although many fifth and sixth graders were explicit about placing it after the West or Antebellum and before the 19205 pictures, a great deal of variation existed even

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then: Some placed it with the 1920s, Depression, or 1950s picture. Sixth-grader Gage noted, "Oh, that's definitely from the forties ... if you look at the desks, they had those fancy things on the side of it; if you look at the teacher, the way she's dressed, at the arms and sleeve, and the bow on the back of her dress, and the way the little girls are dressed and guys in suits or something." The Antebellum and 1960s pictures revealed the greatest inconsistency both among children and with their actual order. Before fifth grade, nearly every child who explicitly differentiated the Antebellum picture placed it after the West; fifth and sixth graders were evenly split on whether it belonged before or after. Children who placed it later than the West gave very similar answers, most of which focused on its more settled nature. Second-grader Darrell, for example, said, "Well, here they're just off in the wild west, and now [in the Antebellum picture] they have stores and big ships." Third-grader Tamar observed, "They'd probably just have a little farm back then [West], but here it's like a big city, like now." Fifth-grader Greg thought the Antebellum picture came later because of the buildings and because "they didn't make gin until after they had settled down." Among fifth and sixth graders, though, several observed the sign in the picture proclaiming the "61 st anniversary of our independence" and concluded that it must date from the early 1800s; having already noted that the West picture came from the late 1800s, they thus placed the two pictures in the correct order. Several others noted that because the Antebellum picture was a drawing rather than a photograph it had to come before the later pictures, all photographs. The consistency with which children explained their placement of the Antebellum picture as coming after the West suggests a linear image of his torical progress. They appear to think that any particular time is characterized by only one image and that these images stand in a definite temporal order: First there were pioneers; then there were cities. Only one child, a sixth grader, suggested that the Antebellum and West images might occur in different geographic locations rather than at different times. Indeed, even children who justified a correct placement by referring to the invention of photography showed the same perspective: They noted that the drawings had to come before the photographs-thus ignoring the fact that pictures were still drawn after the invention of photography. This conclusion is, admittedly, highly tenuous-the sequencing called for in the task itself almost forces such unilinear placementyet the infrequency with which children suggested any other alternative suggests that this may be a fruitful question for further investigation. Recent research with fourth and fifth graders provides even more extensive evidence of this linear view of historical progress (Barton, 1994). The 1960s picture yielded the most inconsistent placements. Between kindergarten and fourth grade, children seemed to place this picture almost at random: About half placed it in an undifferentiated middle category, while the rest were split evenly between placing it with the oldest and most recent pictures. Their explanations, moreover, almost never identified the picture as

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belonging to any specific time. First-grader Billy said, "All of those soldier mans with those guns and those helmets ... they used to have like that"; similarly, second-grader Daniel explained his placement by saying, "Because they started an army," and fourth-grader Ryan observed, "It looks like it was when a war was going on or something." A few children noted that it looked like the Civil War (perhaps the only war they could name), but only one suggested that it could be a more contemporary protest: Third-grader Tamar said, "It looks close to where Martin Luther King was .... The guns, the people, and the big building right there. The people are in a crowd, and maybe listening to someone like Martin Luther King at a speech." First-grader Candi's response was interesting in its uniqueness: She placed it close to now because "there wasn't war in the olden days, and there was war now, and in the olden days there was peace, now there's not." Few fifth and sixth graders, however, placed the 1960s picture with the 1920s or before; most placed it either before the Modern picture or before the 1950s and Depression pictures. Those who placed it correctly often gave explanations that demonstrated accurate knowledge of the period. Fifth-grader Evan identified it as being from the 1960s or 1970s because "you have like protests about like race or something ... it could be about like Black rights, but I don't see any Black people, but I guess they could be carrying the signs." Sixth-grader Caitlin, meanwhile, noted, "It seems as if it were a protest of some sort, and I don't know why, but, when I think of protesting what's going on I think of the seventies; it seems like that was vVoodstock and everything, plus the style of dress, the bright striped shirts." Children who placed the picture before the Depression and 1950s pictures, though, often thought it was from World War II. Sixth-grader Nedra said, "It looks like some war, like World War II maybe, like they look a little like German soldiers," and fifth-grader Celia observed, "It looks like it's over in Germany or some place like that, and they're always fighting and things, but they've started to calm down." Fifth-grader Tina, on the other hand, thought the people looked Japanese and concluded that it had to be a picture of either Vietnam or the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Summary. At all ages, children's placement of most pictures revealed substantial agreement with one another and with the correct order. In particular, the Colonial, West, 1920s, 1950s, and Modern pictures showed little deviation even among young students. Although somewhat less consensus existed with the 1899 and Depression pictures, most children placed these close to their correct position. The fact that 7 of the 9 pictures were consistently placed correctly or nearly so points to a substantial body of historical knowledge among children, despite temporal categories less finely differentiated from those of adults. The greatest inconsistencies occurred when children placed the Antebellum and 1960s pictures. Although children invariably identified the Antebellum picture as belonging at the older end of the sequence, they usually placed it

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after the West picture because it appeared more settled; that pattern raises interesting questions about the extent to which children recognize the diversity of images that might characterize anyone historical period. Children placed the 1960s picture randomly at fourth grade and below, and some fifth graders placed it before the Depression and 1950s picture. Their explanations indicate that the presence of soldiers and guns was particularly confusing; many felt sure that these identified it as being from the time of a specific war, but they weren't sure which one or when it was. Their confusion suggests that, although they consider wars a highly salient aspect of historical images, they have little ability to identify such conflicts in time.

Conclusions For many children in the United States, fifth grade constitutes their first systematic encounter with chronological, academic history covering more than a state or region. It should not be surprising, then, that elementary children are sometimes uncertain in applying this genre or that they sometimes construe its details differently than do educators. Rather than expecting young children who have little experience with academic history to perform like historians, we investigated children's own ways of making temporal distinctions when responding to historical images-as well as their use of dates and other adult terminology. Indeed, the array of temporal distinctions children in our study were able to make indicates that they have a significant body of understanding of historical chronology, although they neither categorize that understanding in the same way as adults nor use the same terminology. If~ as our findings indicate, even very young children can and do make temporal distinctions and have some knowledge of how things were different in the past, it can no longer be maintained that they have no ability to understand history before fourth or fifth grade. Rather, the development of historical understanding might be better served by focusing on helping students refine and extend the knowledge they already have gained about history. The findings from our study suggest several ways in which this might be done and also indicate directions for future research.

Implications for instruction The use of visual images with a variety of chronological clues tapped a wider variety and greater depth of historical understanding than previous studies that relied on verbal tasks. Every child we interviewed distinguished among historical time periods, and, across grade levels, their distinctions became increasingly numerous and refined. Furthermore, the extent to which children's placement of pictures agreed with one another's and with the actual chronological order indicates a.substantial body of shared historical knowledge. Although the people, events, and dates that historians or educators might cate-

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gorize as historically important constituted one element of this shared knowledge, it was neither the only nor the most important such element: The most accessible knowledge for younger children related to material culture and the patterns of everyday life . If children's ability to notice changes in material culture is due, at least in part, to their direct experience with it, then it makes sense to place greater instructional emphasis on history that can be seen. As we have mentioned elsewhere (Levstik & Barton, 1996), seeing means working with a rich array of images of what things looked like, what people did, and how they did it. Additionally, Epstein's (1994) research with secondary students suggests that student-generated visual images can make clearer the intentional nature of such forms. The children in our study, on the other hand, were comfortable with pictures, but they also were uncritical of their veracity. As other researchers have noted, visual images can be misleading on several levels (Epstein, 1994; Gabella, 1994; Levstik & Barton, 1996; Mazur, 1993; Schama, 1991). Instruction using visual images, then, requires the kind of thoughtful attention generally accorded discursive primary sources- concern with provenance, point of view, and the like-as well as attention to features more characteristic of the visual arts- the placement of objects, shades, shapes, line, and mood, for instance. As Epstein (1994) notes, "By interpreting the historical arts to answer questions about a people's historical experience, students' interpretation or conceptions are characterized less by explanation and argument and more by insight into human experience and a kind of human quality or lifelikeness" (pp. 6- 7). In addition, students also benefit by creating their own visual images, both as interpretations of their studies and as source documents for those studies. Through the creation of art, students interpret human experience, shaping it to express what Langer (1957) terms the nature of human feeling. By creating such intentioned work, students may also come to understand better the intentioned nature of other historic arts. These two activities-interpreting the historic arts and creating art about history- encourage children to assume two stances in regard to history. The first is a dynamic perspective in which the child views events in progress, altering his or her interpretation as each new piece of information is added. The second is a synoptic perspective in which the child can step back, review the whole sequence of actions, and draw at least tentative conclusions. From an instructional perspective, local and social history can provide appropriate frameworks for both perspectives. The sources of a dynamic perspective are already in place in local history: Children can observe the local environment, take pictures, interview people, compare pictures of now and then, and view local historic art. In addition, social history is more likely to support a synoptic perspective: Children's early historical information most closely matches social history, providing a richer, more elaborated schema to help them identifY underlying themes, recognize human intentions, and make supportable interpretations. Perhaps most importantly, from an instructional perspective, the findings

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from this study call into question the central role many historians, educators, and textbooks assign to chronology in learning history. Dates played a very small- and generally confusing-part in children's notions of historical time. Students younger than third grade often did not understand the numerical meaning of dates, although many had internalized the conventions for verbalizing them; even third and fourth graders-who more clearly understood their arithmetical basis- usually did not associate particular dates with historical images (with the notable exception of recent dates and the 1950s/1960s). Use of qualitative vocabulary- conventionally named time periods such as the Victorian era, for example-was similarly restricted: General categories predominated until students were able to use dates accurately, and conventional periodization was almost completely absent. Despite this lack of association between dates or periods and historical images, however, these children had built up an impressive body of historical knowledge and understanding, but because that knowledge was drawn from a variety of sources and used for a variety of purposes it was rarely categorized or characterized in the same way as the content offormal history curricula. Only by fifth grade did most students draw widely on knowledge of specific eras (such as the Colonial Era), events (the Boston massacre), and relationships (British taxes and lack of colonial representation created pre-Revolutionary tensions) that allowed them to make interpretations more related to formal history curricula (American colonists and the British had legitimate but differing points of view). This research thus indicates that historical understanding can develop independently of conventional adult temporal vocabularies and suggests that the primacy of dates and chronologies in history instruction be de-emphasized in favor of content and reasoning aimed more at helping children understand the richness and variety of people's lived experiences in different times and places (see also Downey, 1994; Levstik, 1992). This is not to say that no attention should be given to dates or conventionally named periods but rather that-since instruction that relies on them is unlikely to activate children's temporal understanding- it is not a good starting point. Except for dates related to the recent past, there is little reason to expect that using a date will call forth any specific historical image or understanding on the part of most children before fifth grade. Although children at the upper elementary level have more specific associations with dates, their use of qualitative periodization (such as the Colonial Era) seems to arise more from the elements of popular culture than the disciplinary categories found in textbooks. We suggest, then, that introducing adult temporal vocabularics in conjunction with visual images and rich descriptive contexts seems more likely to activate specific temporal association than employing such terminology divorced from meaningful contexts. In addition, the finding that students tended to see history as a linear development- a march of progress paralleling European expansion on the American continent-suggests that special care be taken not to present history as a single story. Instruction should include visual comparisons between

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local, national, and international events-perhaps through comparative time lines-showing that, for instance, major urban centers and industrialization existed contemporaneously with rural settlement and preindustrial economies. Finally, each of these implications for instruction requires an elementary teacher grounded solidly enough in history to support children's emerging time sense and willing to engage students both in the analysis of different historical sources (including the historical arts) and in the creation of artistic interpretations of history. It must be recognized that this is a particular challenge to teachers who, unlike their secondary colleagues, are not single-field specialists. Elementary teachers juggle many competing claims for attention to particular contents. Reform efforts that ignore children's historical thinking, argue over isolated famous names, or claim primacy for chronology in the history curriculum do little to help either beleaguered teachers or their students. As we suggest here and elsewhere (Barton, 1995; Levstik, 1992), focusing first on those elements of historical thinking with which children do have some facility might be more helpful. Previous research indicates that history embedded in particular kinds of narrative can motivate interest, spur inquiry into historical topics, and help children to think about the past as real (Levstik, 1989). Additionally, work by Holt (1990) with secondary students emphasizes the importance of primary sources in thinking historically. Our study indicates that visual images can be a valuable addition to a teacher's repertoire of historical sources. In sum, although there is always the need for more research, we know enough about children's historical thinking not to rely on textbook exposure to famous people, places, and dates that are, as NAEP data clearly demonstrate, quickly forgotten (Hammack et aI., 1990).

Research implications Our research indicates that children develop important historical understandings prior to-and to some extent independently of-their use of dates and other adult vocabulary. This supports our earlier suggestion that children's temporal understandings may reflect facility with parallel cultural constructions rather than a strict developmental sequence. Generally, adults do not use precise time designations in reference to history, either. Historians, for instance, may describe the "rapid rise" of a political figure, or the "sudden collapse" of an economy. In like manner, many adults refer to "the sixties" to designate a period of social turmoil beginning in the mid-1960s and ending in the early 1970s. Indeed, when we field tested the pictures for this study, we found that our adult test population had difficulty making highly differentiated time distinctions. They could generally place pictures in time sequence and were able to give some details about the historical setting for the picture; most could date twentieth-century pictures within a decade, and earlier pictures by the half century. In that sense, younger children's use of relatively broad and often indefinite categories of historical time is not surprising and may even demon-

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strate their understanding of the culturally appropriate forms of discourse. Outside of schooling, after all, how often are most of us asked to assign accurate dates to historical information? Interestingly, children's time vocabulary lagged behind their ability to place visual images in chronological sequence. The explanations of children in second grade and younger, in particular, often failed to indicate clear differentiations among pictures, although they were able to put them in approximate chronological order. Instead of explaining why a picture was older or newer than the others, these children either simply described the pictures or compared them to the present. Similarly, even children who understood the arithmetical meaning of dates had difficulty relating those dates to specific historical information. They might be able to calculate the difference between 1802, 1899, and 1994, but they did not have a clear conception of what might be taking place historically. Yet, given visual images of each of those times, they could place them in chronological order and make inferences based on some historical information. In other words, children's thinking was the reverse of conventional teaching. Where instruction often begins with the when of history, children more often knew something about the what. Future research might more thoroughly investigate what kinds of knowledge children do have about particular periods (e.g. , Brophy, VanSledright, & Bredin, 1993). In our study, for instance, we found that children's explanations of Native American! European American interaction reflected a shift in historiography, with native peoples appearing both as better conservators of the environment and as the victims of unwarranted aggression from settlers (Levstik & Barton, 1996). Interestingly, children in our study were most likely to link pictures to historical background knowledge with reference to the Modern and 1950s picturesboth linked with elements of popular culture rather than the periodization historians or textbooks might use . Again , most studies of historical thinking have concentrated on more distant periods. It would be interesting to find out how children make sense out of the modern periods for which they appear to have richer schemas. Finally, chronology is, as we said, only one element in children's historical thinking. Although the body of research on the development of historical thinking is growing, considerably morc work is required before we have a solid understanding of cognition in this area. We would like to see more work that cuts across grade levels, encompassing individuals from kindergarten through adulthood. And although some elements of historical thinking- historical significance, perspective-taking, and historical agency, among others-have been at least tentatively identified (e.g. , Ashby & Lee, 1987; Booth, 1984; Seixas, 1996; Shemilt, 1987), we need a more consistent body of research on each of these elements. Our study also suggests that, whatever elements of historical thinking are identified, they are influenced by a number of contextual factors. There is already some research on the impact of narrative (Levstik, 1990, 1993) and the arts (Epstein, 1994; Gabella, 1994) on historical thinking,

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but few follow-up studies or studies with different ages and populations of learners. Our own results, for instance, are based on images representative of a relatively narrow band of American history. We would like to expand that work to include a more diverse set of images (and eventually to include images beyond American history) and an even more diverse group of students. Visual images proved to be particularly good stimuli for conversation, not just with emergent readers, but with all of the children we interviewed; using historical art, then, seems a fruitful direction for future research on historical thinking at a variety oflevels.

References Ashby, R., & Lee, P. (1987). Children's concepts of empathy and understanding in history. In C . Portal (Ed.), 77ze history curriculumjor teachers (pp. 62-88). London: Heinemann. Barton, K. C. (1994). Historical understanding among elementary children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kentucky, Lexington. Barton, K. C . (1995, April). ''A{y mom taught me": 77ze situated nature qfhistorical understanding. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. Booth, M. (1984). Skills, concepts, and attitudes: The development of adolescent children's historical thinking. History and 77zeory, 22,101-17. Bradley, N. C. (1947). The growth of the knowledge of time in children of school age. BritishJournal qfPsychology, 38, 67-68. Brophy,]., VanSledright, B. , & Bredin, N. (1993). What do entering fifth graders know about U. S. history? Journal qfSocial Studies Research, 16/17,2- 19. Diem, R . A. (1982). Developing chronological skills in a world history course. Social Education, 46, 191- 94. Downey, M. T. (1994, April). After the dinosaurs: Children's chronological thinking. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans. Epstein, T. L. (1994). The arts of history: An analysis of secondary school students' interpretations of the arts in historical contexts. Journal qf Curriculum and Supervision, 9, 174-94. Fraisse, P. (1963). 77ze psychology qftime (J. Leith., Trans.). New York: Harper and Row. Friedman, K. C. (1944a). The growth of time concepts. Social Education, 8, 29- 31. Friedman, K. C . (1944b). Time concepts of elementary school children. Elementary School Journal, 44, 337- 42. Friedman, W.] . (1978). Development of time concepts in children. In H. W. Reese & L. P. Lipsett (Eds.), Advances in child development and behavior (vol. 12, pp. 118- 52). New York: Academic Press. Friedman, W.]. (1982). Conventional time concepts and children's structuring of time. In W.]. Friedman (Ed.), 77ze developmental psychology qf time (pp. 171-208). New York: Academic Press. Gabella, M. S. (1994). Beyond the looking glass: Bringing students into the conversation of historical inquiry. 77zeory and Research in Social Education, 22, 340-63. Hammack, D. C., Hartoonian, M., Howe,].,jenkins, L. B., Levstik, L. S., Macdonald,

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W. B., Mullis, 1. V. S., & Owen, E. (1990). The U.S. history report card: The achievement qf flurth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students in 1988 and trends from 1986 to 1988 in the factual knowledge qf high schooljuniors. Washington, DC: National Assessment of Educational Progress, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U. S. Department of Education. Holt, T. (1990). Thinking hirtorically: Narrative, imagination, and understanding. New York: College Entrance Examination Board. Jahoda, G. (1963). Children's concepts of time and history. Educational Review, 15, 87-107. Langer, S. (1957). Problems qfart. New York: Scribner. Levstik, L. S. (1989). A gift of time. In]. Hickman & B. Cullinan (Eds.), Children's literature in the classroom: Weaving Charlotte's web (pp. 135-45). Norwood, MA: ChristopherGordon. Levstik, L. S. (1990). Research directions: Mediating content through literary texts. LanguageArts, 67,848-53. Levstik, L. S. (1992). "I wanted to be there": History and narrative in the elementary curriculum. In M. Tunnell & R. Ammon (Eds.), The story qf ourselves: Teaching history through children's literature (pp. 65-77). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Levstik, L. S. (1993). Building a sense of history in a first grade classroom. In]. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on teaching: vol. 4. Research in elementary social studies (pp. 1-31). Greenwich, CN:JA1. Levstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (1996). "They still use somc of their past": Historical salience in children's chronological thinking. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 28, 531-76. Levstik, L. S., & Pappas, C. C. (1987). Exploring the development of historical understanding.Journal qfResearch and Development in Education, 21, 1-15. McAulay,]. D. (1961). What understandings do second grade children have of time relationships? Journal qfEducational Research, 54, 312-14. Mazur,]. (1993). Interpretation and use qf visuals in an interactive multimedia fiction program. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Muir, S. P. (1990). Time concepts for elementary school children. Social Education, 54, 215-18,247. National History Standards Project. (1994a). National standards for United States history: Exploring the American experience. Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools. National History Standards Project. (1994b). National standardsfor world history: Exploring paths to the present. Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools. Oakden, E. C, & Sturt, M. (1922). The development of the knowledge of time in children. BritishJournal qfPsychology, 12, 309 - 36. Poster,]. (1973). The birth of the past: Children's perception of historical time. The History Teacher, 6,587-98. Saxc, D. W. (1992). Resolving students' confusion about indefinite time expressions. The Social Studies, 83, 188-92. Schama, S. (1991). Dead certainties (Unwarranted speculations). New York: Vintage. Seixas, P. (1996). Conceptualizing the growth of historical understanding. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The handbook qf education and human development: New models qflearning, teaching, and schooling (pp. 765-83). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Shemilt, D. (1987). Adolescent ideas about evidence and methodology in history. In C. Portal (Ed.), The history curriculumfor teachers (pp. 39-61). London: Heinemann.

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Sleeper, M. E. (1975). A developmental framework for history education in adolescence. School Review, 84, 91 - 107. Spieseke, A. V. (1963). Developing a sense of time and chronology. In H. M. Carpenter (Ed.), Skill development in social studies. 33rd yearbook qf the National Council for the Social Studies. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Thornton, S.]., & Vukelich, R. (1988). Effects of children's understanding of time concepts on historical understanding. Theory and Research in Social Education, 16, 69-82. West,]. (1978). Young children's awareness of the past. Trends in Education, 1, 9- 14. West,]. (1981 ). Authenticity and time in historical narrative pictures. Teaching History, 29,8- 10. West,]. (1982). Time charts. Education 3-13,10(1),48-50. Zaccaria, M. A. (1978). The development of historical thinking: Implications for the leaching of history. History Teacher, 11, 323- 40.

Appendix A:

Materials

Figure 5.10 1956. Teenagers ata drive-in restaurant [1950s]. Hank WalkerlTime & Life

Figure 5.1 b 1886. Family and covered wagon on theprairie [West]. Courtesy National Archives

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Figure 5.2

1924. Men and women in bathing suits in front of a car [1920s]. Courtesy Library of Congress

Figure 5.3 1837. Political cartoon of an urban scene [Antebellum].

Courtesy Library of Congress

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Figure 5.4

Figure 5.5

1939. Family reading and sewingat home [Depression]. Courtesy Farm Security Administration

1772. Fort with soldiers and Native American Indians [Colonial]. Courtesy Library of Congress 103

Figure 5.6

1899. Schoolroom with teacher and children [1899]. Courtesy Library of Congress

Figure 5.7 1993. Large. modern building with cars and people [Modern].

Courtesy Keith C. Barton

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Figure 5.8

1967. Demonstrators and police at a protest at the Pentagon [1960s]. Courtesy U.S. Army

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Appendix B Interview protocol Mter introducing self to child and obtaining assent, say: Here are two pictures from different times. Take a few minutes to look them over. You may not know exactly what is going on in each picture. That is all right. I'm not interested in whether you know exactly what the picture is but in how you decide how old the picture is or about when the picture could have happened. There are two things I would like you to do with these first two pictures on the table. First, I would like you to put these two pictures in time order. Please start with the picture that is from the longest time ago (point to the child's left), and then put the picture that is the closest to now right here (point to child's right). You can start in just a moment. Second, while you are putting the pictures in order, I would like you to think out loud about why you are putting them in that order. What I mean is, I want you to explain to me what you are thinking while you are doing it. What things in the picture help you to decide which picture happened longest ago, or most recently? Do you have any questions before we start? (Do not answer questions about pictures.) Remember to tell what you are thinking as yeu arc putting the pictures in order. Once tlw chi:"1 ha~ completed the first part of the task, say: Now I have some more pictlu·es. I am go:ng to give them to you one at a time. For each one, tell me wh'~r~ \"',11; tllink:, goes-in between two of them or at about the same time as one of !.hem. E.x.p:aL >lily you put them where you did, just as you did with the first two pictures. Do you have any questions about what you will be doing? (Stop adding pictures if child expresses frustration or can't complete the task.) Once the r:hild has placed all the pictures, say: Now that you have done all of then, .,re there a'1Y pictures you would like to move around? If you do, explain to 'llf: why you are moving them. Point to each picture and say: When do you think tH~ i~? End of task que8tIC,}S: I. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Did you think this was easy or hard to do? What things made it easy or hard? Which pictures did you think were the easiest to figure out? Why? Which pictures did you think were the hardest to figure out? Why? Which pictures did you think were the most interesting? Why did you like that one (or those)? Now that you have looked at all of these pictures, what can you tell me about how things have changed over time? What can you tell me about how things were different a long time ago? What is history? What is the past? What is the difference between history and the past?

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9. What kinds of things have you learned about history or the past or long ago in your classroom? lO. Have you ever learned about history or the past or long ago outside of school?

Chapter 6

"They still use some of their past" Historical salience in elementary children's chronological thinking

Linda S. Levstik and Keith C. Barton

A work, or a diagram, or a gesture does not have meaning. A meaning has to be made for it, by someone, according to some set of conventions for making sense of words, diagrams, or gestures. Lemke (1990, p. 186)

History provides one of the most important sets of conventions by which we culturally construct an understanding of our place in the world. Recent American debates over the nature and content of national standards in American and world history (National History Standards Project, 1994a, 1994b) demonstrate how volatile these cultural constructions can become. Rarely, however, are such debates informed by empirical research. Although there is a growing body of research on children's historical understanding, much of the research has been contextually dis embedded, based on linguistic symbol systems (i.e. narrative, expository texts and/or lectures) and derived from academic history. Yet it is clear that these are not the only ways children come into contact with historical data. In fact, children are quite likely to encounter history embedded in visual, "environmental" forms-pictures, films, art and artifacts, the built environment (for example Lowenthal, 1985; Kammen, 1991). In this study, we sought to embed children's time awareness in a sociocultural framework and to move beyond linguistic symbol systems to incorporate visual data sources; we drew on a cross-disciplinary framework, relating social semiotics, as well as film and media theory, to the small body of work on children's historical! chronological thinking already extant. We begin with three assumptions: People make sense of and to one another to the extent that they share ways of making meanings; people from different communities tend to have different ways of making meaning (thus, historians, as a community, tend to make sense out of historical data differently than physicists might); and, if we are to communicate with children about history we need to understand children's sense-making in this area. We argue, in conclusion, that "history," especially for children, is not a single domain. Rather, history is made up of intersecting domains, each marked by semiotic practices

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that provide the context against which history-whether written, oral or visual-is recognizable and meaningful. While attention to semiotic practices has not been a prominent feature of scholarship in this area, researchers have recently begun to investigate historical understanding; the field can no longer be so clearly characterized as "thin and uneven" (Downey and Levstik, 1991, p. 400). Yet we believe that our third assumption-that communicating with children about history necessitates understanding their sense-making in the area-distinguishes the present study from most other work on the subject. Although the important work of scholars such as McKeown and Beck (1990, 1994), Wineburg (1991), Brophy, VanSledright, and Bredin (1993), Gabella (1994) and Voss, Carretero, Kennet, and Silfies (1994) are diverse in conception, methodology, and execution, they have in common what we consider a basic limitation-they begin either with the content of the school history curriculum or with the thought process of historians and proceed to examine the deficiencies of children's knowledge and understanding. Indeed, based on these studies, one could draw the conclusion that most students' historical thought is seriously flawed. vVe have taken a different approach. Like work by Seixas (1993) and Epstein (1994a), and in our own previous work (Levstik, 1986, 1989, 1993; Levstik and Pappas, 1987; Barton, 1994, 1995), our present study begins not with textbook publishers' or historians' ideas about history, but with students' own thinking in the area. Our intent is not to catalogue students' deficiencies but to examine the range of ideas they have about the past and the social context in which those ideas have developed. In addition, our work differs from most previous investigations in that we have chosen to focus on even the youngest school-age children. 'While most research begins only with students in fifth grade or above, we examine the thinking of children from kindergarten through sixth grade.

The context for historical thinking Cognitive research and historical understanding One of the most important advances in cognitive psychology over the last two decades is the recognition that people think differently about different topics. In contrast to global stages (usually associated with the work of Pia get), most theorists now accept the proposition that conceptual organization and reasoning abilities differ significantly in difIerent areas of thought-thus the way people think about their physical environment (the basis for most Piagetian categories) differs significantly from their thinking about biology or social relations (Sternberg, 1989; Keil, 1990; WeUman & Gelman, 1992; Holyoak & Spellman, 1993; Levine, Resnick, & Higgins, 1993). This recognition has led to a renewed emphasis on the content of thought, and several researchers have investigated the way children use their everyday experience to build their conceptions of the physical, biological and social worlds. Although such intuitive understandings

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frequently conflict with adult or scientific ideas, children's alternative conceptions help them make sense of their experience and often are quite robust and resistant to change (reviewed in Minstrell, 1989; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992; Wellman & Gelman, 1992). But such work has also been criticized for its unproblematic use of the concept domain. Keil (1990) and Wellman and Gelman (1992) note that the concept has been used in widely divergent ways, and Alexander and Judy (1988) suggest that domains have been identified as much out of convenience as empirical choice. There is, after all, no way of determining to just what "domain" of thought any given idea belongs. In what domain, for example, does a person's understanding of the Vietnam War belong-history, politics, economics, geography? Indeed, are these domains of thought at all, or are they simply convenient academic disciplinary distinctions? Focusing on the content of ill-defined domains of thought gives the appearance that such categories have some sort of privileged epistemological status, as though they exist independently ofthe world of human interaction and meaning. But of course our understanding of the world is always mediated by our social and cultural setting. Much recent work in cognitive psychology has proceeded from the assumption that human thought and learning can only be understood by placing them in the multiple contexts- interpersonal, structural, cultural, and historical-in which they occur. From this perspective, thought is constituted in part or in whole by the community in which it is situated. To understand how people think and learn, then, one must understand the social, cultural, and historical basis of that thought. Rather than attempting to examine an individual's privately constructed meaning, one must look to the way in which social interaction, structural and cultural processes, and historical heritages shape meaning. I Recognizing that cognition is situated in human communities recasts the question of what constitutes a domain; from this perspective, domains appear less as naturally-occurring components of the mind or universe than as the result of social discourse . The drawbacks of ignoring the socially situated nature of knowledge are particularly apparent in research on historical understanding. While recent investigations in the area have moved beyond the concern for Piagetian stages evinced by an earlier generation of work (e.g. , Hallam, 1967, 1970, 1972, and reviews in Booth, 1984, and Downey & Levstik, 1991 ), few researchers have seriously considered how students' social experiences affect their conceptions of history. Most have taken for granted that students should either learn the content of commonly accepted history curricula or should learn to "think like historians." McKeown and Beck (1990), for example, interviewed fifth- and sixth-graders in order to determine how much they knew about the American Revolutionary War before studying the topic at school and how much they retained a year later. Similarly, Brophy et al. (1993) investigated elementary children's ideas about common topics in American history before their first systematic exposure to the subject in the fifth grade. They have also examined how much students learned

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from their units of study at school (Brophy et al., 1992a, 1992b, 1992c; see also VanSledright & Brophy, 1992). Britt, Rouet, George, & Perfetti (1994), meanwhile, investigated students' ability to understand the causal and temporal relations presented in the narrative accounts of history textbooks, and McKeown and Beck (1994) compared students' ability to retain information from various textbook accounts. These studies share an acceptance of the content and form of history instruction as it presently exists in most schools in the United States and seek only to evaluate how effective that instruction is. Other research has investigated differences between the thinking of students and that of historians. Wine burg (1991), for example, compared the way professional historians and high school students reasoned about their reading and interpretation of primary sources and other texts. Voss et al. (1994), meanwhile, developed a set of characteristics that they considered representative of causal reasoning in history and looked for evidence of these factors in essays and other responses produced by college undergraduates; similarly, Carretero, Jacott, Limon, Manion, and Leon (1994) compared the kinds of explanations given by adolescents and history graduates concerning historical events. Gabella (1994), in one of the few studies involving extended classroom observation, compared secondary students' understanding of the creation and interpretation of historical texts to a set of characteristics she had identified as being shared by historians. Like much of the research in Britain over the last two decades (e.g., Ashby and Lee, 1987; Booth, 1980, 1984; Dickinson & Lee, 1978, 1984; Lee, 1978; She milt, 1980, 1984a, 1984b, 1987), these studies all have as their primary focus whether students engage in the same kinds of reasoning as professional historians, and they accept that historical explanation is equivalent to such reasoning. Wine burg (1991), in fact, is quite explicit that the standards used to judge the comprehension of historical texts must derive from the discipline of history itself. The un surprising conclusion of most of these studies is that students' reasoning is markedly inferior to historians'. Neither of these approaches fully captures students' historical understanding. By accepting the form and content of history instruction in the United States, such research does not address the potential mismatch between the meaning history may have for students and the socially-constructed interpretation of the past (and socially-sanctioned method of learning) found in most schools. The accounts of American history that children encounter at school cannot be considered worthwhile objects of study simply because they made their way into history texts a century ago and have remained there since. Nor can "historical understanding" be equated with what historians do. Historians have no monopoly on the use and interpretation of the past, nor are their thought processes somehow superior to anyone else's. Indeed, historians have historicallY been as subject to bias as those outside the profession, and their ideological commitments have routinely determined what they have sought "objectively" to establish (Novick, 1988). And the assumption that historians share a set of reasoning strategies is misleading: As historians such as Kammen (1980),

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Kessler-Harris (1990) and Novick (1988) note, the field is characterized by extreme diversity. The reasoning of historians such as Daniel Boorstin, Fawn Brody, Robert Fogel, Michel Foucault, Eugene Genovese, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Joan Scott, and Hayden White is not always the samc. Characterizing any set of practices as being "what historians do" oversimplifies the academic field of history; doing so gives the appearance of a consistent "domain" where none in fact exists. Despite the limitations of these studies, however, they are certainly not without value; quite the contrary: Most of the research cited above contains valuable insights about children's historical knowledge and understanding. Many of their conclusions, in fact, accord well with our own observations about thinking and learning in history. What we want to emphasize, however, is that we are asking a fundamentally different set of questions about children and history. vVe are concerned not with how to help children more effectively use textbooks to learn about the American Revolutionary War, nor even with how to get them to compare and evaluate primary sources. These may represent aspects of historical understanding, but they are hardly the whole picture-and whether they constitute important aspects of historical understanding for children remains an open question. Our concern, rather, is to establish what kinds of historical understanding-related to school and academic history or otherwise-children do have, and to examine the social context that mediates that understanding. Our work thus most closely resembles Seixas's (1993) and Epstein's (1994a) investigations of secondary students and our own previous work with younger children (Levstik, 1986, 1989, 1993; Barton, 1994, 1995). Both Seixas and Barton found that family experiences and popular culture constituted the strongest influences on students' historical understanding. Epstein, meanwhile, found that African American and European American studcnts had distinct (though overlapping) understandings of the historical significance of people and events, and that African American students were more likely to regard their family members as the most credible sources of historical information. Levstik found that younger children were interested in issues of emotion, morality, and individual judgment related to historical topics, especially when those issues were embedded in historical narratives, and that these students were more likely to accept powerful historical narratives than textbook interpretations of history. In this study, we seek to elaborate further how multiple historical communities overlap to produce children's historical understanding.

Historical content and symbolic form Most studies of historical understanding have engaged students in interaction around verbal and written texts. Nearly every study reviewed above prompts students in one of two ways: Either they are asked to respond verbally or in writing to a written text, or they are asked to respond to a series of open-ended

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questions about their knowledge of particular facts or their understanding of aspects of historical explanation. Both methods have produced valuable insights, but we sought to broaden our investigation to include a wider variety of texts. "Learning history" involves children's developing facility with the symbolic forms in use in the several history communities to which they may belong and to which educators want to introduce them. One of these symbolic forms is chronology-ordering events in linear time. Another is the visual text-capturing a moment in time. ("Text" here and throughout the paper refers to a record of social action, whether it is a piece of writing, a photograph, picture, film or video.) The notion of symbolic jimn focuses attention not just on the context within which learning occurs but on the form of the content as it is presented. In particular, there has been renewed interest in the impact of visual texts on learning. Research in this area has been going on for some time (Olson, 1974; Arnheim, 1981; Gardner, 1982; Winner, 1982; Eisner, 1991), but only recently has it focused on history, and then generally on adolescent cognition, not younger children's thinking (Epstein, 1994b, 1994c; Gabella, 1994). Importantly, these works point out some of the distinctions between the visual symbol and the event it represents. The most obvious distinction is that while an actual event is ephemeral, changing before one's eyes, still images are fixed in time. They can be contemplated and analyzed undisturbed by the changing moment, by movement or by the emotional fluctuations that were part of the actual event (Gombrich, 1974; Kennedy, 1974; Arnheim, 1981). Because the images are preserved, they become part of other contexts that may be only marginally related to the original event. The images used in this study, for instance, were contextualized by the researchers as a chronological sample of a portion of American history. Anyone ofthese photographs, however, could be understood in relation to several other contexts, depending on the referentsor intertexts-available to the viewer and the context within which the pictures are vicwed. The photograph of a farm family during the 1930s, for instance, could be read as commentary on family organization, as New Deal propaganda, as documentary art, as evidence of a unique experiment in employing photographic artists, or as data about interior design. Attention to a visual image, then, is allocated selectively as the participant brings prior knowledge to bcar, simultaneously analyzing cues at many different levels (Neuman, 1992). Meanings evolve as relationships are constructed between the symbol systems, the content and particular contexts (Goodman, 1984; Lemke, 1990). In other words, the learner "collaborates" with the medium to construct meaning and knowledge (Kozman, 1991; Epstein, I 994b, 1994c). Film theory further supports this perspective. Boyd (1989) suggests that viewers seek answers to two basic questions: "What really happened here?" and "Who is this character?" In order to answer these questions, the viewer searches for some fact to be discovered, some person who is key to the mystery. In addition, the viewer searches for a social context that connects the pieces of the image-values, ideas, actions (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Kozman, 1991). There is an emerging body

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of evidence that students also respond differently to history embedded in different genres. In two studies of elementary children, Levstik (1986, 1989) noted the impact of the personal voice characteristic of historical narratives (fiction and biography) on younger children's emerging sense of history. More recently, Epstein (1994b, 1994c) and Gabella (1994) also found that students experienced the historical arts-painting, music and poetry-as having voice and intention lacking in more traditional sources such as textbooks. Epstein's work, in addition, emphasizes the impact of students' creating as well as analyzing visual representations of history. Visual information is distinct from linguistic information. While both are conveyed through symbol systems, each is represented differently in memory (Baggett, 1989). Mental representations of visual images contain more qualitative information and open up more possibility to "mean" at several levels of symbolic reference (Goodman, 1984; Baggett, 1989). Visual images convey meaning beyond the linguistic points they may be intended to make, and are understood through the relations between and among their symbolic elements (Langer, 1957; Arnheim, 1981). Visual images also provide learners with a rich field of possibilities for associative linking-associating seemingly unrelated bits of information and linking them together to form new ways of thinking about a problem (Mazur, 1993). The more replete or rich with qualitative data the visual image, the more cognitive "hooks" are available to connect to other information. Of course, this also means that there is a greater likelihood that learners will construct misleading linkages (Mazur, 1993). Given this background, we suggest that, in understanding children's developing sense of historical chronology, it is important to account for message (the content), form (the symbol system with its conventions and rules), and context (the purposes for and situation within which the message is introduced).2 All of these are components of the historical material to which they are introduced (Ricoeur, 1984; Lemke, 1990). For the purposes of our research, it seemed that historical chronological data presented through visual images could be a fruitful approach. In particular, richly detailed images that provided more potential for associative linking, for answering the questions "What happened here?" and "Who is this character?" seemed likely to call on prior knowledge and problemsolving skills and to elicit richer data on children's historical time awareness. Finally, a social semiotic perspective that considers the discourse of a domain, the interpretive nature of reading symbol systems, and the sociocultural nature of interpretation seemed more likely to provide insights into children's representational schema regarding historical time and to better ground those representations in particular contexts. 3

Results In this analysis, we were particularly concerned with three things: what struck children as salient in establishing the chronology of a set of history-related

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images; how children established that something was "history"; and the extent to which children participated in history communities. Historians, for instance, may belong to several tightly intersecting history communities (for example, archival, museum, academic). While each of these communities has some unique discourse and activities, they have many in common, so that historians can generally communicate between discourse communities with relative ease. To what extent are these practices shared by children, and, in particular, what kind of sense do children make of the chronological organization common to history communities? In the next three sections of this paper, we discuss these issues in relation to the findings from our study. In the first, we briefly discuss the types of "history" genres used by the children; in the second, we discuss the features of the visual texts children found salient in chronological sense-making; in the third, we look specifically at the sources of their historical and chronological information.

At the crossroads: the intersecting history genres of elementary children While the elementary children in this study did try to make sense out of history and historical time, they were not full participants in the semiotic communities of historians. Instead, they employed semiotic practices that work in their own discourse communities. Some of these practices barely intersect with academic history. In the younger children's language, for instance, the term "history" can be a warning: "If you don't watch out, you're history!" Sam explained, "Like they tell you you're history, I think it means that they're going to kill you." History is also part of a public discourse of which the children are at least peripherally aware, in which something historical "isn't here any more," is about to be torn down, or is "gonna go out of business and never come back in." Gradually, however, children acquire a more academic history genre in which they use what they learned in school studies of history (or have been introduced to in visits to historic sites and the like) to talk about the past and how it changes over time. We specifically asked them what they could tell us about how things had changed over time based on the pictures they had just chronologically ordered. The most common response was to itemize changes in material culture. Some form of this occurred at all grade levels. The excerpts below are typical of responses at different grade levels. Note that by grade three, there is evidence of attention to social as well as material change. 4 Grade I

At first they didn't even have horses and carriages, and then they had them, and then they invented the car, and then it changed and it changed into the cars we have now.

MINDI :

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Grade 2 DANIEL: Well, they started building wood houses, and then back there they

started building like brick houses, and they had these old, old cars, that didn't run as fast as the cars down there [points to more modern picture].

Grade 3 KENNY: Times have changed from this one [Depression], this one definitely

looks like the rocking fifties cause you can see dad's all sitting in his rocking chair reading his newspaper, mom's sitting in her rocking chair knitting and the kids are on the floor looking at the comics. And times have changed definitely from this [I 950s]-see you don't have these old convertibles anymore, you have some of them, but they're very rare, see. CAROLEE: We've gotten more modern things, polluted the air more and

made a big hole in the ozone-urn-polluted the water more, gotten more things like TV and water spouts [i.e. faucets] so we don't have to go out and get water in a bucket from the well-urn-got newer and modern guns for police. I think that's good, cause then I don't-what they're called? R: Criminals? CAROLEE: Criminals will have less of a chance .... Mostly they used more natural resources, like you use horses instead of a car. R: And the horse is more natural than the car? Because nobody had to build the horse? CAROLEE: Well-sort of--somebody built the horse. God.

Grade 4 DEANNA: Well I could definitely tell you that there's a lot more technology

and-um-a lot of better thinkers like their brains have developed and-urn-because of the buildings they have like increased, they're bigger, they're better, like back here they have those really neat windows, they make things out of windows and glass and back here they don't have anything made of glass except for the windows basically and then back here they have, and back then they didn't even probably use glass and just had holes you know and then the things they used are different. Back here it looks like this is brick and wood and wood, back there, and when you get up here we're getting into metal and still using wood and brick, and then we're getting into glass and then whatever that is. I think its brick .... Most of all we've kind of gotten over it [the past] and we've kind of moved on to different things. Our past has helped us build up to what we are, we have today.

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R: Are there some things you think we maybe should have hung on to? DEANNA: Well, there's a lot of war going on today, in Greece and like that,

but back then they were a little bit more peaceful, even though they still had fights and arguments but you could still walk the streets you know, and we should have kept that in mind.

Grade 6 NEDRA: Now there are cars, photography has improved, the cameras have

improved, and the- there's a difference in the buildings, and- um- the buildings look more modern. Children at all levels also talked about change over time in terms of cause and effect. Bambi, a first grader, is typical of this group: "the city was growing and growing and growing because of the construction work and-uh-thry built schools because thry thought children needed to help, to help like that" (emphasis added). As with other primary age children, Bambi's discussion is fairly general. She may have had some history instruction to draw on, perhaps in a unit on community. In any case, the children appear to use a general schema for change over time. In the excerpts below, more specifics have been added to the schema, including the generalization that in war "you got more land and stuff, and claimed it." The use of terms such as "claimed," and the idea that "bigger boats could get you to far places" are interesting additions to the historical discourse.

Grade 4 RYAN: Well, the technology is like improved. Well, they-they- uh- didn't

have like cement and everything and they couldn't build houses as easy or anything, they- like-built houses out of logs and things, and it was just harder, they didn't have as good as tools, or anything, and then they had to get water out of a river instead of just turning on a faucet, and getting your glass of water, and you had to build your home instead of go buying it. . .. Things like wars and things that have changed- uh- how the future would be like-uh- if, then they fought a war, you got more land and stuff, and claimed it. AMBER: Well, when I start at the beginning [of the chronology], things were

just regular, they didn't have much, for these two [West and 1900], then when you got to these two [Colonial and 1837] these people started having bigger buildings, and they started having-um-boats that you could travel on to get to far places. Here [West, 1900] you could have boats, I think, too, but these look much bigger, and here [Colonial, 1837J you could go to the store and buy stuff, and you wouldn't always have to

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grow your crops like back then. Oooking at Depression picture]: Wait~uh~they had oil lamps, so they didn't have electricity then, and I think that's about right. I don't really think ... wait, they did have newspapers, and they had to have a printing press to make the paper. [places the picture closer to present.]

TYLER

Gradually, children provided more specific historical information, connecting change over time to topics more typical of academic history. They connected specific events and chronology~statehood and slavery, for instance. The excerpt below combines these elements in a discussion that indicates some of the historiography to which the child has been exposed. Primary 3

I like the city picture~umm~Kentucky was the fifteenth state, and this has fifteen stars, so this could have been when Kentucky became a state .... Urn, this look like a couple of slaves in this picture. R: Do you think there was a time when there weren't slaves in this country? LEROY: Yeah, back here [oldest pictures] and then this [more modern] R: When did we get rid of slavery? LEROY: After the war had ended, the North had beat the South, so the slaves were free to go, and Mrs. H . told us that some people asked the people they had had for slaves if they wanted to work for them for money. ... I want to go to Jamaica, and I think that I would like to be sailed away on this blimp [in 1870spicture] and get away from slavery. See, he's got a whip. That look like a Black man there. R: Or maybe an Indian? It's hard to tell with this kind of picture, isn't it? LEROY: They left Indians alone, after they took their land, and they could escape. Christopher Columbus wasn't the first one to discover South America. The Indians, and what's those people called who have the horns, they weren't pirates, but they were~uh~ R: Oh, Vikings! LEROY: They was, the Indians and them were probably the first people in North America. LEROY:

Marking a major change in history discourse, fifth graders grounded their comments in the discourse of academic history. They could talk about change over time in terms of specific events and of cause and effect (if not always multiple causation), and they could make judgments about those changes. The fifth grade excerpt below is typical of such students. Rodney outlines what he considers the major chronology represented in the pictures, including some of the events behind the pictures. In response to probes he provides more background information and concludes that not all these events were for the good.

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It is interesting to note that his example relates to Native Americans. While we have no way of knowing what kind of instruction the children we surveyed were receiving about Native Americans, it was clear that this was a common topic, and that where students were familiar with Native Americans, they were also familiar with the idea that these were the first peoples in the Americas and that "we" forced them off their land.

Grade 5 I can tell you that things have changed a great deal because see on the first picture-urn- the 15 or 1600s we weren't a country, we were beginning to come over here. We had established 13 colonies and then the English started taxing us and we got fed up with that, that was after the French and English War. So then we came to this picture and we got our own independence and George Washington was our leader. That was way after the Boston Massacre and the British- urn-the Revolutionary War and the Battle of Lexington. It was not this Lexington [Kentucky], it was Lexington, Massachusetts. And this one was 1900s. You can tell that's coming into the 1900s cause that's when we started a couple of * * and people got in wagons and start moving westward to find new lands and settle and stuff because they didn't even know what was back there. R: Would you have liked to have done that? RODNEY: Settle land and stuff? Well, it would have been an adventure, but I'd a lot rather have it now. I think it's a shame that we tore down all those trees and ran off the Indians, cause it was their land in the first place. The least we could have bought it or something like that. R: Well, in some instances we bought it from them, but they didn't understand what RODNEY: Yeah, sort of took advantage of them, cause we were trying to con 'em-urn-tell 'em that if they signed this petition paper, they'd still have land, this small portion and they did that cause the colonists knew that the Indians couldn't read their signs that they made but they couldn't read the English- urn. RODNEY:

Reading the visual data

A closer analysis of the children's responses provides some explanation of what data seemed most cogent in establishing chronology. The task presented to children called on them to interpret visual data-pictures. One of the things we wanted to know was how children read such data. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it is much less clear what these "thousand words" mean to any individual child. As students talked their way through the task of chronologically ordering the nine photographs and prints, and responded to the follow-up questions, they used a variety of visual clues to help them. They

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inferred relationships between the pictured data and their own social situations and background experiences and, as they had more background knowledge of history, they also applied that to the task. The initial task was designed to elicit clues children used in assigning sequence or period to the pictures. We had anticipated that some children might not complete the task, but even the youngest children identified some clue that they claimed helped them establish a chronological sequence. One fifth grader explained the task as analogous to a "Where's Waldo" exercise: When I was really little I started out with Waldo, and then up to these * books, J Spy, and I've found everything in the pictures .... There's not a book yet that stumps me... . You can tell by certain little clues and how the picture's shaped, and they had some similarities that you could Imagme.

RODNEY:

While Rodney was more explicit about the game aspect of the task then were most children, his technique was not uncommon. From kindergarten on, children searched for "clues" in the text that could point to either sequence or period. What clues counted as salient, however, varied. The categories below distinguish the ways in which children approached the task of reading visual data for historical and chronological information.

Facts to be discovered. At all levels, children searched for specific facts that distinguished between "now" and "then." Material culture-technology, clothing, architecture, food- was the single most salient "fact" used in establishing chronology. At the most basic level children gave only the fact-"it has men and ladies and horses and a boy and a girl"-without indexing it to a specific time, event or period. The items were simply listed as reasons for the placement. There may, however, be an implicd comparison between the items mentioned and either the past or present, as the chronologies these children created were more accurate than their limited comments would indicate. A second group of children made explicit comparisons between past and present: If we don't have it, it must be long ago. If we do have it, it must be close to now. This pattern was common with early primary age children, but tapered offby third grade.

Kindergarten [l960s): Long, long time ago. Real long, 1993. Goes all the way on the end. Cause, cause some people don't work for the army no more.

MICKEY

Grade I BAMBI:

Well, urn, because the people had like big ships and trains back then

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and they had buildings and not houses like us. They don't have like electricity, like we do, and, urn, chairs like we do. Beginning as early as first grade, some children explicitly compared items to other pictures within the set. Clues didn't simply distinguish between then and now, but between pictures. Thus, as more pictures were added to the task, students were more likely to rearrange the sequence. For instance, one firstgrade child explained that after looking at the full sequence, she needed to move the modern picture to between the 1950s and the Antebellum picture because the car in one picture looked "newer from back then." Older children elaborated more on these comparisons than did primary age children, though still emphasizing material culture.

Grade 4 Because it [1950s] can't be before covered wagons, cause you canthere's a lot of-more- um-there's a lot of kinds of the newest, new stores, and there's not really a lot of big stores in this one [West] .

AMBER:

Grade 5 This one, that one right there [1 950s] is old because it has the building * horses, the wagon, the people they're dressed in it, and this one * * the differently.

GREG :

Grade 6 About the same time, because of the clothes [points at each picture], the way they're dressed it looks sort of the same and- umit's how the family is set up where like the father and mother sit in the chair and at the end of the day and the kids are sitting on the floor doing homework or reading a book or putting on a * * *

GARRETT:

Associative linking: a sociocultural context. Some students moved beyond simply identifying or linking "facts." Instead, they sought actions, ideas, or values that pulled a single picture or set of pictures together. They tended, either in their initial "think alouds" or subsequent follow-up discussions, to try to answer the questions "What really happened?" and "Who is this character?" In doing so, they made historical and ahistorical connections, and some used history as a backdrop to more personal or social concerns. Ahistorical connections- links that do not rely on any historical information-were apparent in younger children's responses . One first-grade child turned each picture into a narrative composed of odds and ends of information from a variety of sources mixed with a good deal of narrative license. He named

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characters in one photograph, and fantasized about the school III another picture being caught in a storm. Other children identified a theme that provided a tenuous, though not particularly historical or chronological, association across pictures. This thematic contextualization involved placing texts within the framework of some larger, familiar thematic pattern of semantic relationships. A first grader, for instance, identified schooling as a thematic context for a subset of the pictures: "In every picture it's kids like going to school, like this is school [1900, schoolroom], school [1930s, family], and these kids [1920s] are going to lifeguard school, and these kids [19505] are probably in college." Apparently "history," at least as it was presented in this context, was not yet a rich enough category to allow these children much interpretive room. Their meaning-making was built on other experiences. They did not refuse the task, nor find it impossible to accomplish. Rather, in almost every case, they constructed some context that allowed them to respond. More often, children associated the pictures with social and sometimes explicitly historical thematic contexts. Sometimes these links were made despite confusing or disconfirming details. Many students, for instance, found it difficult to read the photograph from 1967. As one first grader said, "because there's a lot of people crowded around, I can't tell if it's bad or if it's a good picture." This was particularly true for African American respondents, all but one of whom read the racial makeup of the crowd, linked that with armed soldiers, and decided that this event could have been either a rally against racism, "like when Martin Luther King was alive," or a dangerous place if one were Black. While European American children most often identified the picture as Civil War era, seven also indexed it to civil rights, race, or issues of justice. The excerpts below are typical of such responses at the primary and intermediate levels. Grade I These people were fighting for justice, but there were all these soldiers but a different kind of helmets * * * *.

MATTHEW:

Grade 3 TAMAR:

It looks close to where Martin Luther King was.

R: How long ago would Martin Luther King have been?

Umm-well... 1930 or '20s? The guns, the people and the big building right there. The people are in a crowd, and maybe listening to someone like Martin Luther King at a speech. R: Why this? [points to soldiers] TAMAR: Urn-somebody up there is speaking and they are to protect to make sure no Blacks come around .... Maybe they all White and if I went to that place they might start shooting at me. TAMAR:

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Grade 5 I think it's in like the '70s or '80s cause you have protests about like race or something and because of the clothing, the soldiers' uniformswell-it could be about like Black rights-uh-but I don't see any Black people, but I guess they could be carrying the signs.

EVAN:

Finally, some children linked sociocultural issues, history, and personal concerns. They commented on the racial issues already mentioned, attitudes towards Native peoples, homosexuality, and changes in family roles and activities. A common response to the Depression-era photograph, for instance, was to comment on the family structure. Several children noted that a contemporary photograph of the whole family in a room together would show everyone facing the same direction: toward the television. As one fifth grader explained, "They would be in front of it [television] and staring at it like I would be on an afternoon when I haven't got any homework or either no one was outside playing, I would be there staring and glaring at the TV." Some pictures and questions triggered more poignant responses. Two ofthe follow-up questions asked children which pictured time they would most or least want to visit. A third-grader, pondering which of the pictured times he would want to visit, shared his personal ambitions: LERON:

I'm going to be the president of the United States.

R: You are! Well, I'm especially glad to meet you then. Are you going to be a

Democrat or a Republican? A Republican. R: A Republican president? ... You're gonna be like Jesse Jackson, except you're going to win. LERON: Umhmm. DidJesseJackson run for president? R: Yeah, he did, except he didn't get that far. He lost the nomination to the Democratic Party. LERON: He a Democrat? R: Umhm. He's a Democrat. That O.K.? LERON: My mother says that under Bill Clinton's skin he's kinda Black. R: I hope so. What would be good about that? LERON: He'll try to help other people, besides his color.... R: Who are your favorite Presidents? LERON: John Kennedy and Bill Clinton. R: Kennedy and Clinton. They're both Democrats. How come you decided to join the Republican Party? LERON: It's a party? LERON:

A fourth-grader, contemplating the 1872 picture of a covered wagon explained that he would not want to visit that time:

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CEDRIC: Cause back then there were slaves back then and they'd take me

back cause I'm a- like a chair, and I'd be a slave and that's hard. A fifth grader, after explaining that he would have been on the side of colonial rebellion against England, acknowledged that, as an African American, he would have been a slave. Note how his language shifts from the impersonal third (academic historical discourse?) to the first person at the end of his comments. RODNEY: I didn't like that, the slave, and there was these, forget what they

were called-urn- but they wasn't slaves but they had to ... Indentured servants? RODNEY: Indentured servants! They come over here, they want to come here to America and the only way they could accept them, they have to promise to * some work, and give some of their pay for their trip, so they were sort of slaves, but Blacks, mostly they was slaves. They worked these big farms called plantations, and we grew lots of roots and rice and plants.

R:

A sixth grader also made clear the personal links between history, public issues and her own life. In response to a follow up question asking "what is history," she provided a brief definitional response and clarified it with a very personal example linked to a current public debate. CAITL YN: Well, I think of history as being what's happened in the past and

how in different times different people and the government worked and how the government would act on certain things cause I know that in like the early 1800s if you got gays in the military it would be like "Gays? Shoot them! " It wouldn't be a d ebate, but in this time we're actually debating over it. R: You think that's progress? CAITL YN : Urn-yeah, I think its progress because I personally- I thinkum-that-you know just because someone is gay doesn't mean he can't fight for his country, and in the I 700s they wouldn't have said that. R: Umm- In the 1700s they wouldn't have used that language. They would have had other words to use. I don't think it was a question they asked. It would be interesting to find out when we started asking those questions. CAITL YN: Yeah! R: SO progress would be that we would stop worrying about whether people were gay or whatever? CAITL YN: Or their race. R: Does it seem to you that that's gotten better? CAITL YN: It seems to me that-urn- at least to me it's like at least we're thinking about it now. It may not be the best views that we have but

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at least we're thinking about it because one of my family members is bisexual and-um- he went to march on Washington. In the earlier times, a gay to march on Washington . I don't know, it just doesn't quite fit in. R: Probably if you have a family member, it makes sense for you to be thinking about this. CAITL YN: Yeah, that's what I hate most about- um- school with some of my peers who are makingjokes about "vVhat are you, gay or something?" like that. It's just hard to deal with. There are a lot of boys in my class, there's this song, "I love you, you love me" I just try not to pay attention, but they talk about lesbians and that kind of thing, I don't want to hear about it, you know, I think a school should be a place where you can get away from what my parents are trying to pressure me into, cause my parents aren't really happy about it, and you know cause my parents are pretty religious and everything. And I'm trying, like I'm going to confirmation classes, and I'm trying- um- I'm trying to go with God on these things, but sometimes I just don't think I agree. I really don't know what to do.

Aesthetic commentary. We had expected some of the children to notice the difference between artists' renderings, photographs and the cartoon. Given how often the children mentioned technology as salient in establishing chronology, we expected that some would notice the technology ofthe image . These issues, however, went largely unmentioned. One first-grader assigned chronological sequence by color, even though the images were all black and white. Another mentioned that photographs came later in time than artists' renderings: "Someone made a photo of this and they took some black and white and they rolled it and they made it." Four fourth- , fifth- and sixth-graders made passing reference to the differences. For the most part, though, students looked through the image, as if it were simply a window on the past, without creative intention. The artists' renderings did elicit some commentary on features of composition. For instance, three primary children did not like the 1700s picture because the trees were oddly drawn and the clouds did not "look like ours." Two other children noted that it would be easier to assign chronology if they could tell which of the pictures had been in color and which were originally black and white. We also expected that the composition of an image-what was foregrounded, what was bolder- might influence what clues children found salient. This was sometimes the case. In the I 700s picture, for instance, younger children sometimes focused on the b.lling wood or the Indians in the lower right foreground and missed the fort and/or the British soldiers. In the Depressionera picture, the woman's foot was pointed into the centre foreground of the picture and several children focused their comments on shoes and socks. In some cases, this concentration on a single element led children away from the overall sense of the picture. The crowd and guns in the 1960s picture, for

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instance, led some children to conclude that this was a Civil War setting. Older children, such as the fifth-grader who suddenly noticed that "British" soldiers were marching down a street in the United States 61 years after independence, sometimes found themselves confused by what seemed to them to be incongruities between a piece and the whole. The tendency to concentrate on details of the whole, however, was also a product of the task in which children were specifically asked what features of each image helped them to establish chronology. No matter the age of the child, however, the task was read as a semiotic performance replete with clues that could be understood against a background of experiences with other texts and contexts.

Texts and contexts As we mentioned above, the semIOtic practices that make up the various discourses of history are not always shared by children. As a result, the sense children make of history texts is not always "historical." Students in this study connected images, words and events to more familiar patterns. The patterns might be drawn from images or events in the same picture, or from altogether different sources. These sources, or intertexts, were the context within which students selected chronological "clues" and interpreted the set of pictures used in the study. The "think aloud" exercise provided some evidence of the intertexts against which children read the images. In addition, we asked the children if they learned about history or the past either in or out of school. Although some children claimed never to have learned anything about history or the past, either in school or out, their comments indicated that a number of their intertexts were historical. The following categories of intertexts were most often cited by the children:

FamilY stories.

Family stories appeared from kindergarten through sixth grade. They were stories told by a friend or relative (most often a grandparent) about war, schooling, family history, or famous events that the storyteller had experienced. The stories were often linked with pictures, documents, toys and the like, and with a child's exploration of these artifacts. Two children who reported not liking school history-finding it irrelevant and boring- were nevertheless fascinated by family stories. As children for whom family stories were inter texts ordered the pictures in the study, they reported an event, style, or piece of technology from a family story and dated pictures by calculating the probable age of the storyteller. As the excerpts below demonstrate, younger children reported less detailed recollections of these stories. Perhaps they had heard them less often; perhaps the historic details were less important to them than other features of these story events.

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Kindergarten ANTHONY:

You know how I know all this stuff? Cause my Granny tells me.

Grade I CANDI:

It reminds me what my mom told me about- urn-the olden days.

Grade 2 DARRELL:

I can remember where [I learned about history].

R: Where DARRELL:

Out at my grandma's house

*****

I don't . know what she told

me. The descriptions of8 and 9 year aIds (Grades 3 and 4) were more specific. The children recalled the details oflife in other times- the design of a car, life on the farm or how life for African Americans had changed. They also seemed to enjoy the explorations of things that were, as one child explained, "old, old, ald."

Grade 3 Actually, I learn more at home because my grandmother tells me more than I learn at school. R: What does you grandmother tell you? CAROLEE: Actually, now she's dead, but we found a whole lot of things that have to do- she saved the paper Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon, and some horse won the Derby and-urn- she saved a bunch of papers-they're real important, on china [China?] and stuff. Old, old, old, stuff. R: I thought you told me you didn't like history? CAROLEE: Sort of I don't. When somebody is trying to teach it to me it sort of seems boring, but when you're looking through something and you find something it doesn't seem like you're learning history. R: And that's fun? CAROLEE: Like she has a big, big desk and I had to go through the desk and she has a alphabet, an Indian alphabet she gave me, and we go through the stuff, she gave me a old, old, old thing that's crumbling it's so old, she said it's older than her grandmother, so my grandmother's grandmother. It's an old jewelry box from France. We pull out these old doors and one almost crumbled when we pulled it out, and she had an Indian rug, and she was going to be an architect- I don't know what you call it? R: Archaeologist? An architect designs buildings and an archaeologist digs CAROLEE:

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into other civilizations. CAROLEE: An archaeologist-shows you how much I know about history!

Grade 4 RYAN: Um-like-um- like when we go to Grandma and Grandpa's house

they tell us a whole bunch of things cause my Grandma's a teacher, and R: What kinds of things do they tell you about? RYAN : Like-uh- they tell us like the wars and then my Grandpa was in the

war and he had dogchains and stuff and he told why they had them and stuff and then they have a lot of antiques and stuff and they tell us what they are and things like that, like she has this shelf thing, it has all these little things, like a gumball machine, that looks like a little figure, and it's glass, and shc has a bunch of those things, and they tell us all about those and how they got there and why they made them and stuff. R: You like hearing about that? RYAN: Yeah. And we went over to one of her friends, his name's Bob, and he makes all of these things, cause he's from Germany, and he taught me how to count in German, and then I saw this statue one time and it had a Chinese guy with a really big head, and he said that represents long life

**

R: Hmm RYAN: And he had, he has all these things from China, cause he teaches-

uh--people from China English and stuff. My brother told me a few things, about Black people and all this stuff, and they didn't get paid much and all like that and tell 'em that you didn't have all the privileges. R: What kind of privileges do you have now that you wouldn't have had back then? CEDRIC: I would be separated from my friends. I couldn't have like pets and things, and-uh- I couldn't go to like- if I had a friend-like a White friend like I have now? I couldn't go to like the same stores with him, or restrooms, or things. CEDRIC:

While fifth- and sixth-graders also mentioned these stories, they did so less frequently then did the younger children. The two excerpts below are typical of fifth and sixth grade descriptions offamily stories:

Grade 5 RODNEY: You'd have a totally different kind of lamp cause my mother was

born in the sixties, and my grandmother was born in the fifties. Wait a minute. My grandmother was born in, 1914. My grandfather was born

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in, 1910 or 12. My grandfather's dead. My grandmother's still alive. She's 76. She lives with~she can't tell us what she used to, cause she's got alz ... ? R: Alzheimers? [Rodney nods.] Oh, dear. RODNEY: But based on what she used to tell us, when I have a question I think back then. Grade 6 PATRICIA: My grandmother, she has--um~she has a bunch of documents

and papers that were back from when she was a little girl and her parents had came here from Germany, and she has a lot of papers, and she told us that they were known for bringing over the flower called the buttercup and I learned a lot about where my different family came from, from them~um~learned a lot about World War II because my grandpa was in World War II, he had to go fight, and I learned the different, the different places where they had fought~fought~that I didn't learn here at school~um~they really didn't tell us that much what happened. He says that he~he was in the Navy, he was telling me about Pearl Harbor, and * * * * and fighting Japan and stuff, and that was basically about most of the stuff I learned from them.

Fami[y activities. In addition to stories and related artifacts shared by family members and friends, children designated other family activities related to history, the past, or long ago. While historical information from these activities might be only partly recalled, the experiences provided an intertext for children's other encounters with history. Tn some cases trips also became an interpretive lens through which children viewed particular aspects of history. It is also clear that at least some of the parents connected family vacations to their children's school studies. This marks an economic difference among the children we interviewed. While two of the excerpts below were drawn from children whose families might be characterized as low-middle or low socioeconomic status, the others were middle class children. When we asked children if they learned about history or the past or long ago outside of school, not all the children understood the question. When that happened, we asked if they had ever gone anywhere, maybe on a vacation, or seen anything near where they lived that had to do with history. Almost a third of the lower socioeconomic status children were still unsure of what we were asking. One first grader responded that the only trip he had ever taken was to the dump with his grandfather. On the other hand, other children we interviewed had traveled internationally (Japan and England), and many more had traveled in the United States and their own state and been to a variety of historic sites. The excerpts below are representative of family activities during which children thought they learned something about history, the past, or long ago.

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Grade 3 KENNY: Um~when I was on vacation~my dad's a truck driver~he works

for Perkin. You ever seen those trucks? Well, my dad used to work for those, and like every spring break or every summer break I used to go with him for three or two weeks, and we'd go up to Vermont, Maine, we'd go out on the ocean, and all that sort of stuff, and~uh~in Vermont we used to see all these things like Indians' statues, real feathers and all sorts of stuff like that. We were in the middle of a woods, and also one night when we were coming home it was like midnight, and we were driving right through the middle of the woods and it was dark (like)~ like wolves~well wild dogs * * * and you could definitely tell what it was like back in the caveman days, cause you felt like something was going to sneak up on you and pounce. R: Have you ever learned about history, the past or long ago outside of school? CAROLEE: Museum. Got penny candy, which we liked. Actually, we got about ten pieces for a dime and a big long licorice was ten cents and we got to go into the school [at Ohio Village, a reconstructed nineteenth-century village]. We took the longest trip.

Grade 4 RYAN: When we went to vacation to Pennsylvania and saw the Battle of

Valley Forge . . . And like, we saw this house where the only civilian got killed by a stray bullet in the Battle of Valley Forge. R: Hmm. RYAN: And then we went to Tennessee to see Unto These Hills, how the Cherokee got to~uh~like~uh~how they lived and how people treated them. R: What do you remember about that? RYAN: Well, it was a play and~uh~the Cherokee were like~uh~trying~ they wanted to get land, and the soldiers and stuff would just push them off and then they'd like go to the President and he wouldn't really do anything about it, and just let them set aside land and stuff. CATHY: We went to see a play called, 1776, when Thomas Jefferson signed

the Independence~or the Declaration of Independence~and I learned a lot of stuff about the Declaration of Independence and what happened back then, and~uh~a lot of times when we go to--uh~places that, some of them aren't even in Kentucky, but when we go there they usually have like, how they used to make salt and stuff like that, and then we go in and see the slide show of it, and I learned it from there.

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Grade 5 RACHEL: My family goes to a lot of places like Spartansburg, or Fort

Boonesborough. R: How does that help you learn about the past? RACHEL: They tell you about how Fort Boonesborough started and how

Daniel Boone led us into Kentucky, and like that.

Grade 6 CAITL YN: Most of the time when my family goes on vacations and stuff, we try

to--you know-"Do it for Caitlyn's sake," and they try to do that. Just this past spring break we took a tour of the New England states and-urn-we saw a lot of the capitals. In seven days we went to thirteen capitals. R: There aren't thirteen New England states. Good heaven, where did you go! CAITL YN: I can't remember them all, cause we also went to Washington, D.C., Maryland, New Hampshire, Delaware, Maine and New York and Pennsylvania. It's interesting to see all the different-urn-ways that the capitals are built for the different time periods. R: Yeah, Albany. CAITL YN: We were in the New York capital with that million dollar staircase, or whatever, that has like no light except for the-urn-sunlight and my grandfather was with us cause after that trip he's been to like all the state capitals except for Alaska and Hawaii cause they weren't states when he went there, and when he went "Million dollar staircase? When was it bought?" And it was bought in the l800s for a million dollars then, which was a whole lot of money then, and you can see how like the value of money changes. R: That would be an incredible amount. CAITL YN: A million dollars now is something you win in the sweepstakes.

Popular culture. Historians are not, of course, the most likely interpreters of the past for children. More often popular culture interprets history to children. An array of history-related media were referenced by children in the study. There were the expected references to television. Television programs like Happy Days showed up in discussions of the 1950s and Little House on the Prairie appeared in reference to the picture with the covered wagon. In addition, one student referred to Dukes rif Hazzard and others mentioned television news or informational shows. Movies were also intertexts, usually in reference to cowboys and Indians, but not always. There were also less-expected reference to toys (The American Girls doll collection and Nintendo), comic books, and television shows such as Unsolved Mysteries. Children also referenced newspapers. Finally, one group of children, students at a magnet school for the arts, relied on art, music, and drama intertexts.

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Kindergartners mentioned the fewest popular culture sources of any group. One child mentioned cowboys and Unsolved lvlysteries, another mentioned newspapers. The most interesting (and singular) response is excerpted below. While no other child mentioned trolls as historical figures, other primary age children did refer to fantasies such as the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that appeared to them to have historical settings.

Kindergarten R: Now that you've looked at all these pictures, what can you tell me about

how things have changed over time? Dinosaurs, trolls. R: Trolls? What about trolls? MONTE: They used to live a long time ago. MONTE:

In the primary grades, children mentioned the television shows Little House on the Prairie and Young Riders (both set in the nineteenth-century American West), and movies with "malls and the cars and the schools" because "I've seen movies about then, and I know more about them than any of the other pictures." Others included baseball cards (Hank Aaron) and toys. Primary children also connected history with the news, though some news coverage seemed about as confusing as dinosaurs and trolls. One student, for instance, had seen a news story on the dedication of the Holocaust Museum at which President Clinton and Elie Wiesel were speakers. Was it true that him [president Clinton] and three other people were held in a ring of fire and they let off an oath and I think it was an old museum that they'd had for years? R: Do you mean the Holocaust Museum? LERON: Umhm. LERON:

By fourth and fifth grade, students were much more explicit about how they used popular culture. The excerpts below demonstrate the kind of history acquired from these intertexts, how conscious the children could be of how adults might perceive their choices, and how powerfully these intertexts captured children's historical interests. I think it [1990s picture] goes in between these two [Antebellum and, 1920s] or very close to this, closer to this than this cause this is long, and the way the desks are made, and they're stuck together, and, God! The doll again! I don't have her desk but-Samantha-and she was in the very early 1900s and she had a desk like that, it was about 1907, and also the way that they're dressed the same, the girls are wearing long dresses with stripes, and the boys [are wearing] britches. And the teacher, she has

TINA:

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her hair way up in a bun, and an apron .... Oh, we've got a video on that, there were these children taking over the school, they were sitting on top of the ledges and everything, and they were taking over and there were all these soldiers there, and it said it was children protesting against their country, soldiers shooting them down. Nothing like this in our past? Not at all! And then it goes and shows this kind of thing from the past, like the British and the Americans. Cool. I'd like to know where they are. This is the 1900s simply because of the desks and these bands, cause last year we did a play, "Miss Louise and the Outlaws," and it took place in the 1900s around that time, and that's when the bands were coming, so that gave it away. . . . I go to the library a lot. I read history like the history of comic books, because I'm a big comic collector. I've learned about the history of comic books, and the first comic books, and it's real interesting. Some people think that comics are a waste of time, and really when you think about it, they're part of history, too, because they're literature, they're interesting, some people must have used them, and I've learned about the great composers, like Bach- urn-and other great composers, not in comic books, but in music, cause when I go to the library I check out some music, jazz and rap, and I've learned about lots of rap people, and great baseball players, like Babe Ruth, I've learned about great football players, basketball players. I learn this from books. I've learned a great deal about composers and Michael Jackson, let's see, Stevie Wonder. I've also learned about Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare. Those are the main two I've learned about. At least those are the two on my mind right now. And I've learned from Nintendo, so I've learned a great deal about the history of how those were made, and stuff, so that's not really a waste of time, and I've learned about the cars and cars in the future.

RODNEY:

By sixth grade the children made fewer explicit references to media. When asked about influences outside school they mentioned TV, movies, the Bible, and church. Specific popular culture references included the American Girls dolls and books, Happy Days (set in the 1950s) and a local I 950s-decor diner, the Rockabilly Cafe. They described a picture as looking like "something out of Little House on the Prairie," and one student called the 1950s picture "the Happy Days picture." Patricia provides evidence of a move towards more "informational" television as she explains that viewing included "some kind of show on the other day about the sixties, and like Vietnam, and- urn-different things about the A-bomb and Hiroshima, and you know that's probably the only places that I've learned stuff.

Trade books. Children used fiction and nonfiction trade books as intertexts. While some of these were books assigned as school reading, others were selected as personal reading by the children. In the primary grades, children

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mentioned historical fiction and fantasy, and one child reported looking at books an older sibling was reading. We read a book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and it was interesting with that book and ... the people looked just like that [183 7 picture] in the book.

BAMBI:

I remembered because I have this book at home, it has a lot of old pictures and new, and when I look at it, it has some of these pictures in it, and I can remember when it's at.

THOMAS:

I like-I have a collection of American Girl books, and my favorite one is Samantha and she looks like this [1900s picture]. In Samantha Learns a Lesson, and it shows and I've got the catalogue. $83 with softcover book; hard cover book $86. It will take me a year and a half of my allowance.

CAROLEE:

By fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, students reported more library use and the fantasy references dropped out, replaced by more traditional historical fiction, including Johnny Tremain. American Girls books were still mentioned. [pointing to writing on chalk board]: And the curly writing. It said in the book I read that back then they taught really, really curly writing and-urn-girls they really wanted to write like their teachers, so I guessed it. ... I read in a book-I read that mothers would put on dresses onto two-year-olds and three-year-olds because they didn't want them to get into trouble and when you were trying to climb up it would trip you and you'd fall down and you couldn't get it. ... R: Some of the little kids want to visit 1700 because they think it would be clean and no pollution. TINA: But that's not true! I was reading in this book, and it was a-it was a graph, and it showed the pollution from caveman days to our days, and in caveman days all of a sudden it went like that [points upward], there would have been a lot of pollution and things.

TINA

Instruction. School learning appeared in two ways as intertext for children's sense-making about chronology. First, as they placed the pictures in chronological order children sometimes explained their choices by relating the pictures to their school studies. Second, the follow-up questions first asked children if they had found the task difficult or easy, and why, and then if they had learned anything about history, the past or long ago in school. This provided interesting information about what children thought they were learning about history in school, what topics seemed to either be most common or most memorable, and which helped them anchor historical data in some chronological framework.

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While no kindergartner reported learning about history in school, first graders reported several history topics. One explained that in a study of Africa they had learned that "the mosquitoes and the stuff that kills them hadn't been invented [in the past]"; another reported that in his class history "is the future too and the past," and another recalled that history had been studied, but wasn't sure of much more than that. Two children who, just prior to the interview, had participated in class discussions about English history, stated that they did not study history in school. Another child who thought that there hadn't been much study of history in school nonetheless mentioned the Ku Klux Klan, World War II, George Washington, and the Vietnam War in placing the pictures. Another knew that he had studied a time when "they didn't have a lot of schools, or-uh- they didn't have a lot of-uh- food, and, or a lot of the clothes." Two children reported participating in "Heritage Day," and dressing up in clothes that were "worn a long time ago. " Second graders also mentioned Heritage Day, riding in a horse and buggy, and seeing a man shoot off a gun as school-related history. There was some indication that second graders had been introduced to Pilgrims and pioneers, though they sometimes confused the two, identifying the pioneers in the picture as Pilgrims. Beginning in second grade most children mentioned Indians or Native Americans, though these were not always related to school study. As one second grader explained, "History is when people aren't alive anymore and all that. Like the Indians were the first people over in America." In addition, most of them knew something about Black history, at least as far as knowing that African Americans had been slaves and recognizing that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King had something to do with freedom or rights for African Americans. One child even defined history as "Like in the Black people's days, back when there was Black history times." In the excerpt below, Kareem explains his experience with Black history: R: What have you learned about history or the past or long ago in school?

Martin Luther King was shot, Frederick Douglass died in February, and Hank Aaron was the best baseball player. My friend read about Hank Aaron and I read about Frederick Douglass, for a report. Frederick Douglass helped Haiti and all that.

KAREEM:

Third graders reported studying about the flag and "Betty something," Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Indians, Christopher Columbus, and slavery. The baseball player Hank Aaron reappeared. One child described a study of "Dinosaurs and stuff. We've been doing research." Another explained that she had learned about Indians for several years "and we-uh- played-read books about them and Indian folktales, and how the Pilgrims took over their land and all that." The children appeared to have acquired some information, though it was not organized in a discourse that would necessarily be recognized as either historical or chronological.

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Beginning in fourth grade, and particularly apparent in fifth grade, however, an important shift occurred in the instruction intertexts drawn on by the children and the discourse used in describing these intertexts. There was a leap in the use of what might be called an "academic history genre." Students placed the pictures in relation to their school studies of history as well as the more personal and out-of-school "family stories." They were more likely to refer to specific historic events, eras, and the like, to include references to political history, and to rely less on technological change. They used dates more often, constructed causal narratives drawn from historical data, and, knowing more, found the task of placing things in chronological order much more complex. Increasing historical knowledge sometimes misled them as they struggled to apply newly emerging theories about the past. Fourth graders provided more specific information about Native Americans and Black history than about any other topics. They used somewhat more differentiated language-Hopi, Sioux and Cherokee instead of generic "Indians," for instance.

Grade 4 RYAN [explaining how he ordered the more difficult pictures]: Well, I didn't

really live back then, and I didn't really know that much about it, but I've studied it in schoo!. R: Can you remember any specific things that you remember studying before this year? RYAN: Uh-um-like Pueblo Indians, and-and like-uh-how they made their homes and stuff. CA THY: "Ve studied about the Indians that are past in history, the Sioux, and

the Hopi, and, more kinds of Indians that I can't remember their tribe names. There was also evidence that the children had studied some specific historic events related to each of these groups. I remember about the American Revolution, French and Indian \'\Tar. Learned about the Indians how they had to work for their food, learned about the slaves how they had to grass land, and people owned them, and some people lost their money and build houses like grassland house, under the ground. R: Have you ever learned about Black people who weren't slaves? CEDRIC: Oh, yeah! Like King, Malcolm X. There's another one, we saw a . movie about him, but I can't remember his name, he wrote, but he wasn't a slave, he wrote books and like that. R: Booker T Washington, George Washington Carver?

NICK:

CEDRIC:

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Something like that. Washington Carver, he was a scientist.

As fourth graders have more specific historical information to draw on, they are more likely to see historical connections as salient in establishing chronology. In the excerpt below, a fourth grader grounds her chronological analysis in background information about the history of White settlement and Native American displacement. Her initial inference is tentative--"Mqybe that's about the time ... ," but supported by specific historical references to pioneers and Indian clearances. She goes on to explain, in much more general terms, one of the inferences she is drawing from her study of history: that some things from the past are carried over into the present. I notice in the picture that there are Indians? And then there are sailors or pioneers and then later in this picture [VVest] there are pioneers and there's-and it looks like there are no Indian tribes or anything around it so maybe that's about the time when they cleared out the Indians. . . . .Most of the time when I've learned about history or the past, I've learned it and mostly in social studies, and we've learned about the Indians and we've learned about the world, like different places and we're learning about how they started off and how they're growing and it changes a lot, but they still use a little of what they used long ago, so they still use some of their past in what they do today. Like when we are studying, which we are right now, we're studying the Southwest and they had a person that had long ago they made pots out of clay and like that and she's earning her living today making pots out of clay.

DEANNA:

Grade five was particularly interesting because the students were involved in a year-long study of American history. The state curriculum, though in a period of transition during our study, rccommcndcd that thc fifth-gradc social studies program be American history from First Peoples through Reconstruction. At the time of our interviews half of the students had just completed the Revolutionary War or were only slightly beyond that point, so most of the pictures represented a time beyond what they had studied. The other half were involved in a more topical or thematic approach. What makes this year particularly interesting in relation to instruction as an intertext for sense-making in history, however, is the impact of instructional method. vVhile all of the fifth-grade students we interviewed were studying American history and wcre at approximately the same point in their study, one of the schools approached this subject by incorporating the arts into instruction across the curriculum and relating the "academic" curriculum to studying in the arts. Thus children entered fifth grade having seen or participated in history-related plays (Chris Crossed, l\1.iss Louise and the Outlaws). studies of musical eras, and the like. In fifth grade, their social studies teacher used drama as a regular part of the study of history, including a trial set at the time of the Boston Massacre. She

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also used primary source documents in activities such as trying to decide who fired the first shot at Lexington Green. Responses from these students tended to be more expansive and were more likely to include interpretive statements. This was true in both the picture analysis and the follow-up questions.

Grade 5 RODNEY: This [school picture] is the, 1900s simply because of the desks and

these bands, cause last year we did a play, "Miss Louise and the Outlaws," and it took place in the 1900s around that time, and that's when the bands were coming, so that gives it away.... R: What have you learned about history, the past, or long ago in school? RODNEY: We've been studying, well, let's see we do-have done-have to speak correct grammarl---we've done lots of things-urn-we're getting ready to do a case on the Boston Massacre this Thursday. Urn-we learned about the thirteen colonies, the wars we've had-we're not yet to the Civil War, and the-uh-we haven't got there yet, but we studied the Battle of Lexington, Paul Revere's ride-uh-the Stamp Tax, the Stamp Act, we're past the Revolution. Right now, we're holding on the Revolutionary War because we're trying to find out who said "Fire" and caused the soldiers to fire at the Battle of Lexington. The Americans probably had the advantage there, because we knew the land better than the British, so when they came through, they don't know where we could attack them, and we could disappear just like that cause we knew the land, and they didn't. R: What have you studied about history, the past, or long ago in school? EVAN: Well-urn-we're up to the Revolutionary War and the Congress.

What I always like to study about is the Civil War. R: Yeah? What makes that one interesting? EVAN: Well I say it's interesting cause it's fought in the United States and

there were soldiers from both sides and it was like the first modern war. R: Umhm. When somebody says something like that-that it's the first

modern war-what does that mean? EVAN: It means like it had-they used railroads and machines and the

Monitor, like modern weapons. R: Which of these pictures did you find most interesting? TINA: This one [1837] because it has a lot of things to see in it, see it says "all

those who trade on borrowed capital should perish credit," something like that ... R: A lot of stuff in there that doesn't make a lot of sense? TINA: No! I like it! I like it. It gives you a lot of things to see, and also the flag, I forgot to tell you about that, it's not full, and it's a very old fashioned

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flag, I think in the early, 1800s.... In this picture, the school one, they're all behaving very well, they're sitting straight and this one people see a drunk here, and I'm sure there were a lot, but they're showing a drunk, and they've got British soldiers, walking down the street--oh- wait a minute. If they've got British soldiers walking down the street, I didn't see it before, O.K., I don't get that, cause it says this is the sixty-first anniversary of our independence. R: Are you sure they're British? TINA: Yeah: R: How can you tell? TINA: The hats! It's weird! R: It wouldn't have been possible by then for Americans to be dressing like that? TINA: I don't know. R: Be interesting to find out. Maybe they were good friends by then? TI NA: I really don't think so, because England would have probably been still mad. R: And we had another war with England. TINA: Yeah, in, 1812. It could have been in 1812, and they could have been patrolling the streets, they could have taken over some weird place. R: Do you know of any place the British TINA: No, because we haven't studied that yet, we're just getting over the Revolution. We had the trial. R: How did that go? TINA: Yeah, bah! The British won, but in the real trial the British didn't win, but the jury * * but I'm a colonist, I'm a patriot. She [teacher] showed us all the evidence, and she showed us everything that happened and we studied it, but she didn't tell us anything that happened after that andurn- and she said alright, are you for the British, because the British, on one hand- urn-were taxing the colonists and the colonists had no way of representing they could not vote for people who were running in England and they and no say in their taxes they were going to do it upon them so-urn- that was on the colonists' side, but the British on the other hand, they were being thrown rocks at. My name was Archibald, and I didn't know that I had already broken my wrist-urn-on a British officer, so when I got on the stand and they said have you ever assaulted a British officer, then he said we have evidence you broke your wrists off a British officer, and I went OOH! I didn't know, but I shouldn't have said that, because in the book it said, "Beep, you Yankee bloopers." .. . They used to use pence, yeah, they used British money because they were citizens of England, so they would use pence, but during the war they would have used these little tickets, these food stamps, and they would use those as money and then the fifties and so on so far we've used just coins and dollar bills and so on, and checks, and credit cards.

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Sixth graders were not studying American history, although some were studying ancient history. For most, however, their curriculum involved a geographic and anthropological study of the world. This made their responses interesting on two levels: first, to see if they used any of the American history they presumably had in fifth grade, and second, to see if their current study of other parts of the world was brought to bear on the task. While they did use their studies of Native Americans and the Westward movement, they relied more on material culture clues and especially on technology. When asked what they recalled of history instruction in school, some reported categories: presidents, newspapers, inventions, wars, buildings, clothes, slavery, how people lived. Some provided more specific examples to illustrate categories, or just listed topics: Oregon Trail, U.S. Revolutionary War, Great Depression, lame duck, Amerigo Vespucci, ancient Greece and Rome, World War II, Germany, Vietnam, Hitler, Jews, Atomic bomb, Somalia, Columbus, Mozart, Bach, Baroque period, Japan, Africa, London, Wales, Scotland, Sherwood Forest, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and the United Nations. Sixth graders also tended to make more history- and time-related generalizations in describing the past. CAITL YN: [The hardest pictures to place were] the earlier ones. I had to look

for clues. That is a time when I kind of blank out. There's the twenties and then there's the fifties and I don't know what came in between. R: Have you studied that at all? CAITL YN: Not really. We talked~about in fourth and fifth grade~we talk about older times, and then not much after this, and then just seeing various pictures here and there, cause like in our other classes we've been watching~um~documentaries on the film business and that kind of thing, so I've seen that kind of thing and what the actors and actresses looked like, but then we didn't see too many films in that era. R: What have you learned about history, the past, or long ago in school? CAITL YN: We learn a lot of specific dates, you know, what happened when, and then we learn general stuff: at this time people thought this, and now people thought this, and how people's views change over time. A lot of people's views change, but not everybody. We still have things like the KKK [Ku Klux Klan] around. And you still have that kind of thing around so obviously their views haven't changed since like the Civil War and stuff, but I think most people's have. Not necessarily everybody. Plus, like in class, we study like "At this time everybody was trying to get along with the Blacks," but not necessarily everybody will have. There's definitely still prejudice around, not necessarily just about Blacks and Hispanics, either. PATRICIA: Well, we learned about~um~the ancient Egyptians, and the Romans, we learned about, we're learning about World War II right now, and, another thing is, is we learned about~um~like the president during inauguration time and we had to learn different stuff he had to

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do to become president--um-another thing is that we learned how to run our own business around Christmas time. We got to have our own businesses, and we learned how a business works, and what the different terms were that they used. \I\'e learned about the Civil war-urn-the Revolutionary war. We learned about settlers, like Christopher Columbus and different people like-urn-Amerigo Vespucci, that came along and people that basically discovered the land, and we learned a lot about the different laws, like Congress, how they make the laws, and what the presidents' job is and we learned what the lame ducks were, another thing is-is-we learned about-urn-different places in the world, we studied the state, the state's past about Kentucky's past. R: Do you remember studying anything about history or long ago at school before fourth grade? PATRICIA: Urn-no, not really. I don't think they concentrated too hard on making us learn different stufI' that went on, I don't think they-I don't think they were teaching us and getting us ready for fourth grade history that we were having then. I think they should go on and have it because I think it's important to know about it even when you're like first, second or third grade.

Conclusions The results of this study provide increased evidence regarding the kind and sources of children's historical knowledge, and how they deploy that knowledge. The most accessible historical knowledge for early and middle grade children apparently relates to changes in material culture and the patterns of everyday life. It appears, too, that the intertexts that inform children's historical understanding, especially prior to fourth grade, provide better information about material culture than about other aspects of change over time. Family stories and activities often relate to material culture·--visits to historic sites, conversations related to artifacts and the like. In addition, popular culture referents-whether dolls in period costumes or television shows in which current issues are acted out against a historic backdrop-add information (and misinformation) about material culturc. There was some evidence, even at the younger grades, that instruction made a difference in children's understanding of history. For instance, there was recognition that exploitation of both Native Americans and African Americans occurred prior to the Civil \I\'ar. That some children thought both were confined to the past is, we think, an artifact of instruction that focused on the distant past of these groups. Nonetheless, children remembered both the information about Native American life and African American slavery and the interpretation that displacement and slavery were historic evils. In addition, some children at all grade levels linked history to personal issues. Certainly family stories made these links explicit by telling children that their ancestors

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were actors in history, but children made other connections as well. The willingness to take history personally showed up as children discussed role-playing the parts of historic actors and was triggered by specific details in the pictures. While fifth-grade children continued to deploy many of the same sources of information in assigning chronological sequence as had younger children, they were also learning a new reference system that consisted of specific eras (Colonial, Revolution), events (Boston Massacre, War of, 1812) and relationships (British taxes and lack of colonial representation create pre-Revolutionary tensions) that allowed them to make more discipline-related interpretations (British and colonists had legitimate but differing points of view). This represents a considerable intellectual challenge. For many, this was their first systematic encounter with chronological history covering more than a state or region. In addition, academic history did not always intersect very closely with their pre-existing history domains. Academic history tends to rely on verbal symbols and a chronological sense that is, at best, shaky at this stage. It should not be surprising, then, that fifth graders were sometimes uncertain in applying this new genre, or that they sometimes misconstrued the details. Rather, their willingness to engage in this new genre, and the facility with which some students managed the transition has, we think, important implications for instruction. If the most accessible knowledge for younger children relates to material culture and the patterns of everyday life, then it makes sense to ground history instruction in social history. If children's facility with material culture is due, at least in part, to their direct experience with it, and thus their ability to notice change in this area, then it also makes sense to place greater emphasis on history that can be seen. "Seeing" in this instance is twofold. First, it means providing a rich array of images of what things looked like, what people did and how they did it. Second, it means that instruction must mediate the interaction between child and image. The children in our study were comfortable with pictures, but they were also uncritical of their veracity. Unmediated by instruction, visual images (as other data sources) can be misleading. The role of instruction, then, might be to present a variety of images for discussion and interpretation and to encourage the creation of images of both historic and current events, so that children come to see pictures as intentioned creations. This type of instruction invites children to assume two stances in regard to history. The first is a dynamic perspective in which the child views events in progress, altering his or her interpretation as each new piece of information is added. The second is a synoptic perspective in which the child can step back, review the whole sequence of actions and draw at least tentative conclusions. These two stances, combined with children's access to material culture and their tendency to make personal connections between their lives and the history they encounter, suggest that a good starting point for instruction might be local history. As Dewey and other progressives noted nearly a century ago, this approach has several advantages. It taps history domains already available to young children. The sources for a dynamic perspective are in place: children

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can take pictures, interview people, compare pictures of now and then. We suggest, too, that these activities are particularly supportive of a developing sense of chronology. As students compare pictures, they can view at first hand the results of some sequences of action in time. Finally, they can create their own interpretations, share them with interested others, and, perhaps, come to see that other sources of information about history are as intentioned as their own work. In this way, children are introduced to the semiotic practices of an academic history community in a meaningful context. Finally, it is worth noting the impact of the arts on some of the children's understanding of history. While there were too few of these students to make any but tentative conclusions, their interviews are striking in comparison with their peers. All of them were involved in music, drama, dance, or fine arts performances separate from their academic studies. Partly, they remembered historic details from these events because their involvement in a performance required regular practice and multiple performances. More importantly, these were contexts in which children were active problem solvers. As Winner (1982) notes, "Artists are deeply engaged in multiple pursuits at once, which enables them to see connections that were never seen before" (p. 387). This was particularly evident when drama was used in academic instruction. The fifth-grade students who staged the Boston Massacre trial, for instance, spoke at considerable length about the experience, noting the differences between their trial outcome and the real event. They were aware, too, of point of view in historical interpretation and willingly considered alternative perspectives and possible motives in relation to historic events. They situated themselves in these events, considering how it would have felt, what choices were open to historic actors, and the like. In sum, drama, like visual images, seemed to open up more possibilities to "mean" at a variety oflevels. Recognizing that the use of drama and simulations has been recommended for years, we suggest that these resources are important ways to connect children to history.

Notes I. For basic statements and reviews of some of the key contributions in this literature, see Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (1983); Brown et al. (1989); Rogoff (1990); Lave & Wenger (1991); Resnick (1991); Wertsch (1991); and Levine et al. (1993). 2. From a social semiotic perspective, an action is made meaningful through the relations we construct between it and its contexts. Since every action is placed in many contexts, the kind of relationships we construct between actions or events and contexts provides insight into how these actions or events are understood. 3. The research methods for this study are described in Ch. 5 of this volume. 4. Tapes were coded to protect student anonymity. Where names are used, they are pseudonymous. "R" indicates researcher. Conventions of transcription taken from Wells and Chang-Wells (1992) were used. Incomplete utterances or false starts are shown with a dash: "Well-er-." ?! are used to make utterances judged to have an interrogative or exclamatory intention. CAPITALS are used for words spoken with emphasis, e.g., "I really LOVE to read." Parentheses are used to enclose words or

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phrases about which the transcriber felt uncertain. Passages that are impossible to transcribe are shown with asterisks, one for each word judged to have been spoken, e.g. "I'll go ***" (three words). When necessary, an interpretation of what was said or of the picture being referred to is given in brackets.

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paths to the present. Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles. Neuman, S. (1992). Is learning from media distinctive? Examining children's inferencing strategies. American Educational ResearchJoumal, 29, 119-40. Novick, P. (1988). Yhat noble dream: Yhe "olljectiviry question" and the American historical profts.lion. New York: Cambridge University Press. Olson, D. R. (1974). Media and symbols: Yheforms if expression, communication, and education, 73rd Yearbook, Part I, ofthe National Society for the Study ofEdueation. Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education. Resnick, L. B. (1991). Shared cognition: Thinking as social practice. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on sociallY shared cognition (pp. 1-20). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Ricoeur, P. (1984). Hermeneutics and the human sciences (J. B. Thompson, Trans.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press. Seixas, P. (1993). Historical understanding among adolescents in a multicultural setting. Curriculum Inquiry, 23, 301-27. Shemilt, D. (1980). Evaluation study: Schools Council History 13-16 Project. Edinburgh, Scotland: Holmes McDougall. Shemilt, D. (1984a). Beauty and the philosopher: empathy in history and classroom. In A. K. Dickinson, P.]. Lee, & P.]. Rogers (Eds.), Leaming history (pp. 39-83). London: Heinemann. Shemilt, D. (1984b). The devil's locomotive. History and Yheory, 22(2), 1-18. Shemilt, D. (1987). Adolescent ideas about evidence and methodology in history. In C. Portal (Ed.), Yhe history curriculumfor teachers (pp. 39-61). London: Heinemann. Sternberg, R.]. (1989). Domain-generality versus domain-specificity: The life and impending death of a false dichotomy. Merrill-Palmer QyarterlY, 35, 115-30. VanSledright, B., & Brophy,]. (1992). Storytelling, imagination, and fanciful elaboration in children's historical reconstructions. American Educational Research Joumal, 29, 837-59. Vosniadou, S., & Brewer, W. F. (1992). Mental models of the earth: a study of conceptual change in childhood. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 535-85. Voss,]. F., Carretero, M., Kennet,]., & Silfies, L. N. (1994). The collapse of the Soviet Union: A case study in causal reasoning. In M. Carretero &]. F. Voss (Eds.), Cognitive and instructional processes in history and social sciences (pp. 403-29). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wellman, H. M., & Gelman, S. A. (1992). Cognitive development: Foundational theories of core domains. Annual Review ifPsychology, 43, 337-75. Wells, G., & Chang-Wells, G. L. (1992). Constructing knowledge together: Classrooms as centers ifinquiry and literary. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Wertsch,]. V. (1991). A sociocultural approach to socially shared cognition. In L. B. Resnick,]. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on sociallY shared cognition (pp. 85-100). Washington: American Psychological Association. Wine burg, S. (1991). On the reading of historical texts: notes on the breach between school and academy. American Educational ResearchJoumal, 28, 495-519. Winner, E. (1982). Invented worlds: Yhe psychology ifthe arts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 7

Making connections

Keith C. Barton

"Brian ... Brian . .. I need you to look up here." Brian and Tommy had started to chat with each other instead of looking at the pictures in the books I was holding. I had read Watch the Stars Come out (Levinson, 1985) to a group of fourth-graders gathered around me on the floor, and I was asking them to compare the book's illustrations to parallel photographs in Immigrant Kids (Freedman, 1992) and to think about reasons for the differences. Most students were interested and engaged, but as with any group of elementary children, concentration sometimes wandered. Having taught fourth grade for several years, I quickly noticed off-task behavior, and I refocused Brian and Tommy (more or less) on what I wanted them to do. But more important, this episode opened the door to data that would establish my professional career, for I was simply a doctoral student doing dissertation research while the real teacher, Tina Reynolds, looked on. By establishing my credibility as a fellow teachershowing that I knew what was happening and could deal with it effectively-I developed a rapport that resulted in practically unlimited access to Tina's class and that of her colleague, Amy Leigh. Brian's minor misbehavior was critical to my ability to conduct the observations that ultimately led to several of the chapters in this book. When I began planning my dissertation research, I wanted to do more than interview students. The conversations that Linda and I had with children (Chapters 5 and 6) produced a great deal of interesting data, and other researchers in both North America and Britain had also used interviews to illustrate students' historical thinking. But many aspects of historical thinking may be too complex to assess in a 30-or 40-minute interview. Asking students to use evidence to develop historical interpretations is likely to take more time, and require substantially more support, than can be provided in even the most careful interview. And authentic historical inquiry-in which students develop their own questions, seek information from a variety of sources, and develop conclusions through presentations or compositions-certainly requires the extensive time and scaffolding that only a classroom can provide. IfVygotsky (1978) was right that children perform at higher levels under adult guidance

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than on their own, relying solely on interviews would provide a misleading representation of their performance. In addition, a basic premise of domain-specific theories of learning is that knowledge affects thinking~structure s of thought are not generic but are influenced by the information that individuals have a bout particular topics (R. Glaser, 1984). Some interview research, however, is so distant from students' engagement with specific historical topics that it leads to abstract and decontextualized portraits of their thinking. Students may be asked to talk about the nature of historical change, for example, but not to describe any particular changes; they may be asked how historical accounts are developed but not about any particular interpretations. Or just as tellingly, students may be expected to work with historical materials that present specific but unfamiliar information, such as when they are asked to evaluate accounts of topics they've never learned about in school or anywhere else. This kind of task obviously limits their ability to make use of prior knowledge, and indeed a British researcher once told me that he had developed his materials with precisely that purpose in mind: He wanted to find out how students understood the nature of historical accounts, and he argued that using familiar topics would simply confuse the issue. From that perspective, students' understanding of historical concepts such as empathy or evidence is best investigated by factoring out prior exposure to specific content. I wanted to do just the opposite: I wanted to find out how students thought about topics they already knew about, either because they had been studying them in class or because they had learned about them outside school. I also wanted to find out how students thought about topics that interested them or that they had selected themselves~an area that had rarely been researched in social studies, apart from Linda's own work (Levstik, 1986). And finally, I wanted to know how students' ideas about history played out in classroom contexts: How did they make sense of the history they were asked to learn in school? What connections did they make with their prior knowledge, and did these connections facilitate or impede their understanding of the content? How did their ideas change over the course of a year? As an educator, I hoped not simply to illustrate students' historical cognition, abstracted from its use in educational settings, but to contribute to a research base for teaching and learning the subject. There was just one catch, as Linda quickly pointed out: I had to find classrooms in which students' thinking would be on display, ones in which they were expected to make sense of historical materials and information. As she notes in Chapter 1 , classroom-based research relies on there being something to observe. This was particularly important given that I wanted to explore elements of historical thinking such as students' use of evidence and their ability to understand the perspectives of people in the past. Typical classrooms wouldn't be useful settings for my research, for the dominant pattern of instruction~th en as now~involved asking students to retain information they

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encountered in textbooks or teachers' presentations. If I hoped to gain insight into students' construction of historical ideas, rather than their retention of factual information, I needed to select classrooms that not only devoted substantial time to history-unusual in itself at the elementary level- but also departed from well-established norms for the subject. Fortunately, I thought I had just the setting. Lynne Smith, a colleague at Northern Kentucky University (where I was on the faculty at the time), had introduced me to Tina Reynolds and Amy Leigh, both of whom taught in a school near the university. I had done a brief study in Amy's classroom previously, and I knew that both she and Tina devoted systematic attention to history and used a wide range of instructional strategies that emphasized active student involvement, open-ended projects, and writing assignments. Amy had even been a student in Linda's methods course several years previously. In addition, Amy and Tina taught in adjacent rooms of the same school, and they collaborated extensively in planning and implementing lessons. Their participation in my study, then, would not only allow me to observe students taking part in the kind of historical study I was interested in, it would also conveniently allow me to double the number of participants without adding a second research site. Although I felt confident the teachers would grant me access, I was hoping for a greater level of involvement than sitting in the back of the class as a nonparticipant observer. During my doctoral program, I had become interested in participatory action research, and specifically in collaborative research with teachers. Iwas committed to directly improving the situation of those I worked with, and I hoped that Amy and Tina would be willing to view my research as a collaborative process. However, I also recognized that perspectives of teachers and scholars are not always the same and that Amy and Tina might not be interested in pursuing the kinds of questions I needed to investigate for my dissertation. Indeed, they might not be interested in "research" at all, for teachers typically focus on improving practice rather than systematically collecting and analyzing data. Conducting research and improving practice may be parallel processes, but they are hardly identical, and I didn't want to use the pretense of collaboration to subtly coerce teachers into a project of limited interest or utility. When I initially contacted Amy and Tina about doing research in their classrooms, then, I suggested that we might take a collaborative approach, and they enthusiastically agreed ... but it still remained to work out what that collaboration would involve. The story of our collaboration would make for a more exciting narrative if! could turn it into a confessional tale (Van Maanen, 1988), replete with conflicting purposes, strained interactions, and the clash of identities. But I have no such tale to tell. My temperament, my assumptions about classroom management, and my way of interacting with students were all very similar to Amy's and Tina's (although they were better teachers than I could hope to be). Fortunately, neither had been a university student of mine, so lingering status

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hierarchies had little effect on our interaction. In fact, at our first meeting (the spring before I hoped to begin my research), they told me without hesitation that each of us should establish our "bottom line." Mine, I said, was that they devote "a lot of time" to history, and that I be allowed to do more than simply observe- teaching or co- teaching some lessons, or somehow interacting extensively with students. Their bottom line (on which they had obviously reached consensus ahead of time) was that we include writing activities, and that we stress active student involvement ("not just doing worksheets or memorizing information that they'll forget," in Amy's words). Needless to say, I had little trouble acceding to their demands. Because we readily agreed to these ground rules, we began to discuss what we might do in class during the coming year. Much of this discussion revolved around what it meant to teach state history, a topic they felt compelled to teach, but one they didn't feel very comfortable with. Tina was reluctant simply to teach about famous pioneers and early political leaders, and I agreed that unless that information was used to illustrate some larger idea, it was just trivia. She and Amy pointed out that their most successful project the previous year involved family histories, in which students interviewed relatives and wrote about their lives as children. That project accorded well with what I wanted to observe, and I suggested that similar projects provided the best context for studying state history: Because all students lived in the state, learning about their families' histories would necessarily involve learning about the state's history (cf. McCall & Ristow, 2003). I also suggested extending that idea by having students work in groups to investigate changes in daily life over time, and both Amy and Tina thought such projects would be useful. During the summer, we gathered materials for these activities, and we held two long meetings to plan instruction for the first several weeks of the upcoming year. This pattern of collaboration continued throughout the year, as we shared resources, talked about students' learning, and planned activities we thought would be effective (although we rarely felt we had enough time for joint planning once the year began). I sometimes taught or co-taught lessons, but not often, and mainly near the beginning of the year; the demands of note-taking worked against trying to present lessons, and my involvement with students came primarily though talking with them as they worked individually or in groups. Early in the year Amy and Tina occasionally asked what I "wanted" or "needed" them to do, but I declined to act as an expert or to impose my own ideas on their classrooms, both because I knew such imposition probably wouldn't lead to a successful project and because I trusted their judgment. Given the limited previous research on elementary students' learning of history- this was 1993- my ideas would have had no more validity than their own. Later, though, Tina said that she was never a better teacher than during the year I spent in her class-not because of my direct involvement in teaching but because my presence forced her to be prepared. The chance to talk to a concerned colleague about what's important and how best to accomplish it

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(and even to feel a little guilty about cutting corners) can be an effective stimulus for professional reflection (Cunningham , 2006), and I believe that my discussions with Amy and Tina were my most important contribution to the collaboration. Tina's and Amy's insights into students' thinking were valuable complements to my own, and I sought input from them throughout the project, including their feedback on a draft of the dissertation itself. Ultimately, though, data collection and analysis were almost entirely my concern and my responsibility, and Tina's and Amy's chief contribution to the research was to provide access to classrooms in which students were actively engaged in doing history. But classroom observations were not my only research method. In fact, interviews constituted a major portion of my dissertation data, and I used a taskbased approach similar to that described in Chapter 5. By combining interviews with observations, I was able to ask questions about specific content I knew students had encountered. After asking a vague question such as, "Do you think people believed different things a long time ago than they do now?" (which usually led to responses that were just as vague), I could follow up with, "You read that book about women's rights the other day. Why do you think women w eren't allowed to speak in public a long time ago?" and "Why do you think that's changed?" That kind of probing led to richer, more detailed responses, not only because students could ground their answers in specific knowledge but because they had begun to think about the issue already. Moreover, by conducting interviews throughout the year- I talked with many students on three separate occasions- I was able to track changes in their ideas after they had studied particular topics. This long-term involvement with students, along with the combination of interviews and observations, added credibility to my interpretations of data in a number of ways. The first is the most obvious: It provided methodological triangulation. When patterns in students' responses showed up in both interviews and classroom activities, I could more confidently assert that these represented pervasive elements of their thinking rather than artifacts of particular tasks. This is evident in Chapters 8 and 9, where students' focus on individuals and their tendency to think of history in narrative terms was apparent not only in interviews but in a variety of classroom discussions. My interpretation was still limited to students' engagement in particular kinds of school-type tasks, but at least I could be more confident that their responses weren't bound to specific photographs or qucstions. Similarly, by having the luxury of repeated conversations with students, I could modify my interviews to take account of emerging themes in the data. For example, once I began to see the narrative of progress as a major element in students' thinking, Ispecifically sought contrary evidence by asking if they could think of any areas in which life had gotten worse over time. Single interviews or brief observations are unlikely to yield such opportunities. Combining interviews with observations also allowed me to more fully

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describe the relationship between students' ideas and the content of the materials, activities, and discussions they encountered in class. I've found that when people hear what children say about social or political issues, they often reflexively dismiss their ideas by saying, "Oh, they're just repeating what they've heard at home." Others may characterize students' ideas as simple reflections of instruction at school; if students interpret historical changes in terms of the actions and intentions of individuals (Chapter 8), it's tempting to conclude that they were just repeating what they were taught in class. Such assertions betray a mimetic understanding of learning that is at odds with current cognitive theory as well as my own experience as a teacher, researcher, and parent ... not to mention my memories of being a child who disagreed with his parents and teachers on any number of social, political, and economic issues. Yet it's easier to argue against this kind of claim when we know exactly what children have heard. Based on my observations in Amy's and Tina's classrooms, I knew students were drawing very selectively from what they heard there to construct their own interpretations, ones they had not directly encountered but that represented their active attempts to make sense of history. In explaining their ideas, then, it became necessary to look for broader factors that influenced these active constructions. Any researcher can attest that designing a study like this requires careful attention to the issues of access, rapport, and triangulation that I've been discussing. But these may seem like a cakewalk compared to the arduous task of analyzing the massive amount of data that observations and interviews can produce. How do we turn hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages offieldnotes, transcripts, and artifacts into a coherent set of assertions? Some researchers claim that their analysis is entirely inductive, with no preconceived ideas and no theoretical assumptions. The extent to which completely inductive analysis is desirable was part of a debate between the originators of grounded theory (B. Glaser, 1992; B. Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990), but the possibility of atheoretical research is difficult to defend. Any research involves choices- where to look, who to talk to, what to ask, and so on-and these choices are inevitably based on theoretical assumptions, even if those assumptions are only implicit. And in a practical sense, theory is indispensable for analysis, for it provides the most effective means for sorting through data. Without theory, there would be no way of distinguishing between a student's argument about the cause of the French and Indian War and her request to sharpen a pencil. Theories, though, exist at many levels of generality. In Chapter 4 I lamented that Linda's and my research on children's understanding oftime had involved only a very general theory, that of domain-specific cognition. For my dissertation research-particularly at the point of data analysis- I needed something more specific, and I turned to two works by Peter Seixas, both of which were still in manuscript form when I read them. The first was a descriptive theory that identified six elements of historical thinking-significance, epistemology

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and evidence, continuity and change, progress and decline, empathy and moral judgment, and historical agency (Seixas, 1996). This theory was meant to provide a framework for analyzing students' ideas about history, and its six elements constituted my initial coding categories. Without them I would have made little progress in turning data into findings, and the following three chapters reflect the structure provided by those categories-Chapter 8 focuses on historical agency, Chapter lOis about epistemology and evidence, and Chapter 9 combines continuity and change with progress and decline. In addition, Chapter 14 reports findings related to significance, and empathy and moral judgment show up in several of these chapters and in an unpublished portion of the dissertation (Barton, 1994). Although Seixas identifies these six elements of historical thinking, he does not specify the exact nature of students' thinking in any of them, nor does he suggest how their ideas develop over time. His categories, then, serve more as sensitizing concepts than as a system for closed coding of data. This is where the inductive part of my analysis came in-even using Seixas's theory to guide my search, I still had to analyze how students actually thought about each element. This required yet another interpretive choice, because I had to decide how best to characterize students' ideas about agency, evidence, and so on. By this point in the early 1990s, there were three research traditions I could draw upon for this task. The first involved arranging students' ideas in a sequence of "progression" from the most simplistic to the most sophisticated historical thinking. British scholars such as Ros Ashby, Alaric Dickinson, Peter Lee, and Denis Shemilt had published several studies of this kind, and Linda had made sure I read every one of them before I began my research. A related tradition was that of "expert/novice" research, which described differences in the content and strategic knowledge of beginning and more experienced practitioners within a field. This was more common in North American research and was popular among the cognitive theorists I had been reading. I rejected both these approaches, however, because they implied that students' thought processes should be judged on the extent to which they adhere to an identifiable standard of historical thinking, grounded in the academic discipline of history or in scholarly analyses of historical epistemology. I was troubled by this approach for two principal reasons. First, hierarchical schemes of thinking portray the perspective of historians (or of the scholars who develop the schemes) as the most mature, most rational way of approaching thc past. Whenever we set up such hierarchies- in schooling or in society more generally- we naturalize our own way of thinking instead of recognizing it as a social construction. That is, we make it appear as though certain forms of thought are grounded in universal principles of cognition rather than in the historically and socially situated expectations of given activities (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). "Standards" of historical thinking, then, can easily become a mask for our own prejudices, and we can dismiss people with whom we disagree as irrational-or as not having achieved mature histor-

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ical thought. In addition, characterizing thinking in terms of its deviation from such a purported standard necessarily leads to a form of deficit thinking: Rather than capturing the nuance and complexity of students' ideas, researchers may simply catalogue omissions-mistakes that need remediation. Ideas that fall outside the line of progression, or that have no connection to the thinking of "experts," are unlikely to be recognized as meaningful- or indeed, to be recognized at all. I was more drawn to a third tradition: "Alternative conceptions" research in science. Research in this area explored how students made sense of their experiences with the natural world, just as I hoped to explore how they made sense of history. Rather than portraying students' thinking as irrational or deficient, this perspective assumed that students' ideas were logical ways of understanding their encounters with physical or biological phenomena- hence the older term "misconceptions" had been rcplaced with "alternative conceptions." The analogy with historical thinking is not an exact one, because students' encounters with the past are more socially mediated than their experiences with heat or gravity, but I nonetheless hoped to draw upon this perspective by looking for internal consistency in students' ideas rather than only describing their shortcomings. This is not to say that students' thinking could not be evaluated for both strengths and weaknesses, but I made such evaluations based on the affordances and constraints (Wertsch, 1998) of their ideas, as Linda and I would later describe them (Barton & Levstik, 2004). Science researchers, for example, assume that, although students' conceptions are logical ones, their ideas do not allow them to explain the full range of relevant phenomena (Roth, 1990). In a similar way, in each of the following three chapters I identify weaknesses in students' historical thinking, but I do so by explaining how their ideas limit their understanding of certain kinds of historical topics. I also hoped not just to describe students' ideas but to reach some conclusions about factors that may have influenced their thinking, just as science researchers have done. (By contrast, studies of progression and expert/novice distinctions rarely provide theoretical explanations for less-developed ideas.) Conclusions are always tenuous in the kind of descriptive research I was doing, however, because it is impossible to control for relevant variables. A researcher may claim, for example, that students learned to write argumentative essays because of the graphic organizer their teacher provided, but if all students used the same aid, then there is no comparison group against which to measure their performance. In order to strengthen conclusions in descriptive research, then, it is necessary to link them to relevant theory. A theory that explains how graphic organizers improve writing, for example, provides a foundation for conclusions, even when the design of a study does not rule out alternate explanations. For an explanatory theory of students' historical thinking, I again turned to Seixas (1993), who argued that experiences outside school-particularly in

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students' underlying approach to history. Linda's and my previous research had also demonstrated the importance of a variety of contexts in students' learning, and so this seemed like a potentially productive framcwork for my dissertation research. Not only did Seixas's theory call attention to the need to ask students about their experiences outside school, it also suggested ways in which I might be able to link data within and across the six elements of historical thinking. If! found consistent characteristics in students' thinking, that is, I might be able to explain those patterns by showing how they reflected the social contexts in which students had learned about history. Ultimately, however, the theoretical explanations in the next three chapters are uneven. I make only occasional references to social context, and the portion of my dissertation focusing most directly on that topic (Barton, 1995) was rejected for publication so many times that I finally gave up on it. (Those findings became part of a later article, published here as Chapter 16.) Yet all findings require theoretical explanation, and I make a clear attempt at this only in Chapter 9, where I explain students' story-like simplifications by referring to theories of memory, story grammar, and narrative. In Chapter 10, I explain students' failure to make use of evidence by noting the potential influence of social context, but I do nothing to explain why they were so adept at analyzing the sources themselves~a finding in direct contrast to previous research and one that cries out for explanation. In retrospect, the theory that would explain students' success seems obvious: In a classroom context, students had access to the kind of scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1978; Rogoff, 1990) that is lacking in clinical interviews. I don't know why I didn't develop that explanation when I wrote the dissertation or resulting article. More baffiing still is why I provided no theoretical explanation whatsoever in Chapter 8, which describes students' focus on individual intentions and motivations. This aspect of students' thinking can easily be explained by Donaldson's theory that children best understand situations that make "human sense." As I pointed out in Chapter 4, Donaldson's book Children's Minds (1978) was one of the first works Linda told me to read, and I have always regarded it as a paragon of scholarship, one with clear relevance to history education. Yet I do not cite it~or any related theory~either in my dissertation or in Chapter 8. Don't ask me why, because I don't know. Although looking back on this work causes me to cringe somewhat at my lack of theory, I feel more satisfied with the connections I make to previous research. Any study~small or large, qualitative or quantitative~contributes to scholarly knowledge only when situated within a larger body of work. After presenting any set of findings, it is up to the researcher to explain how those findings confirm, contradict, or refine previous empirical studies in the field, and this is a major element of the discussion section in each of the following three chapters, as I make specific comparisons with research not only in history education but in science education, economic and political understanding, reading comprehension, and even oral kinship traditions. families~shaped

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Of course when I wrote my dissertation in 1994, it was easier to have read most of the work on history education than it is today, when there are well over 200 such publications. On the other hand, in the early 1990s it also was harder to see patterns in previous work; sometimes it seemed as though each study of historical teaching and learning was diflerent, and each new study proceeded almost from scratch. Today, research in the field has begun to yield some fairly consistent findings (Barton, 2008), and so it should be easier for researchers to identify patterns that will allow them to systematically extend previous work; indeed, there is no longer any reason to conduct a study of history education from scratch. Our field, like any other, will develop robust and meaningful traditions only when new studies build on previous empirical findings.

References Barton, K. C. (1994). Historical understanding among elementary children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kentucky, Lexington. Barton, K. C. (1995). "A1y mom taught me": the situated nature ofhistorical understanding. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, April. Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED 387404. Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (2004). Teaching history jor the common good. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Barton, K. C. (2008). Students' ideas about history. In L. S. Levstik & C. A. Tyson (Eds.), Handbook ofresearch on social studies. New York: Routledge. Brown,]. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42. Cunningham, D. L. (2006). Capturing candor: Accessing teachers' thinking about the cultivation of historical empathy. In K. C. Barton (Ed.), Research methods in social studies education: Contemporary issues and perspectives (pp. 183-206). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Donaldson, M. (1978). Children's minds. New York: W. W. Norton. Freedman, R. (1992). Immigrant kids. New York: Scholastic. Glaser, B. G. (1992). Emergence vs.forcing: Basics ofgrounded theory analysis. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press. Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. (1967). 7hediscovery ofgrounded theory. Chicago: Aldine. Glaser, R. (1984). Education and thinking: The role of knowledge. American Psychologist, 39,93-104.

Levinson, R. (1985). Watch the stars come out. New York: Dutton. Levstik, L. S. (1986). The relationship between historical response and narrative in a sixth-grade classroom. 7heory and Research in Social Education, 14, 1-19. McCall, A. L., & Ristow, T. (2003). Teaching state history: A guide to developing a multicultural curriculum. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Ncw York: Oxford University Press. Roth, K.]. (1990). Developing meaningful conceptual understanding in science. In B. F.Jones & L. Idol (Eds.), Dimensions of thinking and cognitive instruction (pp. 139-75). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Seixas, P. (1993). Historical understanding among adolescents in a multicultural setting. Curriculum Inquiry, 23, 301-27. Seixas, P. (1996). Conceptualizing the growth of historical understanding. In D. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), Handbook qfeducation and human development: New models qfleaming, teaching, and schooling (pp. 765-83). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Strauss, A., & Corbin, j. (1990). Basics qf qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Van Maanen,j. (1988). Tales qfthefield: On writing ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development qf higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Wertsch,j. V. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 8

"Bossed around by the queen" Elementary students' understanding of individuals and institutions In history

Keith C. Barton

Over the past decade, many scholars have called for an increase in the amount of history taught in elementary school, and the recent national standards in history recommend that extensive historical content be taught throughout the elementary grades. I To teach any subject, educators must start with an understanding of how children make sense of the topic; but although impressive achievements have been made in examining the content of students' ideas in fields such as mathematics and science, research on their knowledge and understanding of history is still in its early stages-particularly at the elementary level. Some patterns, however, recently have begun to emerge from this work. It has become clear, for example, that even young children know about and are interested in history;2 and although some studies emphasize the disorganized nature of students' historical thinking,3 other work points to more consistently structured aspects of their thought. 4 The yearlong, qualitative investigation reported here of 4th and 5th graders in two elementary classrooms extends and refines one of the emerging conclusions in the analysis of elementary children's historical thinking-their tendency to see historical events in terms of the personal intentions and interactions of individuals and to ignore the role of societal institutions such as government and the economy. These findings are consistent not only with other studies of children's historical understanding but also with research on political socialization and on children's understanding of economics. Students' focus on individuals can lead to significant omissions or misconceptions in their understanding of history, and instruction in the elementary grades should be carefully designed to help students develop the understandings necessary to study the topic meaningfully. These findings suggest that students' study of history may best be accomplished within the context of an integrated social studies curriculum.

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Design of the study Purpose This study investigated the content and structure of elementary students' historical thinking and identified how their thinking influenced participation in instructional activities. One purpose of the study was to identify any ideas about history that students held prior to instruction-a goal similar to work on "misconccptions" or "alternative conceptions" in science education. 5 But whereas other recent studies have investigated students' prior ideas in history," the project reported here went beyond such research in two principal ways. First, this project investigated not only students' ideas about established topics in the upper elementary curriculum (such as European explorers and the American Revolution), but also their understanding of less commonly taught issues (such as the history of race and gender relations and of technological change). Second, the study attempted not only to establish a baseline of prior understanding but also to examine how that understanding influenced students' participation in instructional activities-how students interpreted the historical content they encountered at school in light of their previous ideas. This study was not an evaluation of the instructional effectiveness of the teachers in these two classrooms, and no attempt was made to investigate systematically their instructional goals or to measure students' achievement of them. Given the lack of empirical research on elementary instruction in history (particularly at the outset of this study), such an attempt would have been premature.) The focus was therefore cognitive rather than pedagogical; the study sought to establish what aspects of students' thinking must be taken into account in planning instruction, rather than to evaluate whether these teachers had already formulated effective means for doing so. Such research has substantial implications for teaching, for only by identifying students' prior ideas can effective curricular and instructional choices be made. The following report will indicate some of the problems that students' conceptions created. This study also did not seek to determine whether elementary students can or cannot learn history, or to establish the "level" of their thought. While some older studies concluded that history-defined in terms of Piaget ian stages-was beyond the capability of young children,8 more recent work emphasizes the range and complexity of historical thinking and points to the multiple components of such thought (e.g., the use of evidence, the ability to take the perspective of people in the past, the recognition of agency, and the construction of a purpose for knowing history), as well as to the socially situated nature of each of these components.0 Attempting simplistically to establish whether children can or cannot understand history distorts the field beyond recognition; children clearly do understand history-the important issues are what they understand and how they understand it. The present study is but one part of a broader research project that has identified both impressive strengths that formal instruction can build on and refine 10 and formidable obstacles that will require

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careful attention from teachers and curriculum planners. I I Although the present study focuses on one of these obstacles, it should by no means be taken as a general indictment of children's ability to learn history.

Setting, population, and methods This research was conducted in the classrooms of Amy Leigh and Tina Reynolds, two teachers recommended for their innovative and activityoriented instruction. (With their consent, I have used the teachers' real names. All students' names have been replaced with pseudonyms to protect their privacy and that of their families.) Their school is near Cincinnati, in a longestablished suburban community consisting primarily of stable residential neighborhoods. The students reflected the racial and socioeconomic makeup of the community: All were of European American descent, and most came from middle-class or upper-middle-class socioeconomic backgrounds; a large portion had parents with college degrees and jobs in professional or managerial fields. On the other hand, slightly more than 10 percent of the students lived in the community's small public housing projects, and thus the range of socioeconomic backgrounds in the classes was wide. The overall academic achievement of students in the school was high, and the school scored among the top lOin the state in each of the first three years of the state's new testing program (the year of this study and the two preceding years). Both teachers described their classrooms as including students with a range of academic abilities, but they considered most to be average or above average academically. These classrooms provided extensive opportunities for insight into students' historical thinking. Both teachers considered themselves interested in history, and both devoted a great deal of time to the topic. Neither used textbooks but instead conveyed content through trade books, primary sources, and their own explanations, combined with student-centered projects, role plays and simulations, and open-ended writing assignments (often written from the perspective of people alive at the time). Their teaching accorded well with general principles of effective subject-matter instruction; rather than attempting to cover a large amount of miscellaneous information and expecting students to remember isolated facts, for example, they took time to plan sustained instruction in a few topics that they considered important. In addition, both teachers consistently engaged in interactive scaffolding of students' learning. Rarely, for example, did they tell students exactly what to do or how to do it; rather, they used questions to help students devclop and improve their own assignments. Both also encouraged class and small-group discussion and expected students to respond thoughtfully to their questions and to each other. 12 Students engaged in a variety of instructional activities related to several historical topics. At the beginning of the year they collected information on their personal histories and developed timelines and presentations about their lives. They also spent several weeks working in groups to investigate changes in

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aspects of everyday life (sports, work, household technology, cars, etc.) through the use of books, artifacts, and interviews. Students also studied topics such as the Salem witch trials, relations between European settlers and Native Americans, daily life in the colonial era, the American Revolution, and immigration into the United States near the beginning ofthis century. 13 In order to investigate students' historical thinking, I used three principal techniques- interviews with students (both formal, semistructured interviews and informal discussions), classroom observation and participation (including frequent discussions with their teachers regarding what students knew and were able to do), and analysis of students' written assignments. During the formal interviews, I showed students a series of pictures from American history, asked them to put them in order and to talk about the reasons for their placement, and then asked a series of questions about their understanding of history and about what they had done in class during the year. 14 I observed extensively in each classroom. Doing so allowed me to ask much more specific, probing questions during interviews and provided insight into how students' responses related to what they had heard or read in class. The chief advantage of participant observation was that it allowed me to observe students in a much wider range of contexts than interviews alone could have done. Rather than seeing only their responses to my artificial stimuli in interviews, I was able to watch and talk with students as they engaged in their everyday classroom activities. Because students engaged in so many group projects, and because their teachers actively encouraged open-ended, thoughtful discussion of topics, my presence in the classroom provided me with innumerable opportunities to record informal and spontaneous comments by students. While educational researchers often take the role of nonparticipant observers who attempt to position themselves unobtrusively and not to interfere in instruction, I explicitly took a much more active role. In addition to working with the teachers to plan lessons and locate resources, I frequently taught or cotaught lessons, and even more frequently interjected comments, questions, and observations during class- a practice that the teachers actively encouraged and that fit well with the discussion-oriented nature of their instruction and with the generally open feeling of their classes. When students were engaged in individual or group work I often took on the same role as their teachers- probing students' understanding, asking them questions about the way they carried out the assignment, and providing them with the help they needed. IS In addition to analyzing field notes and interview transcripts, I read a total of 278 written compositions that students produced as part of their regular classroom instruction. Both teachers gave frequent written assignments in history. Since these assignments were designed to prepare students for the state's assessment program-which included writing portfolios and openended questions in history-they were not of the traditional "fill in the blank"

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or "answer the questions at the end of the chapter" variety. Instead, assignments usually asked students to draw conclusions supported by evidence (for example, "How has the United States changed over the last 200 years?") or to put themselves in the place of people in history (for example, by writing a letter to a magistrate in Salem protesting a family member's innocence of witchcraft).

Analysis I drew conclusions from this data through a process of analytic induction. After completing the classroom observations, I scanned field notes, interview transcripts, and student compositions in order to identify an initial set of broad coding categories; these categories were based on the aspects of historical thinking identified by Seixas,16 on the preliminary impressions I developed during field work, and on emerging patterns in the data. The data were then subjected to a more systematic content analysis, in which I grouped units of data according to these initial categories, many of which were broken down, combined, or added to during the course of coding. The coded data were analyzed using means sometimes referred to as cross-case analysis and constant comparison; I grouped the data from different students responding to the same questions or tasks, identified patterns or regularities, and then looked for evidence of these patterns (including a systematic search for negative or discrepant evidence) across different situations, tasks, and interviews. This resulted in a set of descriptive generalizations about students' thinking, which were then combined into broader analytic domains; I used these patterns to develop the materials and probing questions used in the final set of interviews with students, and I asked the teachers (and in some cases, students) for their feedback on my observations. (The resulting data were coded and analyzed in the same way described above.) The use of several different methods of data collection, as well as my lengthy and intensive involvement in the classrooms, significantly strengthens the validity of the study's findings. The variety of ways I collected data, for example, reduces the chance of sampling error; I interviewed and observed students during different times of the day and throughout the school year, included all students in observations and informal intervicws (and nearly all in formal interviews), and recorded their responses to a wide variety of classroom activities and interview questions. In addition, my active role in the class (combined with the collaborative atmosphere the teachers created) helped establish a significant degree of trust and rapport with students; as a result, their comments during interviews and class activities consistently appeared to be genuine and sincere responses to an interested adult-rather than selfconscious or artificial reactions to an unknown researcher. Finally, the frequency of my involvement with the students and their teachers helped ensure that I was observing representative school behavior rather than exceptional patterns due solely to my presence.

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Results Throughout the year, students showed little understanding of the role in history of social institutions such as government or the economy. Rather, they conceptualized historical topics in terms of the intentions and interactions of individuals. When discussing the history of race and gender relations, for example, students pointed to the role of famous people in changing individual attitudes. Similarly, in explaining changes in fashion and technology, students looked only to the motivations and intentions of inventors rather than to broader social or economic trends. And in studying the American Revolution , students displayed little understanding of issues of taxation, representation, or the relationship between England and the colonies; instead, they interpreted the conflict as a contest of wills between individuals who were upset that they were not getting their way. Because their encounters with these topics had taken place in very different contexts, the consistency of their responses suggests that this was a key characteristic of their understanding of history.

History of race and gender relations At the beginning of the year, students already knew that women and minorities were treated differently in the past; they had learned about these topics from television and movies, from discussions with their parents, and from previous instruction at school. Although the history of race and gender relations did not occupy a great deal of instructional time during this study, these topics interested students and occasionally were a focus of instruction. Around the time of the Martin Luther King,Jr., holiday, the classes watched and discussed a video, A Timefor Justice, that focused on the collective actions of African Americans in the 1950s to end segregation and other forms of institutional discrimination. In one class, students became interested in the topic of slavery when their teacher read a biography of George Washington, so she then read selections from !frou Traveled on the Underground RailroadY And near the end of the year, to give students experience with primary sources, one teacher led students in discussing a set of letters from Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams, during the Constitutional Convention. Race and gender relations, however, were never a sustained and systematic topic of study. When asked to explain the history of race and gender relations, students drew from these diverse sources to create accounts that focused on the actions and intentions of individuals. In explaining their understanding of discrimination, students referred not to societal influences such as laws, politics, or economics, but to individual attitudes. Kenny, for example, observed that "people wanted other people to do their work, because they started getting lazy; they got Black people-since they thought Black people weren't as good as White people and that- they wouldn't give them very good clothing or food or anything, and then they would have to do their work, for the White people."

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Similarly, Tonya noted that African Americans were slaves because "the White people were being greedy," and Laura thought women were treated differently in the past "cause men would not share." Mandy also thought that women were treated differently because men "were bossier, like, they made the women do stuff that the men should do also." In discussing historical changes in these areas, students also focused on individuals, particularly the efforts of famous people. Susan said that slavery ended "because Abraham Lincoln changed i t";Jean pointed out that "Abraham Lincoln set them free , and now we like them much better"; and Curtis said that Lincoln "was trying to get the Blacks to stop being slaves and stuff." Students also often mentioned Martin Luther King,jr., as having brought about these changes. In the following interview (conducted at the beginning of the year), Kenny and Kathy explicitly address the role of famous people in bringing about changes in attitudes: 18 We found out it's not fair to women to stay at home and do all the work, while the men go to work and get paid for it [inaudible] . Now the father and mother both can work with jobs and get more money. INTERVIEWER: SO why do you think people decided that it wasn't fair? Why do you think that now people think that's not fair, and a long time ago . .. KATHY: Because they used to treat Black people like that. Till Martin Luther King came along, and he stopped that. KENNY : And now there are people like Martin Luther King, but for women's rights. INTERVIEWER: Why do you think there are people like that now, and there weren't a long time ago? KENNY: I think some people, presidents, Abraham Lincoln, people have changed that over the years. Important people, famous people, have changed that over the years, and given other people their rights. KENNY:

Similarly, during another interview later in the year, Michael explained how African Americans were treated differently in the past, and in the following passage he and Dwayne explain why that has changed: So you think that's something that's changed over time? Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Why do you think that's changed? MICHAEL: Martin Luther King. DW A YN E: And just the presidents. INTERVIEWER: What do you mean? DW A YN E: Like, they make change; like, what's best for the world. INTERVIEWER: MICHAEL:

Nichole also pointed to the influence of Martin Luther King:

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Well, he said a speech, and then everybody started realizing that the Black people were the same as them-and they thought they were just animals and stuff-and they started realizing that they were the same as them, they needed to treat them how they would want to be treated; they have feelings and all that stuff, too. Kathy even suggested that Martin Luther King was responsible for changes in women's rights: "He probably changed it, because Black people didn't have rights, and the women didn't have rights either."

History

of everyday life

Students also focused on individuals when they studied changes in everyday life- areas such as clothes, games, sports, food, medicine, and entertainment. Once again, students began the year with some background knowledge of these topics, and both classes spent several weeks investigating them further as they prepared individual essays and group displays for a "History Museum." Students themselves were largely responsible for the content of their investigations: working in groups, they chose topics, developed lists of questions that interested them, identified resources, took notes, and organized their information into displays. Their teachers worked extensively with students to help them plan and conduct these inquiries, but they provided no direct historical instruction to students; instead, they encouraged students to make observations and draw their own conclusions from the sources they consulted (which included trade books, encyclopedias, physical artifacts, and family and community members). Most of these projects focused on technology and material culture, and nearly all were purely descriptive; students described changes over time but did not address the reasons behind these changes. When asked in interviews to explain their understanding of change, students again pointed to the efiorts of individuals. Brandon, for instance, said that machines had changed "because we have more technology, since Thomas Edison and everything has come along; they didn't have that back then." Charles said that transportation had changed over time "because a person invented the car and everything," and Susan also thought that cars had changed because "someone came into the world, and they were smart, and they just thought that [pointing to a picture of an old car] wasn't enough car, like, you could only carry two people, so they thought it wasn't enough, or they thought it was just too hard to drive." And Brett noted that baseball used to be played without gloves, but since the ball could hurt your hand, "a smart person came up with gloves." In explaining why these inventions arose, students did not suggest connections to broader economic or social changes but only to the motivations of individuals. Dwayne, for example, thought that things change "because they're just, like, inventing new, trying to invent new things s? they could be rich."

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Similarly, Travis said that things have changed "cause there's been a lot of, like, inventors, and, like, lazy people-not that I'm calling inventors lazy people, but they just want life to be easier-so they try to invent easier ways of doing things." Curtis provided one ofthe few exceptions to this belief that technological developments can be attributed to the discrete efforts of particularly smart individuals: When asked what he wondered about in history, he said, "Cars and stuff; I still wonder how they came up with the idea of them, because it's, like, one person didn't just say, 'Hey, let's make a car today,' or anything like that."

The American Revolution The most striking instance of students' focus on individuals came as they studied the events leading to the American Revolution. 19 Students knew very little about this topic as the year began, and they relied almost entirely on their teacher (and this researcher) for information. To prepare students for anticipated instructional activities (such as a debate over colonial taxation), the teacher explained the sources of tension between England and the North American colonies; over the course of several days, she described the expansion of French and English settlement, the series of wars in the colonies between the two countries, the taxes instituted by the British to pay for protection of the colonies, and the American colonists' resentment of being taxed without being represented in Parliament. As students responded to questions during these explanations, it became clear that their understanding of the topic was different than what their teacher had anticipated. Although she emphasized conflicts between political entities and over political principles, students' responses focused on individuals. When asked to predict the result of French and English expansion in North America, for example, several students thought the settlers themselves would get into a war because they "didn't like each other that much"; Kathy thought they would be mad at each other because they didn't understand each other's language. One student who was cast as an English settler during a role-play noted that the English wanted more land "so we can build more houses back in England and buy jewels for the king and queen." Frequently referring to the French and English as "teams," students displayed little awareness that the French and Indian Wars occurred because two countries were at war over territory rather than because individual settlers ran into each other and got mad. It also became clear that students had little understanding of what taxes are, who establishes them, how they are collected, or what they are used for.20 Realizing how crucial this was to the study of the Revolution, the teacher deviated from her plans for several days to engage the class in discussion, explanation, and simulations on the topic of taxation. Although most students were then able to explain the function of taxes-as well as to explain that England

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increased taxes on the colonies in order to pay for the French and Indian still failed to understand accurately why the colonists were upset about these taxes. During her explanation of taxation, the teacher showed students a page of illustrations on the topic from an encyclopedia; these included a cartoon of a woman beating a colonial tax collector with a broom, and this image seemed to provide students with their central understanding of the conflict over taxation. Students consistently maintained that colonists did not like the taxes because the tax collectors came and surprised them in their homes. Despite their teacher's repeated assertions to the contrary, many students adamantly maintained that colonists were upset because they weren't given enough warning that they would have to pay taxes. In trying to help students understand why people today pay their taxes without starting a war, the teacher emphasized that now citizens elect representatives who make the laws governing taxation, and the colonists could not do so. Students' understanding of government and representation was as undeveloped as their understanding of taxation; but again, after days of explanation and discussion, they were able to explain in a basic way how legislators are elected and how laws are made. 2 ! Nonetheless, many students held fast to their belief that people today don't object to taxes as strongly as the colonists did because now they know that they will have to pay, and they have time to prepare. Several others~perhaps convinced by their teacher's repeated assertion that being surprised had nothing to do with it~thought the key problem with taxation in the colonies was that taxes were too high, and the colonists didn't have the money to pay them. As Charles said, "People pay taxes now because they're not coming around and taking your most valuable things." Students' newly developing understanding of taxation and representation had little impact on them as they met in small groups to prepare for a debate over the issue of independence for the colonies. Students on both sides of the issue consistently failed to consider the importance of representation and displayed no understanding of the governmental relationship between England and the colonies. The colonial side in the debate, for example, simply tried to come up with excuses for why they should not have to pay taxes, such as, "They fought the war, why should we have to pay?" Similarly, the British side could not imagine what the colonists would say, other than that the taxes were too high . Once it was explained to them that the colonists would be upset because they could not vote, students on the British side decided they would just let them vote. It also took a long time to convince the colonial group that they needed to focus on the issue of representation; they planned simply to tell the British that they would payoff what they owed in monthly amounts, and then they were going to be their own country. When asked what they were going to do when the British told them they couldn't just be their own country, it was obvious they had not thought about that possibility, and they were adamant the British could not do that. As Gary said, "We're in charge of our own stum" When it

Wars~they

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was explained that in fact the British were in charge and were in a position to prevent the colonies from becoming their own country, students refused to accept it; they seemed to think that England was just some kind of a big bully. Brandon asserted, "They're not in charge of us!" and Kathy explained that they would tell them, "We don't care about your reasons, we're going to go off and make our own government." Although students eventually appeared to make progress in developing arguments that focused on the political issues involved, they made little use of these arguments once the debate began; the debate itself did not amount to much more than one side saying, "We don't want to pay," and the other responding, "You have to." In the other classroom as well, the debate amounted to little more than a contest of wills. The colonists maintained that they didn't want the protection of British troops, so they shouldn't have to pay for it. John (representing the British) asked the colonists, "Why did you leave in the first place?" and received the following series of responses: JENNY: Cause you let us leave, so it's your fault if you're mad at us now. JESSE: We wanted to have freedom from you guys. NICHOlE: But we got more taxes. TRAVIS: That's why we left, because we didn't want taxes on our tea. DARREN: We still are part of your country, but we want to be independent.

You wouldn't want your mom hanging around all the time. JENNY: How would you feel if someone took all your money and gave it

away, and you wouldn't have money to buy food? Exasperated by students' lack of attention to the political issues involved, the teacher interrupted the debate to explain to students just how far off base their arguments were (something I never saw her do on any other occasion). As she discussed the issues with students, they continued to display fundamental misconceptions about the economic and political relationships between England and the colonies- including the belief that it was the English government that directly supplied the colonies with provisions, and confusion over why the colonies could not buy goods from some other country with lower taxes. Fifth-grader Nichole aptly summarized students' understanding of the Revolution when she noted in an interview, "If those people wouldn't'a fought for us and got our freedom, we'd still be bossed around by the queen and stuff."

Discussion Students in this study consistently focused on individual actions and intentions in history and ignored or misunderstood the role of political, economic, or other societal institutions. The variety of contexts in which this pattern emerged suggests that it was neither a peripheral aspect of their understanding nor a result of poor instruction, but a central characteristic of their perception of

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historical information. Students had learned about the history of race and gender relations, for example, from many sources, most of them outside their current classroom; they drew from those diverse sources of information to construct an explanation that focused on the role of famous people in changing individual attitudes. Their knowledge of the American Revolution, on the other hand, came almost entirely from classroom instruction; but although their teachers explicitly addressed the political and economic context of the conflict, students continued to think in terms of people surprised in their homes by tax collectors. And when students independently investigated changes in everyday life, they concluded that these changes had come about because of the motivations of individual inventors. Other research on elementary children's historical understanding reveals similar patterns. Brophy, VanSledright, and Bredin, for example, found that when students began 5th grade, they thought of European explorers of North America as individual hobbyists or entrepreneurs rather than as commissioned agents of European governments. After instruction on the topic, students knew that explorers were commissioned but failed to understand the larger political or economic contexts of their voyages; they attributed the reasons for exploration to the personal motives of monarchs rather than the pursuit of national interests. Similarly, after studying the colonization of North America, most students did not understand the economic principles or processes involvedinstead attributing colonization to personal rivalry among monarchs- and did not understand that the colonies were governed by European nations. 22 Findings from other studies can be explained in much the same way. Students interviewed by McKeown and Beck had read about "no taxation without representation" but interpreted their reading in terms of colonists getting angry, a British colonel being strong, the king ending taxes, and people "quieting down."21 Although McKeown and Beck refer to this as a "surface" narrative, it actually amounts to the transformation of a political narrative into a personal one; students focused on individual actions and intentions rather than on political and economic structures and processes. Similarly, Britt and her colleagues found that one of the most common problems in students' retelling of their reading about the building of the Panama Canal was that they focused on a "subs tory" of the passage they had read rather than the "main story"- yet every single student told one specific substory, that of how workers overcame disease. The main story that they failed to tell was about how the United States received permission to build the canal.24 Clearly this was not a reading problem, as Britt and her colleagues imply. Students did not simply miss the main point; they interpreted the text the way they understand history- by ignoring political institutions and focusing on individual actions and intentions. Nor are such interpretations limited to 4th and 5th graders. Lee, Dickinson, and Ashby found that when students from ages 7 to 14 were asked to choose which factors explained the Roman success in invading Britain, many chose

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statements that provided reasons for the invasion but had no direct causal relationship to its success. When asked to explain their answers, many students "converted" these reasons into direct causes by pointing to the individual desire or determination of the emperor or the Roman troops. Students made suggestions such as, "Claudius would shout at them and threaten to kill them if they didn't win" and "Everybody kept on laughing at Claudius so he wanted to show that he was a good emperor."25 Similarly, Hallden found in his observations of a Swedish secondary classroom that students explained historical events by examining the possible motives individuals had for their actions, and they were impervious to other types of explanations. Despite the fact that instruction in the class focused on social forces and institutions, students interpreted information only at the level of the actions and motives of individuals. 26 Finally, Carretero and his colleagues found that both 6th and 8th graders were more likely to identify intentional, personal factors than structural, political, or economic forces in explaining historic events. 27 These findings are also consistent with research on the general development of children's concepts about society. Studies consistently show that elementary students have little understanding of political institutions and economic systems. Research on the political socialization of children, for example, has repeatedly found that although they widely recognize the president and various political symbols (such as the flag and George Washington), they have little understanding~particularly before 5th grade~of political parties, taxes, the legislative and judicial branches of the government, or the difference between governmental and nongovernmental institutions. 2B Research on students' economic understanding also indicates that before age 11, most students do not know how wages or prices are arrived at, and they do not know how money flows through commercial exchanges; they often fail to understand, for example, what happens to the money paid for goods in a store and think of banks as simple storage places for coins and bills. 29 Furth describes the development of children's thinking about such social institutions as a move from personal to societal thinking: Younger children confuse personal and social roles, think of societal events as the result of the personal wishes of individuals, and have no understanding of government or community, while older children come to see the societal life of a community as an interrelated whole with institutions, roles, and customs. Furth argues that most children at ages 9 and 10 (the age of most students in this study) still have an incomplete understanding of the societal aspects of human life. 30 If students have little understanding of social institutions, then it is not surprising that they interpret history in terms of individual actions and intentions. Yet such interpretations are in important respects misinterpretations and suggest the need for explicit attention in the elementary history curriculum. The civil rights movement, for example, was not primarily an attempt to change individual attitudes, nor were its accomplishments the result of the efforts of a few individuals. The civil rights movement addressed the legality of

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institutional segregation, such as discrimination in public accommodations, electoral procedures, and the judicial system. The movement itself consisted of collective political and economic efforts and depended on the organizational efforts of churches and other social organizations. Understanding the movement requires that students understand what both "civil" and "rights" mean; they need to learn about the collective action of citizens to change laws and institutional practices. Segregation affects individuals, and social movements depend on individuals; but if students think of the civil rights movement primarily as an attempt by Martin Luther King,jr., to change the prejudiced attitudes of European Americans, then they have misunderstood this part of history. Similarly, the American Revolution was not about people being surprised by tax collectors and hitting them over the head with brooms. The American Revolution was fought to change political systcms, and economic factorsmercantilism, taxation, boycotts-figured heavily in the conflict. Again, it was individuals who engaged in this dispute, and the Revolution had effects on individuals; but if students do not understand the institutional context within which these actions took place, then there is no reason for them to study the topic. The importance of the Revolution lies in its ability to shed light on the naturc of political and economic conflict; if students come away with no deeper understanding than that there was a war to keep people from being "bossed around by the queen," it cannot be said that they have understood the topic at all. The National Standards jor United States History repeatedly recognizes the importance of societal institutions in history. In studying the American Revolution, for example, students in 5th grade and above are expected, among other things, to explain the overhaul of English imperial policy following the Seven Years' '>\Tar; compare the arguments advanced by defenders and opponents of the new imperial policy on the traditional rights of English people and the legitimacy of asking the colonies to pay a share of the costs of empire; explain the major ideas expressed in the Declaration ofIndependence and their sources; analyze relationships with France, Holland, and Spain during the Revolution and the contributions of each European power to the American victory; and explain how the Revolution altered the social, political, and economic relations among different groups. Indeed, practically every standard is predicated on the assumption that students will understand political, economic, religious, and other societal institutions and forces. 31 Although the history standards for grades K-4 are less extensive and generally less specific than those for older students, they also include attention to the role of societal institutions in human affairs. Students in kindergarten and above are expected to explain the reasons for and effects of European exploration in the fifteenth and sixteenth century; explain that the U.S. government was formed by English colonists who fought for independence from England; and explain the importance of basic principles of American democracy, including equal protection of the law, majority rule, limitations on government,

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and representative government. Students in 3rd and 4th grade, meanwhile, are expected to describe major historical events in their states; analyze geographic, economic, and religious reasons for early exploration and settlement of their state or region; explain the migrations of Vietnamese, Cubans, and Haitians; and describe the signing of the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration of Independence, and the writing of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclamation.:J2 Each of these expectations requires that students understand basic societal institutions. Such understanding cannot be taken for granted. Both the present study and related research demonstrate that few students in 5th grade or before understand the nature and purpose of societal institutions or their role in human affairs. When students encounter historical content that revolves around those institutions, they interpret that content in light of their understanding of individual actions and intentions-and these interpretations may significantly distort the content they are expected to learn. In planning elementary history instruction, then, educators should remember that students must not only study content about particular events in the past, but also learn about the social relations that make those events meaningful. If students study the American Revolution without understanding taxation and representation, or study the civil rights movement without understanding legal segregation, they will fail to comprehend their history instruction in a meaningful way. These findings suggest that history instruction should take place within the context of an integrated social studies program rather than as a separate or isolated topic. If students learn about economic systems, the functions of government, the rights and responsibilities of citizens, and the interactions of individuals, groups, and institutions-all recommended in the curriculum standards of the National Council for the Social Studies-then they may be able to connect historical information to a meaningful network of social understanding. 33 The teachers in this study drew precisely that conclusion: They decided that in the future they would need to develop more fully students' understanding of taxation and representation and that they would need to do so before discussing the Revolution itself. Any topic in history requires attention to such issues. Studying the Civil War, for example, requires attention to (at the very least) the difference between state and federal government and the economics of staple crop production and industrial manufacture. Studying World War II requires attention to economic depression, political parties, and international relations. Studying the civil rights movement requires attention to legal constraints on individual behavior, the function of the Constitution and judicial system in developing and enforcing laws, and the role of organizations in promoting or impeding societal changes. Few topics in history- if any-can be understood solely by focusing on individuals. Such observations are not meant to imply that social studies content should expand to fill the entire elementary curriculum. But students already study

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topics that relate to societal institutions and relations-presidents, wars, heroes, exploration, and so on-and national standards in history recommend increasing the attention to such topics. Less often do students encounter the related social studies content necessary to make such historical study meaningful. This research indicates that if history is divorced from an integrated exploration of the institutional forms of social life, students may come away with understandings very different than teachers and curriculum planners intend. Simply increasing the amount of history students encounter is unlikely to increase the extent of their historical understanding.

Conclusions Throughout the year, students demonstrated little understanding of the role of societal institutions in shaping historical developments; instead, they looked solely to individual actions and intentions to explain what happened in the past. In explaining changes in material life, students pointed to the actions and motivations of individual inventors and had little sense of how changes related to wide social and economic patterns. Students also thought of changes in the treatment of women and minorities as being the result of changes in individual attitudes (due to the efforts of famous individuals), not a societal process that involved changes in laws and institutions. The clearest example of students' lack of attention to institutional factors arose during their study of the American Revolution. Despite constant attention to the underlying cause of the conflict, students showed little understanding of the governmental relationship between England and the colonies or of the significance of representation and taxation. In each case, students' focus on individuals stood in the way of more complete understandings of these topics. This research suggests that students should study history within the context of an integrated social studies program that addresses the societal context of human affairs rather than as an isolated topic that focuses solely on famous people and events.

Notes I. See e.g. Charlotte Crabtree, "Returning History to the Elementary Schools," in Historical Literacy: The Casefor History in American Education, Ed. Paul Gagnon and The Bradley Commission on History in the Schools (New York: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 173~87; Dianc Ravitch, "Tot Sociology, or What Happened to History in the Grade Schools?" American Scholar 56 (Summer 1987): 343~54; and National History Standards Project, National Standards for History for Grades K-4: Expanding Children's World in Time and Space (Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, 1994), National Standardsfor United States History: Exploring the American Experience (Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, 1994), and National Standardsfor World History: Exploring Paths to the Present (Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, 1994). 2. Jere Brophy, Bruce A. VanSledright, and Nancy Bredin, "Fifth-graders' Ideas About History Expressed Before and After Their Introduction to the Subject,"

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Theory and Research in Social Education 20 (Fall 1992): 440-89; Matthew Downey, "After the Dinosaurs: Elementary Children's Chronological Thinking" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April 1994); Linda S. Levstik and Keith C. Barton, '''They Still Use Some of Their Past': Historical Salience in Elementary Children's Historical Thinking," Journal of Curriculum Studies 28 (September/October 1996): 531-76; Linda S. Levstik and Christine C. Pappas, "Exploring the Development of Historical Understanding," Journal of Research and Development in Education 21 (Fall 1987): 1-15. 3. Margaret McKeown and Isabel Beck, for example, refer to 5th and 6th graders' knowledge of the American Revolution as consisting of "simple associations and a lack of connected structures," while Jere Brophy, Bruce A. VanSledright, and Nancy Bredin similarly point to "only spotty knowledge" and "bits and pieces of information" that are "not yet subsumed within a systematic network of knowledge." Margaret G. McKeown and Isabel L. Beck, "The Assessment and Characterization of Young Learners' Knowledge ofa Topic in History," American Educational Research Journal 27 (Winter 1990): 719; Jere Brophy, Bruce A. VanSledright, and Nancy Bredin, "What Do Entering Fifth Graders Know About U.S. History?" Journal ofSocial Studies Research 16/17 (Spring 1993): 2-19. 4. Keith C. Barton, "Elementary Students' Understanding of History-An Overview," Social Education 61 Uanuary 1997): 13-16; Keith C. Barton and Linda S. Levstik, '''Back When God Was Around and Everything': Elementary Children's Understanding of Historical Time," American Educational ResearchJournal33 (Summer 1996): 419-54; Linda S. Levstik, "The Relationship Between Historical Response and Narrative in a Sixth-grade Classroom," Theory and Research in Social Education 14 (Winter 1986): 1-19, and "Historical Narrative and the Young Reader," Theory into Practice 28 (Spring 1989): 114-19; Levstik and Barton, "Historical Salience"; Bruce A. VanSledright and Jere Brophy, "Storytelling, Imagination, and Fanciful Elab9ration in Children's Historical Reconstructions," American Educational Research Journal 29 (Winter 1992): 837-59. 5. See, for example, James F. Eaton, C. W. Anderson, and E. L. Smith, "Students' Misconceptions Interfere with Science Learning: Case Studies of Fifth-grade Students," Elementary School Journal 84 (March 1984): 365-79; Hugh Helm and Joseph D. Novak (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Seminar: Misconceptions in Science and Mathematics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1983); Peter W. Hewson and Mariana G. A. Hewson, "An Appropriate Conception ofT eaching Science: A View from Studies of Science Learning," Science Education 72 (October 1988): 597-614; Joseph Nussbaum and Shimshon Novick, "Alternative Frameworks, Conceptual Conflict and Accommodation: Toward a Principled Teaching Strategy," Instructional Science II (December 1982): 183-200. 6. See especially Jere Brophy, Bruce VanSledright, and Nancy Bredin, Fifth-graders' Ideas About European Exploration of the New World Expressed Bifore and Afler Stut{ying This Topic Within a Us. History Course, Elementary Subjects Center Series No. 78 (East Lansing, MI: Center for the Learning and Teaching of Elementary Subjects, Institute for Research on Teaching, College of Education, Michigan State University, 1992); Fifth-graders' Ideas About the English Colonies in America Expressed Bifore and Afler Stut{ying Them Within a Us. History Course, Elementary Subjects Center Series No. 80 (East Lansing, MI: Center for the Learning and Teaching of Elementary Subjects, Institute for Research on Teaching, College of Education, Michigan State University, 1992); Fifth-graders' Ideas About the Westward Expansion of the United States Prior to the Civil War Expressed Bifore and Afler Stut{ying the Topic Within a US. History Course, Elementary Subjects Center Series No. 82 (East Lansing, MI: Center for the

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Learning and Teaching of Elementary Subjects, Institute for Research on Teaching, College of Education, Michigan State University, 1992); and "What Do Entering Fifth Graders Know?"; Margaret G. McKeown and Isabel L. Beck, "The Assessment and Characterization of Young Learners' Knowledge of a Topic in History," American Educational Research Joumal 27 (Winter 1990): 688-726. 7. For recent empirical studies, see Linda S. Levstik, "Building a Sense of History in a First Grade Classroom," in Advances in Research on Teaching. vol. 4 of Research in Elementary Social Studies, Ed. Jere Brophy (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1993), pp. 131; Bruce A. VanSledright, "The Teaching-Learning Interaction in American History: A Study of Two Teachers and Their Fifth Graders," Joumal qfSociaZ Studies Research 19 (Spring 1995): 3-23. 8. Roy N. Hallam, "Logical Thinking in History," Educational Review 19 (June 1967): 183-202; "Piaget and Thinking in History," in New Movements in the Stuify and Teaching qf History, Ed. Martin Ballard (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), pp. 162-78; "Thinking and Learning in History," Teaching History 2, no. 8 (1972): 33746; see also the comments in Martin Booth, "Skills, Concepts, and Attitudes: The Development of Adolescent Children's Historical Thinking," History and Theory 22 (December 1984): 10 1-17. 9. See especially Peter Seixas, "Conceptualizing the Growth of Historical Understanding," in Handbook qf Education and Human Development: New ModeL, qf Leaming. Teaching. and Schooling, Ed. D. Olson and N. Torrance (Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 765-83; and "Historical Understanding Among Adolescents in a Multicultural Setting," Curriculum Inquiry 23 (Fall 1995): 301-27; see also Keith C. Barton, "'My Mom Taught Me': The Situated Nature of Historical Understanding" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, April 1995), and Levstik and Barton, "Historical Salience." 10. Barton, "The Situated Nature of Historical Understanding" and "Did the Devil Just Run out ofJuice? Elementary Children's Historical Perspective-taking Ability" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, April 1996). II. Keith C. Barton, "Narrative Simplifications in Elementary Children's Historical Thinking," in Advances in Research on Teaching: Vol. 6. History Teaching and Leaming, Ed. Jere Brophy (Greenwich, CT:JAI Press, 1996). 12. On principles of effective subject matter instruction, see especially Thomas L. Good and Jere Brophy, Looking in Classrooms (New York: Harper Collins, 1994); and Richard Prawat, "Teaching for Understanding: Three Key Attributes," Teaching and Teacher Education 5, no. 4 (1989): 315-28. 13. Other topics in history came up throughout the year outside the time set aside for formal history instruction. Near the Martin Luther KingJr. holiday, for example, both classes watched and discussed a video on the history of the civil rights movement. Historical fiction was also a prevalent part of students' reading experience. The 5th graders read both George Elizabeth Speare's The Sign qf the Beaver (Boston: Houghton Miffiin, 1983) and Michelle Margorian's Good Night, Mr. Tom (New York: Harper Collins, 1986) as part of their study of literature, and the 4th grade class read Theodore Taylor's The Cay (New York: Doubleday, 1969). Throughout the year, I frequently noticed students reading historical fiction independently. 14. I interviewed all students in groups of two and conducted four different series of interviews spaced throughout the school year. Over the course of the year, I interviewed 33 students during a total of 29 interviews; 14 students were interviewed more than once. (See Appendixes for a full description ofthe materials and protocol used.)

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IS. I observed on 63 occasions-beginning in August and continuing until March (the last time during the year when formal instruction was devoted to history)-for a total of approximately 90 hours (not including time spent in interviews). History was typically scheduled for an hour a day, three days a week, and I tried always to be there at the times it was scheduled; over the course of the year, I attended approximately 80 percent of the class sessions devoted to history. Special projects often began earlier or extended later than scheduled, and I tried to remain for those times whenever possible. I also accompanied the classes on three field trips related to history. 16. Seixas, "Historical Understanding." 17. Charles Guggenheim, A Timefor Justice: America's Civil Rights Movement (Montgomery, AL: Teaching Tolerance, 1992); Ellen Levine, If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad (New York: Scholastic, 1992). 18. To increase readability, responses that consist only of acknowledging partners' answers (such as "Yeah" or "Uh-huh") have been omitted. 19. During this unit of study, I observed primarily in the 4th grade classroom, and the following descriptions are based on those students except where otherwise noted. 20. This first became clear when the teacher began a chart comparing what taxes are used for now and what they would have been used for in the colonial era. The first student who volunteered gave examples of how taxes were used to build roads and pay teachers; the other students then decided that taxes were used to pay for all buildings and to pay all salaries. They did not understand the relationship between government and taxation, and they did not realize that the price they pay for an item at a store goes partly to pay suppliers, partly to pay taxes, and partly for profit. Many students, for example, thought that stores decide how much the tax will be, and there was little evidence that any students understood the concept of profit. Students also had difficulty differentiating between private businesses and government institutions. 21. Although students had heard of Congress, they did not know what it was; many believed that laws are made by the president, and that members of Congress are appointed by the president to "help him." One student even thought that the president is elected as the direct result of televised debates. 22. Brophy, VanSledright, and Bredin, Ideas About European Exploration. 23. Margaret G. McKeown and Isabel L. Beck, "Making Sense of Accounts of History: Why Young Students Don't and How They Might," in Teaching and Learning in History, Ed. Gaea Leinhardt, Isabel L. Beck, and Catherine Stain ton (Hillsdale, ~: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), pp. 1-26. 24. M. Anne Britt, Jean-Franc;ois Rouet, Mara C. Georgi, and Charles A. Perfetti, "Learning from History Texts: From Causal Analysis to Argument Models," in Teaching and Learning in History, Ed. Gaea Leinhardt, Isabel L. Beck, and Catherine Stainton (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), pp. 47-84. 25. Peter Lee, Alaric Dickinson, and Rosalyn Ashby, "Some Aspects of Children's Understanding of Historical Explanation" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, April 1995). 26. Olaf Hallden, "Learning History," Oxford Review of Education 12 (March 1986): 53-66; "On the Paradox of Understanding History in an Educational Setting," in Teaching and Learning in History, Ed. Gaea Leinhardt, Isabel L. Beck, and Catherine Stain ton (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), pp. 17-46. 27. Mario Carretero, LilianaJacott, Margarita Limon, Asuncion Lopez-Manjon, and Jose A. Leon, "Historical Knowledge: Cognitive and Instructional Implications," in Cognitive and Instructional Processes in History and the Social Sciences, Ed. Mario Carretero andJames F. Voss (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994), pp. 357-76.

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28. David Easton and Jack Dennis, Children in the Political System: Origins of Political Legitimation (New York: McGraw Hill, 1969); Fred I. Greenstein, Children and Politics.

29.

30.

31. 32. 33.

rev. Ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press): Robert D. Hess and Judith V. Torney, The Development of Political Attitudes in Children (Chicago: Aldine, 1967); Stanley W. Moare,James Lare, and Kenneth A. Wagner, The Child's Political World: A Longitudinal Perspective (New York: Praeger, 1985). Anna E. Berti and Anna S. Bombi, The Child's Construction of Economics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Gustav Jahoda, "The Development of Thinking About Socio-economic Systems," in The Social Dimension: European Developments in Social Psychology, vol. 1, Ed. Henri Tajfel (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 69-88. Hans G. Furth, The World of Grown-ups: Children's Conceptions of Society (New Yark: Elsevier, 1980). Jan Vansina reports similar observations among a number of groups in eastern Africa; he notes that although children by age 10 understand individual kinship relations and the corresponding appropriate behaviors, they do not fully understand the economic, political, and ritual relations among kinship groups until approximately age 15. Jan Vansina, "Memory and Oral Tradition," in The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History, Ed. Joseph Miller (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1980), pp. 262-79. National Standards for United States History: Exploring the American Experience (Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, 1994), pp. 72-80 and elsewhere. National Standardsfor Historyfor Grades K-4: Expanding Children's World in Time and Space (Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, 1994), especially pp. 41, 45, 48, 52, 55, 62. National Council for the Social Studies, Expectations ofExcellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies (Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies).

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Appendix A Procedure Students whose parents consented to their participation were interviewed in pairs in unused rooms of the school. After explaining the nature and purpose of the interview to students, I obtained their written assent and began recording the interviews; the tapes were later transcribed. I began the interviews by presenting students with two pictures from different times in American history (using one of the sets listed in Appendix B below), asking them to put them in order, and asking them to talk about the reasons for their placement; I presented the remaining pictures one at a time. After they had sequenced all the pictures, I asked students several questions both about the pictures and about their general understanding of history. I frequently probed students' comments at length. Most interviews took between 30 and 45 minutes.

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Appendix B Materials

Picture set A I. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Teenagers standing by a convertible, in front of a restaurant (1956) Family standing in front of a covered wagon in a grassy field (1886) Men and women in bathing suits on a beach, in front of a convertible (1924) Political cartoon depicting an urban street scene (1837) Family at home, sewing and reading (1937) Sawmill with colonial soldiers and Native Americans (1772) Urban schoolroom with teacher and children (1899) Large, modern building with people and contemporary cars (1993) Protesters at Pentagon (1967)

Picture set B I. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Men in early automobiles, in front of buildings (1895 and 1896) Television studio during Kennedy-Nixon debate (1960) Block party in suburban community (1970) Women's suffrage advocates, carrying pamphlets and banners (1913) African American family in front of small cabin (1862) Immigrants on deck of an ocean liner (1906) Two women in front of early television set (1931 ) Men cooking outdoors ncar cattle, horses, and covered wagons (1871) Lincoln and Union army officers in front of a tent (1861)

Picture set C I. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Column of cavalry and wagons in Dakota Territory (1874) African American teenager and crowd of Whites on a city street (1957) Urban riot with soldiers and large buildings (1844) Display room of an automobile dealership (1910) Family preparing dinner in a kitchen (1940) American and British officers (1816) Immigrants waiting for ferry at Ellis Island (1912) Exterior of passenger jet airplanes (1970s) Soldiers and antiwar protests (1969)

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Appendix C Interview protocol I interviewed students using the following open-ended protocol:

l.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Here are two pictures from different times. Take a few minutes to look them over. You may not know exactly what is going on in each picture. That is all right. I'm not interested in whether you know exactly what the picture is, but in how you decide how old the picture is or about when the picture could have happened. There are two things I would like you to do with these first two pictures on the table. First, I would like you to put these two pictures in time order. Please start with the picture that is from the longest time ago [point to the child's left], and then put the picture that is the closest to now right here [point to child's right]. You can start in just a moment. Second, while you are putting the pictures in order, I would like you to think out loud about why you are putting them in that order. What I mean is, I want you to explain to me what you are thinking while you are doing it. What things in the picture help you to decide which picture happened longest ago, or most recently. Do you have any questions before we start? Remember to tell what you are thinking as you are putting the pictures in order. Now I have some mote pictures. I am going to give them to you one at a time. For each one, tell me where you think it goes-in between two of them, or before or after, or at about the same time as one of them. Explain why you put them where you did, just as you did with the first two pictures. Do you have any questions about what you will be doing? Now that you have done all of them, are there any pictures you would like to move around? If you do, explain to me why you are moving them. [point to each picture.l When do you think this is? Did you think this was easy or hard to do? What things made it easy or hard? Which pictures did you think were the easiest to figure out? Why? Which pictures did you think were the hardest to figure out? Why? Which pictures did you think were most interesting? Why did you like that one [or thoseJ? If you could go back to visit any of these times, which would it be? Why? Which one would you not like to visit? Why?

Now I have some different kinds of questions that aren't just about the pictures. 1. 2.

What can you tell me about how things have changed over time? (How were things different a long time ago?) Why do you think those things have changed over time? (Why do you think things were different a long time ago?)

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3. Do you think people were different, or acted differently, in the past? Why? 4. How do people find out about how things were different in the past? 5. If someone were trying to find out about the past and got different answers, how could he or she decide what it was really like? 6. What do you think history is? 7. Why do you think history is something people study? 8. Do you like studying history? (Are there any things you've done this year in history that you like or don't like?) 9. Did you ever study history at school before this year? 10. Have you ever learned about history or the past or long ago outside of school? II. Those are all the questions I have for you. Do you have any questions for me, or any questions about the pictures?

Chapter 9

Narrative simplifications in elementary students' historical thinking Keith C. Barton

National standards both in social studies and in U.S. and world history call for the study of history throughout thc elementary grades. They recommend that students become familiar not only with the factual content of history but also with the nature of historical thinking and understanding (National Council for the Social Studies, 1994; National History Standards Project, 1994a, 1994b). Such recommendations represent a substantial change from the current pattern of instruction: At present, schools rarely devote much attention to history before fourth grade, and in the intermediate grades they typically emphasize a textbook-driven approach to coverage offactual details (Goodlad. 1984; Hammack et al., 1990; Shaver, Davis, & Helburn, 1978; Superka, Hawke, & Morrissett, 1980). Such a significant transformation of the curriculum would require extensive insight into how young children make sense of historical information, because instruction will be most effective if it builds on students' experience and takes into account the nature of their thinking in the area. But as Brophy, VanSledright, and Bredin (1993) point out, studies of children's thinking in the social studies is much less developed than in other curricular areas. Although recent research on historical understanding has yielded some consistent findings (Barton, 1997), the scope and detail of such work has yet to match that conducted in science and mathematics. One recurring theme in research on children's understanding of history is the importance of narrative form. Levstik and Pappas (1987) note that students as young as second grade consider history interesting when presented in the form of a story. Levstik (1986, 1989) also found that fifth and sixth graders were highly interested in historical fiction and biography and that their encounter with these forms of narrative led to particularly strong moral and emotional responses. VanSledright and Brophy (1992) noted that when asked to explain historical information, fourth and fifth graders tended to rely on the storytelling format with which they were familiar and that they often produced accounts that followed a logical narrative form but that mixed together accurate information with misconceptions and "imaginative elaborations" (p. 851). And Brophy, VanSledright, and Bredin (1992a, 1992b) found that students'

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understanding of American history was highly influenced by their encounter with literature and other story-like forms of presentation. Each of those studies dealt with students' encounters with particular historical narratives- --the battle of Gettysburg, the life of Helen Keller, the European exploration of the New World, and so on. The research reported here also identifies the impact of narrative but on a different aspect of children's historical thinking-their understanding of change over time. It deals less with their knowledge of specific episodes in the past than with their overall perception of historical trends, processes, and developments. The frequency with which these students simplified historical information into a narrative form- and the congruence of this simplification with research on the recall of fictional narratives- suggest a consistent pattern of thinking that calls for explicit attention in designing curricular content and instructional practices in the elementary grades. I

Results This research yiclded information on several aspects of children's historical thinking- including the kinds of knowledge they brought with them to school, the social context in which their ideas had developed, their ability to take the perspective of people in the past, and their understanding of historical causation (Barton, 1994a, 1994b, 1995, 1996). The present analysis focuses on just one aspect of their thinking- their tendency to simplify and distort information into a narrative form . Throughout the year, students' understanding of history regularly displayed three significant narrative patterns, each consistent with research on the comprehension and recall of fictional narratives. First, students thought of historical changes as having come about for purely logical reasons, as part of a rational development toward the present. Second, they placed all historical developments into a linear and uniform sequence of progress (or sometimes decline). Finally, students collapsed the spatial and temporal expanse of the past into a minimal number of people and events.

History as rational development toward the present At the beginning of the year, many students did not have clearly developed explanations for historical change. Sometimes the very fact of being old was taken as the reason why something was different; I asked Angie, for example, why she thought names in the past were different than those today, and she simply noted, "They're like old-fashioned." Similarly, when Tina asked students how several old appliances were different than modern ones, a student responded, "They're old-fashioned." In these cases, being "old-fashioned" seemed to be explanation enough. Even when students attempted to explain why things were different in the past, they sometimes displayed an almost teleological understanding of historical change- as though the past was just waiting

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for the present to happen. The "household technology" group, for example, included the following caption with their display of a candle: "The candle was like a substitute for awhile for the light bulb." Similarly, the "food" group explained that milk used to come in bottles because "they didn't have cardboard," and people had milk delivered to their house because "they didn't have that many stores back then." When I explicitly asked students why things had changed, though, most attempted to identify a reason. Since most of their examples of change over time were technological ones, their explanations usually straightforwardly identified "new inventions" or "coming up with new ideas." During class one day, for example, students had been discussing how bicycles looked in the past, and I asked why they thought they were different; someone said, "They hadn't come up with the ideas yet." Similarly, during an interview Michael explained that things change because "probably somebody had a problem [inaudible], and it changed something, kept on getting stuff like that, having better ideas and stuff." Jeremy also noted that "they just came up with new ideas," and Dwayne explained that things change because "they find more stuff, and there are people that invent more stuff, and back then they didn't have schools, so they weren't as smart as they are now, because of the schools." The equation of "coming up with new ideas" and "getting smarter" was a common one. Kenny, for example, explained that "there's gotten to be smarter people in the world" and went on to explain that there are "more inventions that'll help us through our lives"; similarly, Darren said, "They discovered how new things work and how you use them; we just got smarter." Students did not always mean by "smarter," though, that people actually had developed greater innate intellectual abilities. During a discussion among students about how the kind of wheels on cars had changed, for example, Donny said that it was "because they got smarter over the years." Another student noted that "they probably figured out the first ones were not as good as others," and Donny added that they didn't have as many chemicals in the past. I asked Donny what he meant when he said they weren't as smart, and he observed, "They were as smart as us, but they hadn't discovered some of the stuff." Students were highly resistant to attributing change to any factor other than a purely rational process. This tendency was particularly striking when I asked about changes in fashion. Heather, for example, suggested that styles had changed because "they got probably better materials to make things, like cotton." Similarly, in the following interview Kenny first attributes changes in fashion to technology: He thinks that we now have good materials (cotton, furs, and leather), whereas a long time ago they could only make clothes "from the animals." Both he and Curtis recognize that they cannot explain my example of other styles by resorting to technology, but Kenny still looks for another purely rational reason; Curtis, meanwhile, turns the discussion back to more obviously technological changes.

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Why have things changed? They've discovered more things, more technology, higher equipment from, I mean, they're getting stuff out of the rainforests, better medicines to keep people alive. INTERVIEWER: All right, why do you think fashion has changed? CURTIS: Because, look at over there [indicating a photograph] KENNY: Well, really, still again, they're getting good- like, now we wear modern coats and furs and we wear leather jackets and everything, and we have good clothing made out of like cotton and everything, and all they had, is they would just take stuff from the animals they had, and we get stuff from other things. INTERVIEWER: You also mentioned that women always wore hats. Why do you think that's changed? Because there's better technology? BOTH : No. KENNY: Well, probably those hats weren't very comfortable. CURTIS: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: SO why do you think they wore them? KENNY: Maybe it could be a law or something, women would have to wear hats, or maybe it would just be the better thing to do. CURTIS: And the styles changed from here, because you couldn't dye that many colors, they didn't know how to get many colors, because you could only dye like red and stuff. 2 INTERVIEWER:

KENNY:

Students did sometimes consider that styles had changed for no rational reason- that the popularity of styles simply changes over time. This came up several times when students were working on a project on how names have changed. One group of girls had been discussing how some older names had gone out of style and were popular once again. I asked why that might be, and one said that someone might just start using that name, and then other people hear it and like it, and start using it too. I asked a group of boys a similar question, and Gary pointed out, "Over the generations, names and people change"; Donny added, "Everything changes, even hats." I asked why those things change, and one student said, "Styles just change"; another pointed out that "people think different things are cool." The observation that styles may change for no rational reason, though, existed in an uneasy tension with the belief in technological progress, even within the same student. In one group, for example, Tonya referred back to the pictures we had looked at in an interview and said that like cars and clothes, "people have all changed, and when other things change, people like to change too, so their names get better along with all the other things that get better." Another student agreed, pointing out, "You don't want a really beautiful girl, and her name is Flossie, or a really cute boy, and his name is Oliver." When I asked them, though, if there were no cute boys or beautiful girls a long time ago- and that was why the names were ugly-all three of the girls partici-

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pating in the discussion immediately said, "No." Amber pointed out that some names have gone out of style and sound old-fashioned, but that at one time, people thought they were popular and "high style." J enny added, "We wouldn't think of naming our children now 'Mildred,' but then it might have been the most beautiful name in the world." Similar discussions frequently arose around the discussion of clothing, as students vacillated between their recognition that older styles may return and their conviction that some styles could never seem fashionable again . One student, for example, exhibited this tension between style and progress when he suggested that ifbell bottoms come back into style, "they won't be as lame as they were back then ... because there's like more threads and stuff that they can use now than they could probably use back then, and they can make it like better fashions." Students also pointed to increasing rationality to explain why social relations, attitudes, and beliefs have changed over time. They nearly always asserted that these had changed because they had been proved wrong or "we figured it out" and sometimes suggested that there was a specific moment in time they were disproved. During a discussion of the Salem witch trials, for example, Greg asked his teacher why people don't still believe in witches. Kenny said confidently that it had been proved wrong- in a single trial at a specific point in history; Tina asked how he knew that, and he said, "Why wouldn't we believe, ifit hadn't been proved wrong, would we just wake up one day and say, 'We don't believe in witches anymore?'" Similarly, during an interview Laura said that people don 't believe in witches anymore because "some people proved that they could not be witches and they thought whoever could float was like a witch, cause they thought their specter was holding them up, and it's not true, cause why would your specter really want to hold you up?" Both Michael and John, in separate interviews, pointed to medical science as having ended belief in witches. Of course, students' perspective on the relationship between scientific and supernatural explanations is not entirely incorrect: There is a connection between the rise of scientific rationality and the decline of other kinds of explanation, but students did not understand how gradual, uneven, and complicated this change has been. Rather, they thought that people simply believed in the supernatural until they l earned otherwise. They gave similar explanations for changes in attitudes toward minorities and women. In the following interview, for example, Stu suggests that racial attitudes have changed because medical tests proved the equality of Blacks and Whites: You think there are fewer prejudiced p eople today than there used to be? STU : Yeah, a long time ago there used to be like over half the continent of America, the United States was prejudiced, and now it's about a half of one-hundredth of the Americans are prejudiced. INTERVIEWER: Why do you think that's changed? INTERVIEWER :

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TONYA:

They realized that the Black people are humans.

STU : They just have different color skins cause they're in Africa and it protects

their skin from getting sunburn. Why do you think people realized that? What caused it to change? STU: Tests and research and stuff, and like maybe a Black person got hurt and they took them to the hospital, and while they were at the hospital, maybe a doctor took a, took maybe a part of the skin, they had to do it in surgery, so they cut off part of the skin, and maybe took it to a lab, and got it tested.

INTERVIEWER:

Although students rarely created such elaborate hypothetical stories, they nonetheless generally credited changes in the social roles of both African Americans and women to the realization that older beliefs were wrong. In the following interview, for example, Allen and Robert explain why women are no longer treated differently than men: Well, we figurcd it out, that everybody's equal to each other. What do you mean, we figured it out? ALLEN: Well, back then, we're not as smart; we always think, "Yeah, we're better than them [women]." INTERVIEWER: Why do you think that changed? ALLEN: Because they're people, so are we. ROBERT: People started realizing that women were really upset that they didn't care [about] women, and they're just as equal. INTERVIEWER: SO why do you think people didn't realize that back before this? I mean, why do you think there was a time when people didn't realize that women were equal with men? ROBERT: We weren't as smart back then. ALLEN: And they were just like- I don't know what started it, a fight could have started it- and they're all saying, "We're better." ALLEN:

INTERVIEWER:

Again, these students did not think of this change as stretching gradually over generations but as a sort of epiphany during which people realized that women were equal to men. Jenny also explained that people a long time ago took slaves "because they didn't know that Black people were the same as us," and Nichole agreed that "they didn't know that Black people had feelings, they thought they were the same as animals." They went on to explain why that changed: VVe learned about Martin Luther King, and how they brought the slaves over, and then some people started realizing that JENNY: They were just as good. NICHOLE:

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Jenny explained in a later interview that people "have come to their senses, and they've found out that they're no different than us." Similarly, Mandy thought that attitudes have changed "because people went to school, they learned that that's wrong." (H er interview partner Brittany, however, pointed out, "You don't know how the teachers know, though; it has changed, I just don't know how.") Students sometimes credited Martin Luther King with causing people to "come to their senses": Nichole, for example, explained, "Well, he said a speech, and then everybody started realizing that the Black people were the same as them-and they thought they w ere just animals and stuff- and they started realizing that they were the same as them, they needed to treat thcm how they would want to be treated, they have feelings and all that stuff too."

History as uniform progress or decline With few exceptions, students thought of historical change not as a random, ambiguous, or cyclical process, but one of straightforward, linear, and generally beneficial progress. Kenny's summary of change over time was typical: "Better cars; they've gone from women [now] getting the exact same thing as men; now Black people have gone from being horrible people to beingthey're the best athletes in the world, they've gone from bad to good-and the cars have gone from bad to good; everything has gotten better than before." Even when not casting historical developments in such explicitly beneficial terms, students saw the process of change as one that went in a single dominant direction; as a result, they often sequenced historical information in an "ideal" order, rather than in the more complicated combinations that actually occurred in the past. One of the most noticeable features of students' understanding of historical change was their perception-like Kenny's-that everything has improved. In explaining why they thought some pictures were more recent than others, for example, students sometimes noted that various objects in the newer pictures are better: Jesse and Nichole both thought the modern picture went after the 1950s picture because the cars were better;Jenny thought the picture of slaves was the oldest because all the houses in the other pictures were better; and Brandon noted that in one recent picture "it looks like they have more advanced stuff." Moreover, my questions about change frequently prompted students to explain not only how things have changed but specifically how they have improved. Kenny, for example, explained at the beginning of the year that now we have "more higher tech stuff- better clothing, better houses, and more money if you have a job, and there's better schools." Michael also explained that cars, radios, and televisions have "got better," and Susan thought that everything had improved over time-"telephones, [... ] cars, beds, washing machines, houses, schools." During their projects on changes in everyday life as well, students sometimes referred to the way in which things have improved; the entertainment group, for example, explained to their class-

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mates that VCRs were "invented for better entertainment than just plain old TV." While it is hardly surprising that students regarded technological changes as improvements, they also frequently singled out clothes as having improved. Angie, for example, thought that clothes made the pictures easy to figure out "because they didn't look sort of real good back then, and now they look sort of better and have more color and stuff in them." In comparing the 1950s picture to one from 1886, Michael also pointed out that "they had better clothes, which was probably made better, like more machines," and Brandon mentioned that the way people dress has changed because "now we can make more modern stuff and everything, they didn't have sweatpants." Jenny even thought that clothes had become cleaner over time: Placing a picture from the 1930s after one from the 1910s, she noted that "their clothes, they look a lot better there than they do here, cause these look dirty, and they look older; but these look like they're new, and they look a lot cleaner." Even purely stylistic changes were sometimes considered representative of improvement; Kathy, for example, said that clothing had gotten better over time "cause I wouldn't really like wearing that stuff, I don't know why, Ijust wouldn't, like feathers in my hat and stuff." The belief that everything has improved over time even led students to deny what seemed to me clear evidence to the contrary. Dwayne, for example, placed a 1970s picture more recently than one showing some of the first cars and explained his placement by pointing out that the streets are straighter in the more recent picture- in spite of the fact that the streets in the older picture actually appeared straight, and the more recent one included a cul-de-sac. Dwayne then pointed to "the windows, look at the way they go out" in the recent picture; I asked him how that compared to the older picture, and he said, "They just have them plain" - this time in spite of the fact that both pictures showed houses with bay windows. Two other students thought the picture was more recent because the houses were bigger--even though both included two-story houses. Such attempts to force evidence into their perceptions of improvement were strikingly common. During the year I encountered only a few instances of students spontaneously suggesting that anything had declined. When I asked Susan why she thought more people might have been buried near family members a long time ago, she suggested that it was because "they cared more about their families, and maybe now more people use drugs and are bugging their families." Dwayne also concluded, after listening to a presentation on how work has changed over time, that people today are lazier, because they buy things from stores rather than making them themselves. And in a composition on how things have changed over the last two hundred years, Rhiannon also departed from the common opinion that clothes are better now by noting, "I think back then their stuff was better than now because they had more fancy clothes, and they kept their clothes longer and their clothes were more sturdier than now. Like they have so many pretty and thick dresses."

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During the final interviews of the year I explicitly asked students what things have gotten worse over time; in most cases students met the question with silence or long pauses. Some could not think of anything, but most came up with examples after a while. One student mentioned violence as something that has become worse, and another noted that people are not as religious as they used to be. The most common response, however, was to point to the environment. Kenny, for example, thought that "they probably didn't have that much pollution back then," and Jenny pointed to problems like the ozone layer. Similarly, Susan noted that "people back then would think that like, they would think about their environment, about like throwing things on the ground, they would think that would be bad; and take the Indians: they used everything, they'd kill a buffalo or something, and they would use everything in the buffalo's body-they'd use their fur, their teeth, their bones, their meat." When I asked why people don't do that anymore, she and her partner replied in unison, "Because they don't care." Students' perception oflinear progress was particularly apparent in the way they decided on the chronological order of certain pictures. One set, for example, included a drawing of people in an Antebellum city and a photograph of a family, with horse and carriage, moving west over a prairie in the 1880s. Students almost always placed the Antebellum picture after the more recent one, and their explanations were nearly identical: They invariably pointed out the more settled nature of the city. Jenny, for example, said, "Well, in this one [Antebellum], it has lots of buildings [... ] and in this one it just has grass and fields and stuff like that." Jesse put the Antebellum picture later because "the buildings, they're not as big," and Nichole added, "It's like they're out in the country, and this is when they're all like in the city." Angie explained that she placed the Antebellum picture more recently "because this has a city and everything," and went on to explain, "Well, this doesn't have like any cities or anything around it, and these people, they have wagons, but it has a city and nicer clothes and stuff right here." Tonya said confidently, "I know it didn't go from brick buildings to wagons and carriages after the brick buildings." And Jeremy explained, "They didn't have whole towns like that built before they had- they had plains before they had whole towns like that." When students were faced with similar pictures at the end of the year, their responses- both their chronological placements and their explanations- were nearly identical to those they gave earlier. The same pattern arose when students confronted a picture of an immigrant ship from 1906. Because they had studied immigrants earlier in the year, nearly every student immediately recognized the picture and said something like, "Oh, those are the immigrants." But recognizing the content of the picture did not help most students place it in sequence; many thought that it must be the oldest picture because it showed people coming to America-and people had to come here before anything else in the pictures could have happened. Charles, for example, thought the picture showed the Mayflower. and even though his

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interview partner Sean recognized it as a picture of immigrants going to Ellis Island, both agreed that it was the oldest picture in the set-coming before pictures of slaves, the Civil War, and the westward movement. Jeremy also knew it was a picture of immigrants, but thought they came at the same time as Columbus: "1492, Columbus sailed, and that's when they found it, about 1500, in the 1500s." This picture of immigrants prompted somewhat more disagreement than others, however, and led to exchanges in which students debated whether or not it was the oldest. In the following excerpt, for example, Angie argues that it must be the oldest in spite of Tonya's apparent suggestion that the "things on the boat" seem more recent: AN GI E:

They have to come over on the boat to get here. But look at all the things on the boat. ANGIE: But they, it looks like these people are like immigrant people, and then these people [slaves] look like they have just came here or something; well, not have just came here, but they've been here for just a little while, not been here for very long.

TONY A:

Similarly, in the following exchange Nichole and Jenny consider whether immigration was a discrete experience that happened at the beginning of American history or whether it continued over a long period of time: Well, I think it should go all the way at the end, cause that's the people coming to America, and the slaves weren't here before the people were here. JENNY: But there were other people already at America before some people [i.e., the immigrants in the picture] carne over. NICHOLE:

Later in the interview, Nichole argued that a picture of Lincoln had to come after the immigration picture "cause the people had to come over here before Abe Lincoln, before they had presidents, cause nobody would elect them, you know; they had to have people over here to elect the president." Throughout the interview tasks, students consistently ordered pictures according to their perception that historical development occurred in a simple and progressive sequence. Students thought that any point in history could be characterized by only one image and that these images stood in a definite chronological order: First people came here, and then they lived in buildings and elected presidents; first settlers moved, then they built cities. Even those students who correctly placed the immigrant picture after the Civil War and slavery pictures sometimes did so because they noticed tall buildings in the background-and tall buildings, they noted, had to come after the shacks and tents in the other pictures. As Curtis said, "They've already settled everywhere." When students were faced with very different pictures that could have

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come from the same time (Abraham Lincoln and an enslaved family, for instance, or immigrants arriving at Ellis Island and the first car), they nearly always found a justification for placing one picture earlier than the other. Students' perception of uniform development showed itself in class projects and discussion as well, as they consistently failed to recognize the diversity of images that might characterize any given point in history. The clearest example arose with regard to architecture. In designing their colonial museums, it was obvious that many students in Amy's class believed that people during the Colonial Era lived in small log cabins. In one group, students remarked on the fact that even large families lived in small houses, because there were no twostory houses then. I asked them if they thought even rich people lived in small houses, and they agreed withJenny's observation that they did; she added that there were no architects back then. I showed these students several pictures of colonial mansions, and they were astounded: They repeatedly said things like, "That's not from colonial times, is it?" Jenny finally concluded, "We're thinking way too far back, like when the Mayflower came over." (Even that observation, however, shows the linear nature of her perception: There was a time in history when everyone lived in small houses, but earlier than they thought.) Occasionally students did point out that the pictures could not be placed in such a linear fashion, or suggested that the same point in history might be represented by a variety of images. Kenny, for example, thought the immigrant picture had to come before the first car because "everybody traveled by boat then, now there 's cars and things," but his interview partner Curtis noted matter-of-factly, "But they had to go over the sea." Similarly, Darren also pointed out that one of the pictures "could be even right now, cause they still have some log cabins in the woods." Other students noted that the appearance of people in the pictures might be the result of their being poor-and thus not having good clothes or homes- rather than of the pictures' being from long ago. And although Tonya was surprised when I told her that the picture of an Antebellum city came before a picture of horses and wagons, her partner Stu observed, "Well, then that's in Philadelphia, and this is in Texas," and went on to say, "The modern technology would be different between states." One of the more interesting exceptions to students' perception of linear progress came in an interview with Jeremy and Gary. Early in the interview, Gary thought that a picture of slaves was one of the oldest, because if it were any more recent, "there'd be a road or something," and there would be a different house and fewer trees; his partner Jeremy, though, thought that it took place at the same time as the picture of the Kennedy-Nixon debate because "these people are dressed almost the same as these people, except they're poor." Later in the interview, though, Gary turned the tables onJeremy. In the following excerpt, Gary points out that J eremy's perception of change over time is too simple: JEREMY: [People] used to talk like [violently and with an accent], "Give me

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whiskey!" Now they talk more like [softer and with no accent], "Give me my whiskey." INTERVIEWER: Why do you think that's changed? JEREMY: Well, because they all used to live out in the country and everything, just their accent. GARY [with exaggerated accent]: People still talk like 'at. JEREMY: Some people GARY: I hate to bust your bubble, but ... Gary himself grew up in a part of the state where many people speak with a regional accent; he thus recognized that change has not been so linear as Jeremy suggested. Later in the interview, Jeremy said that the way people get their food has changed over time, and again Gary corrected him: They don't just go out in the woods with a gun, now people People still do that. JEREMY: Yeah, I know, but not in the city, see like, in this city, in this town [in the Antebellum picture], people go out in the woods and kill their own food, but now you go to the store and buy your own food. JEREMY: GARY:

Having grown up in a region where hunting is still common, Gary again recognized that Jeremy's formulation was too simple. (Note also that Jeremy's view was so linear that he even thought people in cities a long time ago would have hunted for their food.) Still later, Gary mentioned that "back when the cowboys and Indians were around, some people were rough and tough and rowdy, shot people." When I asked him ifhe thought that has changed, he said, "A little bit, but people still get shot a lot." Students also displayed some of their diversity of understanding of this issue one day when I asked a group that was watching a video of Miracle on 34th Street when they thought it was made.John thought it had to be made before Wizard qf Oz because that was the first color movie, and Miracle on 34th Street was in black and white. Jenny (the same student who a week earlier thought all colonial houses were small) pointed out that it didn't have to be earlier because the two movies might have "different producers." John then argued that it had to be a long time ago because of the way they talked; Jenny again pointed out, however, they talked differently because they have "a New York accent." John himself, meanwhile, had demonstrated some understanding of the diversity in history a few days earlier when he had been speculating on the food present in the Colonial Era: He observed, "Well, back in colonial days, we, they didn'twell, they might have-but I didn't think they had pizza or anything. They might have in Italy."

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History as limited in expanse Students clearly did not understand the magnitude of the number of people involved in historical events. During a discussion of the French and Indian Wars, for example, one student said he didn't understand how Indians could have been on both sides, and Tina drew a simple chart showing that out of 10 Indians, five might have sided with the English and five with the French; one of the students pointed out that there would have been more than that on each side, "like hundreds, probably." Similarly, during a discussion of the Revolutionary War in Tina's room, it became clear that students did not understand that there were many thousands of soldiers, engaged in many different conflicts throughout the colonies; they thought there were simply two bodies of troops who kept meeting each other in battle. Students' observations while studying names also revealed how limited they perceived the past to be. They thought that anyone with the same last name as someone (or something) famous must have some intimate connection: One student thought that someone named Xavier was named after Xavier University, others thought a family named Montgomery was named after a local city, and still others thought anyone with the last name Kroger must have been named after the grocery chain. Students also conceived of history as involving a limited number of discrete events, rather than lengthy and extensive processes. John, for example, explained slavery by noting that "during the Revolutionary War and stuff, people sailed down to Africa [...J to like get away from the war, and they found these Black people, and they thought they were monkeys or animals, and they thought they were really neat, and they crowded them up on boats and stuff, and sold them." Jenny explained the end of the witch trials in similar terms: "When they accused like the mayor's wife or somebody's wife that they were a witch, and he said, 'This has gone too far, we've killed enough innocent people, I want you to let everyone go, my wife is not a witch, and this has just gone too far,' and then just like that, everybody just forgot, and they didn't accuse people of witches anymore." Several such examples came up in Tina's class during discussion of picture books set during the time of the American Revolution. Despite the fact that the books focused on the daily life of people at the time, students thought the people were all intimately involved with major political figures and events. Students noticed that the roofs on houses in one picture were very steep, for example, and Tina told me that Kenny was convinced that was so Revolutionary soldiers could hide on one side. She also pointed out that students thought the only thing women would have been doing at the time was sewing uniforms for soldiers. In another book, colonial soldiers raid the home of a family with Tory sympathies, and I overheard one student whisper, "Is this where Paul Revere is coming?" The lack of recognition of the duration and extent of historical events was particularly noticeable when students talked about immigration. Rather than

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perceiving it as a process that took place over several centuries and involved many millions of people, most described it as though it happened all at once, with a limited number of ships. Curtis, for example, thought that an immigrant ship in one picture was crowded because "they probably didn't have that many boats come over"; Nichole also explained, "I don't think there were that many immigrants coming over at that same time; this is one of the main ships that brought everybody over to America." Michael, meanwhile , thought that "it looks like it was when the queen and king went over to sail to get like more people." This collapsing of historical events into a limited time frame was also prominent when students talked about race and gender. Most students clearly had no conception of the history of race relations in the United States as stretching over centuries and involving such diverse topics as slavery, segregation, and civil rights; all these were the same thing for them. Students consistently referred to a picture of African American soldiers on board a ship during World· War II, for example, as "slavery." Angie thought it was "when they brought over the slaves," andJenny said, "It looks like they're all coming out of the ship, or something, or the ones that lived at least. " Students also referred to pictures of a civil rights protest and a segregated street scene, both from the 1950s, as "slavery." In interviews, students frequently attributed changes in the rights of African Americans to the individual efforts of either Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King; moreover, some even thought that these two were responsible for women's rights. Brandon, for example, thought that Lincoln was responsible for women's getting the right to vote, and when I asked Kathy why women have more rights now than in the past, she attributed it to King: "He probably changed it, because Black people didn't have rights, and the women didn't have rights either." Sean also thought a picture of suffragists came at the same time as the Kennedy-Nixon debate because they carried banners that said "Freedom" and that meant "it's the civil rights movement," which happened "when John F. K ennedy was president." He then put the Civil War picture more recently because "Kennedy got shot during the civil rights movement, so then Lincoln came in and he stopped all of it, cause Lincoln was the one who settled it, after Dr. Martin Luther King got shot, Lincoln became president." He later pointed out that "Whites in the civil rights movement, they didn't even care about the Blacks, they used them for slavery, and people aren't like that any more." Although Sean's explanation was more elaborate than most students', it captures well their lack of differentiation of historical events from widely divergent periods; their understanding of history had little room for any but the simplest story. After they had studied the American Revolution, for example, students in both classrooms assumed that women received equal rights immediately after the Revolutionary War; because it was fought for freedom, women's rights must have followed close on its heels. And after listening to a

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book about the life of George Washington and participating in a discussion of his ownership of slaves, Brandon explained (in an interview several weeks later) that Washington "first stated that there shouldn't be slaves." Again, he had not remembered a story so complicated as to involve a person fighting for the "freedom" of his country while at the same time owning slaves.

Discussion Barthes (1977) characterizes narrative as being "without noise" -every element in a narrative, that is, functions as a significant component of the overall story. Of course, not every story follows so tightly structured a format, but cognitive research indicates that people use an idealized mental story grammar--consisting of setting, protagonist, and goal-directed behavior, for example-in understanding and recalling narratives. Both children and adults are more likely to remember stories that conform to such an ideal structure, they better remember elements that have a central (especially causal) significance in a story, and they restructure information when retelling stories in order to make it conform more closely to an ideal structure (reviewed in Mandler, 1982, and Olson & Gee, 1988; on conflicting perspectives on the essential constituents of a story, see Stein & Policastro, 1984). The findings of this study closely match those of research on the comprehension and recall of fictional narratives. First, several studies indicate that after hearing or reading a story, people are more likely to remember those events that are causally connected than those that simply occur in a temporal sequence (Black & Bower, 1980; Omanson, 1982a, 1982b; Thorndyke, 1977; Trabasso & Sperry, 1985). Indeed, the more causal connections an element of a story has with other elements, the more likely people are to recall it (Trabasso, Secco, & VanDenBroek, 1984). Such findings are hardly surprising, for the very purpose of a story is not to list a random collection of temporally ordered events but to reveal a sequence of actions whose causal connections the reader (or listener) considers meaningful. The students in these classrooms clearly used this same narrative approach in understanding the past, imputing a rational basis to all historical developments and describing historical changes as part of an orderly sequence. Technological changes were particularly easy for them to understand, for they could point to purely rational processes such as "coming up with new ideas" and "people getting smarter." l\10reovcr, they used the same approach to explain changes in beliefs, attitudes, and social relations: They thought that women and minorities are treated better today because "we figured it out," and that no one believes in witches or volcano goddesses because they have been "proven" not to exist. When considering changes in fashion-an area in which it is harder to maintain that changes are rational- students sometimes were willing to concede that things may change just because people get tired of doing things the same way, but nonetheless they often imposed a rational basis to those changes.

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A second finding of research on narrative comprehension and recall is that people better remember stories that conform to an ideal plot structure (Brennan, Bridge, & Winograd, 1986; Mandler, 1982; Stein & Nezworski, 1978: Thorndyke, 1977). When the events in a story fail to conform to such a structure, people frequently recount them in the ideal order rather than the order in which they actually heard or read them (Black & Bower, 1980; Mandler, 1978, 1982; Stein & Glenn, 1979; Stein & Nezworski, 1978). In addition, people are more likely to remember content that is central to the main plot of a story than that which could be deleted or is more peripheral; sequences of events that lead to dead-ends are particularly likely to be forgotten (Black & Bower, 1980; Mandler, 1982; Omanson, 1982a, 1982b; Thorndyke, 1977; Trabasso & Sperry, 1985). With few exceptions, these students also thought of historical change as having a kind of ideal plot- they saw change not as a random, ambiguous, or cyclical process, but as being characterized by straightforward, linear, and generally beneficial progress. Students were so convinced that life has improved over time that they interpreted the evidence they encountered in a way that fit their understanding. Even when not casting historical developments in such explicitly beneficial terms, students saw the process of change as one which went in a single dominant direction; as a result, they often sequenced historical information in an "ideal" order, rather than in the more complicated combinations that actually occurred in the past. Such sequencing is consistent with findings from research with a similar interview task (Barton & Levstik, 1996), in which students from first through sixth grade arranged pictures in this kind of uniform sequence and gave explanations nearly identical to those of students in the present study. Finally, researchers since Bartlett (1932) have found that both children and adults retell stories in a simplified form. Mandler (1978), for example, found that when people were asked to recall a story with two separate episodes, they frequently retold it either by making a single character the protagonist for both stories or by creating a single episode out of material from both. And as already noted, people are less likely to recall irrelevant or optional information than that which is central to a story (Mandler, 1982; Omanson, 1982a, 1982b; Thorndyke, 1977). This selective remembering is also prominent in societies in which some or all historical information relies on oral transmission: the past often is recounted as a set of major episodic transformations rather than a series of gradual changes involving many people. As a result, the achievements of several different rulers are credited to a single individual, later events are remembered as having happened around a time of origin, several centuries are collapsed into the span of a few generations, and events in the middle tend to be eclipsed by those at the more remote and more recent end of the spectrum of time. And just as people tend to forget irrelevant or optional details when retelling narratives, oral traditions are particularly likely to omit those rulers who are no longer necessary to validate the contemporary social structure, such

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as those whose lineages became "dead ends" (Henige, 1974; Jones, 1965; Ki-Zerbo, 1969; Miller, 1980). Students in this study demonstrated the same kind of selective perception of the past: They thought of history as involving a very limited set of people and events, and they collapsed lengthy and complicated historical processes into short time frames and simple narratives. They thus often credited famous people with having single-handedly brought about monumental changes that actually came about over a much longer period of time. Brophy et al. (1992a, 1992b) found similar patterns in their interviews with fourth and fifth graders: Students in their studies described European explorers as though they were a small band of associates in close contact with each other, and they thought these explorers had returned to their home countries and personally led groups of settlers to the New World. Those students also conceived of the English colonies in North America as though they were all small villages similar to Plymouth Plantation.

Instructional implications The consistency of these narrative features of students' historical understanding-and their congruence with related research-indicate important considerations for the design of elementary instruction. 3 At the outset, it is critical to keep in mind just why these narrative simplifications are significant enough to demand attention. After all, some educators have extolled the virtues of presenting history as an engaging story (see, e.g., Bradley Commission on History in Schools, 1989; Crabtree, 1989; Craig, 1989), and Egan (1989) argues that narrative provides such a powerful force for understanding that it should form the principal basis for the elementary history curriculum. From such perspectives, students' tendency to think of history as though it were a story appears more a strength than a weakness-as some reviewers of this research have noted, "Settlers did come before cities!" and "Lincoln did free the slaves!" On closer analysis, though, it becomes clear that the narrative features of students' thinking constitute significant and misleading distortions that must be addressed explicitly in the design of elementary curricular and instructional programs in history. Over the past several decades, historians and philosophers of history have debated extensively the role of narrative in historical accounts. While narrative is clearly a common form of historical explanation, a number of scholars have argued that narrative cannot be an accurate representation of past experience. Mink (1978), for example, maintains that history itself is not a narrative-that is, history "as-it-was-lived" did not follow the form of a story that historians later uncovered through their use of evidence. Rather, the narrative form is the creative artifice of the historian. Similarly, White (1978, 1984) argues that historical events are not part of a fixed narrative structure. Instead, they can be encoded into many different potential stories. By choosing one particular story

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to tell about any set of events, the historian thus creates a verbal fiction; like Mink, White argues that the structures of such narratives are invented by the historian, rather than found in the historical evidence itself. While many historians would not accept such an extreme version of the impositional nature of historical narratives, few would deny that the creation of particular narratives inevitably involves selection. In telling any story, the historian will leave out some facts because they have no perceived relevance and will attempt to establish the causal significance of those that are included (see, e.g., Danto, 1965; Gallie, 1964; White, 1965). Indeed, the evaluation of historical accounts revolves precisely around the extent to which this selectivity is justified: Given a historical narrative, the scholar will ask whether the relevant facts have been included and whether those included have the significance attributed to them. While any narrative account is a selective construction, some such constructions are more accurate or complete than others. The narrative features identified in this study, then, represent three important ways in which students' thinking is likely to fall short of the accuracy and completeness necessary for meaningful understanding. First, imputing a rational basis to all change over time distorts history. Students saw technological changes as the result of "coming up with new ideas" or "solving problems." They also thought that styles and fashion change because materials improve, and that attitudes and beliefs change because they are proved wrong. But styles do not always change because of new materials or better ideas; such changes may come about because of changing tastes or because of broader social and economic trends. Technological developments, meanwhile, are more closely linked to the requirements of systems of production and distribution than to the uninhibited march of scientific progress. And perhaps most importantly, people today do not have different beliefs than in the past simply because older ones have been disproved. Fewer people now believe in witches because their worldview is different. While this change has been bound up with scientific discoveries and technological achievements, students' assumption that purely rational considerations ended the belief in witches imposes a secular worldview on people who did not share it. Thinking that women and minorities now have equal rights "because we figured it out," meanwhile, overlooks the relationships between attitudes and broader social, cultural, economic, and political forces, as well as the sustained efforts that have gone into (and continue to go into) changing earlier attitudes. Students also distorted history by thinking of it in terms of uniform, linear progress (or sometimes decline). They thought that nearly every aspect of life has improved over time, and failed to perceive either the diversity of images that might characterize any given moment in history or the possibility that some historical developments may not have proceeded in a single direction. The past is much more diverse than their understanding implies: Settlers did not come before cities, because both settlement and urbanization have been features of human civilization for thousands of years. At any given moment in

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time, people live in many different ways: Some are rich and others poor, some have power and others none, some live in the city and others in the country, and so on (a nd each of these contrasts represents a wide continuum rather than a simple set of opposites) . Failure to recognize this diversity compromises students' ability to understand the interactions of people with different experiences. How could they understand the relationship between owners and workers, or between urban residents and farmers, when they think that everyone was doing the same thing at any given time? In addition, history rarely exemplifies the simplistic kinds of progress or decline students perceived: Unlike well-structured narratives, history includes dead ends, as well as developments that follow no uniform pattern. Political participation, gender roles, and race relations, for example, may have improved (in most people 's perspective) over time, but they have not exhibited the simple and straightforward progress that a linear view of history implies. While an image of progress is reassuring, it hardly squares with the historical record. Finally, students significantly distorted history when they simplified it into a narrative of limited proportions. Their understanding of the past included only a few essential characters and events, which they collapsed into a minimal spatial and temporal expanse and credited with having brought about monumental changes. Although misconceptions about the number of people involved in wars seem almost cute- and presumably easily correctedstudents' simplification of complicated and long-term processes is a more significant narrative distortion. The American Revolution may have been fought for a kind of freedom, for example, but it had little impact on the lives of women, minorities, or the poor; failing to recognize that freedom and rights were not immediately extended to these segments of the u.s. population is an important misunderstanding. Similarly, neither Lincoln nor King brought about equality for African Americans; the still-incomplete history of race relations includes, at the very minimum, the millions of people involved in slavery, abolitionism, the Civil War, Reconstruction, segregation, and the civil rights movement. Thinking that Martin Luther King made a speech that changed everyone's mind is highly misleading. Yet this study in no way suggests that these distorting features of students' thinking are inevitable or irreversible. Indeed, students in Amy's and Tina's classes often displayed their ability to overcome these limitations, even if only temporarily or in narrow circumstances. Instruction, then, should be able to address students' narrative misconceptions. First, to counter students' assumption that all historical change has occurred for purely rational reasons, teachers should explicitly call attention to the reasons for change over time, and should emphasize the connections between changes in different aspects of society- the ways that economic systems lead to particular inventions or patterns of distribution, or the social and technological effects of warfare, or the political consequences of social movements. In addition, teachers need to give students the

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opportunity to examine the ways in which the worldview of people in the past differed from their own. By seeing that people made choices consistent with their own values and conceptions of society, students should be less likely to assume that they simply hadn't "figured it out yet." Finally, instruction must focus on the actual process by which change comes about. Becoming familiar with the abolitionist, anti-lynching, and civil rights movements (and the resistance each encountered), for example, should disabuse students of the notion that either Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King single-handedly enlightened society and ended slavery or racial discrimination. To counter students' perception of a uniform and linear pattern of historical change, it is imperative that instruction focus on the diversity of experience that characterizes a given time period. Students need to learn that at anyone time, people live in a wide range of geographic settings, have a wide range of economic and occupational circumstances, and are subject to a wide range of social expectations. Whether studying ancient Egypt, colonial America, or the 1960s, for example, students should constantly be comparing the experience of men and women, urban and rural residents, and upper, middle, and lower socioeconomic classes. Moreover, students should learn about the relationships among these groups, so that they see historical societies as consisting of many connected groups rather than as idealized stereotypes of explorers, settlers, and so on. Their perception of constant progress throughout history, meanwhile, needs to be addressed by considering both advances and setbacks; for example, examining the highly uneven development of women's participation in public life in the United States (as when factory workers were expected to return to life as homemakers after World War II) would contradict the perception of steadily expanding opportunities. Finally, students' limited perception of the expanse of history could be addressed by devoting attention to gradual and long-term social, economic, and political changes, rather than to famous people and dramatic events. By studying the history of race relations in the United States (instead of the life of Martin Luther King or the Emancipation Proclamation in isolation), or studying the development of the concept of freedom (instead of the isolated study of the American Revolution or the U.S. Constitution), students should become better able to assign people and events a meaningful place in historical time. This would be a dramatic change from current patterns of instruction, which often focus on heroes and wars- precisely the elements of history that students are most likely to overemphasize in their thinking. Focusing on longterm trends in society might also expand students' understanding of the spatial expanse of history by making it clear that not everyone at a given time was intimately bound up with the major events and figures of the day. Similarly, a teacher might choose historical fiction that illustrates daily life for average people rather than just stories about famous people. Simply changing the content ofthe curriculum, however, will not overcome students' misconceptions. Research on conceptual change teaching in science

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indicates that students' ideas are remarkably resilient and unlikely to change just because the teacher provides a scientifically acceptable explanation. To bring about a genuine change in understanding, the teacher first needs to prod students to become dissatisfied with their current conceptions (Hewson & Hewson, 1988; Nussbaum & Novick, 1982; Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertlog, 1982). Creating this kind of conceptual conflict demands that students encounter situations that directly contradict their preexisting ideas-heavy objects floating, chalk and lead falling at the same speed, and so on. While students cannot conduct experiments in history the way they can in science, teachers can nonetheless provide them with the kinds of direct experiences that will challenge their misconceptions. Widely diverse pictures, artifacts, or written sources from the same time period, for example, can force students to come to grips with their assumption of uniformity; the students in this study who were confronted with a picture of a colonial mansion were visibly shaken by its discontinuity with their perception that all people in the Colonial Era lived in log cabins. Similarly, students who read conflicting but equally "rational" arguments about issues (the American Revolution, for example), or who see widespread resistance to change (as with the civil rights movement) may be less likely to believe that change came about because "we figured it out." But even such conceptual conflict will be insufficient to change students' ideas if history remains an isolated topic of study at school, a subject lacking in purpose or meaning. Educators concerned with conceptual change in science emphasize that students' ideas are not isolated theories but part of a broader conceptual ecology, a set of understandings that derive from their assumptions about how knowledge is created and used. If students do not see school knowledge as "real," then conflicts are unlikely to have much meaning for them and may be either assimilated to their prior conceptions or compartmentalized as "school knowledge" (Dreyfus,Jungwirth, & Eliovitch, 1990; Duschl & Gitomer, 1991; Strike & Posner, 1992). In order for students to care enough about subject matter for them actually to change their ideas, they must be involved in investigating meaningful questions and thoughtfully considering their implications; their studies must take place in a context in which both the conflicts and the solutions are meaningful (Dreyfus et al., 1990; Duschl & Gitomer, 1991). In history, then, students need to conduct their own authentic historical investigations-focusing on questions that matter to them and using sources with which they are familiar (cf. Seixas, 1993a). Students' family and social backgrounds clearly influence their understanding of the nature and purpose of history (Barton, 1995; Levstik & Barton, 1996; Seixas, 1993b), and this conceptual ecology must be considered as carefully in history as in science. The present study indicates that students were most likely to move beyond their narrative misconceptions when they had access to relevant evidence from their own experience; the student from a rural area, for example, knew that some people still hunt. Others knew that movies might look different depending on who made them or that Italian food might have been eaten in Italy before in

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America. Bringing about conceptual change will require students to examine historical evidence in situations in which both the conceptual conflicts and their solutions make sense to them; a student who investigates the way his grandmother faced constricted opportunities after World War II, for example, is more likely to regard historical unevenness as plausible than one who simply learns about it from a teacher or textbook. As in other curricular areas, meaningful investigation in authentic situations is a key to understanding.

Conclusions This study has identified three important ways in which elementary students simplified the historical information they encountered. They thought of change as having come about for logical reasons, as having taken place in an orderly sequence, and as being spatially and temporally limited in scope. These narrative features led to significant omissions, distortions, or misconceptions in students' thinking, and instruction should be designed to address each. In particular, students should learn about the reasons for historical changes, be exposed to diversity in history, and become acquainted with broad historical patterns and processes. In addition, instruction should provide students with direct exposure to historical information-visual images and various kinds of primary sources, for example-necessary to bring about conceptual conflicts. Finally, in order to produce genuine change in students' thinking, history instruction should take place in a context of authentic activities in which students directly investigate meaningful historical questions.

Notes I. The research methods for this study are described in Ch. 8 of this volume. Students' writing provided less insight into their thinking than either interviews or classroom participation. These compositions were based on the content they had begun learning while I was present, but the writing and revising usually took place after I left. As a result, I saw the outcome of the assignments but not the process that produced them. In addition, many compositions went into portfolios, were sent home, or (in the case of first drafts) were relegated to the trash can before I saw them. Compositions nonetheless provided a source of triangulation for other data, since students' writing did not reveal patterns inconsistent with those identified from interviews or classroom participation. Greater use of written assignments in future research would require a systematic method of collection and analysis that would not interfere with the instructional needs of teachers and students. 2. In transcribing interviews, I have tried to capture as completely as possible the content and form of the original conversations. I have marked the deletion of words or phrases within a student's response with a bracketed ellipsis ([.. .J). Completed responses by students end with a period, while those that were interrupted by another student or myself have no period at the end. 3. In considering the implications of the present study, it is important to keep in mind both the small number of classrooms involved and the essentially descriptive nature of the findings. The primary purpose of this analysis is to describe recurring features

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of students' thinking, not to explain how those features arose. It is difficult to determine just how much students' perceptions reflect their educational experiences-in and out of school-and how much thcy may rcflect morc basic kinds of cognitive patterning. It would be important to know, for example, the extent to which their perceptions were influenced by the larger sociocultural context, such as how much influence popular culture and thc mcdia had on their understanding of history as a narrative. Also, although these students came from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, their race, ethnicity, and geographic origins were fairly similar. Future research might productively investigate the extent to which students with more diverse experiences interpret historical events differently. Finally, although this study included both fourth and fifth graders, I was unable to analyze the extent to which there may have been systematic differences correlated with age. Future research might examine the way narrative understanding is manifested across a range of grade levels.

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Brophy,]., VanSledright, B., & Bredin. N. 0992b). Fifih-graders' ideas about the English colonies in America expressed before and after stu4Jing them within a u.s. history course. Elementary Subjects Center Series No. 80, Center for the Learning and Teaching of Elementary Subjects, Institute for Research on Teaching, College of Education, Michigan State University. Brophy,].,VanSledright, B., & Bredin, N. (1993). What do entering fifth graders know about U.S. history? Journal ifSocial Studies Research, 16/17,2-19. Crabtree, C. (1989). Returning history to the elementary schools. In P. Gagnon & the Bradley Commission on History in Schools (Eds.). Historical literacy: The casefor history in American education (pp. 173-87). New York: Macmillan. Craig, G. A. (1989). History as a humanistic discipline. In P. Gagnon & the Bradley Commission on History in Schools (Eds.). Historical literacy: The case for history in American education (pp. 119-37). New York: Macmillan. Danto, A.C. (1965). AnalYtical philosophy if history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dreyfus, A., jungwirth, E., & Eliovitch, R. (1990). Applying the "cognitive conflict" strategy for conceptual change: Some implications, difficulties, and problems. Science Education, 74,555-69. Duschl, R. A., & Gitomer, D. H. (1991). Epistemological perspectives on conceptual change: Implications for educational practice. Journal if Research in Science Teaching, 28,839-58. Egan, K. (1989). Layers of historical understanding. Theory and Research in Social Education, 17,280-94. Gallie, W.E. (1964). Philosophy and the historical understanding. New York: Schocken. Good. T. L., & Brophy. ]. (1994). Looking in classrooms (6th ed.). New York: HarperCollins. Goodlad.]. 1. (1984). A place called school: Prospectsfor thefuture. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hammack, D. C., Hartoonian, M., Howe.].,jenkins, L. B., Levstik, L. S., Macdonald, W. B., Mullis, 1. V. S., & Owen. E. (1990). The U.S. history report card: The achievement if fourth-, eighth-, and twe!flh-grade students in 1988 and trends from 1986 to 1988 in the factual knowledge if high school juniors. Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics. Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED 315 377. Henige, D.P. (1974). The chronology if oral traditions: 9Jtestfor a chimera. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hewson, P. W., & Hewson, M. G. A. (1988). An appropriate conception of teaching science: A view from studies of science learning. Science Education, 72,597-614. jones, G. I. (1965). Time and oral tradition with specific reference to Eastern Nigeria. Journal ifAfrican History, 6, 153-60. Ki-Zerbo,]. (1969). The oral tradition as a source of Mrican history. Diogenes, 67, 110-24. Levstik, L.S. (1986). The relationship between historical response and narrative in a sixth-grade classroom. Theory and Research in Social Education, 14, 1-19. Levstik, L.S. (1989). Historical narrative and the young reader. Theory into Practice, 28, 114-119 Levstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (1996). 'They still use some of their past": Historical salience in elementary children's historical thinking. Journal if Curriculum Studies, 28, 531-76.

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Levstik, L. S., & Pappas, C. C. (1987). Exploring the development of historical understanding.Journal qfResearch and Development in Education, 21, 1- 15. Mandler, ]. M. (1978). A code in the node: The use of a story schema in retrieval. Discourse Processes, 1, 14-35. Mandler,]. M. (1982). Some uses and abuses of a story grammar. Discourse Processes, 5, 305-318. Miller,]. C. (1980). Introduction: Listening for the African past. In]. C. Miller (Ed.), 7he African past speaks: Essqys on oral tradition and history (pp. I- 59). Hamden, CT: Archon Books. Mink, L. O. (1978). Narrative form as a cognitive instrument. In R. H . Canary & H. Kozicki (Eds.), the writing qf history: Literary form and historical understanding (pp. 129-49). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Expectations qf excellence: Curriculum standards for Social Studies. Bulletin No. 89. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. National History Standards Project. (1994a). National standards for United States history: Exploring the American experience. Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles. National History Standards Project. (I 994b). National standardsfor world history: Exploring paths to the present. Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles. Nussbaum, ]., & Novick, S. (1982). Alternative frameworks, conceptual conflict and accommodation: Toward a principled teaching strategy. Instructional Science, 11, 183- 200. Olson, M. W., & Gee, T . C. (1988). Understanding narratives: A review of story grammar research. Childhood Education, 64, 302-6. Omanson, R. C. (1982a). An analysis of narratives: IdentifYing central, supportive, and distracting content. Discourse Processes, 5, 195-224. Omanson, R. C. (1982b). The relation between centrality and story category variation. Journal qf Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 21, 326-37. Posner, G.]., Strike, K. A. , Hewson, P. W., & Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation of a s cientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change. Science Education, 66,211- 27. Prawat, R. (1989). Teaching for understanding: Three key attributes. Teaching and Teacher Education, 5, 3 15- 28. Seixas, P. (1993a). The community of inquiry as a basis for knowledge and learning: The case of history. American Educational ResearchJournal, 30, 305- 24. Seixas, P. (1993b). Historical understanding among adolescents in a multicultural setting. Curriculum Inquiry, 23, 301-27. Shaver,]. P., Davis, O . L.,jr., & Helburn, S.W. (1978). An interpretive report on the status qf pre-college social studies education based on three NSF-fonded studies. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED 164363. Stein, N. L., & Glenn, C. G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children. In R. O. Freedle (Ed.), New directions in discourse processing (pp. 53- 120). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Stein, N. L., & Nezworski, T. (1978). The effects of organization and instructional set on story memory. Discourse Processes, 1, 177- 93.

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Stein, N. L., & Policastro, M. (1984). The concept of a story: A comparison hetween children's and teachers' viewpoints. In H. Mandl, N. L. Stein, & T. Trabasso (Eds.), Learning and comprehension of text (pp. 113-55). Hillsdale, l\[J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Strike, K., & Posner, G. (1992). A revisionist theory of conceptual change. In R. Duschl & R. Hamilton (Eds.), Philosophy of science, cognitive p~chology, and educational theory and practice. Albany: SUNY Press. Superka, D. P., Hawke, S., & Morrissett, 1. (1980). The current and future status of the social studies. Social Education, 44, 362-69. Thorndyke, P. (1977). Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse. Cognitive P~chology, 9, 77-110. Trabasso, T., Secco, T., & VanDenBroek, P. (1984). Causal cohesion and story coherence. In H. Mandl, N.L. Stein, & T. Trabasso (Eds.), Learning and comprehension of text (pp. 83 Ill). Hillsdale, l\[J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Trabasso, T., & Sperry, L. L. (1985). Causal relatedness and importance of story events. Journal ofMemory and Language, 24, 595-611. VanSledright, B. A., & Brophy,]. (1992). Storytelling, imagination, and fanciful elaboration in children's historical reconstructions. American Educational ResearchJournal, 29, 837-59. White, H. (1978). Tropics of discourse: Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. White, H. (1984). The question of narrative in contemporary historical theory. History and 1heory, 23,1-33. White, M. (1965). Foundations ofhistorical knowledge. New York: Harper and Row.

Chapter 10

"I just kinda know" Elementary students' ideas about historical evidence

Keith C. Barton

The use of evidence to reach supportable conclusions is one of the most important objectives of the social studies-or, indeed, of most disciplines. Throughout the past century, educators have pointed to the collection, evaluation, and systematic use of evidence as a critical feature of instruction in the field. Dewey's well-known dictum that reflective thought involves "active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form ofknowledge in light of the grounds that support it" (1910, p. 6) has been echoed by scholars such as Kilpatrick (1925), Wesley (1937), Bode (1940), Hunt and Metcalfe (1957), Massialas and Cox (1966), and Beyer (1971). More recently, national curriculum standards for social studies point to the role of data collection and analysis in helping students make informed decisions (National Council for the Social Studies, 1994). History educators frequently demonstrate particular sensitivity to such issues. The Bradley Commission on History in Schools (1988), for example, noted that history instruction should emphasize critical judgment in the use of evidence, and the National Council for History Standards required that national standards "reflect the principle of sound historical reasoning-careful evaluation of evidence" (National History Standards Project, 1994, p. 3). This concern is well placed, for it is evidence that separates historical knowledge from myths, legends, and fairy tales; stories about Columbus proving the world is round or Betsy Ross sewing the first flag are lacking in credibility precisely because there is no evidence to support them (and considerable evidence to the contrary). Without evidence, stories about the past rapidly deteriorate into various forms of "fanciful elaboration" (VanSledright and Brophy, 1992).

Research on students' use of evidence Despite its avowed importance to social studies education, the use of evidence has until recently received little attention by researchers in the United States. The only indexed entry for the topic in the Handbook qf Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning (Shaver, 1991) refers to the use of evidence by researchers

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themselves-not by the students they study. The topic has received somewhat more attention in Britain, where Shemilt (1987) identified four levels of understanding of evidence and methodology in history. At the lowest level, students take knowledge of the past for granted and see no problems of evidence or interpretation; they consider historical information to be true because the teacher says it is, and they think primary sources provide direct, textbook-like accounts of the past. At higher levels, students consider historical knowledge problematic, realize that sources can be biased or incomplete, recognize that historical investigation involves the interpretation of data and the testing of hypotheses against evidence, and see that historical accounts are reconstructions that make connections that contemporaries might not have perceived or even understood. Recent research in the United States has found that students generally fall on the less reflective end of that continuum. Wineburg (1991, 1992), for example, gave several passages (from primary sources, textbooks, and fiction) describing the same event-the Battle at Lexington Green-to historians and high school students and asked them to explain how they would rank the reliability of each. He found that unlike professional historians, students typically did not see the passages as human creations: They did not construct a willful author behind the text, did not consider the authors' intentions or social setting, and were unaware of subtexts. (See Yeager & Davis, 1994, 1995, for similar studies with university students.) Students in Wineburg's study even ranked textbooks as more reliable than primary sources, and Gabella (1993) also found that high school students regarded history texts uncritically and failed to see them as human creations. Similarly, while Epstein (1994a) noted that students recognized bias in textbooks, she found they nonetheless regarded them as authoritative sources of factual information. Studies with younger students have yielded similar results. In interviews with fifth graders, Barton (1993) encountered a highly skeptical attitude toward historical accounts but found that students had no understanding of the kinds of evidence upon which such accounts are based. Brophy, VanSledright, and Bredin (1992) also found that before studying the topic, fifth graders had little understanding of what historians do or of the interpretive nature of history; after completing a unit on the nature of history and the work of historians, they had a better sense of the kinds of evidence historians use but still understood little of its interpretive nature or how to reconcile conflicting accounts. And Levstik (1989) noted that a fifth grader who had read historical fiction tended to evaluate her textbook's account of history in light of the "truth" she had learned from fiction; thus although historical fiction began to acquaint the student with the interpretive nature of history, it failed to provide her with an understanding of the kinds of evidence upon which interpretations are based. These studies all point to students' lack of familiarity with the use and evaluation of historical evidence. But while they provide valuable insight into students' conceptualization of historical knowledge, such studies often are

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limited by a reliance on formal interview techniques. Formal interviews can provide extensive information on students' thinking, yet a more complete picture requires information on how students use evidence to reach conclusions in meaningful settings; such settings might include instruction at school, discussions with relatives, independent reading, or visits to historic sites. Research isolated from the contexts in which students are called upon to make use of evidence-in or out of school-provides only a partial picture of students' understanding of the evidentiary basis of history. Current cognitive theory emphasizes the contextualized nature of knowledge-the ways in which social and cultural settings determine how people acquire and use information and skills (e.g., Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Resnick, 1991; Rogoff, 1990). A more complete portrait of students' approach to evidence requires going beyond clinical interviews with artificial tasks: It requires data from students' use of evidence in the classroom and in other culturally significant settings. Might students demonstrate a less simplistic understanding of evidence if it involved situations that occur in their everyday lives? Would they be more or less critical of historical information that derives from family members? How critical are students when conducting historical research at school? Some reeent studies have looked more closely at the relationship betweeen classroom instruction and students' understanding of evidence (Levstik, 1996; VanSledright & Frankes, 2000; VanSledright & .Kelly, 1998), and this research has led to a more complete portrait of students' approach to history. In particular, these studies have identified specific stumbling blocks children encounter as they attempt to apply what they have learned in classroom settings. The findings reported here-the result of a year-long investigation combining interviews and extensive classroom observation-overlap in important ways with these recent studies. In particular, this work points to significant strengths students brought to their understanding of historical evidence, but it also identifies serious shortcomings in their use of evidence to reach conclusions. Both the strengths and the weaknesses in students' understanding hold important implications for classroom instruction. I

Findings Sources of historical information When I asked students during the early stages of the study how people find out about the past, nearly all thought the information was handed down through word of mouth. As Dwayne explained, "Their mom and dad told them before they died, then they just keep passing it up." Jenny also explained, "Well, like if like adults lived, and if your grandparents or something were alive, at a certain time, they could tell you." Similarly, Kenny noted, "Maybe it's been passed down through families," and his interview partner Curtis added, "Through

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generations." Even when asked about topics further removed from their own experience, students thought the information was transmitted orally; Kenny, for example, said, "Maybe an Indian that lives now has it passed on to him from his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers, who lived back then, and lived to be ninety years old, and passed down to him, so now he could tell us about that." Students also occasionally mentioned that people could learn about the past from books (especially after the school year got underway). But when asked how the people who write books know what happened, students described them as little more than written versions of oral transmission; most thought books about the past were written by people in the past, who had witnessed events firsthand. Kenny explained that "somebody just decided to write it down" and went on to say, And the history of those books is, people have written them a long time ago, and now they've lasted until now, and they can tell us about back then [... ] Or it's about maybe a child lived back here [indicating an earlier time], and wrote a book way up there [at a later time], and now it's lasted until now, so it's lasted thirty years, from when he was a little child, and he wrote the book about his childhood and what it was like back then. Similarly, Kathy suggested, "Maybe if people a long time ago wrote a book about theirselves or something," and Tonya explained, "Some people wrote about it back in the past, and they passed it up through the generations, like somebody might have written it back here, and passed it to these people." Reflecting the belief that books about the past had to be old themselves, Nichole maintained that to find out about the past from encyclopedias, a person would have to find some that are "really, really old [...] because they would have to say what they had back then, and in newer ones, it doesn't have stuff that's old." Students sometimes recognized that books about history are written in the present, yet they nonetheless thought those were based directly on accounts that had themselves been handed down through word of mouth. Amber, for example, said, "It could be if their family just sort of, the stories that kept coming up in the family, like if I had kids and I passed the story down, and maybe they would make a book about it." In the following interview excerpt, students demonstrate the same idea: INTERVIEWER: So people who write books about things a long time ago,

where do you think they found out how things were different? SUSAN: Well, probably they lived back then. INTERVIEWER: What about if somebody wanted to write a book about how

things were different three hundred years ago? How would they know? JEAN: They would probably look it up in the encyclopedia.

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But how about the person who wrote the encyclopedia, how do you think they found out? SUSAN: Probably if they had relatives that were a hundred years old, or eighty years old when they died, and they had a relative, and they find that out, and if my relative was a hundred years old, they would probably tell me. INTERVIEWER:

When pressed to think of other ways to find out about the past, most students made reasonable suggestions. A few mentioned artifacts. Amber, for example, said, "They get a hat from back then, and a hat from now, and they compare." Similarly, Angie explained that "they might find old stuff, from the old days [...J Like if people died or something, you could go to their house to find older things, if they were sorta old." A few students also mentioned journals or diaries. Jesse, for example, said, "If you could have like ajournal," and Nichole said, "Well, they have like diaries and stuff, like when you go on vacation, like back then, like you would have a boat, well, you would find out, and you would write that in your journal, like 'We went in the boat today.'" And given that they were sitting in front of a series of historical pictures as I asked them these questions, several students observed that you could learn about the past from pictures. Once students had more experience collecting historical information in their classrooms, their answers to interview questions like these became much more confident and varied. Having done their own research using people, photographs, artifacts, documents, and a variety of contemporary books, students began to list several of these sources in rapid succession when asked about sources of historical information. The answer to this question eventually became so apparent to students that I dropped it from the interviews altogether.

Evaluating evidence and reconciling conflicting accounts When asked what they would do if they were trying to find out about the past and got different answers, most students initially had trouble answering. Some simply misunderstood the question. Angie, for example, thought that different answers might bc found because one person was writing about one country, and another was writing about another. Similarly, J eremy thought that one person might be talking about Abraham Lincoln, while another was talking about George Washington. Once I gave specific examples of how the issue might arise, though, most students provided more complicated responses. When I asked what they would do if they got different information from relatives they interviewed for their personal timelines- regarding what their first word was, for instance-they suggested that some people were more reliable as sources. John said he would believe his parents rather than his sister "because my sister probably wouldn't

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remember as much as my mom or dad would." Jeremy also said, "I'd go by what my parents said, because your parents would know, your aunt or uncle wouldn't know." Most students pointed specifically to the greater reliability of mothers than fathers. Jeremy said, "I'd go with your mom, because your mom would know and not your dad, because your dad wouldn't keep all the records. Your mom or the hospital keeps all your records, and your baby book and all that stuff." Amber agreed, adding, "Your moms are usually around to hear your first word and dads are probably out working." Jenny also noted that "I just think my mom would know more than my dad would," and Tonya explained, "My dad is wrong about different things with me all the time, and he gets me and my baby brother mixed up all the time." Several students suggested looking at another source. Kathy laughed knowingly when I asked what she would do if her mother said her first word was mama and her father said it was dada. and said, "I would probably get a baby book and look, and if it wasn't in there, then ask like your grandma or grandpa." Dwayne also said to look in a baby book; when I asked him if he thought that would be more reliable, he said, "Yeah, because then it's then. You remember it because it was on that day, and now it's gone." One student suggested much the same response but with a very different example: Kenny and Curtis had initially agreed that conflicting accounts could only by reconciled by guessing, but when Curtis mentioned the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Kenny pointed to the use of multiple sources: "They go around, they look for clues, they found people who had maybe seen it." Near the end of the year, students had a chance to apply their ideas on evaluating and reconciling sources in class: They read twelve different accounts of the battle at Lexington Green and ranked the reliability of each (adapted from Bennett, 1967). When Amy introduced the activity she compared it to a controversy that had arisen in a recent basketball game involving several of the students (and with which the entire class seemed to be familiar). They were excited about discussing the differences of opinion involved, and Amy explained that in this exercise they would be doing much the same thing: They were going to look at several different accounts of the same event and decide what they thought happened. In their initial discussion, students suggested several factors that might influence the reliability of the accounts. Even before Amy compared it to the basketball game, Jenny had asked her, "Are all these colonist people?"; when she found out they were not, she said that the ones who were colonists would probably think the British started it, and the British would probably think the colonists did. John also said that it would be important to know whether they were actually present at the event. Amy asked whether it would matter how long afterward the accounts were written, and students agreed that it would; Darren said if they were written more recently they would know exactly what happened, but if someone wrote them a long time afterward, they wouldn't remember as much. John said that knowing who won the war might also influ-

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ence what they wrote, because they would tend to favor the winners; Jenny added that if the two sides were still mad at each other after the war, that would affect what they wrote as well. Students had no trouble applying these principles once they began reading and discussing the individual accounts. The first was that of a "Colonial onlooker" who asserted that the British fired first. Some students thought being a colonist would make him more likely to blame the British; others noted that since he was only an "onlooker" he probably wasn't on either side and that because he was actually present, he might be reliable. The second account came from a British officer's diary. Like several other students, Nichole pointed out that because it was a diary, he wouldn't know other people were going to read it and he would be more likely to tell the truth. The third account was that of a captured British soldier who claimed that the British fired first. Students thought that the fact that he was "going against his own side" made him more reliable, but several also pointed out that he might just be telling the colonists what they wanted to hear so he wouldn't be killed. As Nichole said, "He's going against the British, so it might be reliable, but it also might not be, because he's just saying that so the colonists won't kill him." The fourth account was a deposition sworn to by thirty-four Colonial militiamen, who claimed that the British fired first. Angie argued that if thirtyfour people all had to come to agreement on the same statement, it wouldn't be very reliable, because each person would have had to make compromises for the group to reach consensus; her explanation was so well argued that no one suggested an alternative interpretation of the reliability of that source. Several students thought the report of the British commander- based on the reports of the officers who had been present at the battle-would have been unreliable; they thought the officers might have lied about who fired first so that they would not get in trouble. Others, however, thought they would be likely to tell the truth because the general would eventually find out from others what really happened, and the officers would be in even bigger trouble if they lied. In one group, Angie explained, "If they told a lie, and he found out, he might kill them, because army people aren't supposed to lie." (Donny noted, "But they do.") Students agreed that an account from a London newspaper would not be very reliable, both because it would be more likely to support the British side and because the information might have been changed by the time it was published (two months after the battle). Students agreed that a Colonial newspaper would be just as biased in the other direction. Students also thought that another account, written fifty years later by a former minuteman, would be unreliable because he wouldn't be able to remember very well and because he would want the colonists to look like heroes.

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Using evidence to reach conclusions In some ways, the Lexington Green activity described above was one of the most successful of the entire year. The exercise was at just the right level of difficulty: The accounts contained enough archaic language that students had to work to decipher the meaning of some passages, for example, but not so hard they gave up. Similarly, students were able to evaluate the reliability of the sources, but these evaluations were not so immediately obvious that they required no discussion. Students also thought the exercise (which lasted several days) was fascinating; they were constantly engaged in the task, and at the end of the first day were shocked at how quickly time had gone by when lunch time arrived. Travis pointed out that he thought it was interesting because he liked looking at the differences of opinion and putting them into categories; Susan thought it was interesting to read someone's diary. In helping students understand how historians interpret evidence, however, the exercise was less successful. Despite understanding and enjoying the activity, students never saw the connection between what they were doing and how people know what happened in history. At the beginning of the task, Amy had explained that they would be doing just what historians do- looking at several different accounts and trying to figure out which are the most reliable. From an instructional perspective, the purpose of the exercise was to give students a better understanding of how historians work, yet that was precisely what students failed to understand: They never realized that historical accounts are based on the kinds of evidence they were themselves examining. Several indications of this lack of understanding arose during the exercise. Jenny noted after reading the first account, for example, that they should write on their worksheets that it was 'just his opinion"; she seemed to think that some of the accounts would not be an "opinion," but would be the actual description of what happened. Similarly, when Tonya came to an introduction that read, "The London Gazette printed this version of the incident on June 10, 1775," she concluded immediately that it was not reliable because it was a "version." I asked her if that made it different than the others, and she said, "Yeah, because it's just made up." More strikingly, one group was discussing an account described as being written by "an English author" in ISII. The consensus among the students was that he might be making it all up. When asked how he would have gotten the information for his description, one student said, "Study it"; another explained that because it was the shot heard round the world, "he would have heard about it." One student thought the author himself might have been at the battle, but the others were convinced that the account was just "made up." None of them understood that his account would have been based on some of the sources they themselves were looking at; they thought he either made up the account or just "heard about it" from other people. At the end of the exercise several students agreed that any account identified as having an "author"

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had to be less reliable, because authors make things up in order to make them more exciting. Students' lack of understanding of the evidentiary basis of historical accounts was clearest the day after they finished working through the sources. Amy asked students who they now thought had fircd the first shot at Lexington Green. All the students had an opinion, but all agreed that none of their opinions were based on the accounts they had just read: Because they thought none of the sources was completely reliable, they simply explained what they thought "must" have happened-without any reference to the sources. (l\10st thought that the colonists had fired first because they had more incentive to start the war.l Amy was surprised that students had chosen to ignore these sources; moreover, when asked whether they thought that was what historians do-just decide what they think "must" have happened-all agreed that they did. The idea of basing an account on evidence was completely lacking in their explanations. While the Lexington Green activity compressed issues of historical interpretation into an easily observable time frame, such issues were by no means lacking at other times. Throughout the year, many of students' assignments required the use of historical evidence-creating personal and family histories, making displays on changes in everyday life, and designing museums of coloniallife. In completing these assignments, students rarely attended to issues of reliability or the evaluation of conflicting sources. Despite their valid, common sense ideas, most students never considered such questions, even when the task involved the collection and interpretation of evidence. When completing personal and family histories, for example, students simply collected and recorded the necessary information and never attempted to verify what they found. Similarly, when developing displays on the history of everyday life, students had a wide range of sources from which to choose, but they failed to consider whether they should compare sources or seek confirmation for what they learned. Most groups, in fact, found one book they liked and based their entire presentation on it; when they did include information from more than one source, each was given equal weight, with no attempt to evaluate its reliability. Since these projects did not explicitly require verification of information or comparison of sources, students can easily be forgiven for not doing so-but it is important to note that in spite of their understanding that sources might be inaccurate or might disagree, they never considered the issue on their own initiative during classroom projects. More striking were the occasions when students neglected evidence altogether. Just as they had ignored the primary sources in reaching conclusions about Lexington Green, students sometimes developed their projects without making use of any of the information available. A group developing a display on the history of household technology, for example, brought in numerous artifacts and placed them into categories according to their age; when Tina asked them how they found out in which category each belonged, they said they 'just

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knew." Another group had used several different books to investigate changes in work, but when they started to develop their presentation, they began by creating new information-based on no sources whatever-and completely ignored the research they had done on the topic. And when designing museums of colonial life, students frequently responded to questions about the source of their information by saying, "I just kinda know." Despite the presence in the room of books on the colonial era, photographs of preserved colonial homes, and reproductions of artwork dating from the period, no student attempted to use these sources to supplement or verify what she or he already thought. Just as in the Lexington Green activity, the idea of using evidence to support conclusions did not appear salient for students.

Discussion This study demonstrates the complexities of students' understanding of historical evidence. Having previously had minimal formal exposure to history-and even less to the work of historians-students understandably began the year with little idea of how evidence is used to create historical accounts. Most thought that historical information was handed down by word of mouth-an assumption reflecting the family context in which much of their previous historical learning had taken place (Barton, 1995). But this personalized understanding of historical information also provided students with reasonable ideas about what made some sources more reliable than others, as well as how to reconcile conflicting accounts: They knew that people sometimes remember differently, that personal bias can influence accounts, that direct sources provide different insights than indirect ones, and that contemporary sources are more reliable than later memory. These findings are similar to those of VanSledright and Kelly (1998), who found that some fifth graders understood that texts could vary in their validity and that students considered authors' points of view important in making judgments about those texts. Students in the present study made impressive use of their understanding in analyzing primary sources describing the battle at Lexington Green. These fourth and fifth graders engaged in precisely the kinds of historical thinking that eluded the high schoolers studied by Wine burg (1991, 1992) and some of the university students described by Yeager and Davis (1994, 1995): They saw each account as constructed by a willful author, and they carefully and systematically analyzed the potential bias in each source-the political leanings of the author, the goal the author was trying to achieve, the recentness of the event, even the effects of peer pressure. Students' experiences with disagreements, with bias, and with memory-all developed outside the context of school history-equipped them with the critical skills needed for sound historical reasoning. But just as important, these students regarded texts so critically they considered them pure fiction. Faced with conflicting sources, students despaired of establishing any reliability and thus rejected them all.

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VanSledright and Kelly (1998) and VanSledright and Frankes (2000) found similar difficulties among the students they studied; the fourth and fifth graders in those studies knew that sources could disagree, but they knew of no strategies for dealing with such disagreement. But although the students in this study regarded sources critically, they paradoxically regarded information-abstracted from the texts that carry ituncritically: They acted as though knowledge of the past existed independently of evidence. Thus in developing their projects on the history of everyday life, students had no interest in establishing the validity of their information: If they came across information somewhcrc-anywherc-they included it, and they rarely considered the possibility of looking at more than one sou~e. Students working on "Colonial museums" or other projects often included information that came from no source at all, but which they just "kinda knew." Most revealingly, students in Amy's class based their conclusions about the battle of Lexington Green on none of the evidence they had been considering, and they thought historians did the same. These findings are,similar to those in a recent study by Levstik (1996), who found that when third graders who had completed extensive historical research were asked to put their findings into a narrative form, they quickly abandoned the information they had acquired and "resorted to wholesale fiction" (p. 2). For educators, the crucial question is why?-why do students have such difliculty employing evidence when they reach conclusions about the history they study in class? Because the present study was primarily descriptive, answers to this question must remain speculative; nonetheless, the experiences of these students suggest that three factors may have been crucial. The first is the most obvious: Students had little or no prior experience in using historical evidence to reach conclusions in classroom settings and thus were not very skilled at such tasks. These students had not previously studied history systematically at school, and the history they had encountered there did not focus on questions of evidence. It is not surprising, then, that their initial attempts at historical analysis did not always accord very precisely with the work of professional historians. Rather than being seen as a failure to think historically, students' performance should be seen as an early point on a continuum of historical thinking, a starting point along a path that will involve expanding exposure to historical sources and instruction in their evaluation and use. Some might object that fourth and fifth graders are simply not capable of such analysis, but that view is not supported by this research. Students in this study enjoyed working with primary sources, could evaluate them critically when asked to, and sometimes consulted them in creating their own historical accounts; those achievements seem reasonable for beginners, and there is no reason to think that with increased exposure students could not further refine their use of historical evidence. A second reason for students' difficulty in using evidence may lie in the narrative form in which they had previously learned about history. When

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students had encountered history at school before fourth grade, it was in the context of reading or listening to stories of famous people. Outside school, they had heard relatives tell stories about the past, watched television shows or movies set in historic time periods, or read historical fiction or biographies on their own (Barton, 1995). In each of these instances, the form of presentation was a narrative one: Students learned about characters who participated in causally connected chains of events. Any narrative involves the intentional selection and arrangement of elements, as well as an interpretation of the connections among those elements-but rarely do narratives (particularly for children) invite speculation into the basis for such interpretation. :More commonlY'i- narrative presents its audience with a single version of events, arranged so that it appears to be the only one possible; the audience typically judges the validity of the story's interpretation not by comparison to empirical evidence (irrelevant anyway in the case of fiction) but by its verisimilitude-its congruence with their understanding of the norms of human motivation and behavior (Bruner, 1986). Cpildren realize that fictional narratives are imaginative creations and do not deed to be validated by factual evidence-but what are they to do with nonfiction narratives such as history? Lacking previous instruction in the topic, the students in this study assimilated their understanding of historical narratives to that of fictional ones: Because they thought anything that had an "author" was inherently unreliable on empirical grounds, they supplied their own details on the basis of what they thought "must" have happened. Rather than attempting to reconcile or choose from among conflicting accounts, students regarded all such accounts as equally unreliable and reached their judgments on the basis of a more general understanding of human motivation and behavior. Finally, explaining students' readiness to assert historical knowledge that has no evidentiary basis may require placing their historical thinking into a broader context than the school setting. Like adults, children are most likely to acquire the skills considered significant in the society of which they are a part (whether or not those match the instruction they receive at school). Students in Amy's classroom may not have perceived any cultural importance in basing conclusions about the past on evidence; they may not have recognized that as a valued skill, or one that they are likely ever to need. After all, what difference would it make which account of Lexington Green was best supported by the sources? This is not to say that students did not care about the exercise, or about history more generally; in fact, they enjoyed the subject immensely, and the Lexington Green activity was a particular favorite. The one aspect of the lesson that mattered little to them, though, was the connection between conclusions and evidence, and their indifference to this aspect of historical reasoning may well reflect a similar apathy in the broader society of which they are a part. Indeed, one could argue that students' performance closely mirrors the general lack of concern in American culture with questions of evidence. In many areas of life-politics, economics, religion, and popular culture, for

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example~the uncritical acceptance of conclusions appears to be more highly valued than their analysis in light of the grounds that support them. The popularity of psychic telephone lines, weekly tabloids, urban legends, and UFO sightings suggests that people do indeed accept many propositions without regard to their supporting evidence. This tendency to base firmly hcld bcliefs on grounds other than empirical evidence is also apparent in popular perceptions of history, as demonstrated, for example, by resistance to alternative interpretations of the bombing of Hiroshima (Nobile, 1995) or by nostalgic remembrance of times that never were (Coontz, 1992). Given this general discomfort with examining the evidence for beliefs, students' indifference to the issue seems unremarkable: They appear to have internalized their society's lack of interest in this aspect of history. Yet this simplified picture may also obscure important facets of historical reasoning, for there is not one American culture, nor anyone popular historical understanding~there are many. A great deal of research in history, sociology, and anthropology has demonstrated how communities retain, pass on, and commemorate perceptions of the past that may stand in contrast to official stories encountered in school or other institutions (Bodnar, 1992; Cohen, 1994; Gillis, 1994; Kammen, 1995; Schwartz, Zerubavel, & Barnett, 1986). Recent studies with children confirm the pervasiveness of these alternative historical perceptions. Epstein (1994b, 1997), for example, found that African American high school students often used the historical information they acquired in their neighborhoods and from their families to construct an understanding that stood in active resistance to what they learned at school. Similarly, Barton and Levstik (1997) found that middle graders drew on the historical memories of people they knew to provide alternatives to more progressive and benign versions of American history. Because families and communities can retain memories that stand in contrast to official interpretations, the connection between historical evidence and conclusions has the potential to assume great cultural importance; issues that continue to matter in society, but whose interpretations have not yet been firmly established, may spark more interest in historical evidence than do less controversial issues. The fact that some students in this study were already familiar with debates over the assassination ofJohn F. Kennedy suggests that issues of evidence may indeed be salient for children when they relate to questions that retain their importance in the wider culture. Rather than concluding that students' lack of interest in evidence-based conclusions reflects a general deficiency in American culture, it may be more accurate to conclude that it reflects our society's lack of interest in documenting colonial military encounters. Instead of seeking to explain why students are not more inclined to use historical evidence when they draw conclusions, perhaps we would be better served by seeking to establish which topics are most likely to stimulate them to do so.

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Instructional implications These findings carry several significant instructional implications. First, students need systematic exposure to the collection and evaluation of historical evidence. Most students initially suggested that historical information was handed down by word of mouth, or perhaps by its written equivalent- books written a long time ago. These students did not know that people in the present use a variety of sources in order to reconstruct accounts of the past. Without a more complete understanding of the basis of historical knowledge, students are ill-equipped to participate in the kinds of "sound historical reasoning" required for meaningful learning. Amy and Tina, however, engaged their classes in assignments in which students themselves were responsible for collecting historical information, and thus they came to see the variety of sources people today use to learn about the past. Projects that required students to engage in historical inquiry-creating personal and family histories, making displays and presentations, recreating historical events-led them to a more complete understanding of the sources of historical information. Elementary students need the opportunity to examine historical evidence firsthand-not the tertiary and evidence-free accounts in textbooks, but documents, photographs, objects, oral accounts, and a wide variety of secondary sources. Second, elementary students have important skills in historical reasoning that can be built on and expanded. Students already were aware of numerous ways in which sources could be biased, and they easily applied their understanding to historical documents; their analysis of the Lexington Green sources far outpaces the older students described in previous research. These students' greater facility with the task perhaps resulted from its completion in a classroom setting: Students were able to discuss the task beforehand, compare it to what they already knew, and work collaboratively with teachers and peers. Evaluating evidence in that kind of familiar context resulted in more sophisticated responses than in the more clinical settings used in previous studies. Given students' interest and ability in evaluating evidence, instruction should incorporate many more such exercises, in the elementary grades and later. Through such exercises, students could move beyond their generalized understanding of bias to consider the specifically historical circumstances that produced the sources they examine. They might, for example, learn about political or economic events that influence the subtexts of documents, or they might investigate how historical attitudes toward gender, race, religion, or other aspects of society influence the ways historical documents are worded. Students' prior understanding of conflict and bias in present day accounts provides a solid basis for such an undertaking. But students also need much more experience connecting historical evidence and conclusions. Despite their critical strengths, students did not spontaneously bring these to bear on their historical studies. Although they learned during the year what kinds of sources historians use and had no trouble

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evaluating sources critically when asked to do so, students failed to recognize that conclusions about what happened in history must be based on critical examination of sources. Students recognized that any source is potentially biased, but as a result they either treated all sources equally or threw sources out altogether and based their conclusions on what they "kinda knew." But historical knowledge requires a more complicated response-considering which sources are more credible and evaluating which claims are better supported by evidence. In order to engage in this kind of reasoning, students need more practice in the "active, persistent, and careful consideration," in Dewey's terms, of the evidence for historical claims. Such consideration cannot be a simple add-on to a fact-based curriculum, nor even a central component of the only occasional inquiry project; evidence-based reasoning must be a continual and explicit focus of instruction. Most important, students need systematic and ongoing practice with using evidence to form conclusions, and teachers must help students clarify the connection between their conclusions and the evidence that supports them. These efforts must become such a common feature of instruction that students demonstrate careful reasoning as a consistent habit of thinking (cf. Meier, 1995; Sizer, 1992). But helping students develop these skills also requires considering the factors that may hinder their application in historical contexts. First, educators need to be extremely cautious in their use of historical narratives. The power of narrative to stimulate students' interest is well-established, and for several years it was fashionable in some circles to refer to history as "a story well told." As a device for teaching students history, however, the uncritical presentation of stories about the past has serious drawbacks. Because stories usually omit any mention of the evidence upon which they are based, teachers should make sure that they are accompanied by projects that require the examination of evidence. Students might, for example, use sets of historical sources to decide which elements of a given story are most likely to be true, and which may have been invented or exaggerated. Whenever possible, students need to read works of history whose authors describe their sources of information, and who indicate conflicts among those sources; an essential criterion for the evaluation of children's nonfiction, in fact, is the extent to which an author makes such issues clear (Levstik & Barton, 1997). Students could also use primary sources to create their own stories, and teachers could help them reflect on the connections between the evidence and their interpretations. In addition, when students encounter the larger narratives that comprise the substance of most textbooks and curriculum guides, they should have the chance to use historical evidence to create alternative interpretations-to describe the story of westward expansion from the perspective of Native Americans, or women, or Mrican Americans, for example. Unless students' exposure to historical narratives is accompanied by familiarity with the way those narratives are created, they are unlikely to develop a meaningful understanding of the difference

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between evidence-based historical accounts and "fanciful elaborations" (VanSledright & Brophy, 1992). Finally, students' encounter with history should focus on issues that retain their significance in contemporary society, for those are the issues most likely to inspire students to support their conclusions with reliable evidence. Instead of well-crafted "academic" exercises on safe topics such as Lexington Green, students should examine the evidence surrounding more meaningful historical events-World War II, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and so on. Even topics more typically found in primary classrooms have the potential to inspire strong reactions today. Stories about Columbus, the Pilgrims, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln still matter because they are central to the American mythology of "our" origins as a nation, and evidence that challenges popular perceptions will be treated skeptically; many people, for example, are highly resistant to hearing that Columbus was directly responsible for the mutilation and murder of countless Native Americans. Students who examine the evidence surrounding deeply-held American myths may be more likely to develop an appreciation for the necessity of linking conclusions to evidenceparticularly if they share their findings with those outside the classroom. If students have to overcome skepticism toward their claims, they may see more clearly the necessity of basing those claims on reliable evidence.

Conclusions The students in this study initially had little knowledge of the evidentiary basis of historical accounts, but after participating in several historical investigations they developed an understanding of the range of sources that can yield historical information. Students also had valid ideas about how to evaluate sources: When placed in the historical context they knew best-talking to relativesmost understood that some sources are more reliable than others and that conflicting sources could be reconciled by evaluating their reliability or by referring to other sources. Furthermore, students were able to apply these common sense ideas in evaluating primary sources on the battle at Lexington Green. Yet students never fully understood the connection between critically examining sources and forming conclusions. Although they could examine sources critically when asked, they rarely did so spontaneously, and thus when developing accounts of what happened in history they either ignored explicit consideration of the reliability of sources or treated all sources equally. Several factors may have contributed to students' difficulty in basing their historical accounts on evidence-their lack of previous experience with such skills, their exposure to history primarily in the form of narratives, or their perception that the use of historical evidence has little importance in the wider culture. Each of these factors could be addressed systematically in the elementary classroom: Teachers could provide students with more practice in using historical evidence, could make sure that historical narratives are accompanied

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by critical analysis of the evidence on which they rest, and could focus on issues significant enough to make the question of evidence an important one. Thus while this study shows that elementary students possess important skills needed for historical reasoning, it also indicates that instruction should focus more systematically and explicitly on helping students make use of these skills; students need practice weighing historical evidence, examining biases, synthesizing information, and reaching conclusions. In perhaps no other area of the school curriculum is content so thoroughly divorced from attention to the methods of investigation and creation of knowledge; especially at the elementary level, students rarely have the chance to collect historical information, examine primary sources, or consider conflicting interpretations. More attention to such activities is needed in order to help students develop a more complete understanding of the sources of historical knowledge. 2

Notes 1. The research methods for this study are described in Ch. 8 of this volume. 2. The author wishes to thank Linda S. Levstik, Bruce VanSledright, and Michael Whelan for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.

References Barton, K. C. (1993, November). History is more than story: Expanding the boundaries rifelementary learning. Paper presented to the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies, Nashville. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 367 562. Barton, K. C. (1994). Historical understanding among elementary children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of K entucky, Lexington. Barton, K. C. (1995, April). ",vb mom taught me": The situated nature rifhistorical understanding. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. ERIC Document R eproduction Service No. ED 387 404. Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (1997, March). Middle graders' explanations rif historical signijicance. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 418033. Bennett. P. S.(1967). vVhat happened on Lexington Green: An inquiry into the nature and methods rif history (teacher and students manuals). Washington, DC: Office of Education, Bureau of Research. Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED 032 333. Beyer, B. K. (1971). Inquiry in the social studies classroom: A strategy for teaching. Columbus: Merrill. Bode, B. H. (1940). How we learn. Boston: H eath. Bodnar,]. (1992). Remaking America: Public memory. commemoration. and patriotism in the twentieth century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bradley Commission on History in Schools. (1989). Building a history curriculum: Guidelines for teaching. In P. Gagnon & The Bradley Commission on History in Schools (Eds.), Historical literary: the case for history in American education (pp. 16- 47). New York: Macmillan.

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Brophy,]., VanSledright, B. A., & Bredin, N. (1992). Fifth-graders' ideas about history expressed before and after their introduction to the subject. Ikeory and Research in Social Education, 20, 440- 89. Brown,]. S., Collins, A. , & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18( I), 32- 42. Bruner,]. S. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cohen, D. W. (1994). Ike combing qfhistory. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Coontz, S. (1992). The wqy we never were: Americanfamilies and the nostalgia trap. New York: Basic Books. Dewey,]. (1910). How we think. New York: Heath. Epstein, T. L. (1994a). America Revised revisited: Adolescents' attitudes toward a United States history textbook. Social Education, 58, 41-44. Epstein, T. L. (1994b, April). Makes no difference ifyou're black or white? A.frican-American and European-American adolescents' perspectives on historical significance and historical sources. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans. Epstein, T. L. (1997). Sociocultural approaches to young people's historical understanding. Social Education, 61,28-31. Gabella, M. S. (1993, April). Textual truths, photographicfacts: Epistemological stumbling blocks in the sturfy qf history. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta. Gillis,]. R. (1994). Memory and identity: The history ofa relationship. In]. R . Gillis (Ed.), Commemorations: Ike politics qfnational identity (pp. 3- 24). Princeton, l'{J: Princeton University Press. Good, T. L., & Brophy,]. (1994). Looking in classrooms. New York: HarperColiins. Hunt, M. P. , & Metcalfe, L. E. (1957). Teaching high school social studies: Problems in riflective thinking and social understanding. New York: Harper. Kammen, M. (1995). Review ofIwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames qfremembrance: the rfynamics qfcollective memory. History and Theory, 34, 245- 61. Kilpatrick, W. H. (1925). Foundations qfmethod: IrifOrmal talks on teaching. New York: Macmillan. Lave,]., & Wenger, E. (1991 ). Situated learning: ugitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Levstik, L. S. (1996, April). "The color must come in the words": The challenges qfhistorical interpretation with children. Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the College and University Faculty Assembly, National Council for the Social Studies, Washington, DC. Levstik, L. S. (1989). Historical narrative and the young reader. 7heory into Practice, 28, 114--19. Levstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (1997). Doing history: Investigating with children in elementary and middle schools. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Massialas, B.G., & Cox, C. B. (1966). Inquiry in social studies. New York: McGraw-Hill. Meier, D. (1995). How our schools could be. Phi Delta Kappan, 76, 369--73. National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Expectations qf excellence: Curriculum standardsfor social studies (Bulletin No. 89). Washington, DC: Author. National History Standards Project. (1994). National standards for United States history: Exploring the American experience. Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools.

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Nelson,]. L. (1970). Teaching elementary social studies through inquiry. Highland Park, NJ: Dreier Educational Systems. Nobile, P. (I 995).Judgment at the Smithsonian. New York: Marlow. Prawat, R. (1989). Teaching for understanding: Three key attributes. Teaching and Teacher Education, 5, 315-28. Resnick, L. B. (1991). Shared cognition: Thinking as social practice. In L. B. Resnick, ]. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on social!;; shared cognition (pp. 1- 20). Washington, OC: American Psychological Association. Rogoff, B.(1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press. Schwartz, B., Zerubavel, Y., & Barnett, B. M. (1986). The recovery of Mas ada: A study in collective memory. The Sociological Q1iarter!;;, 27, 147- 64. Shaver,]. P. (Ed.) (1991 ). Handbook ofresearch on social studies teaching and learning. New York: Macmillan. Shemilt, D. (1987). Adolescent ideas about evidence and methodology in history. In C. Portal (Ed.), The history curriculumfor teachers (pp. 39-61). London: Heinemann. Sizer, T. R. (1992). Horace's school: Redesigning the American high school. New York: Houghton Mifflin. VanSledright, B. A., & Brophy J. (1992). Storytelling, imagination, and fanciful elaboration in children's historical reconstructions. American Educational Research Journal, 29, 837- 59. VanSledright, B. A., & Frankes, L. (2000). Concept- and strategic-knowledge development in historical study: A comparative exploration in two fourth-grade classrooms. Cognition and Instmction, 18,239-83. VanSledright, B. A. , & Kelly, C. (1998). Reading American history: The influence of multiple sources on six fifth graders. Elementary SchoolJournal, 98, 239-65. Wesley, E. B. (1937). Teaching the social studies: Theory and practice. New York: Heath. Wineburg, S. S. (1991). On the reading of historical texts: Notes on the breach between school and academy. American Educational ResearchJournal, 28, 495-519. Wineburg, S. S. (1992). Probing the depths of students' historical knowledge. Perspectives ofthe American HistoricalAssociation, 30(3), 19- 24. Yeager, E. A., & Davis, O. L. , jr. (1994, April). Understanding the "knowing how" ofhistory: Elementary student teachers' thinking about historical texts. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 376121. Yeager, E. A., & Davis, O. L.,jr. (1995). Between campus and classroom: Secondary teachers' thinking about historical texts. Journal ofResearch and Development in Education, 29,1 - 8.

Chapter I I

What makes the past worth knowing?

Linda S. Levstik

[Historians1 advance bravely into the future with our eyes fIxed fIrmly on the past: the image we present to the world is, to put it bluntly, that of a rear end .... We can perceive shapes through the fog and mist, we can speculate as to their signifIcance, and sometimes we can even agree among ourselves as to what these are .. . [W]e can never go back there to see for sure. John Lewis Gaddis (2002) Once, sitting in the back of a fourth grade classroom, I watched a particularly deadly history lesson. D esultory answers followed perfunctory questions about a topic so uninspired I can recall only that it had something to do with state history. Students gazed hopefully at the clock, rummaged in their desks, shifted uncomfortably in their seats and generally let their frustrations show. As the lesson (and the school day) ended, three boys turned to ask if I had to observe this sort of thing very often. It must be pretty boring, they said, adding that nobody could possibly make this "history stufl" worth learning. As I think back on that conversation, I recall my frustration at another wasted opportunity to engage students with a significant past. It wasn't just that I disagreed with the content choices made by the teacher, although, as I recall, there wasn't much content to the lesson at all. And it wasn't just that the lesson wasn't engaging. It was that the whole thing was so insignificant. No historical questions established the significance of one historical detail rather than another. Nothing connected the content to previous studies, to larger historical patterns, or to students' lives or interests. The point of the lesson had nothing to do with history, and everything to do with "getting through" a required part of the curriculum. Small wonder that the students found nothing to convince them that school history had anything worthwhile to say to them. Yet the students Keith and I have interviewed over the years find the past interesting, express strong ideas about what makes history (though not always school history) worthwhile, and enjoy sharing their ideas about the past and history. And, as Rosenzweig and Thelan (1998) found, so do many adults- until you ask them about the "boring" history they studied in school (p. III). Why such

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disconnect between potential (developing historical interest and understanding) and practice (generating little historical interest and less understanding)? In the 1990s considerable attention focused on two aspects of potential and practice in history education: Establishing the components of "historical thinking" and developing content and assessment standards (Nash, Crabtree, & Dunn, 2000; National Assessment Governing Board, 1994). At the time, components ascribed to historical thinking varied considerably, depending on assumptions about and descriptions of the practices of academic historians. Imprecision in definitions also muddied the waters. Overall, for instance, history educators used historical thinking and historical understanding interchangeably. Yet in developing a set of history standards, the National Center for History in the Schools (1996) suggested a separation between thinking and understanding, explaining that "true historical understanding requires students to engage in historical thinking" (p. 1). While historical understanding certainly suggests some sort of historical thinking, exactly what difference there might be between historical understanding and historical thinking was then (and continues to be) unclear-as is that interesting and problematic modifier, true. The National Center for History in the Schools (1996) offered up five overlapping and ultimately confusing dimensions of historical understanding: Chronological thinking, historical comprehension, historical analysis and interpretation, historical research capabilities, and historical issues-analysis and decision-making. While there is much that could be said about these categories and the accompanying standards (Nash et al., 2000; Symcox, 2002), they highlight the imprecision regarding what constituted historical thinking or understanding. With the benefit of hindsight, we suggest that the struggle to define what constituted historical thinking was rooted in more fundamental differences about the nature of history (that word true in regard to historical understanding signifies some of the trouble) and its purposes in democratic schools (Barton & Levstik, 2004). At the time, we worried less about terminology than about the sense children make of the past. If children exhibited more sophisticated ideas about the past than generally assumed, yet found school history irrelevant, we wanted to know how they established relevance. Again, terminology was fluid. In our earlier research Keith and I used the term salience in referring to how students selected chronologically relevant information in historical images. The NCHS standards, on the other hand, briefly referred to determining relevance as an element of historical thinking, although it was unclear if determining relevance described the same cognitive activity as determining salience. By the time I began working on the 1994 NAEP U.S. History Framework development committee, discussion centered on "establishing significance" as a feature of historical analysis and interpretation. Interestingly, the NAEP Framework (National Assessment Governing Board 1994) avoided using historical thinking and historical understanding altogether, proffering instead, two "cognitive domains" - historical knowledge and perspective, and historical

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analysis and interpretation~as testable areas for subsequent U.S. history assessments. Unfortunately, neither the NCHS standards nor the NAEP framework offered clear enough definitions of terms to distinguish one from the other or to establish them as synonymous. This is not to suggest that one term is necessarily better than another, only that imprecision marked early discussions of teaching and learning history, as is often the case in emerging fields. Fluidity of terms and definitions can be frustrating, making it difficult to evaluate research claims or even to locate relevant research, but fluidity also offers interesting possibilities for researchers. In the 1990s, the practices associated with academic historians' work~the domains suggested by NCHS or NAEP, for instance~offered a beginning point for scholars investigating the degree to which children's thinking matched "expert" thinking or conformed to newly established "standards" as well as for scholars investigating children's ways of making sense of the past in different social contexts. From our perspective, focusing on the ways in which students matched or fell short of either professional practice or the newly emerging standards missed a crucial component of history education~the grounds on which children made decisions about what was historically significant (or salient or relevant). What did children and adolescents actually do when they tried to make sense of the past? What parts of the past took on significance, why, and in what contexts? We were not alone in this interest. The historical literature was awash with attention to "historical memory." In the introduction to Mystic Chords qfMemory (1993), historian Michael Kammen noted over a decade of "intense and widespread interest" in collective memory and national identity: In response to this trans-national phenomenon, critics adhering to diverse ideological persuasions have suggested that societies in fact reconstruct their pasts rather than faithfully record them, and that they do so with the needs of contemporary culture clearly in mind~manipulating the past in order to mold the present. (p. 3) Outside history, too, debate swirled around public commemorations from the Vietnam Memorial to historical exhibits at museums across the country. In 1994, sociologist John Bodnar began his book, Remaking America: Public Memory. Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century with the disputed Vietnam Memorial, describing the "struggle for supremacy between advocates of various political ideas and sentiments" in shaping public memory (p.l). We found both Kammen and Bodnar's work useful, but were particularly struck by Bodnar's description of vernacular histories wherein groups and individuals unrepresented or misrepresented in the mainstream historical narrative constructed alternative histories for themselves. At about the same time, Seixas's (1994) and Epstein's (1998) studies of secondary students' conceptions

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of historical significance suggested that students' ideas about significance followed Bodnar's pattern, varying by race, ethnicity, and country of origin, among other things. In investigating children's chronological thinking, we also noted the differing influence of what we initially called "history genres," the combinations of purposes and practices that characterize history in different settings. Bodnar's vernacular history offered us a useful theoretical framework for thinking about the intersections among history genres and children's social worlds, and the concomitant complexities of establishing historical significance in or out of classrooms. Over the years, we've adapted a number of concepts and theories from literacy to our work with historical thinking-the concept of "genre" being one example. In part, this developed from my early interest in narrative and history, but equally it grew from the richness of scholarship in literacy and the (then) relative paucity of research in history education. By the mid-l 990s, theoretical work in history and the social sciences proved increasingly useful for our work. In the two studies that follow, we draw heavily (and temporarily) on the work of historian Michael Kammen (1993) and sociologist John Bodnar (1994) as well as that of political scientists Kwame Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann (1996). I say temporarilY because we hold our theories lightly-assuming that they will shift as we continue to read and research. In our experience, reading widely (across fields) as well as deeply (within fields) increases the possibility of developing better working theories, making more powerful connections across disciplines, and, often enough, challenging our existing theories. Even good theories can (almost) always be better-better able to account for complexity, to connect phenomena, to predict behaviors. In our experience, too, theories from other disciplines suggest new ways of analyzing and explaining information, ideas, and impressions gathered as we interview and observe students and teachers. The two studies that follow represent this pattern. On one level, the initial study of children's perceptions of historical significance represents a continuation of our work with chronology. As Keith noted in Chapter 4, from a methodological perspective, the picture timeline worked very well, generating rich conversation with a broader range of students than classroom ethnographies allow, and offering a relatively time-constrained, nonintrusive format. We wanted to refine the methodology, testing its effectiveness with more complicated concepts than chronology. Historical significance certainly offered interesting complications. As I noted earlier, it is a slippery concept. One might, for instance, establish the significance of a source depending on its relevance to a particular historical question, or the significance of a person, idea, or event based on a particular approach-political, economic, or cultural history-or purpose-emphasizing or countering a national narrative of unity and progress, directing attention to global connections. As a result, historical interpretations shift over time as well as among and between historians and the general public, teachers and students. Yet the notion persists that historical significance holds steady over time, that what was significant in the

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past (particularly in mainstream national narratives) will/must continue to be significant in the present and future (Allen, 2006). Historians including Michael Kammen (1993) and, more recently, David Blight (1997, 2002, 2006) offer interesting insights into how historical memory shifts over time, and Edward Ayers's (2003) recent work documents the speed with which one historical narrative supplants another. But schools respond slowly to historiographical shifts, often resisting newer and more complex interpretations that alter ideas about the significance of traditional parts of the history curriculum. The Florida legislature's insistence on requiring school history to offer 'just the facts" and rejecting history as in any way "constructed," is just one example of public resistance to changing conceptions of the past (Allen, 2006). As a result, school history varies considerably from current scholarship, and students' perceptions may vary further based on influences beyond either school or scholarship. The chronology study offered us enough of a glimpse of students' ideas about historical salience or significance to suggest that this might be an interesting problem to explore further. Given students' enthusiasm for the picture-based chronology task, too, we thought an elaboration on the timeline might support deeper conversation about children's ideas regarding historical significance. As we mentioned earlier, we enjoy developing and refining research methodologies that offer students as many opportunities as possible to demonstrate what they know. From our perspective, citizens of a pluralist democracy should be able to draw on history to help them understand their own and others' lives and to participate intelligently in democratic debate, discussion, and decisionmaking. In order for that to happen, history educators need to better understand students' ideas about history and the past. By the 1990s, scholarship on the creation of public memory not only investigated aspects of the complex and shifting array of influences on adult perceptions of historical significance, but suggested the importance of this concept if children were ever to engage with the past, in schools, in meaningful ways. In our first study, then, we decided to investigate early adolescents' perceptions of historical significance. What ideas did they have about the significance of people, ideas, and events in the past? What sources did they draw on or criteria invoke in establishing historical significance? In the second study I considered how students' perceptions mapped onto those of teachers and teacher candidates. How did each adult group establish historical significance for themselves and for their students (or students-to-be)? What influenced their perceptions? What made one moment or event more or less meaningful than another, or more of less appropriate for school children? And, what were the possible consequences of these perceptions for teachers, their students, and an educated citizenry? Keith and I spend a good deal of our professional lives thinking about how to make history meaningful to students. Becausc we have both been in classrooms where "meaningful" doesn't really apply to history instruction, we are immensely grateful for classrooms where it does, and for teachers and students

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who indulge us by sharing their ideas a bout history and the past. As a r esult, we try to c reate high-interest research situations that not only benefit us, but benefit schools and children as well. To a large extent we consider this part of our "thank you" to host schools- but we also want teachers and students to continue to work with us, and research that has no "value-added" component for schools might get us in the door once, but probably not twice. The "value-added" component differs from study to study. In long-term, single-setting studies, for instance, teachers and students tell us they b enefit from the interaction with another interested adult and appreciate an extra pair of eyes and ears. We have both conducted such studies and developed rich, challenging relationships that have continued over many years. Often, though, time is at a premium. Sometimes, as with these two studies, we may only have 30 to 45 minutes with a student or group of students to explain our research, establish rapport, engage them in a t ask, and conduct an interview. Every minute has to count, and the task has not only to be almost instantly engaging, but challenging enough to provoke conversation, allow students to demonstrate what they know, and add something to their historical thinking in the process. With this in mind, we began building a task to generate talk about historical significance. Opting for U.S. rather than world history appealed logistically. First, students in American elementary and middle schools generally have little experience with world history. We worried that they might have few grounds for establishing significance. We also decided that confining our study to relatively familiar history might facilitate students' participation in the task. They wouldn't need extensive captions, poor readers would be at less of a disadvantage, and students would be less likely to turn to us for additional information. In addition, the staggering array of possibilities in world history made the task of selecting a relatively small number of images for a time-constrained task daunting. And, while each of us had studied and taught the history of specific countries or regions outside the U.S. , neither of us had read as widely or as deeply in world history as we had in U .S. history. As researchers, we needed to recognize our strengths and limitations, but more to the point, we wanted to make sure we didn't frustrate students into silence or end up with data so diffuse as to be impossible to code. This is not to say that adapting the significance timeline to world history shouldn't or couldn't be done. In fact, we hope someone will do just that. As we have conducted versions of this task in different settings in the United States, we have been disturbed by the willingness of students and some teachers to dismiss the rest of the world as insignificant in regard to U .S. history. This phenomenon certainly bears further investigation. Is this response an artifact of the task-establishing a national timeline- or symptomatic of a d eeper dismissiveness regarding the rest of the world? We don't know, but the very different response generated in other national s ettings suggests the latter may be avery real issue. Whatever the reasons, very little research focuses on historical thinking in the context of world history and we consider this a s erious gap in the research

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base. Having now tried versions of this task in the U.S. and different national settings, and read some of the newer work on teaching world history, we suspect that we were wrong about the confusion a world history timeline might engender among students as well as about the difficulty of selecting appropriate pictures (cf. Gaudelli, 2002). Once we settled on U.S. history as the basis for the timeline, we also decided to limit our study to fifth through eighth graders. Establishing significance seemed to us to require more formal exposure to history (recognition of specific people, ideas, and events) than had the chronology task. The first formal instruction in U.S. history generally occurs in a fifth grade survey course. While patterns differ somewhat between schools and across regions, the next U.S. history course appears in eighth grade, often with a focus on the early contact period through Reconstruction. In addition, fifth through eighth graders' reading levels would allow us to use captioned pictures. We have since developed similar timelines for use with state history and find that fourth graders manage the task quite well, provided at least one student in each group can read the captions out loud. We selected pictures for the timeline based on several criteria. We began with the newly developed NAEP U.S. history framework's periodization (National Assessment Governing Board, 1994): Contact, exploration, nationbuilding, expansion, industrialization, and modernization. The NAEP periodization matched curricular patterns in the schools we anticipated including in the study, it offered a framework subject to national assessment, and I had participated in developing the framework, so I was interested in seeing if it at all matched students' ideas of what was historically significant. Working on projects such as the NAEP framework and, later, with assessment development offers significant advantages to researchers. Reading student responses to test items makes clear how easily an image, question, or diagram can be misread. Crafting test items and then being able to follow those items from pilot to final assessment turned out to be enormously helpful in making interview protocols clearer and probes more effective. Work with an organization such as NAEP offers the additional advantage of listening to perspectives you might otherwise have missed or ignored. For me, the passionate negotiation during NAEP framework meetings around issues of periodization highlighted the importance of investigating perceptions of his torical significance among adults as well as children. What was worth knowing, and why? What consequences in terms of content, perspectives, and pedagogy might follow one periodization rather than another? What people, events, and ideas best represented a historical period? What might be left out or marginalized? In considering what kinds of history to represent among the timeline pictures, we tried to complicate traditional periodizations and include social! cultural history (expanding and contracting rights for women and minorities) and scientific and technological change (electrification, disease control,

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computerization) as well as military/political history (constitutional history, war, and territorial expansion). Finally, we included three pictures that represented, for want of a better term, popular culture: Thanksgiving, Elvis Presley, and the 0.]. Simpson "trial of the century." Earlier, Seixas (1994) had described a hierarchy of student thinking in regard to establishing historical significance. At the lowest level proposed by Seixas, students confused fame with significance. We wanted to test out Seixas's proposition, so we included images with a clear "fame factor," such as the then-ubiquitous 0.]. Simpson trial and the enduring and ever-reappearing pop icon, Elvis Presley. Of course, the Simpson trial might also stand for media influence and racial tensions in America, while Elvis Presley could represent rock and roll as a cultural phenomenon, or the appropriation of Black music into White ,culture, and we were ready to be impressed if students made those claims. We included Thanksgiving as an example of the dominant "holiday" curriculum in elementary schools and as part of a popular historical lexicon. We wondered whether children would select any of these items, and if they did, what arguments they would make for their inclusion. As it turned out, no student group ever selected either Elvis or 0.]. Simpson. Students usually laughed as they immediately relegated them to the discard pile, and Thanksgiving was only occasionally selected. In the end, we settled on twenty images and developed a set of demographic questions, and an interview protocol, to accompany the timeline activity. We again used black and white images to eliminate the possibility that color might suggest significance to students. As we had in the chronology study, too, we made good quality photographs of each image and laminated each one so that they were easier to handle and less likely to be damaged in use. In contrast to the chronology study, we decided to use small groups (3-4 students) rather than individual interviews. We thought that group interviews would allow us to interview more students in a shorter period of time with less disruption to school schedules. More importantly, we anticipated that group discussion would generate more and better explanations for assigning relative historical significance than individual "think alouds" directed primarily to the researcher. Group negotiation seemed a more natural forum for eliciting students' reasons for their choices. We also thought a group task would encourage more student discussion and require less intervention or probes on our part. As it turned out, the group task generated such vigorous negotiation that overlapping speech made it difficult to distinguish speakers when transcribing tapes. Often, too, one or two students dominated-in effect, reducing the number of responses that might have been generated in a smaller group. Overall, we find tasks like this one work better with pairs rather than larger groups of students. Pairs make it more difficult for a student to remain silent and more likely that we will be able to identify individual speakers for transcriptions. Unfortunately, we came to this conclusion after completing the study, not during pilot testing. Interestingly, in international settings, I find that students often feel more

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comfortable in groups of three, perhaps because they outnumber the research team (usually two people)! In these settings, digital recorders alleviate some of the difficulty of transcribing overlapping speech- and overlapping speech occurs less often in some cultures than in others. In the process of piloting the task, we made several other interesting discoveries. First, everyone loved the task. Pilot participants from fifth graders through adults became so fully engaged that we had trouble getting them to stop and respond to questions. The historians who participated in the pilot debated picture choices, grounds for significance, and, sometimes, adaptations to their own classrooms. We worked with our undergraduate students, too, to see how well the task operated with "lay" consumers of history. \Ve eliminated some pictures because the adults knew too little about them to discuss them in any depth, even with help from brief captions. Pilot tests can be important to the success of a study. Our tasks approximate classroom activities and we know that the best planned lessons can derail in unexpected ways. This is especially true in our international work where local informants- our history education colleagues, historians, and older studentshelp us avoid egregious errors, not just in terms of content accuracy, but in regard to the social, political, or cultural weight of particular aspects of national history. Based on pilot testing, too, I included an opportunity for adults in the second study to be the "loyal opposition" and argue for an image left off the timeline by their peers. Without this option, groups too often bog down in arguments and never complete the task at all. Pilot testing for the first study also convinced me to develop the parallel study with teachers and teacher candidates. I was frustrated with the disparity between the interest, excitement, and intelligence demonstrated by students participating in our various research projects, the enthusiasm with which adults engaged in our pilot testing, and the dreary instruction that passed for history in some schools. How did teachers and those training to be teachers think about historical significance themselves, and how did they think about the significance of historical study for children? Why did they so often focus on what I considered trivial and often inaccurate information rather than on history that interested students and might better inform citizenship? A study of teachers and teacher-candidates represented a departure for me. Plenty of history and social studies educators study teacher development (Adler, 2008; VanHover, 2008). I much prefer children. Aside from being endlessly surprising and almost always willing to talk, children strike me as an especially hopeful end of the educational enterprise. If we can better understand their sense-making, perhaps we can keep them intellectually engaged longer andstretching optimism just a bit further-encourage better informed civic participation. So, when I study teachers, I prefer long-term investigations of strong teachers working in challenging situations who nonetheless make history interesting and meaningful to students (as in Chapters 2 and 3). In this case, however, I really wanted to more thoroughly understand what appeared to be

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a disconnect rather than a connection between students' and teachers' perceptions of significance in the context of national history. I included all the same pictures used in the first study as well as five pictures more explicitly focused on the treatment of minorities (including some of the pictures we'd left off the original timeline). I'd been surprised by how few of the non-historians in the pilot testing knew anything about these events and wanted to explore these "silences" in more depth. I must say, the results disturbed me. It wasn't that the teachers and teacher candidates didn't know as much history as I might have hoped. Based on years of work with elementary and middle school teacher education, I was expecting that. It was that so many of them thought schools should offer such a limited and naive historical vision- nothing very complicated, certainly nothing controversial, and little informed by current historiography. And it wasn't just that they didn't think students could handle it. They were worried about the repercussions if they introduced a more nuanced history. Parents would complain, students might become cynical, teachers could lose their jobs. Even if they believed their students capable of deeper historical thinking, the teachers and teacher-candidates in this study would be reluctant to explore those capabilities. Increasing historical information wouldn't necessarily change that. Altering practice would require specific attention to institutional constraints on what Grant (2003) calls ambitious teaching and learning. In the years since these two studies were conducted, we've adapted the significance timeline for use in research projects in Northern Ireland, New Zealand, and Ghana. We've also adapted the timeline for professional development work. Building on what we've learned in national and cross-national settings, we've complicated the task for use as a t eaching tool, beginning with the basic set of pictures, adding subsets of pictures (state history, minority histories) to challenge predictable choices and encouraging teachers to consider how new images change the narrative arc represented by their timelines. It is so much easier with digital resources to adapt the task for different settings or themes. We get considerable satisfaction when teachers adapt our research tasks for classroom use, too. Sometimes the adaptations result in new approaches to our research, but more importantly, teachers tell us that they represent exactly the "value-added" component we hope to contribute to the teachers and students with whom we work. Interestingly, too, while most of the teachers seem to use the tasks as interesting teaching or learning activities, teachers also tell us they are useful assessment tools, providing opportunities to better assess their students' historical thinking without losing valuable instruction time. As we've experimented with variations on the significance timeline, especially in different countries, we 've become more and more aware of how culturally constrained and politically sensitive are our ideas of historical significance. As John Gaddis (2004) argues in the opening quote, it may be that we can only "perceive shapes through the fog and mist" and ... "speculate as to their signif-

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icance" (pp. 2-3) in their own time, but we can certainly do better than that in regard to our own time. As we ask different questions of the past--questions inevitably rooted in current experience- we establish the significance in our own time of new and different aspects of the past. If nothing else, then, investigating perceptions of historical significance calls attention to the fluidity and contentiousness of those perceptions in different times and contexts. I am often reminded of this as I work with Teaching American History grants. My colleagues and I watch as dedicated, hard-working teachers grapple with the challenges of engaging their students with a more meaningful history in the face of high-stakes assessments and standards that establish questionable criteria for significance, to say nothing of the popular historical lexicon that exists at odds with standards and current historical scholarship. An initial evaluation of their professional development offers hope for more alignment between children's potential and classroom practice, as these teachers combine current historical scholarship with the research on children's historical thinking to develop more interesting, intellectually challenging, and, we hope, significant history teaching and learning (Levstik & Kern, 2006).

References Adler, S. (2008). The education of social studies teachers. In L. Levstik & C. A. Tyson (Eds.). Handbook qfresearch in social studies education. New York: Routledge. Allen, G. (2006). Florida law stirs debate over teaching history. Retrieved August 19, 2006, from All Things Considered Web site: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story. php?storyId = 5676428 Appiah, K.A. & Gutmann, A. (1996). Color consciousness: The political morality qf race. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ayers, E. L. (2003). In the presence qfmine enemies. New York: Norton. Blight, D . W. (1997). Quarrel forgotten or a r evolution remembered? Reunion and race in the Memory of the Civil War, 1875-1913. In D. W. Blight & B. D. Simpson (Eds.) Union and emancipation: Essays on politics and race in the Civil War era (pp. 151 - 80). Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. Blight, D. W. (2002). Race and reunion: TIe Civil War in American memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Blight, D. W. (Ed.) (2006). Passages tofieedom: TIe Underground Railroad in history and memory. New York: Collins. Bodnar,]. (1993). Remaking America: Public memory, commemoration and patriotism in the twentieth century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bynum, V. E. (1996). Misshapen identity: Memory, folklore, and the legend of Rachel Knight. In P. Morton (Ed.), Discovering the women in slavery: Emancipatingperspectives on the American past (pp. 29-46). Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Epstein, T. (1998). Deconstructing differences in African-American and EuropeanAmerican adolescents' perspectives on U.S. history. Curriculum Inquiry, 28, 396-423. Gaddis,]. L. (2004). TIe landscape qfhistory. New York: Oxford University Press. Gaudelli, W. (2002). World class. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Grant, S. G. (2003). History lessons: Teaching, learning, and testing in U.S. high school classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Huggins, N. I. (1991). The deforming mirror of truth: Slavery and the master narrative of American history. Radical History Review, 49, 25~48. Kammen, M. (1993). Mystic chords qfmemory: The tranifOrmation qftradition in American culture. New York: Vintage. Levstik, L.S. & Kern, K. (2006, November). Teachers engaging with historical interpretation. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the College and University Faculty Assembly, National Council for the Social Studies, Washington, DC. Nash, G. B., Crabtree, C. & Dunn, R. E. (2000). History on trial: Culture wars and the teaching qfthe past. New York: Knopf. National Assessment Governing Board. (1994). U.S. History framework for the 1994 National Assessment qf Educational Progress. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1994. National Center for History in the Schools (1996). National standards for history: Basic edition. Retrieved February 9,2007, from National Center for History in the Schools Web site: http://nchs.ucla.edu/standards. Rosenzweig, R. & Thelen, D. (2000). The presence qf the past: Popular uses qf history in the present. New York: Columbia University Press. Seixas, P. (1994). Students' understanding of historical significance. Theory and Research in Social Education, 22, 281~304. Symcox, L. (2002). J;t;7zose history? .The struggle for national standards in American classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. VanHover, S. (2008). The professional development of social studies teachers. In L. S. Levstik & Tyson, C. A. (Eds.). Handbook qf research in social studies education. New York: Routledge.

Chapter 12

"It wasn't a good part of history" National identity and students' explanations of historical sign ifi cance

Keith C. Barton and Linda S. Levstik

That democratic idea (that all are equal in the eyes of God) is one of the grand contributions of the age of Europe even given the imperial expansion, the colonial subjugation of Africa and Asia, the pernicious and vicious crimes against working people and people of color and so forth. So ambiguous a legacy means ... we have got to keep two ideas in our minds at the same time. The achievements as well as the downfalls. The grand contributions and the VICIOUS cTimes. (Cornel West) To be an American is not ... a matter of blood; it is a matter of an idea- and history is the image of that idea. (Robert Penn Warren)

As Robert Penn Warren suggests, the image of an idea is integral to the way in which we assign historical significance to people, events, and ideas in American history. But the image of the American idea is as much about what is repressed-by whom and to what end- as about what is recollected-by whom and in what context (Cohen, 1994). Multiple-and at times radiealimages develop below the surface of official portraits of the past; these ideas exist both within and beyond the boundaries of the "crafts and guilds of his torical disciplines" (Bodnar, 1994; Cohen, 1994, p. 4; Cuthbertson, 1994). Such alternative and even conflicting images of the past also exist among children, who construct their understandings and representations of history in complex cultural webs of historical images and ideas. In this study we investigate how early adolescents (fifth through eighth grade) evaluate significance in American history, and how they use history to create a sense of collective identity. Ideas of historical significance are cultural constructs transmitted to members of a society in a variety of ways (Appiah & Gutmann, 1996; Cohen, 1994; Kammen, 1991; Seixas, 1994; Sham a, 1992). Schooling is one important forum for this transmission- a site where contending forces in the culture try to

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influence what history will be publicly commemorated. In the United States, systematic study of American history begins in earnest in fifth grade, is repeated in middle school, and is reintroduced in high school. Of course, schools are not the only sources of children's historical information: Family members, the media, historic sites, and museums all present versions of the past both to children and to adults (Barton, 1995; Bodnar, 1994; Cohen, 1994; Levstik & Barton, 1996; Seixas, 1993b; Wallace, 1996). Schools are, however, sites where some form of overarching national history is explicitly introduced; indeed, decisions about what aspects of history should be included in the curriculum are hotly contested in American society (Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995). Because of the potential disparity between the versions of history they encounter at school and in the wider society, students may be faced with reconciling widely varied accounts of the past. Our study focuses not so much on the public debate swirling around these issues as on students' own thinking about what is historically significant. What sense are young people making of the images and ideas about history that they encounter in schools and elsewhere? The process by which students restructure the past involves more than historians' or teachers' stories. It also has to do with students' own ways of conceiving of a "usable" past. In his study of Canadian high school students, for instance, Seixas (1994) noted that students ascribed significance to those events they considered useful in explaining present circumstances or providing a set oflessons to guide present and future behavior. But in another study, Seixas (1997) found that students from diverse ethnic backgrounds sometimes had difficulty coordinating their own perspectives on historical significance with those presented in the school curriculum. Similarly, Epstein (1994, 1997) found that many African American high school students' historical understanding stood in active resistance to what they encountered in school; in attempting to create a usable past, they drew on forms of history presented in what they perceived as more culturally relevant sites-neighborhoods and families. These findings highlight the extent to which understanding history as the image of an idea . or ideas- is both appealing and problematic. On the one hand, this metaphor of history as the image of an idea suggests that, despite attempts by cultural leaders or authorities to shape a past that maintains the status quo and invests it with powerful emotional appeal, both the image and the idea shift over time. Marginalized people- Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, Latinos, Southern and Central Europeans, women, laborers, and the poor-can enter and alter images long dominated by white Anglo Saxon propertied males (Kammen, 1991, 1996). On the other hand, the metaphor also suggests a constant struggle for control of the image. If a people's image of their collective history frames their understanding of shared institutions and shapes their sense of identity, it also establishes the boundaries of nations and neighborhoods, recalls some parts of the past and represses others, holds some groups and individuals up for recognition and turns a blind eye to others (Cohen, 1994). For some groups and individuals

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the struggle is to be seen within the historical image. Those whose past has been repressed because it threatens an official national image have a great deal of difficulty entering public memory. Individuals and groups may recall, forget, or repress memories, but the production of public memory requires dissemination and some degree of acceptance (Appiah & Gutmann, 1996; Kammen, 1991). Without such acceptance, the experiences of marginalized groups and individuals are unlikely to stand as an effective critique of "official" historical narratives. The findings of both Seixas (1994, 1997) and Epstein (1994, 1997) reveal the extent to which high school students' understandings of historical significance may diverge from that of the school curriculum and thereby provide alternative perspectives on the meaning ofthe past. Our study also looks at how a relatively diverse group of students ascribes significance to ideas, events, and people in America's past, but concentrates on students during their first systematic encounters with national history in the intermediate and middle school years. In addition, we try to understand how students mediate the demands of the "official" story of American history and their own, frequently more ambiguous, knowledge of the past. As we analyzed the ways in which these middle-grade students talked about history, it became clear that they understood and experienced the past as both "grand contributions" and "vicious crimes," in Cornel West's terms. They considered both elements of history significant, and tied them together with an overarching story of progress and American exceptionality. But while students knew about the events "that they would mention in books or somebody would teach you about," they also were familiar with other perspectives on the past- perspectives that often derived from the experiences and living memories of the people they knew.

Procedure We developed a semi-structured interview that included both a task requiring students to choose from among a set of twenty captioned historical pictures, and a set of broader questions designed to explore their understanding of historical significance. We interviewed forty-eight students in grades five through eight, and conducted all interviews with single-sex groups of either three or four students; during interviews, students described their identity in terms of a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including African American, Native American, various European nationalities, or a mixture of these. l All students attended middle schools in central and northern Kentucky; one was in an inner-city area, two were rural schools that drew from both rural and suburban populations, and one was a creative and performing arts magnet school that included students from throughout an urban/suburban region. Pictures and their accompanying captions were designed to activate students' background knowledge and identify consequences of the events depicted, and to avoid

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overtly biasing students' selections. (Complete captions are included in Appendix A.) We began interviews by asking students if they were familiar with timelines~all of them were~and explaining that they would be looking through a set of pictures with captions and then working together as a group to decide which eight were important enough to include on a timeline of the last 500 years. We then handed the set of pictures to students and allowed them to work though the task with minimal guidance. (Some groups read the captions carefully, while others skimmed more quickly.) Once students chose eight pictures and placed them on the tim eline, we asked them to explain each of their choices, to identify which pictures other people might have chosen (and those they thought no one would have chosen), and to talk about what they had learned about history both in and out of school. In addition to asking questions from our formal protocol, we frequently probed students' responses in order to explore more fully the reasoning behind their answers. (The complete interview protocol is included in Appendix B.) In addition to tabulating students' choices, we analyzed interview transcripts and drew conclusions from them through a process of analytic induction. After interviewing students, we identified a set of thematic strands in their responses, and we subjected the transcripts to a systematic content analysis in which we categorized responses according to coding categories based on those strands. Many of the initial categories were broken down, combined, or added to during the course of coding, and the coding included a systematic search for negative or discrepant evidence. We then analyzed the coded data using cross-case analysis (in which we grouped the answers of students responding to the same items in the selection task and interview) and constant comparison (in which we compared students' responses across different portions of the task and interview). This resulted in a set of descriptive generalizations that form the basis for our conclusions, which we describe in the next section. 2

Results: "Two ideas in our minds" As we have noted, the construction of the past is always a selective process, in which certain people, events, and trends are remembered, emphasized, and even celebrated while others are forgotten, excluded, or deemphasized. A number of social theorists have argued that this process of selection is invariably tied to the demands of contemporary cultural and social institutions; from such a perspective, those aspects of the past most likely to be considered significant are those that lead to identification with a particular social order and ratify a community's social and cultural practices. In this view, history has little to do with establishing what happened in the past but everything to do with the promotion of social unity and consensus in the present (Appleby, Hunt, & Jacob, 1994; Bodnar, 1994; Commager, 1965; Douglas, 1986; Malinowski, 1948; Shils, 1971; Wallace, 1996; Williams, 1977).

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The post as legitimation for the present Many of the students' responses accorded well with this legitimating perspective on the function of history in contemporary society. (Overall results are depicted in Table 1, while each group's choices can be found in Appendix D.) Students chose pictures and gave explanations that focused to a large extent on the origin and development of the United States as a social and political entity, on the creation and development of what they perceived as uniquely American freedoms and opportunities, and on the beneficial effects of technological change. Students generally excluded, on the other hand, pictures of people and events that they recognized as having widespread impact but could not assimilate to their image of the country's continuous and beneficial progress.

The Origin qf the United States. Many of students' explanations focused on the origins of the United States and its people. Several groups, for example, noted that the pictures of de Soto or the "First Thanksgiving" represented the exploration and settlement of North America; as Brenda explained, the Thanksgiving picture shows "the start of the United States, when we all became possible, because we all came from over there, and a bunch of immigrants came over here, and that's basically how we started our nation."3 Similarly, many students explained the significance of Ellis Island by noting the role of immigration in shaping the current population of the United States. Megan, for example, considered it important "because we're supposed to be a country made out of a melting pot. ... And if we didn't have immigration, then we wouldn't have as many people in our country, and that's what makes our country different from other countries. We're not like Germany where you only have German people." Several other groups mentioned the importance of immigration in creating a "melting pot," and some noted-in a very general way-immigrants' cultural contributions to American society. Students also emphasized national origins in their discussion of the Revolutionary War, which they consistently selected as one of the most important events in American history. Every group placed it among their eight pictures, and they did so automatically, without debate or discussion. In explaining their decision, students pointed primarily to the Revolution's importance in the creation of the United States as a separate country. Amber noted that thc Amcrican Revolution was important "cause it recognized the independence of the United States," while Rhiannon explained that it "kinda started our country." Reuben noted that without the American Revolution, "we would have no country," and Chad explained, "we'd still be part ofEngland."4 Students' emphasis on the origins of the United States-both its settlement and its creation as a political unit-reflects the importance of the past in defining a community of identification. Students consistently used the pronouns our and we in talking about the American Revolution, regardless of their own ethnic background, their gender, or the recency of their families' immigration

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Table 12.1 Pictures chosen as historically significant Picture

Bill of Rights American Revolution Emancipation World War II Civil Rights Edison Suffrage Depression Vietnam Computer Immigration Thanksgiving Education Airplane de Soto Disease Car O. J. Simpson Elvis Presley Frontier Life

Number chosen Girls

Boys

Total

7 7 6 4 4 5 4 3 2 2 3 2 3

7 7 6 6 5 3 3 4 4 3

14 14 12 10 9 8 7 7 6 5 4 4 3 3 2 2

I

2 I

0 0 0 0

I

2 0 2 I I I

0 0 0

I

0 0 0

to the United States. Their explanations suggested that they considered events related to America's creation and settlement important because those events defined the community with which they identified. While previous research indicates that children's understanding of the colonial period and the American Revolution is vague, confused, and riddled with misconceptions (Barton, 1997; McKeown & Beck, 1990; VanSledright, 1996), students in the present study had internalized the one element of the period that contemporary society considers most important- that this is where we began. This sense of continuity over time- the meaningful identification of people in the present with a community that stretches into the past- is one of the key functions of historical memory (Gillis, 1994; Malinowski, 1948; Shils, 1971; Williams, 1977).

American exceptionalism. Students credited the American Revolution with bringing about a number of benefits apart from the simple founding of the country. Megan, for example, suggested that because of the American R evolution, "different immigrants started coming over," andJessica noted that "everyone could be happy," and that without the Revolution, the country "probably wouldn't be as productive." The most commonly mentioned benefit of the Revolution was freedom. Rhiannon noted that before the Revolution, "we didn't have our rights, we weren't free," and Asher noted that without it,

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"we wouldn't have freedom." Similarly, Derek suggested that without the Revolution, there would be "probably not as many freedoms .... There would probably still be slaves and stuff." Students further emphasized the importance of "freedom" in their discussion of the creation and extension of political and civil rights. Every group chose the Bill of Rights as one of its eight pictures and pointed to it as the foundation of American freedom; asJaJuan explained, "It gave us all of our freedom and rights," and according to Peter, "If we didn't have the Bill of Rights we wouldn't be as free, the country would be very much, so different." Students particularly emphasized protections of speech, press, and religion. Yolanda, for example, noted that the Bill of Rights was "good, because everybody should be free to have, to what they want to say." Without it, Michelle noted, "we couldn't like go to one of our churches that we go to now," and her interview partner Amber added, "or we couldn't say some things now that we say in the newspaper or something." Many students explained with conviction that the Bill of Rights set the United States apart from other countries. Megan explained that "unlike other countries we have freedom of speech and other countries didn't have that kind of right, and the Bill of Rights is important because it reassures us that we have these rights and the law cannot take them away from us." Jaclyn also noted that the Bill of Rights is important "to distinguish us from other countries, because we have more freedom than they do," and Rhiannon noted that it was "a big part of why everybody loved America . . . cause America's known around the world as the place for freedom." As Lewis explained, "America's known for its freedom and stuff, and I think that's part of what makes it good." Sylvia noted that in other countries, religion and culture tie people together, but in the United States "we don't have that and this Bill is really what holds us together." In emphasizing American freedom and rights, students were not simply identifying with a community but asserting its moral rightness. As Malinowski (1948) and Shils (1971) note, a society's understanding of its past not only provides a sense of identity but provides a warrant or charter for present practice- it asserts the superiority of present-day institutions. For the students in this study, the Bill of Rights set the United States off as a uniquely good and moral society, full of inalienable freedoms that no other country has. Their explanations never touched on the specific constitutional issues that animated debates of the period, but once again they had taken away from their studies one significant point- that their country originated in a commitment to rights that remain the envy of the world, that cannot be taken away, and that hold us together.

Progressive expansion !if rights, opportunity, and fteedom. Students also consistently chose pictures relating to the extension of voting rights and other freedoms. Twelve of the fourteen groups chose the picture depicting the Emancipation Proclamation, ten chose Civil Rights, and seven choose Suffrage (and ten

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groups chose at least two of these). In each case, students explained their selections by noting the importance of extending rights and freedoms already enjoyed by other Americans. Whitney said that the Emancipation Proclamation was important because "the slaves shouldn't have to be like slaves because of the color of their skin, " and Michelle explained that because of it, "nobody would have to like do all the work for no money, and be pushed around like that." As Tiffany noted, "African Americans could still be slaves if we didn't pass that law." Students also pointed to the importance of the suffrage and Civil Rights movements in making the country more "fair." Dustin, for example, noted that women "should have the right to vote," and Katrina explained that suffrage "gave the other 50 percent of Americans the right to vote." Similarly, Ryan explained that the Civil Rights Movement was important "because African Americans were not treated equally," and his interview partnerJaJuan agreed that "they need just as much rights as we do." Students often described such events in terms not only of fairness or freedom but also of their contribution to the improvement of social relations or individual opportunity. Rachel suggested that the Thanksgiving picture was important because "it was kind of like the beginning of us becoming friends," and Yolanda also noted that "we was making a bond with Native Americans; that's good because that's a tradition that goes on forever." Several students described the importance of the Civil Rights Movement in similar terms; Lewis, for example, explained that it was important "because it shows that we can try to achieve goals peacefully instead of always having to fight." Donny, meanwhile, noted that the Civil Rights movement was important because it gave African Americans "a lot of opportunity to get jobs and stuff because [before] they weren't really recognized as people," and Rhiannon described the suffrage movement as important because it led to women's working and having jobs. Students' emphasis on expanding opportunities was also pronounced in their discussions of the development of education; although only three groups included it as one of their final choices, many students nonetheless pointed to its significance. Tiffany, for example, noted that education not only leads to inventions, but allows us to "choose our careers for the future," and Brenda explained that "ifit wasn't for the first school, we wouldn't get anywhere in the world." The progressive development and extension of American rights and opportunities was the most frequently mentioned theme in students' responsesregardless of age, gender, or racial and ethnic background- and many students consciously and explicitly described such events as part of an ongoing and significant process in American history. Nicole, for example, noted that the Emancipation Proclamation was "another step toward freedom, " and her partners suggested that it "helped enforce" the Bill of Rights. Megan also explained that "the Constitution says that all people are equal," and that the Emancipation Proclamation "made it all true because before that they were slaves and didn't have privileges like White people do." Chad, meanwhile,

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explained that suffrage was "kinda like" the Emancipation Proclamation for women, "cause this was when they were like being equal to the men." And Sonja explained that the Civil Rights Movement was important because it was "the last major group of people that hadn't gotten their rights." Amber suggested that the most important thing she'd learned about history at school was "the rights of the people that were back then, that they had to fight for to get, and how we have so much freedom now, and they hardly had any back in the 1900s, or 1800s." Students' emphasis on the expansion of rights and opportunities and the steady improvement of social relations reveals their concern with establishing that the United States is a country in which historic hardships and injustices arc corrected and overcome. The legitimating function of history is particularly important in societies in which contemporary groups experience wide differences in their economic or social status, for such circumstances call for explanations that establish the legitimacy of the status quo (Bodnar 1994; Malinowski 1948). While the students in this study did not use the past to justify current inequalities, they did use the extension of rights and opportunities as a way of demonstrating that such inequalities are bound to be overcome (or that they already have been), and they consciously and reflectively considered such progress to be the dominant theme in American history.

Technological progress. Students' concern with progress was also evident in their explanations of pictures representing technological change. Ten of the fourteen groups chose pictures of either Thomas Edison or the computer, and their explanations pointed to the importance of inventions in making contemporary life possible. As Yolanda noted, Thomas Edison is important "because we use his inventions every day." Leslie also noted, "the light bulb is necessary for today," and Rachel explained that without the light bulb, "we would have been like in the stone age." Similarly, Jaclyn noted that the computer "has really changed things, cause you don't have to write things, you can just type them on a computer and print it out." Brandon suggested that "our whole life revolves around computers," and Reuben explained that "everything in the world now, just about, is run by them." Students selected pictures of the airplane and the car far less often, but their explanations of those inventions also pointed to their importance in shaping modern life.Jaclyn, for example, noted that without the car, "we wouldn't be able to like travel, hardly at all, we would have to walk," and Cole explained that airplanes are important because "people need to get around faster than walking." Students' universally positive regard for such technological changes indicates the extent to which their progressive view of history excluded the consideration of alternatives. Shils (1971 ) notes that members of a society typically accept the past as a "given," in which "incongruent alternatives are not so much deliberately rejected as scarcely perceived" (p. 140). Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent in our society than in the belief in technological progress;

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most of us consider electricity and even computers so much a given that we have difficulty imagining that their invention could be regarded as anything other than an advance. But Wallace (1996) has shown how individuals and institutions have deliberately shaped such perceptions, and how the drawbacks and social consequences of technological change have been excluded from popular understanding. Not surprisingly, the students in this study invariably pointed to the positive effects of technological changes and their role in making contemporary life possible, and rarely mentioned the relationship between technology and pollution, the consumption of resources, or patterns of labor. The benefits of technological development were as self-evident to them as the extension of civil and political rights.

Change and con trover~ . Students' emphasis on the progressive development of contemporary American society was also evident in the pictures they rejected. There were three pictures no group selected, and many students explained that two of these could not reasonably be considered among the most important events in American history-Elvis Presley and 0.]. Simpson.' During their initial sorting of the pictures, students rejected these pictures immediately, often laughing as soon as they saw them. While many students described Elvis Presley's influence on music, they rejected his historical significance. Yolanda pointed out that Elvis "didn't do anything for the country, to make history," and Rachel noted that "it doesn't change America much." ]. R. also noted, "It's just like media, it might have affected us, cause he might have started rock and roll and all that stuff, but it probably wouldn't affect half the population." (Only Briana pointed to the importance of such cultural changes in noting that the Elvis picture might be a reasonable choice because "it's sort of a start of our culture, and it shows how much things have changed and everything.") For most students, simple changes in culture- as opposed to advances in freedom or technology-were insufficient to qualify as historically significant. Students were also well aware of the controversy surrounding the 0.]. Simpson trial, but few thought this was a matter of historical significance. Tiffany, for example, said that Simpson "has nothing to do with anything today," and her interview partner Briana agreed that "it's not a main issue." Lewis noted that "it just kept people suspended for a while, but really, it'll be forgotten pretty soon." No student argued for its inclusion on the basis of its representation of contemporary race relations, although some suggested that others might reasonably have done so. (It should be noted, however, that all students who explicitly denied its importance came from schools that had almost exclusively European American students; students in schools with mixed ethnic populations either ignored the picture or suggested that others might have chosen it as important.) Again, students did not perceive the trial as leading to any advances in society, and rejected it as being of historical significance. Neither Elvis Presley nor 0.]. Simpson helped students establish themselves as part of a just and progressive nation.

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War. Students' concern with constructing a narrative of American progress was also apparent in their discussion of war. They certainly considered wars important, and they often said so; Nicole, for example, suggested that the Vietnam picture must be important "because it's a war," and Ryan also noted that some people might have chosen it "because it's a war, and all wars are important." As Rhiannon noted, wars "are a big part of history because everyone remembers wars."6 At the same time, however, students had to align their recognition that wars are invariably important with their belief in progress. The American R evolution and the Civil War presented no problems: The former led to freedom, the latter to the end of slavery and the reuniting of the nation. But while many students considered World War II and the Vietnam War important (eleven groups chose at least one of the two), they struggled to find an explanation of their significance that accorded with their image of progress. Some students suggested that World War II was important because it ended the Holocaust or prevented the extension of Hitler's power, but others looked for a more specifically American connection- and in discussing Vietnam, students framed its importance exclusively in terms of the United States. While the patterns in students' explanations of Vietnam and World War II are not as clear and consistent as in their discussion of other pictures, two themes stand out. First, some students noted that these wars demonstrated once again America's moral superiority. Byron, for example, explained that World War II was important because "it showed that America was a great world power," and that "we stand up for people"; his interview partner added that "it showed that like you don't mess with America." Similarly, Rhiannon thought that in World War II, "we were just basically helping other countries," and also that we were fighting the Vietnam War "for the Vietnamese people." Other students, however, sought to relate these wars not to the country's inherent superiority but to its ability to learn from its mistakes. Reuben, for example, said that Vietnam "taught us that we weren't invincible, that there are other people who are willing to give up more than us to get what they needed," while Chad suggested that Vietnam taught us that we "shouldn't go slowly into a war," and that we shouldn't "waste men just trying to decide." (Fred, on the other hand, thought that both wars taught the United States that "there are other people in the world and they have ideas too. ") Donny summed up this view by noting that wars are important to study "because like the mistakes you made in a war and stuff so it doesn't happen again." Although these sets of explanations regarding war differed in their content, both reveal the extent to which students attempted to assimilate their knowledge of history to a view of the past that provided legitimation for the contemporary society of which they considered themselves a part. Some students described the significance of Vietnam and World War II in terms of their conception of the United States as a uniquely moral andjust society- an extension of their focus on the development of American freedom and rights. Others

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justified these wars by pointing to the lessons that were learned-an extension of perception of American history as the story of unfolding progress, a story in which all developments lead to a better future. And students' emphasis on the impact of war on the United States- rather than in a global context-indicates the extent to which their frame of reference was the national community, as they had first made clear in their concern with events related to the settlement of North America and the creation of the United States as a political entity.

Vernacular history: Coping with ambiguity Next to the unifying and legitimating framework already described, students maintained an alternative story in which the promise of the Bill of Rights was thwarted. All students knew from personal experience that prejudice existed despite the ideal of equality, that sexism existed despite the extension of political rights, and that some events could not be reconciled with images of progress. Scholars investigating "collective memory" note that such progressive and legitimating historical perspectives are not the only available views of the past. Bodnar (1994), for example, points to the existence of a "vernacular" culture that stands in contrast to "official" versions of history. Unlike official histories based on the "imagined communities of a large nation," vernacular histories derive from lived experience in specific and generally small-scale communities. They often arise from the perception on the part of community members that their values and firsthand experiences are ignored or discounted. Also unlike the patriotic and nationalistic views of history promoted in official culture, "vernacular expressions convey what social reality feels like rather than what it should be like" (p. 14). As Seixas (1997) and Epstein (1994, 1997) found, students' understanding of and identification with vernacular history can put them in conflict with the history presented in the school curriculum. Making sense of children's historical understanding, then, involves more than identifying what children take to be the central ideas of history; it also involves analyzing how children apply those central ideas to different aspects of the past-particularly those events that cannot easily be assimilated to a story of progress and exceptionality (Appiah & Gutmann, 1996). What happens, for instance, when "official" history and personal experience offer conflicting perspectives? What happens, too, when students perceive the historical record to be ambiguous- when people either resist learning from the past or cannot figure out what the past means? In this section, we look at how students tried to make sense of situations that were, from their perspective, more ambiguous than a story of steadily expanding progress.

Racism and sexism. As we have already noted, students sought to fit events such as the Civil Rights and women's suffrage movements into a framework of progress and reconciliation. In general, dissent and oppression were flattened in their discussions: As students usually explained it, rights were given, not wrested

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from a resistant society. Oppressed or disfranchised people noticed that they did not have the same rights as others and asked for amelioration, redress was granted (or was in process), and reconciliation followed. They were aware that some violence occurred~they knew about assassinations, for instance~but they rarely described any forms of civil disobedience or long-term protest. Some events and issues presented more challenge to this schema of ongoing reconciliation than others, however. Continuing racism and sexism were two of these. For European American students, the continuation of racism was a puzzle. African Americans "have rights," Rhiannon said, pondering the problem; Sonja agreed, but noted that "we still have prejudice." "Yeah," Rhiannon acknowledged, "There's still prejudice ... and there are even like other religious groups and other different countries that ... have prejudice, too. Even if everybody has the right, doesn't change people's emotions." She and Sonja continued to turn the idea around, suggesting that recent immigrants seemed to be treated most badly. Rhiannon said, "illegal~not illegal, but aliens~that have just come here like Puerto Ricans and ~Iexicans ... they came here but they're legally allowed to be here, but people think they're like taking our taxes and taking all our government stuff that would go to them." Another group of girls also mentioned hostility toward recent immigrants, noting that California was involved in "making laws" about immigration. As they discussed this disjuncture between progress and prejudice, Rachel mentioned that "people think of America as the land of opportunities but I don't think they think of . " raCIsm. As Rachel's remark indicates, there was some recognition among European American students that the history of expanding opportunities was neither smooth, uninterrupted, nor finished. This was particularly apparent as students discussed the picture of a civil rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Several of the eighth-grade boys said that King was a hero~"in our eyes," Byron concluded, then amended, "or, at least in my eyes." Tony interjected that "I would not do that [march in a protest] if it was all a Black community. Say we're like a family of Whites and they treated us the way we treated them. I'd be quiet." When asked ifhe meant that he would be afraid to do what King had done, Tony responded, "Yeah!" Later, he expanded on his concern: "Although [African Americans] got to be free we still kinda pushed 'em ... we still gave them the cheap neighborhoods so they didn't live with us." Lincoln added, "kind oflike the Indians ... and the voting thing for women." "We said hey, they're here, pift," Byron said, gesturing as if brushing them out of the way. Similarly, Saara pointed out, "Some places are going back to segregation. I think it's sad. It took such a long time to get it the way it is now." Rachel nodded and commented, "It's not perfect, not where we want to be." African American students framed the past as a story of learning from mistakes, as had European American students, but they sometimes introduced a more complex analysis of progress in extending rights to marginalized people.

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Isabella was particularly articulate in her commentary. She argued that while there had been progress- people of African descent on U .S. Olympic teams, her own presence in an integrated school- the problems that remained were daunting. She explained that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was important because it "helped toward freeing the slaves . . . h edidn't actually do it by himself. Other people helped ... but a lot of people remain racist, and even today in a lot of places, like in Mississippi, the schools are still segregated. And even now you see things about the KKK. They even have their own program on the Internet. It's like you could go anywhere [but] you wouldn't be accepted, [and] even if you were accepted you wouldn't go." The Bill of Rights, she argued, was "only for rich White men who could vote and you had to pay taxes ... so the Bill of Rights just protected wealthy, white, male landowners, but that [civil rights] applied to everyone and gave everyone a chance." Isabella also provided an alternative interpretation to the story of cooperation between White settlers and Native Americans. After her classmate Sylvia, a European American, commented that de Soto was important because the Spaniards "had children and their children had children, and they spread out, and some are here," Isabella added, "And the Indians, that's sort of when they broke up the peace treaties, they just went away and disappeared. I think, even now [Native Americans] set up their own organizations and some don't trust people and they really have to know you for a long time to trust you- to like want you on their land." Later, Isabella expanded on her vision of American history, identifying at least one source for her perspective. Martin Luther King "went to jail, preached and influenced p eople like Rosa Parks," she began, looking at the picture of King leading the civil rights march. "I saw Ghosts qf Mississippi. It was about another civil rights worker, Medgar [Evers]. He was also a civil rights leader. People don't know any other people." She went on to raise the issue of police treatment of African Americans in the local community, comparing a recent well-publicized incident to the OJ. Simpson trials: "I think that even though they had some evidence they immediately pinned it on him," she said of Simpson. "And they didn't actually check on her background to see if people had threatened her in the past. ... I don't think anybody should think they know because they don't, they only know who made phone calls and they don't know anything else except what was in the tabloids."7 Later, commenting on the significance of the Civil Rights Movement, Isabella noted that "you don't really learn about [civil rights] in school. You know I've read books about it. My parents have books and I've gone to the library and I've seen movies and stuff and I mean at this school and at my other school I didn't learn too much about it cause like you celebrate Martin Luther King but you don't hear about it ... you just hear that he helped." Isabella's powerful vernacular history, nurtured by her family and enriched by her own interests, allowed her to offer an alternative to the official story that she found in her schooling. Not all students of color were as outspoken as Isabella, however. Sometimes, when a European American student argued that

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"we're all equal now," a student of color would drop out of the conversation, at least temporarily. In one instance, Robert, a European American, remarked that one of the results of racism was that "most Black people are poor and on free or reduced lunches like 93 percent or so." Derek, his African American classmate, looked at him in surprise, pointing a finger at his own chest and shaking his head. He stayed silent, however, until the conversation shifted to Native Americans. This time, when Robert said that Columbus discovered America, Derek leaned forward and asked, "How did he discover America? There were already people here!" Oliver, a European American, intervened, saying "they didn't know where the United States was; since they didn't know it, it was a discovery [for them], but not for the Indians." Again, Derek withdrew, shalcing his head. Similarly, when the eighth-grade girls discussed recent immigration from "Puerto Rico and Mexico," Patricia, whose father was Mexican American, remained silent during the discussion of legal and illegal immigration, reentering the conversation at a later point to discuss ethnic contributions-food-to American culture. Her classmate Saara, an immigrant from Poland, however, intervened when Rhiannonjoked that Saara was an "illegal alien." Saara forcefully explained that she was legal and had a green card- "actually, apink green card." Women's suffrage presented a related set of issues for the students. As was the case with slavery and emancipation, suffrage did not strike most of the students-male or female- as controversial. Overall, male and female students thought that the extension of the vote to women was evidence of the same kind of progress afforded by the extension of civil rights to African Americans. As Tania noted, "If women are going to live here, they should get some of the authority." Saara agreed, explaining that "the Emancipation Proclamation sort of represents [the same thing]." In general, students' attitudes toward legal remedies for past injustice can be summed up in Tony's comment that participating in deciding on "what happens in the country makes you equal." However, while most students were aware of instances of violence and dissent attached to racism in the United States, they knew little about the violence and dissent that accompanied the suffrage movement. In fact, one male student explicitly compared violence against African Americans-"they got like beat and stuff'- with the comparative safety of women, who were told, "Like just go get in your house and stay there." Just as students recognized that emancipation had not ended racism, they also were aware of continuing sexism, especially as they grappled with it in personal interactions. Suffrage was distant in time; other aspects of women's rights played out in the immediate environment of home and school. When Saara argued that males were as likely as females to think women 's suffrage was important, she drew on her experience with her father: "I know my dad would have picked that," she said. Her classmate Rachel agreed that adult men might pick it but told Saara to remember that "this is the boys in this school!" Similarly, Lincoln looked over the pictures on the timeline and decided that

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"knowing some of the girls we know, they may not like that [picture] because it's all men." Some students also mentioned that women's rights was a current political issue. Megan noted that "one of the Republicans [in the 1996 presidential race] said women should just stay home and not work and just kinda take care of kids and stuff like that." Several also suggested that women would look for different characteristics in politics. Women "think differently," Oliver said, and Megan and Jessica agreed with each other that "women have different perspectives." On the other hand, some students argued that "we're not all that different." Byron, for instance, suggested that "it has a lot to do with the age instead of the gender," whileJaclyn thought that "it depends on who it is," not on the person's gender. Interestingly too, though boys were as likely (or unlikely) to select women's suffrage for the timeline, boys were convinced that all the girls would select it, and girls were equally sure that none of the boys would. As students discussed issues of race, ethnicity, and gender, they negotiated their places in American history, drawing on what they learned in school, but also on things learned in other settings. When asked what kinds of history they learned outside of school, Megan, who described her heritage as Irish and Indian (Native American), said, "Like where I come from." Her classmate Miatta, whose family included both African Americans and Native Americans, said, "That's important to me. That's how I learned about Native Americans." Jared also learned "a lot about Black history" at home . Jessica explained that her family'S stories about their past helped her understand why "we do things differently at Christmas because of our history." Brandon learned about farming in the past, because "my grandpa and grandma live on a farm." Patricia, who described herself as Mexican and Italian, remembered learning about "different languages and stuff and so maybe there's things we mix in [to school history]." Fred learned "a lot about present day history. My dad's a real strong Republican, so I've learned a lot about politics from him." Lewis laughed, remembering learning "too much about the Cherokees' weather predicting" from his Cherokee relatives. To some extent, then, students across grade levels saw history as fixing their own experience in the constellation of possibilities in the world (Holt 1990). While some form of collective history was learned in school, other, more personal histories were learned outside of schoo!. Some of these personal histories simply embellished what was learned in school; others, however, provided a counterpoint to official school history.

The Great Depression. Race, ethnicity, and gender were not the only issues that sometimes challenged students' historical schema of progress over time. Other events whose moral underpinnings were ambiguous were often confusingand generally interesting. As one group of girls considered the photograph of the Great Depression, for instance, they indicated that it was "really important." Rhiannon said that "like everybody's grandparents, like you always hear people talking." "It wasn't a good part of history," Sonja added. Patricia said

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"it was something to learn from." When asked what was to be learned from this event, however, they struggled to explain. "Like, that, um ... " Sonja looked to her classmates for help. "We should .. . ?" All four girls began laughing. Rhiannon explained, "We don't know how it started so we like haven't studied it. We've heard about it every other place." Kathy added that "I've only heard about the Depression, how bad it was, but that's about it. They didn't tell why it was bad, like what made it, and what people had to go through, things like that." While students were often unsure exactly what lesson could be learned from this historical era, they thought that it had something to do with economics, and the need for government. Chad, for instance, thought that the Depression "was the first time our country had become really poor." The other lesson learned, however, was that national hubris is likely to be punished. J. R. decided that the Depression 'just changed the country so much. They realized that they weren't the god of all countries." Byron thought that another lesson might be that "it's not going to be perfect all the time." "Yeah," Tony agreed. "We think our country's perfect-it's so great!" Thomas added that "we take it for granted." Given that none of the students reported studying the Depression (although about half said they had seen films from the era in a humanities class), they had accumulated an interesting array of conceptions and misconceptions about it. They knew bad things had happened, though they thought they had happened fairly uniformly to all Americans. 8 They also had some idea that government had intervened to try to correct the problem. Finally, they were also fairly sure that bad things did not happen without a reason. They had no knowledge of any other economic declines in American history; as far as they knew their country had, with this one exception, been uniformly wealthy. Like a figure from mythology, however, America confused itself with the divine. It saw itself as th~ "god of countries" and was punished for its hubris. America, some students concluded, should be more humble in its prosperity. They were less sure, however, about exactly how that might be done and thought that it was something they would learn if they ever got the chance to study the Depression. The Vietnam War. The Vietnam War presented students with even greater challenges. While some of the students simply assigned significance to Vietnam because it was a war and "all wars are important," none of the students crafted what they knew about this war into a cohesive narrative. Most found the Vietnam War interesting and confusing. Yolanda tried to explain her confusion. On the one hand it seemed to her that the involvement of U.S. citizens should be recognized "because all the people in there were, like, very sad." On the other hand, "all the people that died" seemed a high price to pay for a lost war. The war challenged students' conceptions of history and historical significance on several levels. First, it called into question their ideas about American exceptionality. As we noted, students thought that Americans were different in

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that they did not fight wars of aggression. With the exception of the American Revolution and the Civil War, which were "our wars," Americans went to war to "help people ... we were fighting . .. for other people." Two groups of students were so convinced that Americans only went to war to help others that they insisted that all wars other than the Revolution and Civil War were "not really our wars" and therefore not significant to American history. They could not, however, reconcile what they knew about Vietnam with this view. They were not sure whom Americans were helping in Vietnam . Rhiannon struggled to explain the identity of the people America was fighting. "The Vietnamese people," she finally declared. When asked which Vietnamese people, she hesitated. "North or South?" she asked, laughing. Sonja volunteered that she thought "it was like a civil war between like Vietnam, I think." Lewis speculated that the war "helped Vietnam be different. Well, it helped the north and south or something." His classmate Peter shrugged and said, "I don't really know much about the Vietnam War." After listening to his peers struggle for awhile, Jared commented that "they're trying to make excuses for a war we lost." Certainly students at each grade level understood the outcome of the Vietnam War as a loss for America, and most mentioned that it was the only war America ever lost. As already noted, many students tried to discover a lesson in that defeat- thus Briana suggested that "we can't expect our army to win every time, because they're only as human as we are," and another student concluded that "if they're going to go communist, let them . . .we should stay out of their business." Clearly, the lessons to be learned from Vietnam were still fluid: There was no single interpretation that seemed to override others, no framework provided by school or home. In fact, the one consistent source of information on Vietnam (mentioned by all but two groups) was the movie

Forrest Gump. Sources such as Forrest Gump did little to help students understand the second feature of the Vietnam War that confused them- antiwar protests. The protests surrounding American involvement in Vietnam made no sense to them. To begin with, protest challenged their schema of cooperation and reconciliation. Why, they wondered, did people object to helping another country? Isabella wanted to know "how [the war] was started and why some of the best people were against it. I mean to me, I want to know why they were against the Vietnamese people." Lincoln offered the conclusion that "people were going mad." 01iver,Jacob, and Robert thought that more people died in Vietnam because "you have all these shootings because people in the United States were arguing over something," but they were unclear as to what the argument was about. They had no inkling that war resistance was a regular feature of America's history; so far as they knew, Vietnam was a singular incident of dissent. 'When the master narrative of American history is one of progress, alternative perspectives can scarcely be perceived as needed, much less as positive- small wonder, then, that students saw dissent as evidence of failure

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and were confused as to what lessons they should take from the war. "Disagreement," Jaclyn said, "can lead to such a big conflict that could have been solved a lot easier." Perhaps because their major sources of information on dissent touched largely on the experiences of returning veterans, students also seemed to view the protesters as the cause of conflict. They reported little formal instruction about the history of the Vietnam War, but someone at each grade level had personal experience with Vietnam veterans. Megan's father and uncle, for example, both fought in Vietnam; her father's best friend, she said, "got killed standing right next to him." When her father and uncle came home they were met by protesters. Others knew fathers, grandfathers, friends, and relatives who had fought in Vietnam, and several reported having heard a Vietnam veteran speak in school; one seventh grader wore an MIA bracelet purchased while on a school visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. If there were similar connections to war protesters, they either did not share these or did not know about them. Tiffany summed up most of what they knew about protests: "When the soldiers came back, they weren't looked upon very nicely." Vietnam was clearly one historical event within the living memory of people they knew and cared about. Participants in the conflict could be called into mind or described in anecdote. Megan recalled a "girl last year, her father used to parachute into the jungle and he'd be shot at." Patricia told about her grandfather, whose plane was shot down "and he was in a camp for a year and they knocked out all his teeth." Jessica's grandfather, meanwhile, "flew planes and he dropped bombs and he wrote poems about it, too. And he said it would be just little dots of people falling over. He didn't like doing that because he could just see people falling but he didn't know which side they were on. They just kept falling down." As Loewen (1995) notes, there is an important distinction between history held in living memory and history beyond the memory of anyone living. For these children the connection was even more immediate. Those who held significant parts of the past in living memory were in personal communication with the students. They provided both their own interpretations of the past and commentary on the interpretations of others. They could claim- and children could believe- that this firsthand knowledge was more accurate than any public report (and it may well have been). As a result, official interpretations of these events were not the only or even most significant interpretation available to the students. The Depression was distant enough that they seemed to trust that with a little more study they could understand it. Vietnam was immediate enough that they were less sure of what they might learn. As Isabella explained, "I want to know how it was started and why some of the best people were against it. I mean like to me, I want to know why they were against the Vietnamese people." Even within the wider culture, the public history of Vietnam is still in process. As Kammen (1991) notes, books, films, and other media are creating "a new mythology in which the U .S. government disappears as a devastating

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force, the Vietnamese people cease to be victims, and the principal focus of concern becomes psychic stress for those veterans who survived" (p. 657). We might add that the antiwar movement also disappears except as a footnote explaining hostility toward veterans. Little wonder then, that the students in our study wanted to know why protesters "were against the Vietnamese people," and were confused about what help the Vietnamese people sought.

Conclusions While the past and its attendant traditions can be interesting in their own right, history serves functions beyond antiquarian interests. History matters politically. By directing attention to real or imagined connections between past and present, history is invoked to legitimate the social order, to bind otherwise disparate people together, or to rally support for social change. Thus the political and social values of a people are shaped by their sense of history-by the official history commemorated in various ways in the society and by the vernacular histories that explain alternative social realities. Such social uses of the past were apparent in the responses of the students in this research. Most students described little difference between official and vernacular histories. They began with the assumption that the "grand contributions" outlined in the Bill of Rights were worth preserving and sharing. While they recognized that "vicious crimes" had been committed, they did not think that this threatened the legitimacy of their unifying framework. Rather, they saw the Bill of Rights as the vehicle whereby crimes against civil rights could be minimized and inclusion in public memory and public participation maximized. Using this inclusive framework, they ascribed significance to those things that integrated groups and individuals into the "ongoing political structure-the public sphere-with its attendant schedule of benefits and rewards" (Elshtain, 1981, p. 228). Next to this unifying and legitimating framework, however, students maintained an alternative story in which private prejudices and, sometimes, public policies worked against inclusion and thwarted the promise of the Bill of Rights. All students knew from personal experience that prejudice existed despite the ideal of equality, that sexism existed despite the extension of political rights, and that some events could not be reconciled with images of progress. Unfortunately, they had no overarching framework to help them make sense of these things. This should not be surprising. The complexity of America's heritage in regard to race, gender, labor, and economics-all elements in the issues that most confused the students-provides a challenge to adults as well. In addition, neither official nor vernacular history provided most students with a coherent framework for understanding the place of dissent or protest in American history. All students appeared to accept the legitimacy of the dissent and protest that culminated in the American Revolution, and African American students had a richer vernacular history that included such elements

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in the more recent past, but overall, students were less knowledgeable about or comfortable with other forms of civil dissent. Nonetheless, students of all racial groups maintained faith in the image of an idea of expanding rights and progress. They were reasonably confident that Americans could (and should) more fully realize these aspirations, although they sometimes doubted that things would ever be "perfect." They also expressed interest in exactly those areas of ambiguity that most confused them-and with which they had the least experience in school. In different contexts student responses might have focused more on these ambiguities. If students had perceived themselves to be part of distinct ethnic groups, for example, their responses might have emphasized more strongly the experiences of those groups. Such collective historical identities can be emotionally powerful (Asher, Goodwin, Genishi, & Woo, 1997). Our students, however, frequently identified themselves as belonging to multiple ethnic groups-Cherokee and African American, Native American and Irish, and so on. To some extent, then, our students' self-identifications reflected the complex and overlapping nature of American identity. In addition, students' discussions might have been different if the interviewers' backgrounds had been different-or had been perceived by students to be. Our ethnicity, age, or relationship to their schools or their teachers might have influenced students' responses. Similarly, results might have varied in more homogeneous groups, or in groups with both genders. Although we did group students by gender and grade level, we did not attempt to group them by ethnicity, class, or any other characteristic. Working with groups of different composition might have yielded different results. In some cases, for example, students might have been more likely to bring up examples of historical omissions. Yet even in these relatively heterogeneous groups, students expressed interest in the gaps they perceived in their historical knowledge. These historical omissions in the curriculum are significant, for schools participate in creating public memory whether they intend to or not. From our perspective, it is not the task of teachers to transmit official history uncritically-nor to celebrate vernacular history uncritically-but to help children discover history that is useful and relevant to their lives. History of this kind can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the perception of progress (like that shared by the students in our study) provides an image of hope for the future, but it often ignores both current scholarship and long-standing problems and thus teaches "the mistaken lesson of complacency" (Cmiel, 1994).9 An emphasis on the lack of progress, on the other hand, can slip into "a steady corrosive cynicism" that may leave students unable and unwilling to use the "grand contributions" to demand redress for the "vicious crimes." Appiah and Gutmann (1996) note that "those of us who have been disappointed by this nation's repeated unwillingness to extend the promise of democracy and freedom to blacks and other racial minorities must never lose faith in this flawed system that nevertheless remains ... better than all the available alter-

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natives" (pp. 28-29). The challenge, it seems to us, is to introduce students to the richer complexities of the past within a context that provides some framework for making critical sense out of both legitimating stories and alternative, vernacular histories- and to decide for themselves whether "this flawed system" is better than the available alternatives or not. One way of helping students grapple with alternatives is by directly exposing them to the complexity and diversity of perspectives that have always existed. Schools should avoid reinforcing simplistic perceptions of historic events in which people work together in a happy consensus to bring about freedom, equality, and opportunity. Students would bc less confused about Vietnam if they knew that many colonists opposed the American Revolution, that the Civil War prompted draft riots in the North, or that returning World War II soldiers faced hostility and discrimination. Students' understanding of history would be more complete if they knew that the past has been characterized by dissent as well as consensus, setbacks as well as advances, restriction of opportunity as well as expansion. If they remain unaware of such complexity in the distant past, then it is hardly surprising that they have difficulty making sense of history within living memory- history in which the complexity has not yet been filtered out. In particular, controversial issues that are within the living memory of children and of the people with whom they come in contact present important opportunities for historical inquiry (Hunt & Metcalf, 1955). Students can test (and contest) accounts of the living past against their own experience as well as the experiences of others whom they know. With careful teacher facilitation, they can begin to recognize the omissions or inclusions that mark an account as representing a particular perspective. In addition, they can begin to think about the ways in which present circumstances influence the interpretation of the past (Megill 1995). This is not to say that historical interpretations should be free of constraints; they still must take into account the available resources. The choice of resources, however, and the meanings accorded those resources are shaped by "the viewpoint of the present" (Megill, 1995, p. 164). The "viewpoint of the present" is perhaps most obvious to students as they encounter history that is still part ofliving memory and whose interpretation is not fixed in the school canon. The interpretive ambiguity surrounding these topics spurred genuine interest among the students in our study. In addition, history that begins where students already have questions about interpretation is certainly a more authentic experience with historical inquiry than concocted exercises aimed at rediscovering traditional interpretations of the more distant past (cf. Seixas 1993a). Although few school districts in the United States include twentieth-century history as part of the formal curriculum prior to about eleventh grade, a further advantage of such study is that the sources available for the investigation of current controversies are varied and relatively accessible-photographs, films, television news, and oral history, as well as textual sources that rely on relatively contemporaneous language.

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Recognition of complexity would not only make students' understanding of history more complete; it would also make it more useful. Several studies have shown that students believe a major purpose of history is to learn lessons from the past- particularly to avoid mistakes that have been made before (Barton, 1995; Seixas, 1994; VanSledright, 1997). Students in this study were no exception: They believed there were lessons to be learned from historic events, even when they were not quite sure what those lessons were. But inaccurate, simplistic, or overgeneralized history is unlikely to provide many lessons for the present; or more to the point, such history is likely to provide highly misleading "lessons." Public policy debates often include discussion of purported historical antecedents, and such discussions are frequently based on beliefs about the past that are lacking in evidence-or contradicted by it (Coontz, 1992). We have all heard that social disorder began with the end of school prayer, that students were on grade level when reading was taught by phonics, that children were happy and healthy before women entered the workforce. The incompleteness of such historical perceptions leads to highly simplistic policy recommendations with little chance of success. Students who have a more complete understanding of the past may be able to avoid such oversimplified "lessons" and to base their decisions about public issues on a firmer historical foundation. There is, then, a communal investment in the critical examination of both official and vernacular history. Students in a democracy cannot uncritically accept the received wisdom of the past nor be kept ignorant of the ambiguities of the present. As Richard Nixon once said, "When information which properly belongs to the public is systematically withheld by those in power, the people soon become ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who manage them, and-eventually-incapable of determining their own destinies" (quoted in Loewen, 1995, p. 232). Avoiding history that is within the living memory of children and of the people with whom they come in contact means that neither official nor vernacular history is likely to be critically examined, and that students will be left with inadequate intellectual tools with which to examine the constantly shifting uses of history in their lives. By making questions of significance an explicit part of their instruction, on the other hand, teachers can provide a forum for student talk about history and a framework for making sense out of these different images of the past (Levstik & Barton, 1997; Seixas, 1997). To the extent that they do so, history can become a compelling part of the curriculum and an important part of children's civic education. 10

Notes I. We used group rather than individual interviews in order to promote discussion and elaboration among students, and we used single-sex groups in order to provide more easily analyzed data on gender differences. 2. During the process of coding and analysis, we explicitly searched for differences in

"It wasn't a good part of history"

3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

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girls' and boys' explanations, and for differences over the course of the four grade levels. With few exceptions, we found neither. As a result, and in the interest of readability, throughout this article we have chosen examples of responses that represent both sexes and a range of grade levels. R eaders who wish to establish the grade level of individual students may refer to Appendix C. Interestingly, whenever the name of Christopher Columbus arose, students were quick to point out either that Native Americans already lived in North America or that the Vikings had explored here, and that Columbus could not therefore be considered to have discovered the continent. Students' explanations often focused not just on the founding of the United States, but more specifically on the conflictual nature of the separation from England. As in previous research (Barton, 1997), students sometimes portrayed this conflict in highly personalized terms, as though it were a conflict between individuals rather than political entities. Chelsea, for example, explained that "we didn't want to go by England rules, so we stood up for ourselves," and Christine noted that "everybody like, just fought back." The importance of the English monarch was a key element of such explanations. Ashley, for example, noted that independence was "from the British ruler," and Molly explained that the Revolution "gave them the freedom to do what they liked, so they weren't run by the king." Although no students chose the picture of Frontier Life, several thought that others might reasonably have chosen it, and no student explicitly denied that it could be considered one of the most important pictures. In previous research (Barton & Levstik, 1996) we found that students from the primary years through sixth grade considered wars a salient but confusing aspect of history; while they often pointed to their importance, they rarely identified the issues (or the warring sides) in any but the most general terms. Students in the present study were much more capable of explaining specific details of wars, but their answers also reflected a belief in their significance that was strongly held but not always clearly or consistently articulated. In the local community, an African American teenager was shot to death by a police officer. The young man had his hands above his head when he was shot. A court of inquiry found the officer had accidentally discharged his weapon. A protest march, described in the media as a "riot," followed the shooting. The incident was the catalyst for several community efforts to establish better communication about issues of race, but the fact that all the children in the discussion group were familiar with the event two years after its occurrence points out the emotional weight of the incident in the community. At a local level it had some of the same impact as the Simpson trial had nationally. Interestingly, in writing about the Great Depression, Kammen (1991) discusses the repression of memory about the Depression among adult Americans, noting that "life histories recorded by the Federal Writers' Project reveal the extent to which activist women were omitted from both personal and public memories of the labor union movement. ... [There was] a tendency for working-class as well as middle-class people to repress or even genuinely forget particulars of the prolonged and problematic period they had lived through" (p. 503). Americans, of course, are not the only society to fall into this trap. As one commentator noted of the British, they "know about the uglier episodes: the slave trade, the worse bits of imperialism, the appeasement of Hitler, the bombing of Dresden and, yes, even the Irish potato famine. But little shame attaches to these blemishes. They can be overlooked in the great, grand sweep of achievement of this happy breed of men. All in all, whatever the shortcomings of modern Britain, its past is a pretty splendid affair" (Anonymous, 1996: 72).

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10. This study was funded in part by the Kentucky Institute on Education Reform, University of Kentucky. The authors would like to thank Lynne Smith, Carol Hill, and Missy Myers for their invaluable assistance during this project, and Catherine Cornbleth and Bruce VanSledright for their insightful comments on an earlier version of the paper.

References Anonymous. (1996,December 21 ). The uses and abuses of history. The Economist, 341(7997), 71-74. Appiah, K. A., & Gutmann, A. (1996). Color conscious: The political morality qf race. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Appleby,]., Hunt, L., &Jacob, M. (1994). Telling the truth about history. New York: W. W. Norton. Asher, N., Goodwin, A. L. , Genishi, C., &Woo, K. (1997 , April). Asian American autobiographies: The construction qf identity in historical context. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago. Barton, K. C. (1995, April). ''My mom taught me": The situated nature qfhistorical understanding. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. Barton, K. C. (1997). "Bossed around by the Queen": Elementary students' understanding of individuals and institutions in history. Journal qf Curriculum and Supervision, 12,290- 314. Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (1996). "Back when God was around and everything": Elementary students' understanding of historical time. American Educational Research Journal, 33, 419-54. Bodnar,]. (1994). Remaking America: Public memory, commemoration, and patriotism in the twentieth century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cmiel, K. (1994). History against itself. Journal qfAmerican History, 81, 1169- 74. Cohen, D. W. (1994). The combing qfhistory. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Commager, H. G. (1965). The search for a usable past. American Heritage Magazine, 16(2), 4--9. Coontz, S. (1992). The wqy we never were: American families and the nostalgia trap. New York: Basic Books. Cornbleth, C., & Waugh, D. (1995). The great speckled bird: Multicultural politics and education policymaking. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Cuthbertson, G. (1994). Racial attraction: Tracing the historiographical alliances between South Africa and the United States. Journal qfAmerican History, 81, 1123- 36. Douglas, M. (1986). How institutions think. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Elshtain,]. B. (1981). Public man, private woman: Women in social and political thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Epstein, T. L. (1994, April). Makes no differences ifyou're black or white? Aftican American and European-American adolescents' perspectives on historical significance and historical sources. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans. Epstein, T. L. (1997). Sociocultural approaches to young people's historical understanding. Social Education, 61,28-31. Gillis,]. R. (1994). Memory and identity: The history ofa relationship. In]. R. Gillis

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(Ed.), Commemorations: 17ze politics qf national identity (pp. 3-24). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Holt, T. (1990). 17zinking historical!J: Narrative. imagination. and understanding. ~ew York: The College Board. Hunt, M. P., & Metcalf, L. E. (1955). Teaching high school social studies. New York: Harper. Kammen, M. (1991). Mystic chords qfmemory: 17ze transformation qftradition in American culture. New York: Vintage. Kammen, M. (1996). Some patterns and meanings of memory distortion in American history. In D. L. Schacter (Ed.), Memory distortion: How minds, brains, and societies reconstruct the past (pp. 331-45). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Levstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (1996). "They still use some of their past": Historical salience in elementary children's chronological thinking. Journal qfCurriculum Studies, 28, 531-76. Levstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (1997). Doing history: Investigating with children in elementary and middle schools. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Loewen,]. (1995). Lies my teacher told me. New York: The New Press. Malinowski, B. (1948). Magic, science and religion and other em!)'s. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. McKeown, M. G., & Beck, 1. L. (1990). The assessment and characterization of young learners' knowledge of a topic in history. American Educational Research Journal, 27, 688-726. Mcgill, A. (1995). "Grand narrative" and thc discipline of history. In F. Ankersmith & H. Kellner (Eds.), A new philosophy qf history (pp. 151-73). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Seixas, P. (1993a). The community of inquiry as a basis for knowledge and learning: The case of history. American Educational ResearchJournal, 30, 305-24. Seixas, P. (1993b). Historical understanding among adolescents in a multicultural setting. Curriculum Inquiry, 23, 301-27. Seixas, P. (1994). Students' understanding of historical significance. 17zeory and Research in Social Education, 22, 281-304. Seixas, P. (1997). Mapping the terrain of historical significance. Social Education, 61, 220-28. Shama, S. (1992). Dead certainties: Unwarranted speculations. New York: Vintage. Shils, E. (1971). Tradition. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13, 122-59. VanSledright, B. A. (1996). "I don't remember-The ideas are all jumbled in my head": 8th graders reconstructions of colonial American history. Journal qf Curriculum and Supervision, 10,317-45. VanSledright, B. A. (1997). And Santayana lives on: Students' views on the purposes for studying American history. Journal qfCurriculum Studies, 29, 529-57. Wallace, M. (1996). )Hickey Mouse history and other essi!)'s on American memory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Appendix A Materials used in interview task-captions and picture descriptions Materials consisted of twenty laminated photocopies and accompanying captions, as described below. Hernando de Soto, a Spanish explorer, met a number of Indian tribes during the first European expedition to reach the Mississippi River. Explorers came to the Americas in search ofland and resources. The Native Americans were forced to give up their lands and their ways oflife. [picture of de Soto and Spanish sailors in a small ship, Native Americans looking on from shore] The first Thanksgiving in New England was celebrated in Plymouth less than a year after the Plymouth colonists had settled in America in 1620. In the early fall of 1621, Governor William Bradford arranged a harvest festival to give thanks to God for the progress the colony had made. [Picture of Pilgrims praying at a table, with Native Americans seated in background] The American Revolution (1775-83) was fought between Great Britain and its thirteen colonies that lay along the Atlantic Ocean in North America. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, in which the colonies declared their freedom from British rule. On September 3, 1783, Britain signed the Treaty of Paris by which it recognized the independence of the United States. [picture of delegates at the Continental Congress] The Bill of Rights is a document attached to the Constitution that describes the fundamental rights of the people. They protect a person's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It also forbids the government to violate these rights. The Bill came into effect on December 15, 1791. [picture depicting "Liberty," crowned by an American flag, with a list of the "four freedoms" in the background] OnJanuary 1, 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This historic document was one step toward the end of slavery in the United States. [picture of Abraham Lincoln and advisors] Western frontier life represented the dreams of homesteaders, who crossed the plains to Oregon or California in wagons. Their back-breaking labor turned the barren plains into fields of grain. The western farmer's land has been called the sod-house frontier, because so many settlers built homes of dirt and sod. [photograph of two women and children in front of sod house] Thomas Edison's greatest invention was the electric light bulb. Many other people had been working on the idea for years. Edison wanted lights that were small enough to be used in homes and offices. On October 19, 1879, after many failures, Edison finally succeeded in making a light bulb that used sewing thread as a filament. [photograph of Edison in a workshop] The demand for public education increased in the United States during the

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early 1800s. People saw that a nation's economic and social well-being depended on educated citizens. After 1850, states began to pass compulsory school attendance laws. These laws required children to attend school until they completed a certain grade or reached a certain age. [photograph of classroom and students, circa 1900] Immigration is the act of coming to a foreign country to live. Millions of European immigrants streamed into the United States during the 1800s and early 1900s. Ellis Island, in New York Harbor, was the main reception center for immigrants from 1892 to 1924. [Immigrants on dock with city skyline in background] On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright invented and built the first successful airplane. Here, Wilbur looks on as his brother flies their plane for the first time. That first flight lasted twelve important seconds. [photograph of first airplane] The issue of suffrage (the right to vote) became increasingly important to women during the 1800s. In 1920, the United States adopted the nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution granting American women the right to vote. [photograph of women casting ballots, circa 1920s.] The development of the car gave people freedom of movement, which led to rapid changes in American society. Automotive production provided jobs for millions of workers and the widespread use of cars became vital to our economy. [photograph of a row of parked cars on a city street, circa 1920s.] Depression is a long, serious slump in business activity. Buying and selling drop, causing a decline in production, prices, income, and employment. Money becomes scarce. The worst depression in history was the Great Depression, which struck the world in 1929 and continued through the 1930s. [photograph of woman and two children during Depression.] World War II (1939- 45) brought about the downfall of Western Europe as the center of world power and led to the rise of the Soviet Union. The development of the atomic bomb during the war opened the nuclear age. The United States entered the war on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked American military bases at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. [photograph of destroyed ships enveloped in smoke.] Polio was one of the most feared diseases until Jonas Salk developed an effective vaccine against it in 1953. In the past, polio epidemics were common and many of its victims were left paralyzed for life. Today, Salk's vaccine has eliminated this serious infection in nearly all the developed countries in the world. [photographs of Salk, person using crutches, and microscopic enlargement of disease virus.] The Civil Rights Movement began after World War II. African Americans had served with honor in the war yet were still discriminated against and treated unfairly. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the recognized leader of the movement. He urged Mrican Americans to use peaceful means, such as

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marches and demonstrations, to achieve their rights and goals. [photograph of Martin Luther King,Jr., leading other African Americans in a protest march.] The rock 'n' roll explosion began with Elvis Presley in the 1950s. Rock 'n' roll had its roots in many forms of previous music, such as rhythm and blues and country. By the 1960s Elvis had paved the way for groups like the Beatles, who were one of the most popular rock groups of all time. [Advertising poster for Presley concert] The Vietnam War (1957 - 75) was the longest war in which the United States took part. Americans disagreed about U.S. involvement there and this became one of the most debated issues in our nation's history. North Vietnam and South Vietnamese rebels fought to take over South Vietnam. The United States and the South Vietnamese army tried to stop them but failed. [Photograph of armed soldiers and prisoners wading through water] The advent of the computer marked a technological revolution as the machines simplified many difficult and time-consuming tasks. Computers provide an efficient way to manage large amounts of information and are a means of communication and information exchange. Computers can quickly and accurately solve numerical problems, store and retrieve information, and create and display documents and pictures. [photograph of man and woman working near a computer monitor] Did he or didn't he? Millions of people watch their television sets and wonder where the truth might lie. Did 0.]. Simpson kill Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman? It is the media event of 1994--95. [Portion of a newsmagazine cover with photographs of 0.]. and Nicole Brown Simpson]

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Appendix B Interview protocol Have you ever seen a timeline like this in your classroom or in books? Do you know what they're for? (Show blank timeline. If necessary, explain that a timeline is a way of showing some important things in history and when they happened.) This is a timeline of the last 500 years, and these are pictures from different times. Each one has a caption that explains a little about it. You're going to work together as a group to decide which of these are important enough to put on the timeline. You can only pick 8, so you havc to decide which are the most important. After you've decided on the eight most important ones, I'll ask you to explain each of your choices. Do you have any questions before you start? Remember, when you start, you'll need to read the captions on each one, and then talk to each other about which ones you think are important enough to put on the timeline and why. After students complete task, ask: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

Why did you choose this one [point to each]? Which pictures do you think other people might have picked, and why? Are there any pictures that you don't think anyone would pick? Why? [point to any pictures not mentioned] Can you think of any reason someone might have included this one? Is there anything in history that's not on any of these pictures that you think should have been included? If a group of [opposite sex: girls/boys] were doing this, do you think they would make any choices different than you did? Iflittle kids, like third or fourth graders, were doing this, what do you think might be different about their choices? If older people, like your parents' or grandparents' ages, were doing this, what do you think might be different about their choices? What are the most important things about history that you've learned in school, and why do you think they're important? \\That are the least important things you've learned about history in school, and why don't you think they're as important? What are the most important things about history you've learned outside ofschool?

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Appendix C Grade level of students interviewed All names listed are pseudonyms.

Appendix C Grade levels of students interviewed Girls, Grade 5

Boys, Grade 5

Laniesha Whitney Yolanda

Dustin Ryan JaJuan

Girls, Grade 6

Boys, Grade 6

group I

group 2

group I

group 2

Leslie Michelle Amber

Miatta Tania Megan Jessica

Israel Cole Brandon

Jacob Oliver Derek Robert

Girls, Grade 7

Boys, Grade 7

group I

group 2

group I

group 2

Jaclyn Tiffany Briana

Kathy Sonja Rhiannon Patricia

Reuben Ron Lewis

Asher Jared Peter Fred

Boys, Grade 8

Girls, Grade 8 group I

group 2

group I

group 2

Katrina Nicole Brenda

Isabella Sylvia Saara Rachel

J. R.

Thomas Tony Lincoln Byron

Chad Donny

::::I

Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution

Edison

Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution

Depression

Suffrage Edison

Depression Education

Thanksgiving

Immigration Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution

Suffrage Edison

Bill of Rights Revolution

Immigration

Education Suffrage Edison Immigration Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution De Soto

Suffrage Edison

Depression

Civil Rights WWII

Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution De Soto Thanksgiving

Education

Disease

Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution

Airplane

111

< 111

-

it

Q. 111

Q

Oq

.,

Q.

:s

Q

Q.

.,111

:s

111

Oq

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Girls

Appendix D Interview responses by gender and grade level

WWII Disease

WWII

Car Edison Airplane

Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution

Edison

Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution

Depression Suffrage

Civil Rights

Computer

Grade 6 group I

Civil Rights

Grade 5 group I

Boys

Appendix 0 (Continued)

Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution

Depression Suffrage

WWII

Vietnam

Grade 6 group 2

Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution Thanksgiving

Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution Thanksgiving

Edison

WWII

Computer Vietnam

Computer Vietnam Civil Rights

WWII

Grade 7 group 2

Grade 7 group I

Emancipation Bill of Rights Revolution

Airplane

Depression

WWII

Vietnam Civil Rights

Grade 8 group I

Bill of Rights Revolution De Soto

Immigration

Depression Suffrage

Civil Rights

Grade 8 group 2

Chapter 13

Articulating the silences Teachers' and adolescents' conceptions of historical significance

Linda S. Levstik

At the level of mythology, emancipation-from kings, lords, tyrants, slavery, caste, tribes, superstition, poverty, patriarchy, even heterosexuality-is the very essence of ':America." ... America has held out the promise of a freedom greater than any [immigrants] had known before. But ... becoming American cannot be understood in "emancipationist" terms alone, for immigrants invariably encountered structures of class, race, gender, and national power that constrained, and sometimes defeated, their efforts to be free. Coercion, as much as liberty, has been intrinsic to our history and to the process of becoming American. (Gary Gerstle)l Ideas of historical significance are cultural constructs transmitted to members of a society in a variety of ways. 2 This is especially the case for national history. In an era of fragile nation-states, it is instructive to watch the ways in which, in the hands of nationalists, history becomes the "raw material to be recycled to produce daily myths ... an enemy that must be dealt with in a radical, bloody way."3 Even in countries that aspire to a more democratic and civic rather than ethnic principle of nationality, decisions about what is historically significant have as much to do with what is repressed as with what is recollected. 4 As Gerstle notes, "nationalism demands that boundaries against outsiders be drawn, that a dominant national culture be created or reinvigorated, and that internal and external opponents of the national project be subdued, nationalized, vanquished, and even excluded or repelled."" Even under the most repressive forms of nationalism, however, alternative histories develop beneath the surface and on the margins of official history. In a multicultural democracy such as the United States, alternative histories also develop, but they are more overtly disseminated through family and cultural and religious associations as well as through such public channels as museums and print and visual media. Because of the potential disparity between the version of history encountered in these contexts and that disseminated in school-a site where some form of overarching national history is explicitly introduced-students in multicultural

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societies may be faced with reconciling widely varied accounts of the past. In Hollinger's view, such nations should aspire to a history '''thick' enough to sustain collective action yet 'thin' enough to provide room for the cultures of a variety of descent groupS."6 Individuals develop and express group identities but also take part in "an ongoing collective debate about the character and direction of the nation."7 Thus, according to Hollinger, teaching and learning national history should include study of the different systems of ethnoracial classification used in the nation, including consideration of the various constituencies empowered or disempowered by these classifications. This approach to studying history, Hollinger argues, would demystify ethnoracial categories and "challenge the authority that [U.S.] society has traditionally allowed skin color and the shape ofthe face to exercise over culture."8 There is little evidence that U.S. teachers (or any substantial part of the American public) are prepared to help students participate in the type of debate described by Hollinger.9 Indeed, the ways in which knowledge is created, transmitted, distorted, politicized, and used for specific purposes is rarely made evident in teacher training programs.1O Without such challenges to the status quo, prospective teachers may uncritically accept existing curriculum content as well as the social arrangements reflected in and supported by that content. Students, in turn, are unlikely to expect different ways of teaching or demonstrate different patterns of learning history if they have never seen them modeled. II Indeed, in several studies, students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds experienced difficulty fitting their own perspectives on historical significance with those presented in the school curriculum. 12 Some stood in active resistance to what they encountered in school, drawing instead on forms of history presented in what they perceived as more culturally relevant sites, such as neighborhoods and families.

Students', teachers', and teacher candidates' views of historical significance Developing a history that can sustain collective action while embracing the cultures of a variety of descent groups is more than a theoretical nicety; it is a practical necessity. Whether in workplaces or schools, Americans are linked to the world in complex and interesting ways, not least of which is through an influx of immigration that rivals numbers at the turn of the century.13 Meanwhile, the teaching force remains largely White, with relatively little experience teaching about diverse ethnoracial groups. 14 In this chapter I consider the implications of this disparity between who American students are-and will be in the near future- and who their teachers understand Americans to bc in the context of national history. I will focus on the results of two studies: first, an investigation of early adolescents' understanding of historical significance and, second, a similar study with teachers and teacher candidates. In the first study, in open-ended interviews, forty-eight

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students in grades 5 through 8 were presented with a set of captioned historical pictures and asked to choose the ones important enough to include on a timeline of the past five hundred years and to explain their choices (see Appendix). 15 In the second study, twenty teacher candidates (preservice teachers at the beginning of their social studies methods course) and twelve teachers (inservice teachers with one or more years of experience) were asked to complete the same task with a nearly identical set of captioned historical pictures (see Appendix). 16 Both studies used semistructured interviews and included a task that required participants to choose from among a set of twenty (for students) or twenty-five (for teachers and teacher candidates) captioned historical pictures and to respond to a set of broader questions and probes designed to explore their understanding of historical significanceY In the teacher and teacher candidate interviews, groups worked simultaneously, though separately. 18 The teachers and teacher candidates also worked with five pictures that were not used in the student study. These were selected to better represent the diversity of the U.S. historical experience as well as the "rights" issues that were prominent in student discussions of historical significance. After interviewing participants and identifying a set of thematic strands in their responses, we subjected the interview transcripts to a systematic content analysis; coding included a systematic search for negative or discrepant evidence. The coded data were then analyzed using cross-case analysis (grouping the answers of students responding to the same items in the selection task and interview) and constant comparison (comparing students' responses across different portions of the task and interview). This resulted in a set of descriptive generalizations that forms the basis for this chapter. In both studies, participants' choices focused primarily on the origin and development of the political and social structure of the United States, and the explanations pointed to steadily expanding rights and opportunities as the central theme in American history. At the same time, students had difficulty incorporating some historical patterns and events into their image of progress, and their discussion of these issues indicated a familiarity with a "vernacular" view of history separate from "official" views that justify the contemporary social structure. 19 Teachers and tcacher candidates, on the other hand, rarely focused on any form of vernacular history. Instead, most of the adult participants explicitly selected pictures that showed a positive image of nationbuilding, identifying their selections as "the main story," "what formed us," what made America "our family" what "made us a world power."

First person plural The first person plural came naturally to these students, teachers, and teacher candidates as they talked about an American past. "We" fought the revolution, "we" discovered a cure for polio, "we" pushed the Taino, the Cherokee, or the

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Nez Perce off their land. From the respondents' perspective, historical events took on significance when they "formed us," "changed us," or "made us a nation ." At first, this seems barely worth noting; after all, almost all of the student respondents and all but one of the adult respondents were American citizens, and they were sorting through images of U.S. history. But pronouns are shape-shifters, and it is useful to pay attention, particularly when antecedents shift around. Who are "we," and what is "ours"? Regardless of their own ethnic background, their gender, or the recency of their families' immigration to the United Statcs, students, teachers, and teacher candidates consistently used the pronouns "we" and "our" in talking about the events related to the settlement and creation of the United States. Their explanations suggest that they considered these events important because they defined a collective community. Beginning with a Thanksgiving picture that showed "the start of the United States, when we all became possible, because we all came from over there, and a bunch of immigrants came over here, and that's basically how we started our nation," students depicted the United States as a nation of immigrants. Teachers and teacher candidates also described immigration as one ofthe most distinctive aspects of American history. "This is why we got America. Why we are here," explained Celia, a teacher candidate. "This is where a large chunk of us are from, and this is like the basis for a lot of our cities, our development, our society." Her classmate Parker agreed: "When you think about it, we're all immigrants." Geri, a veteran teacher, said that the picture of immigrants was "our family." Along with immigration, the Bill of Rights and the American Revolution elicited comments from adults about the establishment of "our country," "our fundamental rights and "guidelines for working together." This emphasis on the origins of the United States-both its settlement and its creation as a political unit- reflects the importance of the past in defining a community ofidcntification. While previous research indicates that children's understanding of the colonial period and the American Revolution is often vague and riddled with misconceptions, students had internalized one element that contemporary society considers important-that this is where "we" began.2o Additionally, students and adults identified immigration as a key component in establishing the boundaries of national identity. For most of these students and adults, their community began with European settlement and expanded over time to include an unspecified array of European immigrants. Students and adults distinguished their historical community from that of Native Americans, explaining that "we"- European settlers-pushed "them"-the original inhabitants of the Americas-off "their" land. 21 As one teacher candidate explained, the exploration of the Americas was "a White man's event ... it doesn't include any African Americans, any Indians because we were pushing Indians off their land. . . and the African Americans [pictured among the explorers] were probably [Europeans'] slaves." Just as consistently, students and adults distinguished between "us"- those

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historically possessing rights and freedoms-and "them"- those historically disenfranchised or discriminated against on the basis of ethnoracial categories or gender. Thus, at Thanksgiving "it was kind of like the beginning of us becoming friends," said one student. "We was making a bond with Native Americans; that's good because that's a tradition that goes on forever." In similar terms, another student noted that the civil rights movement was important because it gave African Americans "a lot of opportunity to get jobs and stuff because [before] they w eren't really recognized as people." Similarly, Ryan explained that the civil rights movement was important "because African Americans were not treated equally." His interview partner,JaJuan, agreed that "they need just as much rights as we do." Students also recognized that there were problems in uniting historically segregated people. As Lincoln explained, "although [African Americans] got to be free we still kinda pushed 'em ... we still gave them the cheap neighborhoods so they didn't live with us ... . Kind of like the Indians ... and the voting thing for women. " Byron noddcd, adding, "We said hey, they're here, pfft" gesturing as if brushing them out of the way. Teacher candidates (but no teachers) also used an us-and-them dichotomy in discussing the significance of civil rights. Without civil rights, several said, "They [African Americans] would still be slaves"- just as earlier they had said that "without the American Revolution we would be ruled by England. "22 Veteran teachers spent considerably less time discussing civil rights than did either of the other two groups. They almost unanimously placed civil rights on the timeline, sometimes distinguishing between "our over-all rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights but not extended to all of them," and civil rights and women 's rights that had to be wrested from a resistant society generally identified as "us." Once gender was raised as an issue however, students shifted from generic identification with European Americans to identification by gender In the case of women's suffrage girls identified with women in the early twentieth century, explaining that "we [females] came along and got the vote." Boys, on the other hand, identified with the men from the period, arguing that "we [males] already had the vote."23 This pattern was not as prominent among the adults, most of whom were women. While some adults strongly identified with women in the women's movement others were just as adamant in not doing so. The emphasis by students, teachers and teacher candidates on the expansion of rights and opportunities and the steady improvement of social relations indicates concern with establishing the United States as a country in which historic hardships and injustices are corrected and overcome. This should not be surprising. In societies in which contemporary groups experience wide differences in their economic or social status, emancipatory historical stories serve to establish the legitimacy of the status quo and dissipate concern about the persistence of disparities in circumstance. 24 But, as Gerstle notes in the opening quote, "becoming American cannot be understood in 'emancipationist' terms alone ... . Coercion, as much as liberty, has been intrinsic to our history and to the process of becoming American." 25

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Ignoring the complexity of the American experience may serve to maintain existing economic and social structures, but it certainly confuses students and teachers about a good deal of American history. When the history curriculum "emphasizes the obvious, cheerful, and stereotypical," students and teachers are deprived of an important mechanism whereby they might understand their own lives as having historical context(s), and they are given no help in understanding the continuation of inequities and injustice in their (or others') society.26 Instead, they are faced with a history long on myth, short on intellectual rigor, and extraordinarily slow to incorporate the wide range of behavior that has characterized American history.

Challenging the obvious, cheerful, and stereotypical Some participants- particularly among the adolescent students- were aware of and sometimes disturbed by anomalies in the historical record. For European American students, the continuation of racism was one such puzzle. African Americans "have rights," Rhiannon said, pondering the problem; Sonja agreed but noted that "we still have prejudice." "Yeah," Rhiannon acknowledged, "there's still prejudice ... and there are even like other religious groups and other different countries that ... have prejudice, too. Even if everybody has the right, doesn't change people's emotions." She and Sonja continued to turn the idea around, suggesting that recent immigrants seemed to be treated most badly. Rhiannon said, "Illegal-not illegal, but aliens- that have just come here like Puerto Ricans and Mexicans .. . they came here but they're legally allowed to be here, but people think they're like taking our taxes and taking all our government stuff that would go to them." Another group of girls also mentioned hostility towards recent immigrants, noting that California was involved in "making laws" about immigration. As they discussed this disjuncture between progress and prejudice, Rachel mentioned that "people think of America as the land of opportunities but I don't think they think of racism." Saara also pointed out that "[s]ome places are going back to segregation. I think it's sad. It took such a long time to get it the way it is now." Rachel nodded and commented, "It's not perfect, not where we want to be." African American students framed the past as a story of learning from mistakes, as had European American students, but they sometimes introduced a more complex analysis of progress in extending rights to marginalized people. They, too, argued that the Bill of Rights was, as Isabella said, "only for rich White men who could vote and you had to pay taxes ... so the Bill of Rights just protected wealthy, White, male landowners, but that [rights] applied to everyone and gave every one a chance." They also mentioned the lack of attention to civil rights in school. "You don't really learn about [civil rights] in school," Isabella commented. "You know I've read books about it. My parents have books and I've gone to the library and I've seen movies and stuff and I

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mean at this school and at my other school I didn't learn too much about it 'cause like you celebrate Martin Luther King but you don't hear about it ... you just hear that he helped." Sometimes, too, when a European American student argued that "we're all equal now," a student of color would drop out of the conversation, at least temporarily. In one instance, Robert, a European American, remarked that one of the results of racism was that "most Black people are poor and on free or reduced lunches like 93 percent or so." Derek, his African American classmate, looked at him in surprise, pointing a finger at his own chest and shaking his head. He stayed silent, however, until the conversation shifted to Native Americans. When Robert said that Columbus discovered America, Derek leaned forward and asked, "How did he discover America? There were already people here!" Oliver, a European American, intervened, saying "they didn't know where the U.S. was; since they didn't know it, it was a discovery [for them], but not for the Indians." Again, Derek withdrew, shaking his head in disagreement. Similarly, when the eighth-grade girls discussed recent immigration from "Puerto Rico and Mexico," Patricia, whose father was Mexican American, remained silent during the discussion of legal and illegal immigration, re-entering the conversation at a later point to discuss ethnic contributions-food- to American culture. In contrast, her classmate Saara, an immigrant from Poland, intervened forcefully when Rhiannon joked that Saara was an "illegal alien." Saara declared that she was legal and had a green card-"actually, a pink green card." Teachers and teacher candidates spent much less time discussing the continuation of racism. Instead, they stressed the continued need for inclusion, folding racism and ethnicity into one "issue of culture" where "we still have problems." One teacher candidate, Jerrie, suggested that these problems were so crucial that her group should focus on "a social perspective, like what made things better" (emphasis mine). Another group of teachers discussed continuing discrimination against immigrants, and a third group argued about whether to include the Depression picture because "it was at this time that we established all the social programs ... all the things we're trying to change now." This last group of teachers also kept the immigration picture on the timeline because, Bonnie explained, "you wouldn't get to civil rights without that." While the adults' brief attention to ethnoracial history stands in contrast to the students' lengthier discussion of racism and discrimination, the topic arose most often among students in schools with the greatest degree of ethnoracial diversity.27 Similarly, adults who worked in more diverse school settings were more likely to address race as an issue separate from ethnicity. Just as ethnoracial history provoked discussion among participants in the study, so did the Vietnam War. For students, Vietnam raised question about American exceptionality. They thought that Americans were different in that they did not fight wars of aggression, and fought only to "help people ... we were fighting . . . for other people." They could not reconcile what they knew

280 Linda S. Levstik about Vietnam with this vIew. They weren't sure whom Americans were helping in Vietnam. Rhiannon struggled to explain with whom America was fighting. "The Vietnamese people," she finally declared. When asked which Vietnamese people, she hesitated. "North or south?" she asked, laughing. Sonja volunteered that she thought "it was like a civil war between like Vietnam, I think." Lewis speculated that the war "helped Vietnam be different. Well, it helped the north and south or something." His classmate Peter shrugged and said, "I don't really know much about the Vietnam War." After listening to his peers struggle for awhile, Jared commented that "they're trying to make excuses for a war we lost. " Teachers and teacher candidates also had difficulty reconciling what they knew of Vietnam with their ideas about why Americans enter wars . While they were not as convinced as the students that Americans went to war solely for altruistic purposes, they did think that Americans were supposed to get something out of the war-access to oil or some other economic advantage, for instance. They were unsure what Americans intended to "get out of [Vietnam]" knowing only that "we lost that war." Lisa, a teacher candidate, described the loss as "a change for the worse ... it was being pushed out," and compared the American experience to the way in which Native Americans were "pushed out of their land. " Younger teacher candidates said they didn't know much about Vietnam, claiming they never studied it, either in pre collegiate or collegiate history classes. Teachers and older teacher candidates evidenced some firstand second-hand information about the war, usually gathered from having lived through the timc period, or from family or acquaintances who served in Vietnam. This information did not help them understand why America was involved, only that the war precipitated protests at home and bad treatment for returning soldiers. Stacie, a teacher, said, "it may have been the longest war, but we weren't even fighting for our country. I mean, I know it's significant, but. ... " Celia nodded, saying, "See, I think, my Dad [a Vietnam veteran] would kill me, but I don't think we should take it [on the timeline]." Mason agreed, arguing that "it certainly had an era of its own, but as far as forming who we are, I don't know." In part, thesc ideas reflect the development of a wider public mythology "in which the U.S. government disappears as a devastating force, the Vietnamese people cease to be victims, and the principal focus of concern becomes psychic stress for those veterans who survived."28 This interpretation of the Vietnam era makes the antiwar movement cspecially confusing. Such protests challenged students' and adults' schema of cooperation and reconciliation. Why, they wondered, did people object to helping another country? Isabella, a student, wanted to know "how [the war] was started and why some of the best people were against it. I mean to me, I want to know why they were against the Vietnamese people." Another student, Lincoln, offered the conclusion that "people were going mad." Three students, Oliver,Jacob, and Robert, thought that more people died in Vietnam because "you have all these shootings

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because people in the U.S. were arguing over something," but they were unclear as to what the argument was about. They had no inkling that war resistance was a regular feature of America's history; so far as they knew, Vietnam was a singular incident of dissent. Though students expressed interest in the Vietnam era, teachers and teacher candidates worried about including it on their timeline because "it was a negative thing." In one group of teacher candidates, discussion centered on when "negative things like protests" should be introduced. "You wouldn't talk about it in elementary school," Jana claimed. They also worried about discussing Vietnam because they connected anti-Vietnam protest to morc general social unrest. As Tara, a teacher candidate, explained it, "the whole value system or beliefs changed in the country, maybe not as a direct result of the war, maybe just the times, but there was the sexual revolution." Others argued that, despite the social upheaval of the period, Vietnam didn't "form us." When Mason, a teacher, asked, "what did [the war] do?" his peers had difficulty formulating a response. "Well," Celine said, "it's a huge deal ... a huge controversy on whether or not this was even an important thing at the time." Susan added that "it caused us to have dissent and we started to become critical of government." Celine frowned, adding, "Weren't we already critical in some ways?" "Not as overtly," Susan explained. In all the adult discussion of Vietnam, only Celine's remark indicated any awareness that protest or criticism of government might predate the Vietnam era. Yet her peers dismissed her reservations; they had a vague sense that something was differcnt about the kind of protest and criticism leveled at the government during and after the Vietnam years, though they had trouble articulating that difference. Later in the discussion, for instance, Susan returned to the idea that Vietnam marked a critical turning point in how Americans viewed their government. Vietnam, she argued, represented "our conscience. Even though it was kind of a negative thing, I think it gave us a conscience." Her peers remained unconvinced. Vietnam had been "a problem at the time," not something with long-term cause and certainly not something that explained "who we are"- their bottom line for determining historical significance. This tendency to see history as a series of separate and singular events showed up in several other discussions among teachers and teacher candidates. Only one adult, for instance, remarked that the United States had suffered economic depressions prior to 1929. Not unlike the students who treated the Depression as a one-time event when "everyone was poor" and America "realized that they weren't the god of all countries," some adults saw the effects of the Depression as limited to a single generation. At most, they thought the experience of economic depression explained some of their parents' or grandparents' attitudes toward work and money, but they perceived little effect for subsequent generations of Americans. As Abby, a teacher candidate , noted, "the Depression [is] a big part of our history, but as far as how we are .... " She shrugged. Abby and her peers tended to describe history as a series of time-

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bound problems recognized, debated, and resolved (or just forgotten)- a depression in the 1930s, a civil rights movement in the I 960s, the invention of a technology or medical cure at a particular moment in time. When individuals did mention the long-term or world-wide effects of events or eras, they were greeted with surprise by some of their peers. In two groups of teacher candidates, for instance, a member of each group connected economic depression in the United States to current social welfare systems. Nila explained that "the Depression sets up all that stuff that FDR does, like welfare. Without all that, the welfare system as we know it wouldn't exist. Like we still have the TVA in 1998, you know, sixty years later." Moira raised her eyebrows, turned to Nila, and asked, "Were you some kind of history major?" "No," Nila responded. "I had a really good history teacher in high schoo!." In another group of teacher candidates, Hanna argued that the Depression had "world-wide impact," but her peers disagreed, countering that its significance was confined to changing things "for our grandparents. " In other instances, adults relied on fragmentary or conflated pieces of his torical information to argue for or against the significance of an event or era. Susan, a teacher, was probably conflating information about instances of women's suffrage prior to 1920 with early restrictions on male suffrage when she argued that the Nineteenth Amendment was not important because women could already vote. "See, women voted in the 1700s! It just was who owned land," she told her group. "So some men didn't vote, but some women could, it just depended on who owned land." Fragmentary information also led Bonnie, another teacher, to make law-like statements about historical causeand-effect relationships. She recalled that World War II helped lift the United States out of economic depression and concluded that the Depression was significant because "war usually grows out of [depression] and produces prosperity."

The code of silence When a student,jaclyn, noted in regard to antiwar protests that "disagreement can lead to such a big conflict that could have been solved a lot easier," she inadvertently characterized a basic tension in teaching and learning national history. As White characterizes it: Even more important than transmIttmg public scholarly knowledge, elementary and secondary schools serve as institutions that enculturate the young of our nation with the core values, beliefs, and practices of the contemporary mainstream American culture .... Therefore, historical, geographic, economic, or political events that do not reflect the United States and its inhabitants at their finest hour, embodying the ideas for which we stand, tend to be ruthlessly edited out when "what is or was" meets the filter of "what should be."29

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While students, teachers, and teacher candidates all ascribed significance to aspects of the past that promoted social unity and consensus, they did not all respond in the same ways to more divisive aspects of American history. 30 Instead, students expressed interest in exactly those aspects of the past that teachers and teacher candidates found profoundly disturbing. Given the adults' desire to identify with and introduce children to a community at once stable and emancipatory, the coercive and divisive elements in national development presented teachers and teacher candidates with a dilemma. First, they worried that introducing "negative" history was developmentally inappropriate perhaps children in elementary and middle school were not mature enough to handle an ambiguous past. Next, they suggested that these aspects of the past were aberrations rather than patterns in American history. Finally, not only did they argue that knowing about coercive and divisive parts of America's past was not fundamental to the formation of children's national identity; they suggested that such knowledge threatened to undermine that identity. In building these arguments, teachers and teacher candidates circumscribe a national identity that was inclusive but not plural, civic but rarely social. Thus, civil rights movements that sought to include more people in joint civic life with European Americans were significant, but instances of ethnoracial repression (Indian removal, Japanese internment) or resistance (Vietnam) or movements that challenged Americans to alter basic social or economic conditions (labor movements, economic depression) rarely were. As examples of coercion and resistance in nation-building dropped off the adults' timelines, there was silence at exactly the points where students expressed confusion about and interest in the past.

Safety in silence The teachers and teacher candidates in this study were not unaware of the dilemma presented by the contrast between their desire for a beneficent national history and students' desire to know more about exactly those aspects of the past with which teachers felt most uncertain. They argued that their own experience as students of history had failed to prepare them to understand national history in sophisticated ways or to make sense out of the persistent problems of a diverse nation or an increasingly interdependent world. They said, for instance, that history "should be multicultural," but they also wanted to look past differences and establish some sort of common identity. Several declared that they didn't see color in their classrooms and couldn't imagine discussing with their students how color was used to construct racial categories in the United States. 31 They were aware that injustices had happened in the past but were terrified of what they might unleash by speaking about them in the present. In response, they chose silence. These silences in the history curriculum are reflections of silences in the larger culture-codes of politeness that constrain what adults think it is appropriate to discuss in public or with children,

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a desire to enculturate children into what teachers perceive as mainstream American culture. As the products of schools that were often silent on cultural differences, these teachers extend the silence into their own classrooms. They avoid topics that make them uncomfortable or that they think will disturb their students.32 When faced with accommodating a more diverse student population, their tendency is to celebrate relatively minor, non-threatening differences-clothing, holidays, food- and avoid overt discussion of race, cultural conflict, social inequities, and oppression. 33 In so doing, they inadvertently present students with stereotypes and misrepresent past and current circumstances Not surprisingly individuals whose history is so often misrepresented in the curriculum are likely to reject history as meaningless, inaccurate, and irrelevant. In consequence they are more likely to understand themselves and others in local and presentist terms. 34 Of course, we can always argue that what these students and teachers really need is more history. The students in this study will get just that. They are embarked on a course of study that will provide them with perhaps the most concentrated attention to history in their schooling. Between fifth and eleventh grade they are likely to take at least five history courses. The teachers and teacher candidates also took history at both precollegiate and collegiate levels. 35 They recalled that their history instructors introduced all of the topics pictured in the timeline task, with the exception of Vietnam. They expressed embarrassment and frustration over the gaps in their recollection. Despite their foggy memories for some parts of the past, however, they recalled the main point of the mainstream story-emancipation, progress, and exceptionality-even as they acknowledged its silences. In this they were much like the African American adults surveyed by Rosenzweig,36 who also perceived American history as a story of progress over time. A national story of progressive emancipation without attention to the coercive elcmcnts of nation building, however, fails to provide teachers or students with a framework for making sense out of much of history and leaves them vulnerable to myth and manipulation. 37 Engaging students in in-depth study of the coercive as well as emancipatory potential in the American experience, on the other hand, can be challenging for teachers. As I analyzed the comments of the teachers and teacher candidates engaged in the timeline task, three specific challenges emerged.

Narrow conceptions qfAmerican polity. As the teachers discussed what was or was not historically significant, they built a dichotomous picture of American history. "Our" story focused on the construction of a European American polity that was a single culture in a multicultural world. While other cultural groups appeared at various point in the story, their activities were generally sidebars to the main events. Few of the teachers or teacher candidates knew enough about individuals and groups they perceived as "other" to discuss them in a sensitive, reasonably accurate way, even when they were sympathetic to

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their inclusion on the timeline. While they knew brief immigration and civil rights stories that emphasized the emancipatory pull of America, they knew almost nothing about the factors that pushed people to emigrate or about the varied circumstances that constrained their participation in American society. As Gerstle notes, a nation is itself a structure of power that, like class, gender, and race, limits the array of options available to its citizens. 38 With no information about the ways in which national power is brought to bear in the process of nation building, teachers have little hope of helping students analyze either emancipation or coercion in the making of Americans. Changing this requires more than increasing the required doses of national history. Rather, it suggests that historical study might benefit from an anthropological perspective that would encourage teachers "to reflect on cultural variation ... combat ... ethnocentrism .. and see other people's points of view more clearly."39 Focusing on questions about human actions and thoughts in a range of "strange" settings might also "expose taken for granted substantive values to scrutiny," while raising a new set of questions to frame national history: What constituencies have various social, political, and economic systems apparently served? To what uses have these systems been put by various empowered and disempowered agents? Which ethnoracial categories have been introduced when and by whom, and who, if anyone, resisted their application and in what context? To concentrate on telling such a story could demystify and historicize the categories, without denying their ordinance, for good or ill, over specific people at specific times and places. 4o

Little experience with historical inquiry. Shifting history instruction from the transmission of cultural verities to their investigation highlights another problem. Neither teachers nor students report experience with historical inquiry.4! As a result, both need different, not necessarily more history- history that engages them in inquiry into the kinds of questions suggested earlier. 42 Perhaps collegiate level history classes could more systematically involve students in such inquiry. In turn, methods courses and professional development activities could focus on developing forms of historical inquiry appropriate for K-12 students. 43 Fear qf repercussions from administrators and public. There is a wonderful scene in the movie Lone Star in which contending community delegations meet with two social studies teachers to discuss their approach to Texas history. When one of the teachers says that she is simply trying to show her students the complex ways in which different individuals and groups came together in Texas, a parent retorts that she doesn't want complexities for her child and suggests that the teachers stick to food and celebrations. When I show that scene to my graduate classes, it always elicits a groan. It is exactly what they are afraid of- irate parents who want a sanitized version of history and will fight to keep it. The teachers and teacher candidates in this study share that anxiety. They want to smooth over differences, not hold them up for examination. Not surprisingly,

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they prefer that parents support rather than attack their programs. Traditionally, Americans have looked to history to provide a justification for the current way of things, and they are likely to resist instruction that questions thc foundations of the status quo. Teachers, then, need to learn how to garner support for change and how to respond to challenges. 44 It is not enough to educate students for democratic citizenship; teachers too must learn to take part in meaningful and productive discussion with people of diverse viewpoints. 45

Conclusion The ways in which the students, teachers, and teacher candidates in these two studies talked about history and historical significance in relation to national history are both encouraging and frustrating. While both groups expressed faith in the mainstream American story of gradual emancipation and progress, students were more likely to maintain an alternative story in which private prejudices and, sometimes, public policy worked against inclusion and thwarted what they perceived as the promise of the Bill of Rights. Teachers and teacher candidates, on the other hand, often rejected negative images as having little to do with the formation of national identity, especially as it applied to children and adolescents. Their reluctance to include divisive or coercive- or simply alternative-elements from the past contrasted sharply with students' interest in those areas. Of course once these historical topics enter the curriculum, they, too, may be sanitized and lose their appeal to students. While this is possible- even probable- it is not necessary. If race, dissent, gender and class become questions for inquiry rather than topics for study perhaps they can maintain their power for students. 46 To this end, teachers' notions of freedom, expanding rights, and the dangers of conflict, as well as their ideas about discrimination and oppression need to be examined, "drawn on and pushed against [so that] the history usually reserved for the few is the history that belong to all."47 Then the challenge for teachers will be to help children build a framework for making critical sense out of legitimating stories as well as alternative vernacular histories. Lacking such a framework, students may simply replace nationalist selfsatisfaction with cynicism. 48 Neither prepares students to understand national history. Indeed, not only are both likely to leave students uninterested in history, but they are probably equally likely to lead students away from active civic participation.

Notes 1. Gary Gerstle, "Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans," Journal ofAmerican History, 84(2) (1997), 524-58. 2. K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, Color Conscious: The Political Morality ofRace

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(Princeton, 1996); David W. Cohen, The Combing qfHistory (Chicago, 1994); Michael Kammen, iMystic Chords qf Memory: The TranifOrmation qf Tradition in American Culture (New York, 1991); Simon Shama, Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations (New York, 1992). 3. Siavenka Drakulic, Cqfe Europa (New York, 1996), p. 187. 4. Cohen, Combing qfHistory. 5. Gerstle, "Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans," p. 555. 6. David A. Hollinger, "National Solidarity at the End of the Twentieth Century: Reflections on the United States and Liberal Nationalism," Journal qf American History, 84(2) (1997), 559-69, 565. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., p. 569. 9. Gloria Ladson-Billings, "Coping with Multicultural Illiteracy: A Teacher Education Response," Social Education, 55 (1991), 186-87, 194; Bruce A. VanSledright, '''I Don't Remember-The Ideas are All Jumbled in My Head': 8th Graders' Reconstructions of Colonial American History," Journal qfCurriculum and Supervision, 10 (1996), 317-45. 10. J oBeth Allen (Ed.), Class Actions: Teachingfor Social Justice in Elementary and Middle School (New York, 1998); Etta R. Hollins, Culture in School Learning: Revealing the Deep Meaning (Mahwah, NJ, 1996); Ladson-Billings, "Multicultural Illiteracy"; Theresa Mickey McCormick, Creating the Nonsexist Classroom: A Multicultural Approach (New York, 1994). II. VanSledright, "I Don't Remember." 12. Keith C. Barton and Linda S. Levstik, "'It Wasn't a Good Part of History': National Identity and Students' Explanations of Historical Significance," Teachers College Record, 99(3) (1998), 478-513; Terrie L. Epstein, "Makes No Difference if you're Black or White? African American and European American Adolescents' Perspectives on Historical Significance and Historical Sources," paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April 1994; Terrie L. Epstein, "Sociocultural Approaches to Young Pcople's Historical Understanding," Social Education, 61(1997), 28-31; Peter Seixas, "Mapping the Terrain of Historical Significance," Social Education, 61(1997), pp. 22-28. 13. Jane]. White, "Teaching Anthropology to Precollegiate Teachers and Studcnts," in C. P. Kottak et al. (Eds.), The Teaching qfAnthropology: Problems, Issues, and Decisions (Mountain View, CA, 1997),289-98. 14. Ibid. 15. Linda S. Levstik and Keith C. Barton, Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools (Mahwah, NJ, 1997); Linda S. Levstik, "The Boys we Know; the Girls in this School," International Journal qf Social Studies 12(2) (1999), 19-34. 16. Group rather than individual interviews were used in order to promote discussion and elaboration among participants. We used single-sex groups in the student study in order to provide more easily analyzed data on gender differences. This was not possible with the teachers and teacher candidates, as there were only three men in the participant pool. Ethnic identification of students was based on teachers' judgments and students' self-identification; adults self-identified. 17. See, for instance, Barton and Levstik, "National Identity." 18. All the teachers and teacher candidates were enrolled in undergraduate (teacher candidates) or graduate (teachers) courses and were familiar with small-group work during which instructors moved among groups. Questions that arose were most often procedural ("Can we really only pick eight?"), though sometimes participants

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19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

Linda S. Levstik asked for more specific historical information ("When did women get the vote in England?"), and I briefly an swered these questions. john Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1992). Margaret G. Mckeown and Isabel L. Beck, "The Assessment and Characterization of Young Learners' Knowledge of a Topic in History," American Educational Research Journal, 27 (1990), 688- 726; VanSledright, "I Don't Remember." Interestingly, whenever the name of Christopher Columbus arose, students were quick to point out either that Native Americans already lived in North America or that the Vikings had explored here and that Columbus could not therefore be considered to have discovered the continent. Keith C. Barton, '''Bossed Around by the Queen': Elementary Students Understanding ofIndividuals and Institutions in History," Journal if Curriculum and Supervision, 12 (1997), 290- 314. See also Levstik, "The Boys we Know"; Levstik and Barton, Doing History. Gerstle, "Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans"; john R. Gillis, "Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship," in R. Gillis (Ed.), Commemorations: TIe Politics ifNational Identity (Princeton, 1994), pp. 3-24; Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays (Glencoe, IL, 1948); Edward Shils, "Tradition," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13 (1971), 122- 59; Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (New York, 1977). Gerstle, "Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans." Anne Martin, "Social Studies in Kindergarten: A Case Study," Elementary School Journal, 90(3) (1990), 305- 17. The students interviewed included children who identified themselves as African American, as being of European extraction, or as a mixture of these. In one of the schools, about a quarter of the students interviewed were first- or second-generation residents of the United States. Kammen, Mystic Chords. White, "Teaching Anthropology," p. 291. joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York, 1994); Bodnar, Remaking America; Henry S. Commager, "The Search for a Usable Past," American Heritage Magazine, 17(2) (1965), 4-9; M. Douglas, How Institutions 77link (Syracuse, 1986); Patricia H. Hinchey, Finding Freedom in the Classroom: A Practical Introduction to Critical TIeory (New York, 1998); Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion; Shils, "Tradition"; Williams, Marxism and Literature. Appiah and Gutman, Color Conscious. White, "Teaching Anthropology." Allen, Class Actions; Ladson-Billings, "Multicultural Illiteracy." Linda McNeil, "Empowering Students: Beyond Defensive Teaching in Social Studies," in C. Emihovich (Ed.), Locating Learning; Ethnographic Perspectives on Classroom Research (Norwood, Nj, 1989), pp. 117- 39; White, "Teaching Anthropology." Not all teachers and teacher candidates identified specific courses in responding to the question about where they had learned about history. All of them reported studying American history at the precollegiate and collegiate level. The teacher candidates generally take a two-semester sequence in American history (some students took Advanced Placement American history in high school instead). There are insufficient data to describe the specific courses taken by the teachers. Roy Rosenzweig, "How Americans Use and Think about the Past: Implications from a National Survey for the Teaching of History" in Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and S. Wineburg, (Eds.), Knowing. Teaching. and Learning History; National and International Perspectives (N ew York, 2000), pp. 262-83.

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37. Jere Brophy and Bruce VanSledright, Teaching and Learning History in Elementary Schools (New York, 1997); Tom Holt, Thinking HistoricallY: Narrative, Imagination, and Understanding (New York, 1990); Levstik and Barton, Doing History. 38. Gerstle, "Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans." 39. Jane J. White, "Teaching about Cultural Diversity," in C. Kottak, J. White, R. Furlow, and P. Rice, (Eds.), TIle Teaching if Anthropology: Problems, Issues, and Decisions (Mountain View, CA, 1997), pp. 70- 76. 40. Gerstle, "Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans." 41. Fred M. Newmann, Walter G. Secada, and Gary G. Wehlage, A Guide to Authentic Instruction and Assessment: Vision, Standards and Scoring (Madison, WI, 1995). 42. Holt, Thinking HistoricallY; Levstik and Barton, Doing History. 43. See, for instance, ibid. 44. Linda S. Levstik, '''Any History is Someone's History': Listening to Multiple Voices from the Past," Social Education, 61(1) (1997), 48-51. 45. Allen, Class Actions; Carole L. Hahn, Becoming Political (Albany, NY, 1998); Levstik, "Any History"; Levstik and Barton, Doing History;Jame s Loewen, Lies my Teacher Told Me (New York, 1995). 46. Holt, Thinking HistoricallY; Levstik and Barton, Doing Histo ry. 47. D ennie P. Wolf and Robert Orrill, "Editors' Introduction," in Tom Holt, Thinking HistoricallY (New York, 1990), pp. xi- xiv. 48. Barton and Levstik, "National Identity. "

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Appendix S. Pictures Adolescent Study Hernando de Soto The First Thanksgiving The American Revolution The Bill of Rights Emancipation Proclamation Western frontier Electric light bulb Public education Immigration First successful airplane Women's suffrage Development of the car Depression World War Polio vaccine Civil rights movement Rock 'n' roll/Elvis Presley Vietnam War Computer 0.]. Simpson Trial

Additional Pictures: Adult Study Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire Indian Removal Bill/Trail of Tears Induction ceremony for U.S. citizenship Executive Order No. 9066 United Farmworkers demonstration

Interview questions

Adolescent study I. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Why did you choose this one [point to each]? Which pictures do you think other people might have picked, and why? Are there any pictures that you don't think anyone would pick? Why? [point to any pictures not mentioned] Can you think of any reason someone might have included this one? Is there anything in history that's not on any of these pictures that you think should have been included? If a group of [opposite sex: girls/boys] were doing this, do you think they would make any choices different than you did? Iflittle kids, like third or fourth graders, were doing this, what do you think might be different about their choices? If older people, like your parents' or grandparents' ages, were doing this, what do you think might be different about their choices? What are the most important things about history that you've learned in school, and why do you think they're important? What are the least impor-

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tant things you've learned about history in school, and why don't you think they're as important? 10. What are the most important things about history you've learned outside of school?

Adult study 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

Which pictures do you think other people might have picked, and why? Are there any pictures that you don't think anyone would pick? Why? Is there anything in history that's not represented in any ofthese pictures that you think should have been included? If a group of your students were doing this, do you think they would make any choices different than you did? If students younger or older than yours were doing this, what do you think might be different about their choices? What are the most important things about history that you've learned in school (including college/university), and why do you think they're important? What are the least important things you've learned about history in school (including college/university), and why don't you think they're as important? What are the most important things about history you've learned outside of school?

Chapter 14

Challenging the familiar

Keith C. Barton

Much of my recent scholarship has derived, in whole or part, from my work in Northern Ireland. Findings from that research have contributed to my understanding of how students' historical thinking develops, how social context influences their ideas, and how the formal curriculum intersects with learning outside school. As I look back, I recognize the narrowness of my previous views of history education, and I can't imagine writing about the topic without incorporating what I learned in Northern Ireland. But these insights were hard won, and their origins say as much about the process of conducting research as they do about students' thinking. My experiences in Northern Ireland reflect a mixture of planning and serendipity, insider and outsider perspectives, old findings and new ways of thinking. Colleagues and students often ask how I became interested in Northern Ireland. It's tempting to say that it was because the region offers unique and unparalleled opportunities to investigate the development of historical understanding. After all, Nationalists and Unionists have competing historical narratives, and these histories are an inescapable part of public life. Moreover, many people in Northern Ireland-ineluding many educators-believe that children begin learning these competing histories from an early age. Yet schools offer a neutral and balanced approach, steeped in inquiry learning and the evidencebased curriculum developed in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. Moreover, the curriculum differs significantly from the narratives of national development that are taught in the United States. Northern Ireland thus offers a chance to examine the impact of social context on students' understanding, both by contrasting Catholic and Protestant students' ideas and by comparing them to those of students in the United States. Throughout the 1990s, Linda and I had been emphasizing the impact of context on students' ideas about history (as had Terrie Epstein, Peter Seixas, and Bruce VanSledright), yet apart from survey research, few studies had systematically compared the development of historical understanding in different countries. In fact, though, none of these issues had much to do with my decision to conduct research in Northern Ireland. Quite simply, I went there because my

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wife wanted to. As a sociologist who studies community organizing, she had gone to Northern Ireland for a week-long seminar on the peace process, and she suggested we return for our upcoming sabbaticals. I reasoned that because I study children, I could work anywhere (at least in the English-speaking world), and I set about developing a proposal that ultimately was funded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. My plan was to collect data that would be as similar as possible to my dissertation research so that I could systematically compare students' thinking in the two locations. I anticipated several months of classroom observation in a single school, combined with interviews in which students arranged photographs in chronological order and talked about their experiences with history. I hoped to carry out the project in one of Northern Ireland's few integrated schools so that I could work with students from both religious communities. Anyone familiar with qualitative research knows that the best laid plans often go awry, and research in another country compounds the potential problems. It's difficult enough to select a site, gain access, and secure the cooperation of teachers and administrators when researchers work in their own backyard-how to even begin going about such tasks in another country? This is where I began to get lucky. As part of her seminar, my wife had met the Head of the Faculty of Education at the University of Ulster, and when I contacted him about becoming affiliated with the university he offered to make us "visiting academics." Better yet, he put me in contact with Alan McCully, a faculty member whose role preparing teachers was much like my own. Alan, as it happened, sat on the board of governors of a local integrated school, and his advocacy for me with the school's faculty and administration quickly led them to approve my project. He also arranged for our 8-year-old daughter to enroll at the school, where she would be in the same class as his own daughter. (He even offered to let us use his house and car until we found our own.) And as I discovered over the next few months, Alan was well-respected in both the educational community of Northern Ireland and the wider arena of history education in Britain and Europe, so not only could I rely on him for access to a research site (and a car) but for introduction into new circles of scholars and educators. The first rule for conducting international research is surely to find helpful colleagues and depend on them shamelessly. Alan has been far more than a source of professional contacts, though, and we have collaborated on research, writing, presentations, and workshops. Colleagues who have noticed how frequently my articles and presentations are co-authored sometimes ask why I work with others so often-and how I manage to do so, given the potential problems of such collaboration. The "why" question is easy, because this is an aspect of the career I find especially rewarding. There's not much I enjoy more than sitting down with Linda over a cup of coffee, or with Alan over a pint of stout, and trying to work out some aspect of history education. We typically arrive at these meetings with data, questions, or half-formed ideas, and we leave with new insights into teaching

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and learning-insights that have been arrived at through three hours of continual give-and-take, suggesting and revising, speculating and confirming, questioning and concluding. The ideas that come out of these meetings are truly co-constructed, and it's not usually possible to say who "thought of' anything in particular, because the ideas arise through the process of discussion. I've been enormously fortunate to find colleagues who have contributed so much to my professional satisfaction. No matter how close colleagues are, however, and no matter how many interests they have in common, they may nonetheless collide over the design and implementation of a project-and especially over collaborative analysis and writing. Yet most of what I know about such conflicts comes from listening to other people complain, for I've rarely experienced such problems myself. I think part of the reason is that I always share a basic interpretive framework with the colleagues I write with. My ideas about what history education is for and how to make sense of students' ideas, for example, are fundamentally similar to both Alan's and Linda's. It might be more difficult to work together if we weren't in such close agreement about how to interpret our data or what implications to draw from it- even if we were interested in the same topics and had the same general goals. Our collaboration may also be facilitated by clearly defined writing tasks. Although ideas are frequently co-constructed in my work with Alan and Linda, writing never is. We decide who will write what, and we stick to our plans. Although we share drafts for feedback and revision, it's always clear who has responsibility for a given paragraph, section, or chapter. Despite Alan's gracious assistance as I planned my research, though, events did not quite go as I had hoped when I arrived in Northern Ireland. Most notably, the school had a new principal who had not been told about the study and who was less than enthusiastic about my presence. She was unwilling to give me the full access that I had hoped for. I also found that high-stakes testing exerts as much pressure on schools in Northern Ireland as in the United States: Because elementary students there take an examination that determines where they can attend secondary school, teachers give priority to the tested subjectslanguage, math, and science. As a result, history wouldn't be taught in the highest grade level at the school until after my research was over, and for a time my opportunities for collecting data seemed limited. I had to wrestle with the fear that assails every qualitative researcher beginning a new project: Will I find anything worthwhile? Fortunately, each time I met teachers and principals from other schools, they invited me to interview their own students. Ultimately, I was able to collect plenty of data, but I relied more on interviews across sites, and less on in-depth observation in a single school, than I had expected. What appears in my published work as a careful attempt to sample a variety of school types is really a mixture of opportunity and necessity. Thus the second rule for conducting international research: Be flexible ... be very flexible. And be humble. This is difficult for Americans. Outside the United States, a common perception is that we are convinced of our superiority, ready to

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impose our opinions on others, and not very bright. (A IO-year-old in Northern Ireland told me they stereotype the English as snobs, the Scots as drunkards, and Americans as stupid.) Americans are held in higher regard in Northern Ireland than in many other countries, but people there are keenly aware of the attention their region receives in the international media, and they are troubled by the misconceptions and simplistic ideas held by outsiders. I was often asked, "What do you think about our problems?" or "What's the solution to the Troubles?" Such questions provide a perfect opportunity for Americans to confirm their status as simultaneously ignorant and boastful. The only sensible answers are, "I'm struggling to understand" and "I have no idea," and by summoning the courage to admit my ignorance, I could show that I was a worthy colleague rather than a pretentious intruder. As a result, new acquaintances usually were glad to talk about politics, education, and society, and teachers and principals insisted that we discuss weighty intellectual matters over tea and biscuits. Educators in the United States are polite and accommodating when I come to their schools, but they rarely initiate conversations on the nature of historical causation. Pleading ignorance can also lead to better data, because students' responses are more elaborate when they talk to someone who doesn't know as much as they do. Children who are asked to retell a story, for example, will provide more details and greater elaboration' when they believe the other person doesn't already know the story. If they already knew it, what would be the point of going into detail? So, too, with research in history education. Students in the U.S. can expect that a professor knows more about the American Revolution than they do, and so it's difficult to get them to explain it in any detail: They see no reason to, and they can't help but view the task as a thinly veiled test of their comparative ignorance. But in another country, the power balance is shifted. When students in Northern Ireland mentioned issues related to the region's history, I could often claim not to know what they meant, and I could do so convincingly-in some cases because I really didn't know, and in others because it was at least plausible that I was unaware. If researchers from Northern Ireland were to ask students what they meant by a term like "marching season," even young students would be skeptical about their intent (or their intelligence). But as an American, I could ask the same thing and get thoughtful and detailed answers. Students saw it as a valid occasion to help out an uninformed foreigner. On the other hand, no matter how open-minded we try to be, we necessarily rely on our prior interpretative frameworks to make sense of new situations. In some cases, these frameworks provide useful shortcuts for analyzing data. In previous research, for example, Linda and I (and others) had found that students' ideas about history derived not only from school but from interactions with relatives, visits to museums and historic sites, and exposure to print and electronic media (Chapter 6). When students in Northern Ireland noted similar influences, it was easy to assimilate their experiences to what I already knew. I

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didn't have to ask myself, "Why do they keep talking about their grandparents when I ask about history?" or "Have they really learned this much history from television?" U.S. and Northern Irish society are similar enough that I could build on my previous knowledge in making sense of such influences. But sometimes prior ideas act as barriers to understanding. Based on my work in the United States~combined with my lifelong immersion in U.S. history education~1 knew that children begin to use history to develop a sense of identity during the elementary years, and that they connect this identity to a story of national origins and development. I expected students in Northern Ireland to do the same, particularly when I asked about the purpose oflearning history: I expected them to explain, as U.S. students do, that history told them who they were and where they came from. Because there are two dominant, and conflicting, stories of national development in Northern Ireland, I anticipated that Catholic students would identify with one narrative of the region's history, while Protestants would identify with the other. I thought that would be the central finding of my research: I would be able to describe how children come to identify with competing stories of Northern Ireland's past. Yet after weeks of observations and interviews, I couldn't find any evidence of the pattern I was expecting. The school curriculum had no connection to national history, and students never brought it up on their own, either in formal interviews or informal conversations. Frustrated, I began to address the issue more directly by asking students who they thought the most important people in history were; surely these figures would be attached to British or Irish history the way George Washington and Martin Luther King,jr., are to U.S. history. But students couldn't think of any famous historical figures, at least not off the top of their heads. They consistently displayed a great deal of historical knowledge, but it didn't seem to revolve around any famous people or events, or to be organized into a larger perspective on what history was all about. Halfway through my research, I despaired of finding anything worthwhile, and I began planning my apology to the Marshall Fund for wasting their money. The problem, though, came from my own conceptual blinders rather than students' lack of historical perspective. They were providing clear and consistent explanations of the subject's purpose, but I was so tied to my expectations that I couldn't make sense of what they were telling me. Eventually, I was able to overcome this limitation; I don't know how it happened, but I do know when. I was in a small school along the northern coast, sitting on a cold tile floor and talking with a pair of 9-year-old girls over a set of oversized photographs. When I asked why history was important, one said exactly what dozens of other students had already told me. For some reason, this time I actually heard her, and what had seemed like disjointed observations fell into an obvious and coherent pattern. These students were not linking their identities to narratives of national development. Instead, they saw history as a way of learning about the lifestyles of people different than themselves. Of course, I didn't simply "discover" this pattern in students' responses. As

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with all research, I was imposing an interpretation on a variety of individual pieces of data. But not all interpretations are created equal, and the one I brought with me from the U.S. had limited utility in accounting for students' statements in Northern Ireland. When I finally recognized alternatives to the views I was familiar with, I was able to develop a new and more productive interpretation. This interpretation was fruitful not only because it helped me see coherence in students' descriptions of history's purpose but also because it led me to ask new questions of my data. I was forced, for example, to think more deeply about how sources of historical understanding differed in the two countries. How could students learn about the past in similar contcxts yet develop different ideas about its purpose? And once I was able to get past my assumption that they were learning narratives of national development, I was better able to see patterns in their descriptions of the nature and direction of historical change, and I c ould better explain why those descriptions differed from those of students in the United States. This kind of challenge to previous ways of thinking is one of the chief benefits of international comparative research (Hahn, 2006). The differing patterns in students' responses in Northern Ireland and the United States, for example, made me recognize that I needed a more specific theoretical framework than I had been using. It was no longer enough to say that students' ideas were related to their sociocultural context. As productive as that idea had been a few years before , it now sounded almost like a truism (although there are plenty of educational researchers who continue to ignore context and who focus only on teaching practices or individual cognition). What I needed was a way of explaining how the contexts of historical learning differed, and how those led to differing responses on the part of students. For this I turned to the idea of cultural artifacts (Cole, 1996) or tools (Wertsch, 1998) and Wertsch's related concept of mediated action. By helping me explain the differences in my U.S. and Northern Ireland data, these theories also enabled me to understand my previous research in a new way. What I had previously thought of as patterns in how students remember historical information (Chapter 9), for example, now appeared to be instances of their use of particular mechanisms for remembering such information (Chapter 15 )~and not the only ones available. ~10re recently, Alan's and my joint research in Northern Ireland (some of which is reported in Barton & M cCully, 2005) has forced us to rethink the usefulness ofvVertsch 's distinction between appropriation of and resistance to cultural tools. Although this distinction is useful in interpreting several studies in the U .S., it doesn't work as neatly when it comes up against responses of students in Northern Ireland. These responses may be better explained through Bakhtin's (1982) concept of "internally persuasive discourse," because students appear to be drawing from two different cultural tools~th e competing historical discourses of school and community~to fashion their own unique understandings of history's value. Their views can be convincing and clearly articulated, but they are not easily recognized as examples of the history they

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encounter either in or out of school- nor is their reasoning easily categorized as either appropriation or resistance. In addition to requiring new interpretive approaches, international experiences can alert educators to unstated assumptions about how schools operate and how the curriculum should be organized. Elsewhere (Barton, 200 I) I have noted that my observations in Northern Ireland disabused me of the notion that elementary students invariably learn about the history of "their country," because in Northern Ireland such national history is considered too controversial for young children. I had a similar revelation while observing a secondary history class. The teacher was explaining that the Second Home Rule Bill (technically the Irish Government Bill, 1893) had to be read in the House of Commons three times before it could be voted on. I began wondering why she had to make such a point about the number of readings; "Haven't they learned that in civics?" Ithought. And then it dawned on me: There is no "civics" in the Northern Ireland curriculum or, indeed, elsewhere in the United Kingdom-no time when students learn how the British government operates. They study history and geography, but they never study other aspects of what we call social studies in North America-including civics, economics, or culture. To the extent that they learn about these topics, they do so only when relevant to historical or geographical topics, or as elective subjects in later grades. (The curriculum in both Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom has changed since the time of my research, however, and so this pattern is no longer quite so simple.) This realization led me to rethink my assumptions about the place of history in the curriculum and its relationship to the rest of the social studies (Thornton and Barton, 2007). Such challenges to our assumptions can be rewarding, but they can also be humbling. In one of my first conversations with Alan, he gently pointed out that my plan to compare Nationalist and Unionist perspectives by interviewing children at an integrated primary school was unlikely to yield striking differences, because families who send their children to such schools usually do so because they are not strongly partisan themselves. I would be interviewing precisely those students, that is, whose backgrounds were least likely to reflect clear political allegiances. Similarly, a few years ago a colleague's doctoral student emailed me for feedback on her plan to do research in Northern Ireland- she wanted to study representation of gender roles there by analyzing photographs in social studies textbooks. I told her that gender in the educational system of Northern Ireland is a very important topic, and a seriously understudied one, but that social studies is not a curricular subject there. In addition, textbooks in Europe are so different from those in the United States that analysis of their illustrations probably wouldn't be a productive way of addressing her research questions. I hope that I was as gentle in my critique as Alan had been in his. It's never easy to find out that the world doesn't work the way we thought, but international research is rewarding precisely because it broadens our understanding of how educational experiences can be organized.

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The following two chapters present some of the central findings from my research with elementary students in Northern Ireland. These articles began as a single conference presentation that attempted to tie together a large portion of my data from Northern Ireland- students' ideas about the purpose of history, their concepts of change and causation, and the sources of their ideas. Several colleagues who tried to read this monstrosity candidly told me they couldn't make sense of it. In retrospect, that's not surprising. Few journals publish such long papers, and with good reason: The amount of data and the complexity of argumentation would likely overwhelm even the most highly motivated readers, and those with less interest in the topic would have good reason to cross it off their lists altogether. Ultimately, I separated my analysis into these two articles- the first focusing on students' understanding of the process of historical change, the second on their ideas about history's purpose and the source of their ideas. Despite some overlap in the resulting publications, this separation led to arguments that are more tightly focused and, I hope, clearer than the original conference manuscript.

References Bakhtin, M. M. (1982). The dialogic imagination: Four essqys. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press. Barton, K. C. (2001). History education and national identity in Northern Ireland and the United States. Theory into Practice, 40,48-54. Barton, K. C., & McCully, A. W. (2005). History, identity, and the school curriculum in Northern Ireland: An empirical study of secondary students' ideas and perspectives. Journal qfCurriculum Studies, 37,85-116. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and fUture discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hahn, C. (2006). Comparative and international social studies research. In K . C.Barton (Ed.), Research methods in social studies education: Contemporary issues and perspectives (pp. 138- 57). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Thornton, S. J., & Barton, K. C. (2007, April). W'hy history is impossible without the social studies. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago. Wertsch,J. V. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 15

A sociocultural perspective on children's understanding of historical change Comparative findings from Northern Ireland and the United States

Keith C. Barton

Scholars often note that ideas about history are profoundly shaped by the cultural contexts in which they arise. VanSledright (1997/1998), for example, suggests that "even the most naIve school-age thinkers bring with them a set of temporal bearings that are mediated by a whole range of cultural messages about and experiences with the past" (p. 9). Ideally, studying the impact of such cultural messages would involve comparing the ideas of children who have learned history in differing contexts. Our understanding of this mediational process, however, is still at a rudimentary stage; until recently, little systematic research had been conducted on the historical thinking of students from varied cultural, ethnic, or national backgrounds. (Recent studies include Angvik & von Borries, 1997; Cercadillo, 2001; Epstein, 1998; Levstik, 2001; Seixas, 1993a.) But without this kind of comparative analysis, culturally specific features of historical thinking may be mistaken for universal or invariant aspects of children's thought; convcrsely, attributes of historical thinking that appear to be the product of specific cultural settings may actually represent thought processes that occur in a wide variety of contexts. Systematic comparative studies, then, are required to clarify the extent to which sociocultural factors concretely affect ideas about the past. The research reported here contributes to such an effort by comparing selected aspects of children's historical understanding in Northern Ireland and the United States. One way of approaching this task is to compare how children in different national contexts make use of specific "cultural tools" when they engage in activities related to history. An emphasis on cultural tools (or "artifacts") has been an important part of recent sociocultural theory, particularly of perspectives centered on the concept of mediated action. This approach is grounded in the assumption that human activity (including mental activity) never takes place as an isolated, individual occurrence, but invariably makes use of objects, procedures, and symbol systems that have developed within particular cultural,

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historical, and institutional contexts (Cole, 1996; Wells, 1999; W ertsch, 1998). When individuals engage in any activity, they necessarily do so by drawing from the set of cultural tools at their disposal. At the same time, these toolswhether physical objects like backhoes and typewriters or representational systems such as language or mathematics- shape how people perceive and engagc with thc world. This is not to say that cultural tools mechanistically determine how people think and act, but rather that when people engage in any activity, they necessarily do so through the use of particular artifacts, and these provide both affordances and constraints (Wertsch, 1998): They help organize experiences and solve the practical problems ofliving, but at the same time they introduce limitations that make it diflicult to see the world- or act on it- in alternative ways. Applying this perspective to a comparative study of students' historical thinking would involve examining whether children in distinct contexts use different sets of cultural tools in representing historical content. The notion of context is inherently ambiguous, for it can refer to a setting as narrow as a brief event in a nuclear family or as broad as long-term patterns among transnational ethnic or linguistic groups. Rather than thinking of context as a single, bounded entity, then, it might more usefully be conceptualized as a series of concentric influences on thought and action (Cole, 1996; Wertsch, 1998). Each level of influence, then, is subject to operational definition and empirical investigation. For the purposes of this study, context is equated with national (or subnational) political boundaries- those of the U nited States and Northern Ireland. Defining context in this way is useful in a study such as this, because students in each of these settings have been exposed to a relatively uniform national curriculum (an official one in the case of Northern Ireland, a de facto one in the United States) and have internally similar experiences with public historical representations, yet the form and content of each of these influences differs in important ways between the two regions. Defining context in terms of these political boundaries, however, should not blind us to the possibility that many more variations in children's thinking may-and almost certainly do-exist within each of these national settings. The studies reported here combine data from children of different genders, socioeconomic classes, ethnicities, and religious identities, because the empirical base of this research is not extensive enough to permit separation of the data along each ofthese characteristics; future studies, however, might well address potential differences along each of these demarcations. The definition of cultural tool is as malleable as that of context: A tool can be as broad as the ability to use language or as narrow as a linguistic practice shared among members of a small community. Although the implications of these differing levels of conceptualization have been explored as they relate to language (e.g. , \Vells, 1999), attempts to sort out the meaning of tool use in historical thinking has barely begun. (See Barton, 2002; Levstik & Barton, 200 I; Wertsch, 1998, for initial attempts at such analysis.) The format in which historical information is presented, however, surely constitutes one kind of

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cultural tool, and in the United States, one of the most common means of presentation is in the form of narratives-temporally ordered sequences of events that are causally linked. Research with elementary students in the United States has demonstrated the potential of narrative format both for stimulating interest in history and for developing and structuring recall of historical content (Barton, 1996; Levstik, 1986, 1989; Levstik & Pappas, 1987; VanSledright & Brophy, 1992), and research with university students has identified the powerful effects of one particular narrative-what Wertsch (1998) calls the "quest-for-freedom" narrative- in shaping understanding of the origins of the United States. Nor are such effects limited to historical information; indeed, the impact of narrative form appears so pervasive that some scholars have considered it a "primary act of mind," (Hardy, 1968), or a fundamental component of human consciousness (Carr, 1986; MacIntyre, 1981). Yet narrative is not the only approach to history: The presentation of his torical information can also be accomplished through a predominantly analytical frame (c£ Bruner, 1986) that focuses on relationships among societal institutions and group or individual behavior at given moments in history. Comparing the lifestyles of Native American groups at the time of the European encounter or studying life in the British colonies in North America would be examples of primarily analytical approaches to history. Narrative is not necessarily absent from such presentations, for the content may be explicitly or implicitly situated within a broader temporal sequence, and indeed, narrative and analytical approaches may coexist in any number of combinations. But a primary emphasis on societal relationships rather than temporal sequences of events is the hallmark of the kind of historical study favored among educators in the United Kingdom (Husbands, 1996). Moreover, in Northern Ireland, nonnarrative presentations of history predominate outside school as well (as least in the contexts that have the greatest impact on children in the elementary grades). Examining the relative presence or absence of narrative in children's historical thinking in the two locations, as well as differences in the particular form that their narrative explanations may take, therefore seems like a potentially productive avenue for comparing the impact of contextual factors in their understanding of history. Phrased another way, comparing the understanding of students in Northern Ireland and the United States provides the chance to evaluate the extent to which particular narrative representations of history constitute cultural tools: A sociocultural perspective suggests students in the United States would be more likely to use narrative-or particular kinds of narrative- to construct their historical understanding than those who have other mediational means at their disposal. If, on the other hand, the same aspects of narrative feature equally prominently in the thinking of students in both locations, those would appear to constitute general characteristics of historical thinking rather than culturally situated artifacts. This study examines these issues through a study of the historical thinking of children in Northern Ireland and a comparison of the results

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with previous research among U.S. children. Although this study investigated a number of aspects of historical understanding, the findings reported here focus on one key dimension of children's ideas about history- their explanations of how and why life has changed over time. The following sections describe how children in Northern Ireland explain this process, compare their explanations to those of children in the United States, and situate their explanations in terms of the specific kinds of narrative and non-narrative tools to which they have been exposed.

Background for the study Research methods This research was conducted at four schools in Northern Ireland. Two were integrated schools (one primary and one secondary) in a district with a large town and several small and medium villages; students at each of these schools came from throughout the surrounding district, and although each enrolled roughly equal numbers of Protestants and Catholics, all students came from communities that were predominantly Protestant. Both other schools drew exclusively from their immediate surroundings; one was a controlled primary school in a Protestant village, the other a maintained primary school in a Catholic village. l Economically, all schools enrolled students from a wide variety of backgrounds, but two included large portions of children whose parents were middle-class professionals; families at another were much poorer and included a high proportion of farmers, skilled or unskilled laborers, and the unemployed; the fourth school fell between these two extremes. Thus, although the research sites did not include schools in the region's few dense urban areas, they otherwise represented a wide range of social backgrounds, including students from both major religious traditions, varied economic circumstances, and a combination oflarge and small towns and villages. The study relied on two principal research methods. The first consisted of open-ended, semistructured interviews with 121 students, aged 6- 12 years, during a total of 60 interviews at the four schools. 2 (Most students were interviewed in pairs.) In each interview. I showed students pictures from the past, asked them to arrange them in chronological order, to explain the reasons for their placements, and to estimate the approximate time period of each. I followed this task with more general questions about history. These included asking what aspects oflife had changed over time and why, how people know how life was different in the past, why history is important, and where students had learned about the past. I frequently probed their answers or asked additional questions to follow up on issues that arose during interviews. In addition to student interviews, the study involved extensive classroom observation, particularly listening to and talking with students as they took part in whole-class or small-group discussions; because students spent the majority

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of instructional time working on individual or group assignments. I had numerous opportunities to talk to them informally. 3 During 6 months of residence in Northern Ireland, I also collected information in many other historyrelated settings so that I could place students' learning in its broader context. These settings included museums and history parks, secondary history classrooms, university courses for preservice teachers, and meetings oflocal history associations, as well as discussions with primary and secondary teachers, museum curators, university faculty, and resource specialists and administrators in the Northern Ireland Department of Education. The characterizations of Northern Ireland historical representations in this study are based largely on these interviews and observations. The data from each of these sources were analyzed through a process of analytic induction, in which field notes and interview transcripts were scanned to identify an initial set of coding categories based on emerging patterns in the data. The data were then subjected to a more systematic content analysis in which units of evidence were categorized according to these initial categories. This coding procedure included both constant comparison (involving the grouping of data from different settings, tasks, or interview questions) and crosscase analysis (involving thc grouping of data from different instances of the same observational settings, or responses to the same questions or tasks). The coded data then were analyzed for evidence of patterns in participants' responses, including a systematic search for negative or discrepant evidence. Finally, these patterns were combined into the broader analytic domains that form the substance of this report. Each of the conclusions presented here, therefore, represents the synthesis of numerous student responses; these conclusions represent an attempt at summarizing the patterns in children's answers, and each is based on multiple pieces of evidence. In a qualitative study such as this one, however, it is impossible to present the entire body of data upon which conclusions are based, and although some of these conclusions permit the inclusion of simple descriptive tabulations (indicating the relative proportion of students who responded in particular ways, for example) more often the variety of children's explanations, and the diversity of contexts in which they arose, necessitate a more qualitative presentation of the evidence. Throughout the paper, then, children's voices are included to give texture to the analytic conclusions and to provide samples of the kinds of evidence upon which those conclusions are based. In addition, an attempt is made wherever possible to illustrate the range of the ideas children expressed, including those that may stand counter to the study'S overall findings.

The elementary history curriculum in Northern Ireland and the United States The Northern Ireland curriculum requires the study of history at all levels, but as in the United States, educators there are quick to point out that the subject

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has lower status than reading, language, and mathematics, and that it occupies a much smaller portion of the curriculum. Although students in the earliest grades may occasionally compare aspects of past and present (chores, pastimes, and so on) or read historical stories, myths, or legends, formal study of the subject usually begins in P4, when students study a specific time period through a unit such as Life in the Recent Past, involving comparisons of life in the 1950s/1960s with life today, or Life During the War, focusing on the effect of World 'vVar II on daily life in Northern Ireland. Each year from P5 to P7, classrooms engage in a history "core unit" required by the Northern Ireland curriculum; each unit typically lasts about a half-term (one quarter of the school year), with between 60 and 90 min spent on the unit each week. These units include Life in Early Times (P5), which focuses on the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods in Ireland; The Vikings (P6), which focuses on the nature of Viking society in Scandinavia and the impact of Viking raiders and settlers on Ireland and elsewhere; and Life in Victorian Times (P7), which includes studying the lives of people in town and country at different levels of society in Britain and Ireland. Each year, classes also study a supplemental unit topic, usually based on the teacher's interest or background or the availability of resources. Among the most popular supplemental topics are the Ancient Egyptians, the Irish Famine, "line of development" studies such as the history of transportation, or studies ofloeally important sites (such as prehistoric burial formations). Although the United States has never had a mandatory national curriculum, elementary students traditionally have encountered a formal history education that varies little from one location to another. Before fourth grade, historical study usually involves learning personalized stories derived from national holidays-thus children may study Columbus, the Pilgrims, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and (more recently) Martin Luther King, Jr. In some classrooms, teachers may supplement these experiences with readings or activities rclated to other famous people in the U.S. past-Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, or other figures of interest to teachers or students. Occasionally, students may study the way oflife of people at a particular time, such as precontact Native Americans or pioneers moving westward in the 1800s. Fourth graders frequently study the history oftheir own state and typically focus on its settlement and early leaders; fifth graders almost universally study U.S. history as a chronological narrative beginning with exploration and settlement of North America, continuing through Colonial times, the American Revolution, and the adoption of the Constitution-and sometimes concluding with nineteenth century topics such as the 'vVestward Movement or the Civil War. The sixth grade curriculum exhibits greater variation from state to state, but it frequently either focuses on world history (particularly ancient civilizations) or omits the formal study of history altogether. The established pattern of elementary history in the United States may be breaking down under the influence of revised state requirements (which sometimes include both attention to the "process" aspects of historical study and suggestions for curric-

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ular arrangements other than chronological treatments), but for most students in the United States, the pattern described above-focusing almost entirely on the origin and development of the United States as a national entity-has until very recently constituted their dominant encounter with formal historical study at school.

Findings: Children's explanations of historical change One of the least-studied aspects of children's historical thinking is their understanding of how and why the lives of people have changed over time. In both the United States and Northern Ireland, even young children know that life was different in the past than it is now, but when asked why it has changed they often struggle for an explanation-they appear to have little experience in or out of school trying to account for the forces that lead to change. For the purposes of academic research, that lack of experience is a distinct advantage: Because children have not rehearsed a set of "correct" explanations, patterns in their responses shed light on the factors that influence their thinking. When faced with novel questions about why life has changed, children often have to create answers on the spot, and the choices they make in developing these explanations suggest the historical forces that have the most salience for them. Engaging students in such explanations, then, provides the opportunity to examine the extent to which their answers are shaped by specific cultural tools used in the historical representations with which they have become familiar. The research reported here provides information on three aspects of children's explanations of change over time in Northern Ireland: why material culture has changed, why social relationships have changed, and the overall direction of historical change.

Changes in material culture In the only study to examine U.S. children's understanding of the reasons for historical change (using classroom observations and interviews similar to those in the present study, and conducted in an ethnically homogenous [European American], economically mixed suburb near a large Midwestern city), Barton (1996, 1997) found students relied heavily on factors such as "new inventions" or "coming up with new ideas" to explain why life is different now than in the past. For the fourth and fifth graders in that study, change over time was a rational and beneficial process in which individuals developed inventions that improved nearly all aspects of life; they even attributed changes in fashion to improved technology and "better" clothes. Moreover, in explaining the rise of new technology, U.S. students focused on the motivations of individual inventors rather than on broader societal or economic factors. They conceived of material and technological change almost entirely in terms of individual desires

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and achievements, rather than as a process connected to the institutional forces of society. The responses of some Northern Ireland students in this study also reflected an emphasis on individuals and on progress, but although they sometimes gave explanations that overlapped with those of U.S. students, they relied less exclusively on assertions of individual achievement or rational, beneficial progress: They often suggested that change has occurred for reasons other than the development of new inventions, and they only occasionally equated all changes with progress. Like students in the United States, those in Northern Ireland did frequently point to the importance of inventions in changing people's way of life. When they were asked why horses and carts were used instead of cars, for example, or why people in the past didn't use electric lights, or radios, or televisions, students gave the obvious explanation that those things hadn't been invented. Some students gave similar explanations for other changes; some thought that thatched roofs were used in the past because slate tiles didn't exist, and others explained that homes had been improved to make them stronger, or warmer, or to keep the water out. In addition, like students in the United States, some overgeneralized the importance of inventions and credited them with bringing about all changes in material life, including changes in fashion. P3 Sinead, for example, thought clothes were different in the past because "they just didn't have the material and the leather to make them"; similarly, P7 Stuart said, "They've found new materials, and they've found new ways to manufacture them," and P4 Bruce explained. "They've got better machines to make them."4 But students in Northern Ireland frequently identified reasons for change other than inventions, and they were less likely than U.S. students to suggest that all change amounts to progress. About one fourth of students, for example, suggested that clothes have changed because people's ideas about what looks good have changed. P6 Benjamin thought people wore different clothes in the past because "it was just fashion then," and P5 Cody said, "It was a kind of a flashy style in that time, wearing clothes like that .... They thought it was quite cool to wear that." Similarly, P5 Natasha noted that "the fashion's changed" and that "people don't like the same things all the time," and YB Sheila explained that clothes have changed because of the fashions and "what people thought they looked good in." Although U.S. students also recognized that people in the past thought their own styles looked good, they nonetheless regarded stylistic changes as improvements (Barton, 1996); many of these Northern Ireland students, on the other hand, explicitly explained that changes in fashion were simply matters of preference. Other students in Northern Ireland attributed material change to differing social and economic contexts. Some, for example, noted that clothes were once made in the home, and now are bought in stores; P4 Kyle observed that clothes have changed because "we can buy our clothes at shops, we don't have to make our clothes," and P5 Nathan explained, "I think the clothes have changed

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because the people are getting richer and richer; the people back in those times would be just poor people, they had to make their own materials, but nowadays you can buy your own materials." This connection between changes in material life and changes in the level of affiuence was a common one. P3 Sophie, for example, thought clothes were different in the past because "they didn't have very much money," and P4 Declan said, "I think they wear different clothes because they didn't have enough money to buy the clothes people wear nowadays." Suggesting a more explicit connection between wealth and clothing, P6 Eric explained that clothes have changed because "they were poorer and they had to use their clothes for a long time before they had enough money to go and buy more." Several students used social and economic factors to explain changes in other areas of life as well. P6 Martin thought houses have changed because "they couldn't afford anything [in the past]," and P4 Colm thought cars and roads had changed "because more people are richer and they've got more money to make more stuff." In addition, about half the students suggested more than one factor in accounting for changes in material life-these students pointed to various combinations of social, economic, and technological developments. One such explanation is that of P5 Victoria; in the following quote she explains changing styles of hats by pointing to the interplay of technology, fashion, and economics: People have discovered, and they've done more things, and people have liked them and all, and it's gone into fashion and everybody does it and all. Everybody buys it, and the people who made the hats thought, "Well, let's do a new idea, because everybody's got the same kind of hat, because we're only selling those," but if they made new ones, then more people would buy them, and then they would make different ones and different ones. Thus, whereas U.S. students see material change almost exclusively as a rational, beneficial process initiated by the efforts of individuals, the Northern Ireland students in this study frequently identified the role of social and economic forces, and they did not uniformly equate change with progress. Similar differences were apparent when students explained why social relations have changed over time.

Changes in social relations Although it would be hard to attribute changing ethnic or gender relations to new inventions, students in the U.S. study noted above did explain such changes by pointing to rational improvements in individual attitudes. They thought that discrimination against women and African Americans existed in the past because males and European Americans were "bossy," "lazy," or "greedy," and change came about because people "figured it out, that everybody's equal to

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each other" (Barton, 1997, p. 299; 1996, p. 60). U.S. students particularly emphasized the role of famous individuals in bringing about change. As one student said, Martin Luther King "said a speech, and then everybody started realizing that the Black people were the same as them ... they needed to treat them how they would want to be treated" (Barton, 1997, p. 300). For the U.S. students, changing social relations were little different than improved technology; their explanations focused on individual intentions and achievements and ignored societal factors such as social and political movements, economics, or the government. Similarly, in interviews with a group of ethnically homogenous (European American) students in a working-class suburb in the northern Midwest, Brophy and VanSledright (1997) found that elementary students thought of the actions of European explorers of North America in terms of their individual motivations rather than understanding that they were acting on behalf of governments that were responding to political and economic pressures. Students in Northern Ireland, on the other hand, gave a wider range of explanations for changing social relations. The contexts in which they considered the issue were different, for neither gender nor ethnicity provided meaningful parallels to U.S. students' discussions." For these children, the most salient change in the way people have treated each other lay in the practice of caning. All children in this study knew that in the recent past, students were caned when they misbehaved at school. The practice was still current when some of their parents were children, and their grandparents were well acquainted with the custom. Many students recounted stories of their relatives' sufferings at the end of a cane, and when the P4 class in this study visited a historic school where they relived the experience of students in the 1950s, the possibility of being caned was the central topic of conversation for several days both before and after the trip. Although caning is a different topic than prejudice or discrimination, it provides an example of a change in social relationsand an example about which all students were knowledgeable. About one third of the students pointed to changes in attitudes as the exclusive reason teachers no longer cane children. P5 Dermot, for example, explained that "caning changed because people are getting kinder," and Y8 Alan said that "they didn't know that it was wrong to actually cane somebody .... They just didn't think." Students' answers sometimes echoed their U.S. counterparts' explanations of rational progress in the development of ideas. P7 Carla, for example, said that caning changed "because over time they realized that they should be less strict," and P5 Natasha explained that "they just found out that it's really, really bad, and they're thinking of other people's feclings now." Several students pointed out that teachers no longer cane children because they found more effective punishments; P5 Joanna explained that detention is "learning them not to do that again because they're not going outside to play, and that's what normally everybody looks for," and P6 Siobhan explained, "They realized it wouldn't make the children stop doing it [misbehaving] ... and it would just be better just to talk to the children, and they might

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understand why not to do it." Just as U.S. students tended to think that people "figured out" that women and Mrican Americans should be treated the same as everyone else, these students thought that teachers "realized" that they should be less strict, and that detention was a more effective punishment than caning. The other two thirds of students, however, pointed to precisely the factors that were missing in U.S. students' explanations of changing social relationscollective action and changes in social institutions. Many students said that caning had changed because there had been changes in the law. P5 Jade, for example, thought that teachers caned children "because they didn't have any cops in them days," and P3 Joshua explained that "the law found out and the law changed it, it was against the law." Similarly, P5 Nathan thought that "now it's illegal to cane children," and his interview partner Connor agreed, saying, "Because if you cane them, you could get sent to jail ... it's against the law to hurt somebody that you don't know." P7 Ronan noted that caning has changed "because there's human rights now, and they can't smack children with canes and stuff like that. ... There's laws now, and there's courts that will give lots of people says [i.e., a say] in human rights and stuff." Many of these students pointed to the connection between changed ideas and collective action (or the institutional changes that result from collective action). At the simplest level, P5 Melissa said, "They would have told their mummies and their mummies would have done something about it"; several P4 students also thought that the practice changed because parents complained to principals, who made teachers stop. Many more, though, pointed to the role of organizations and social institutions. P6 Benjamin pointed out, "They're not allowed to cane them now because the education board doesn't allow it" and observed that "the NSPCC [National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children] and people are going against caning people." Similarly, P7 Ailbhe thought that in the past, "No one had the power over the king, no one would dare challenge the king in groups or something," but now there's "the children's rights thing, or cruelty to children thing, they were saying that they shouldn't be doing this to children; you can punish them, but that's not the way to punish children now." P6 Jeffrey explained that caning has changed because "new people came in ... and they made new rules like child abuse, like jails, and all that kind of thing." For these students, caning ended not just because attitudes changed, but because changing attitudes led to action that produced new laws and regulations. These dimensions of collective action and institutional change were almost completely lacking in the explanations of U.S. students. Students in Northern Ireland pointed to institutional forces not only when they discussed caning but whenever they tried to account for changing social relations. In the P6 classroom 1 observed, students learned that Viking women were married as young as 12. When I asked why they married so much earlier than people today, some said that they were stupid or "thick," but others adamantly denied that explanation and attempted to place early marriages in their social and economic context. Several said Viking women married early so

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their families would get money; others explained that Viking men were away on raids and needed more housework done for them than people do today; others said that since people died earlier than today, they needed to marry earlier as well. Some students said the age of marriages had changed because people's attitudes had changed, but others pointed to changing laws or "rules" governing marriage. Similarly, a number of students observed that in many periods in the past, people behaved more violently toward each other- in particular, they hanged people or "chopped people's heads off." When asked why that changed, students invariably said that it is now illegal. P6 Scott said that "laws came, then [in Viking times] there was no law," P6 Nuala thought "they didn't have the law, they just hung people," and P6 Alice said, "There's laws in that time [Edwardian], and then [Norman] they could fight and kill whoever they wanted to." The explanations given by students in Northern Ireland, then, pointed not only to individual attitudes but, more often, to the kinds of social and institutional factors that U.S. students rarely mentioned.

Direction

of historical

change

Another difference between students in Northern Ireland and the United States lay in their understanding of the overall direction of historical change. In two studies, students in the United States described historical change not as a random, ambiguous, or cyclical process, but one of straightforward, linear, and generally beneficial progress. One study (Barton, 1996) was that of fourth and filth graders described above; the other (Barton & Levstik, 1996) consisted of interviews using visual images such as those in this study, and included children from kindergarten through grade 6 and from varied ethnic and economic backgrounds in rural, urban, and suburban schools. In both of those studies, students ordered pictures and described past times using a framework that suggested historical development occurred in a progressive sequence in which the United States was first explored and populated, then settled, and finally developed. Thus, in sequencing pictures from different times in history, U.S. students placed them in an "ideal" order, rather than in the more complicated combinations that actually occurred in the past; students consistently placed a picture of a large Antebellum city, for example, after a photograph of a family moving westward in the late 1880s (Figure 15.1). Their explanations invariably pointed to the more developed, more settled nature of the city-they explained that people first lived in places with grass and fields, and only later built cities. Similarly, students in one of the studies (Barton, 1996) placed pictures of early twentieth century immigration to the United States before pictures of early political leaders and explained that people had to arrive in the United States before electing presidents. These students ordered pictures according to their belief that historical development occurred in a simple and progressive sequence; they thought that any time in history could be characterized by only one image, and that these images stood in a determinate chronological order.

Figure /5./ Pictures used in Barton (1996) and Barton and Levstik (1996); (top) courtesy of Library of Congress; and (bottom) courtesy of National Archives

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Figure /5.2 Pictures used with students in Northern Ireland . Reproduced with the kind permission of the Trustees of the Museum and Galleries of Northern Ireland. Record No. IC/High St. 184 (top). Record No. W04I I 3 16 (bottom)

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Students in Northern Ireland, on the other hand, frequently noted the diversity of images that could characterize any given time in the past. Two of the pictures students worked with were chosen specifically to match the ones U.S. students placed in the wrong order: a drawing of urban Belfast in the 1830s, and a photograph of a rural cottage in County Donegal in the 1890s (Figure 15.2). Only about half the students in Northern Ireland placed the 1890s picture before the one from the 1830s (compared to all U.S. students before fifth grade, and half thereafter, who worked with the comparable pictures), their explanations mirrored those of U.S. students. They explained, for example, that the buildings in the 1830s picture were bigger than in the one from the 1890s. Several students, though, explained that the two pictures could be at the same time. P3 Morna thought they looked different '''cause they're different parts ... that's the country and that's the city"; similarly, P4 Danielle thought they were the same time "cause that's the town, and that's the country." Although such observations were frequent among students in Northern Ireland, only one student in the U.S. studies cited above (out of nearly a hundred students interviewed) made a similar suggestion. When working with other pictures as well, students explained how different pictures could come from the same time. Y8 Deanna thought pictures from the 1830s and 1780s might be the same time but "may be in different places, some places might be richer and some might be poorer, in different places." Similarly, P4 Drummond thought the people in Victorian and Edwardian pictures were wearing similar clothes, but those in the former were richer; Y8 Hamish also thought Edwardian and Victorian pictures could be from about the same time because "this one's poorer people, these ones are richer people." P6 Dylan thought pictures from the 1890s and 1900 might overlap in time as well; when arranging them, he asked, "Maybe, like could you put that halfway through, and then halfway through it you'd have another?" Asked to explain, he said, "You know the way you get one thing, okay? But you don't have to go all the way through it to get a new thing? Let's say, the thing could go on, but a new thing starts in the middle of that, and goes on, and then goes halfway." Like many of the students interviewed, Dylan recognized that change doesn't occur simultaneously throughout society, and that earlier "things" survive into later times. Compared to U.S. students, those in Northern Ireland were much more likely to recognize that representations of vastly different settings could have originated at the same time and that images could not always be arranged according to their place within an idealized sequence of social and material improvement.

Discussion: The cultural context of historical understanding It is important not to overstate the differences in the historical understandings of students in the two countries, because as noted earlier, children in Northern Ireland sometimes gave explanations that overlapped with those of their coun-

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terparts in the United States. Quite a few, for example, thought that pictures of cities must come after pictures of rural cottages, and some thought clothes were different because people discovered new materials (such as leather), or that students were caned because there were no photocopy machines to duplicate detention slips. Nor was their understanding of societal institutions always very advanced; attributing changes to greater wealth shows only a beginning understanding of the role of economic factors in history. But the much greater tendency of children in Northern Ireland to describe change in terms of societal institutions and group processes, combined with the frequency with which they recognized that historical periods can be characterized by multiple images, suggests that they are less bound to a narrative of progress and individual achievement than are children in the United States. These differences indicate that on at least some occasions, students in the two countries are making use of differing cultural tools to think about historical change. Although their responses cannot be characterized as simply narrative or non-narrative in format (because the nature of the interview task virtually mandated some kind of narrative response), the kinds of narratives suggested by students in the two settings differed in important ways. Such distinctions in their appropriation of cultural tools for thinking about history reflect the differing nature of historical representation in the two societies.

Social contexts of historical representation In both Northern Ireland and the United States, children learn about the past in a variety of settings, including but not limited to formal schooling. In both settings, for example, parents, grandparents, and other relatives provide children with information on general historical changes (how clothes or cars or homes were different in the past), on specific people and events in history, and on their own participation in historical events (Barton, 200 I; Levstik & Barton, 1996). In addition, students in both countries learn a great deal about the past from educational and recreational settings such as museums and history parks; these are particularly important in Northern Ireland, where children have ready access to numerous museums, prehistoric burial sites, the ruins of castles and churches, and extensive and well-designed re-creations of historic villages. Finally, students in the United States and Northern Ireland frequently learn about the past from the media-books, television programs, movies, and cartoons are a significant source of historical information in both places. But although children in the two locations learn about history in similar settings, the representations they encounter there are very different. In Northern Ireland, for both political and pedagogical reasons, young children rarely see history presented in the kind of narrative format that dominates the topic in the United States. In the United States, the dominant means by which history is represented is in the form of a narrative of national progress, grounded in individual

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achievements: Students learn about the brave explorers who discovered a new land, the persecuted colonists who sought freedom, the hearty pioneers who settled the wilderness, and the visionary men who founded the nation and eventually extended rights and opportunities to all (Barton & Levstik 1998). Alternative perspectives on U.S. history provide a more complete picture, but they follow the same narrative thread: Explorers pillaged the new land; settlers murdered the natives; women, African Americans, and other groups fought for equality. The details of the story may be different, but its overall narrative structure is the same; in particular, both approaches emphasize the achievements of individuals: Whether studying Columbus and George Washington, or Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King, Jr., children learn that the noble heroes of the past made the United States what it is today. From either perspective, U.S. history is a narrative in which individuals initiate a series of events that follow in a causal chain. Both are stories of nation building, one more simplistic, one more complex, but both are about the origins of modern society and the state-and both ultimately are stories of progress. Nor do U.S. students encounter this narrative only in the formal school curriculum; the historical images they experience outside school reinforce and even prepare them for the story of national development. The stories children hear from relatives, for example, often parallel the history of the nation; they may learn about their family's immigration to the United States, their assimilation into American society, or their participation in the nation's increasing prosperity or urbanization (or both).6 Before students begin school-much less before they begin studying history regularly in fourth or fifth grade-they have been saturated with images of Columbus, the Pilgrims, Betsy Ross, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King,Jr. They see these figures on children's television programming, in commercials and advertisements, on placemats at restaurants; even the pictures on U.S. coins and bills tell the story of the country's history.7 Students may have little specific knowledge of the historical role of these individuals, but they know they are the important figures in history about whom they will someday learn more. The emphasis on individual achievement is further reinforced by the television programs children watch: In the United States, students report watching fictional dramas such as Little House on the Prairie and Dr. Qyinn, lvledicine Woman (Barton, 1995; Levstik & Barton, 1996)-formats that necessarily tell the stories of individuals. Children in the United States also have access to a wealth of picture books, biographies, and novels that tell the story of real or fictional individuals in the nation's historynarratives about Columbus' exploration, teenagers fighting in the American Revolution, children during the time of slavery, or Jackie Robinson integrating baseball. When U.S. students try to describe and explain change over time, the principal cultural tool at their disposal is this narrative of progress and individual achievement. They fail to recognize that large cities and new settlements existed at the same time, or that immigrants continued to come to the United

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States long after the region was initially settled by Europeans, because these events do not match the idealized order of the particular narrative they have begun to appropriate: First there were immigrants, then there were settlers, and then there were cities (Barton 1996). Students emphasize the role of individuals in bringing about change because this too is a central component of the narrative they are learning. In the United States, brave individuals fought for freedom and equality, they endured hardships to make a better life for themselves, they created new inventions to make life easier for everyone (Barton, 1996, 1997). These allied to progress; although students no longer believe the United States has always been the world's bastion of freedom and opportunity (Barton & Lcvstik, 1998; Cornbleth, 1998), they do believe the country has steadily made progress in that direction. "We've figured it out," as they are fond of saying. But primary students in Northern Ireland do not learn history as a story of national progress and development; in fact, they often do not learn history as a story at all. In the settings in which young children encounter the past, history is most often presented as a series of static portrayals of life at different times, rather than as a narrative explaining the development of modern society. In school, for example, students at each grade level study one or two specific times in history, and they focus on what life was like at the time-how people met basic needs, the organization of social life, the nature of cultural beliefs, and so on. There is neither an attempt to connect topics into an overall narrative (whether of the history of Northern Ireland, Britain, or the world), nor a connected narrative within topics. Although most schools treat the required topics in P5 through P7 in chronological order, P4 and Y8 topics (The Recent Past and The Normans in Ireland), as well as many supplementary topics, do not conform to this order. Moreover, within each grade level, students learn about the social and material life of people at the time. They do not usually study narratives such as the "rise of Egyptian Civilization" or the "arrival and departure" of Vikings in Ireland. Only in secondary school (particularly years 9 through 12) do students study national and world history as a connected, chronological narrative, and even then, the emphasis is on the analysis and interpretation of evidence rather than the details of the narrative itself. In addition, the role of notable individuals from the region's past are almost entirely absent in the primary grades; children rarely learn about famous people or their impact on society. The history children encounter in museums, historic sites, and history parks is similar to that which they experience in school. As noted earlier, these arc one of the most important sources of historical knowledge for children in Northern Ireland. Like the school curriculum, many of these sites focus on static portrayals of societies at different times rather than on historic narratives. Thus, when children visit castles or other such remains, they learn what life was like for people at the time rather than how those sites fit into broader historical developments. (In addition, many sites are not accompanied by any interpre-

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tive material at all.) Museums and history parks are more likely to arrange their displays in a narrative fashion, but these also typically emphasize the history of social and material life; children may learn about the development offarming, of leisure activities, of household work, and so on, but they rarely encounter narratives of the political development of contemporary Northern Ireland in these public forums. The fundamental difference between the historical experiences of children in Northern Ireland and the United States, then, is that children in the United States encounter the past in the context of a narrative of national development, grounded in individual achievement, whereas those in Northern Ireland are presented with portrayals of the way of life of societies in the past-a more "analytic" framework. The differences in children's understanding of the nature of change over time in the two settings clearly are consistent with these differences. Students in Northern Ireland study societies at different levels of development at various times in history (Ancient Egypt and Mesolithic Ireland within the same school year, for example) and perhaps as a result, they are more likely to recognize that the same time can be characterized by more than one image, and that such images do not proceed in a linear sequence of material advancement. This focus on social life is also consistent with the fact that students in Northern Ireland are less likely to look to individuals' achievements to explain historical change: Students study, in a simple way, the structure of society, and they use societal differences as a way of explaining differences in people's ways of life. The sociocultural settings in the two locations (not only the school curriculum, but historical experiences outside of school) provide differing levels of exposure to specific kinds of narrative, and students in the two countries draw on these cultural tools with differing frequency when they explain the nature and direction of historical change.

Political and pedagogical contexts of learning history A basic assumption of sociocultural perspectives on human learning is that cultural tools themselves have a history. They are neither "natural" vehicles for thinking and acting, nor logical and unproblematic solutions to the problems of living. Rather, such tools- and the ways people use them-are the products of particular historical developments, and their use continues to undergo a process of change (Wertsch, 1998). Moreover, tool use is bound up with broader social purposes, purposes that inevitably reflect the power relations in the societies of which they are a part. To understand specific tools for making sense of history, then, it is necessary to examine their position within the broader context of historical representation in given settings. Such analysis requires consideration of the intersecting political, economic, and pedagogical forces that shape children's exposure to the past. In schools in Northern Ireland, the emphasis on social and material life, rather than narratives of events, is due in part to changes in the curriculum that

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have taken place throughout the United Kingdom over the last three decades. This trend dates to at least the late 1960s, when educators in British teacher training departments and colleges began to develop a pedagogic discourse that differentiated school history from the products of academic scholarship (Phillips, 1998). By the mid-1980s, teachers and teacher educators shared a view of the subject grounded in psychological theories oflearning and focusing on the nature of history as a discipline (including, for example, skills related to the analysis and interpretation of evidence) rather than on stories of the British national past. Despite efforts by some politicians and historians in the late 1980s and early 1990s to construct a national curriculum emphasizing narrative treatment of the glory and heritage of the country's past (Nash, Crabtree, & Dunn, 1997; Phillips, 1998), history in the United Kingdom continues to be viewed primarily as an evidence-based, inquiry-oriented subject concerned with social, economic, and cultural affairs as much as with politics. Indeed, for both historians and teachers in the United Kingdom, narratives have to some extent come to be regarded as "an unacademic, slightly immature and unreliable mode of analysis" involving too much didacticism and too little student involvement (Husbands, 1996, p. 46). The inquiry-based conception of historical study is embedded in the Northern Ireland curriculum, which in the primary years requires attention to procedures such as identifying features of past societies, recognizing similarities and differences between ways of life at different times, and using a variety of sources to gain information about the past (Department of Education Northern Ireland, 1996).8 Educators in Northern Ireland, like those elsewhere in the United Kingdom, equate the teaching and learning of history with the application of historical skills to the study of past societies, rather than with retention of the details of specific national narratives. Students' experiences with print and electronic media reinforce this emphasis on the institutional analysis of past societies. Any number of captivating and well-designed history books for children are available in stores and libraries in Northern Ireland, and these focus almost exclusively on social and material life. British publishers market works that complement the focus of the primary school curriculum, presumably because they hope those books will be purchased in conjunction with the subjects studied in schools. It is easy to find picture books about life in a medieval castle or during the time of the Vikings or the Ancient Egyptians (even in the United States, books like these often are imports or reissues of British books), but narratives of individual achievements, whether real or fictional, are much less common than in the United States; in fact, I never saw a child there reading such a picture book. (Biographies and works of historical fiction, particularly those published in the Republic of Ireland, are more commonly available for older children, but these did not appear to be popular among students in this study.) Moreover, children's picture books concerned solely with the history ofN orthern Ireland would have a v ery small potential audience (fewer than 2 million people live there), particularly because most would appeal to members of only one religious community.

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The lack of a viable market for books focused on the achievements of historic individuals results in many fewer opportunities for children to experience such works than in the United States. Tclcvision vicwing is also a significantly different experience for children in Northern Ireland than in the United States. This is no trivial matter, for studies in both locations demonstrate the powerful impact of television on student's understanding of history (Barton, 2001; Levstik & Barton, 1996). Although British and Irish stations sometimes air U.S. programs set in the past (including, for example, The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie, and Happy Days) these rarely appear more than once a week. Television programming is morc irregular than in the United States, and thus children are less likely to develop the habit of watching the same show at the same time every day (or even every week); they are more likely to watch "whatever is on," as several told me-and frequently what is on are expository documentaries, including historical ones. Such documentaries are much more prominent than in the United States: They are shown during prime time on the major networks and draw large audiences. These documentaries share the non-narrative framework of other historical sources; in one popular series, for example, archeologists descend upon a historic site for a rapid cxcavation over 48 hours. Programs like this necessarily focus on uncovering details of life at another time, not on narrating the accomplishments of specific individuals or recounting a series of events in the national past. In Northern Ireland, though, the most important reason for focusing on social and material life rather than narratives of events-and one that extends beyond the classroom into other public presentations of history- is more overtly political. Northern Ireland is beset by deep political divisions, and these revolve around conflicting stories of the region's past. Unionists and Nationalists each have their own historical narratives to tell, and these narratives are opposed at nearly every point. Not only schools, but most museums and other public historical sites avoid association with either of these interpretations of the past, and as a result they avoid narrative presentations of political developments. Any narrative inevitably involves assumptions- explicit or implicit- about the causes of events; causation is at the heart of narrative structure and distinguishes narratives from simple "chronicles," or listings of events . But statements about causes in Northern Ireland's history are political statements, and political statements there have serious consequences. Telling any particular story about the national past, even telling two or more stories sideby-side, will alienate a portion of the potential audience and could lead to serious political repercussions. Although the secondary curriculum does include explicit attention to the region's political history and an attempt to expose students to a variety of viewpoints, in most of the locations that provide younger children with their knowledge of history (primary schools, museums, historic sites) the potential repercussions of such controversy are too threatening. As a

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result, nonsectarian public forums in Northern Ireland do not often tell stories; rather, they illustrate historical times. An important feature of this representational format is the absence of attention to the achievements of famous people in the past-the specific type of narrative that is so common in the United States. Although students occasionally learn about historic individuals during reading instruction (the P5 classroom I observed read about Guy Fawkes in a British-produced reader) or through holiday celebrations (students in Catholic or Integrated schools sometimes study St. Patrick in preparation for St. Patrick's Day), such individuals are not typically mentioned during history instruction at school. Similarly, museums and other historic sites rarely emphasize the achievements of specific individuals. Again, this lack of attention can be attributed both to pedagogical assumptions about the proper subject of historical study and to the political forces that influence public life in Northern Ireland. There are few figures in the history of Ireland or Great Britain who are not identified as representative of specific political positions, and thus all individuals in the region's history are controversial and must be avoided. The political context also influences what students learn about the past from relatives, who provide them with much of their understanding of the nature and purpose of history. Although it is frequently asserted that children in Northern Ireland learn sectarian stories of the national past "at their mother's knee" (Stewart, 1977, p. 16), such political narratives were completely lacking in the responses of children in this study. Although some of the children came from families with strong political leanings, and although they sometimes talked about political violence in contemporary terms, they never mentioned learning Unionist or Nationalist stories of the national past from relatives. 9 Instead, they described learning about their parents' and grandparents' experiences with different technologies, fashions, and social practices, and unlike in the United States, these stories arc not set within a context of progress and national development. Because Northern Ireland is a region of continuing political violence and continuing economic depression, and because class differences and regional variations are explicit and accepted features of life throughout the United Kingdom, "progress" does not provide an overarching explanatory framework for understanding historical change as it docs in the United States. Differences in lifestyle between children and their grandparents, then, are not as representative of a seemingly inexorable improvement of society. Stories of immigration and assimilation, moreover, are almost entirely lacking-most families in Northern Ireland have lived there four centuries or more.l() As a result, family stories about the past in Northern Ireland do not directly complement and support narratives of national progress and development as they often do in the United States. For Americans who have grown up learning history through the kind of narrative framework described earlier, it is easy both to understand the factors that shape historical representations in Northern Ireland and to dismiss them

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as aberrations: The political situation, the unique national curriculum, the economics of book publishing, even the failure of British broadcasters to program the same syndicated shows each day, all seem to conspire to produce patterns that deviate from the "normal" way of approaching history with which Americans are familiar. But the cultural tools for understanding history in the United States are as much the product of historical development as those in Northern Ireland, and without understanding that development (and its relationship to the power structures that shape educational institutions here), we are ill-equipped to evaluate the effectiveness of our own approach to the past. Although a thorough account of the development of historical representations for children in the United States has yet to be written, analyses of textbooks, curricular reform, and the place of history in popular culture provide some insights into the social, cultural, and economic forces that shape learning of the topic. The focus on historic individuals and their achievements, for example, has a long tradition in schools; Elson (1964) notes that the presentation of virtuous heroes, worthy of emulation by children, was a "cardinal educational canon" (p. 186) of the schoolbooks of the nineteenth century. The commissions on history teaching of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, meanwhile, also frequently recommended biography as the appropriate format for historical study in the elementary grades (Kelty, 1929). This approach has remained a staple of instruction in the primary grades, and other sources of historical understanding-television dramas, movies, and historical literature-all share this individualistic focus, for they are concerned with producing stories that will be popular. In the United States, that typically means adventures centered on strong individuals. This emphasis is consistent, moreover, with a broader aversion to confronting issues of social structure in the United States, and with the discouragement of thinking about social issues in collective terms (Gamson, 1992). In the United Kingdom, discussion of social class and economic structure are an accepted part of public debate, and most people take for granted that government should playa significant role in reducing inequality (Bryson & Curtice, 1998; Kaase & Newton, 1998; Taylor-Gooby, 1998). But American perceptions of social relations tend to focus on individual attitudes and behaviors; for example, witness the media's obsession with the personal lives of politicians and entertainers rather than on deeper political contexts or societal issues (Bennett, 1988). Americans also tend to blame inequality on the inadequate personal drive of individuals (Feagin, 1975; Gans, 1975; Katz, 1989; Ryan, 1976), thereby downplaying the legitimacy of group interests and dismissing the need for collective action. History teachers certainly are aware of-and share inbroader cultural norms, and they adjust their instruction so as not to deviate too dramatically from popular expectations (Romanowski, 1996). Textbooks also reflect these cultural values. Those of the nineteenth century portrayed material success as the result of personal virtue and individual effort and ignored the role oflabor organizations (except to criticize them as violent or

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corrupt; Elson, 1964); more recent texts continue to sidestep issues of social class and the structural underpinnings of inequality. Loewen (1995) argues that this derives from the American belief in meritocracy, and that such belief ultimately serves to justify the status quo: If inequalities derive from personal failings, rather than structural constraints, then there is no need for societal change. The translation of these norms into the day-to-day curriculum of the elementary school (and their reflection in other sites of historical learning) is a complicated process that is only imperfectly understood, but the consonance of children's historical experiences with the individualism of U.S. society suggests that these explanations are not a "natural" way of approaching the past but are in fact culturally and historically situated. Reaction in the 1930s to the Rugg series of social studies textbooks, which incorporated analysis of social structure and inequality, demonstrates the tenacity of these attitudes: Although initially popular, Rugg's textbooks were subjected to widespread attack for being unAmerican, and they quickly fell out of use (Nash et aI., 1997). Although social studies educators have repeatedly called on schools to address the "closed areas" of society (i.e., Hunt and Metcalf, 1968), such as the structural determinants of inequality, this kind of study is not a common feature of the curriculum even at the secondary level. Similarly, the portrayal of U.S. history as a story of national development and progress has evolved to serve certain social needs, and the perpetuation of this particular narrative is supported by both economic and political pressures. Kammen (1991) notes that throughout the nation's past, history has been a principal means by which Americans understand who they are and what holds them together, and many of the standard historical narratives in the early grades-those of Columbus, the Pilgrims, Washington, Lincoln-were crafted in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to provide common identity and purpose for a diverse, even fractured, nation (Appelbaum, 1984; Appleby, Hunt, &Jacob, 1994; Pelta, 1991; Schwartz, 1990,2000; Siskind, 1992). They have been used ever since to assimilate children into a uniquely "American" identity. The role of history in promoting a sense of nationhood is not a uniquely American phenomenon (Anderson, 1983; Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1992), but the U.S. narrative is situated explicitly within a framework of continual improvement, as previous historical interpretations have been in other nations (Butterfield, 1931). Nineteenth-century U.S. textbooks portrayed material and moral progress as a fundamental law of history, a law nowhere better substantiated than in their own country (Elson, 1964), and this story of progress continues to form their basic framework. As Loewen (1995) observes, history texts "present our nation as getting better in all areas, from race relations to transportation" (p. 259). In museums, meanwhile, the discourse of progress-particularly as related to technology-is so dominant that alternative narratives are difficult to imagine (Wallace, 1996). Again, Loewen (1995) notes that the emphasis on progress supports economic and political conservatism, for it implies that the path to a brighter

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future lies in doing more of what we have always done. No fundamental changes are needed~and we need pay no attention to calls for radical reform~because life in the United States has always been getting better anyway. Attempts to tell a more diverse story of the nation's past (one that includes multiple perspectives, that addresses setbacks as well as progress, and that calls attention to enduring conflicts and dilemmas in U.S. history) are met with staunch resistance, as debates in the 1990s over national history standards and museum exhibits such as those on the Enola Gay and the American West dcmonstratc (Lifton & Mitchcll, 1995; Nash et a!., 1997). Textbook publishers, meanwhile, ever mindful of profits, seek to avoid such controversies and hence continue to frame their texts within a narrative of progress and development. Children are exposed to the story of national progress, then, not because it is an inevitable format for historical study, but because it is consistent with powerful political and economic forces.

Conclusions: Affordances and constraints Wertsch (1998) notes that most perspectives on sociocultural theory and mediated action focus on the enabling aspects of cultural tools--on the ways they have adaptively evolved to help people make sense of and act on the world around them. But Wertsch also points to the constraining effects of such artifacts~the ways they limit the forms of action (including mental action) that people can undertake. This comparison of the historical understanding of children in the United States and Northern Ireland points to some of the advantages and disadvantages (affordances and constraints, in Wertsch's terms) inherent in their use of differing cultural tools. U.S. students' use of a narrative of national progress, grounded in individual achievement, provides a systematic framework for making sense of the content of their nation's past, even if they are prone to misremembering or misunderstanding many of the details of specific episodes in that past (McKeown & Beck, 1990: VanSledright, 1995). Conceptualizing history in such terms can also give U.S. children a feeling of common identity~a sense of who "we" are that may transcend ethnic divisions (Barton, 2001; Barton & Levstik, 1998; Cornbleth, 1998). Finally, the idea that national history is a story of progress can provide guidance for individual behavior and inspire a belief that "we" should learn from our mistakes (Barton, 200 I; Barton & Levstik, 1998; VanSledright, 1997). The limitations of this kind of narrative, however, are just as obvious. It fails to prepare children to understand the influence of societal institutions on individual action; it fails to acquaint them with the diversity that exists at any given time in history; it fails to illustrate the power of collective action; and it fails to acknowledge that social and material life do not ascend invariably to more productive, more comfortable, and more just levels of development. In other words, the dominant historical narrative used by children in the United States does not allow them to make sense of many of the most important aspects of

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their own past. Even with those stories that seem to conform to a narrative of progress, children may harbor significant misunderstandings. Thus they may think of the story of Rosa Parks (an increasingly canonical element of primary history) as one of a tired woman who didn't want to give up her seat, and whose refusal led to changes in the attitudes of White Americans. The cultural tools at their disposal provide no way to make sense of the fuller context of Parks' actions- the laws that required racial segregation, the organized social movement of which Parks was a member, and the economic pressure that led to institutional changes. Furthermore, an overriding image of progress stands in the way of a meaningful understanding of the many complexities, dead-ends, and tragedies of U.S. history. Children are aware that not all the country's problems have been solved, and they recognize that much of what they know about history (particularly what they have learned from "unofficial" sources in their families or communities) does not fit the story of progress, but without experience with alternative tools for conceptualizing the past, they are unable to integrate these pieces of information into a coherent framework (Barton & Levstik, 1998). In many ways, the cultural tools used by children in Northern Ireland provide a more complete, more balanced understanding of history. Students there are more likely to identify the societal contexts of change, and they are more likely to recognize that multiple images can characterize any given period in history. They also are less likely to think that individuals are responsible for all changes in history, or that change is equivalent to progress. It is important not to overstate these differences, for as noted above, not all children in Northern Ireland conceptualize historical change in the same way; many give explanations similar to those of their counterparts in the United States (as children sometimes do in other countries as well; see Carretero, Jacou, Limon, Manjon, & Leon, 1994; Hallden, 1986; Lee, Dickinson, & Ashby, 1995). But the research reported here shows that children are by no means limited to such ideas about the past. In Northern Ireland, the content of the school curriculum, the focus of classroom instruction, and the nature of historical representation outside school all serve to counter these narrative tendencies by providing alternative cultural tools for conceptualizing the process of change over time. This more analytical framework for studying history in Northern Ireland is not without drawbacks of its own. Most notably, the aversion to national history fails to provide students with the one thing they may need most-a sense of shared identity. Perhaps because students do not emerge from the primary grades with a systematic understanding of national history, they are susceptible to the politicized historical narratives encountered during early adolescence, a time of strong pressure to identify with sectarian organizations. Unionist and Nationalist perspectives on the region's past provide precisely what is lacking in public historical representations for children-a strong, historically grounded sense of identity, albeit one defined in sectarian terms, and one that explicitly excludes members of the other religious community. This exclusivity may be

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further compounded by the lack of attention to individual achievement or stories of progress. If problems are never solved, and if individual actions are relatively insignificant, then history may point more to nihilism than to hope. The past then becomes a kind of prison from which escape is unlikely, perhaps impossible- a perspective characteristic not only of many adults in Northern Ireland (Brown, 1988; MacDonagh, 1983; McBride, 1997) but of some secondary students as well (Barton, 2005). Other constraints of this non-narrative approach are less directly political. Shemilt (1998) argues that period-based units of study do not, of themselves, lead to children's construction oflarger narratives of change and development. Although they may acquire detailed knowledge of given historical times, they will not necessarily be able to connect these into a framework that allows them to understand the means by which change took place, nor will they necessarily know why particular activities, events, or states of affairs are worth studying, for it is these larger narrative frameworks that provide historical meaning and allow for constructions of historical significance. To understand the past, Shemilt argues, it is necessary not only to recognize its similarities and differences compared to the present, but to understand how the two are developmentally related. Without that, the study of the past becomes merely "antiquarian sociology" with no overall order or meaning. Shemilt further suggests that it is precisely the construction of these historically based developmental narratives that provides an antidote to "mythical" history- a particularly compelling observation when applied to Northern Ireland. If any cultural tool inevitably provides both affordances and constraints, then surely students will be better served by educational institutions that provide them with a variety of such tools, so that the advantages of one may make up for the limitations of others. Instead of limiting students to a single framework for understanding history, schools might attempt to give them experience looking at the past through different lenses, by using a variety of narrative and non-narrative tools. In North America, a number of scholars over the last decade have suggested changes in history teaching that would bring the field more in line with contemporary perspectives on the production of historical knowledge (Levstik & Barton, 1997; Segall, 1999; Seixas, 1993b; VanSledright, 1996; Wineburg, 1991), and these suggestions often point either implicitly or explicitly to the approaches popular throughout the United Kingdom- particularly analysis and interpretation of evidence rather than recounting prescribed national narratives. In Northern Ireland, meanwhile, although no one suggests history teaching should be patterned on an American model, a number of educators have suggested that schools, museums, and other public institutions should explore controversial issues in national history, and that history education should be explicitly directed toward the development of desirable societal values (e.g., McCully, 1999; Gallagher, 1998). But as the discussion above suggests, such transformations will not come about easily, for the cultural tools that dominate historical thinking in each

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location are supported by powerful social forces. Establishing how changes in history teaching and learning might take place is beyond the scope of this paper, but focusing on the culturally situated tools children have begun to appropriate from their surrounding society makes it clear that simple decrees from scholars, administrators, or policy-making bodies are unlikely to lead to fundamental changes in the teaching and learning of history. Broadening children's understanding of history (by providing them with a greater variety of tools for the task) is a social transformation, one that necessitates an attempt to change popular ideas about the purpose of the subject. Further research that situates the development of historical understanding within broader social forces, though, and that clarifies the variety of historical tools available in different settings, may well provide an empirical basis for undertaking such an attempt.

Acknowledgements This research was funded in part by a fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Additional assistance was provided by the Cincinnati Branch of the English-Speaking Union and by the University of Ulster, Coleraine. The author would like to thank Harry McMahon and Alan McCully of the University of Ulster for their generous assistance, as well as Vivienne Pollock and Pat McLean of the Ulster Museum and the principals, teaching staff, and students of the participating schools.

Notes 1. Most schools in Northern Ireland are attended by a population of students that is either exclusively Protestant or exclusively Catholic (or nearly so). Those attended mainly by Protestants are known as controlled schools and are under the direct management of regional education boards, and those attended mainly by Catholics are known as maintained schools and are administered by a council under the auspices of the Catholic church. Although both are open to children of all denominations, in practice few students (particularly at the primary level) attend schools in which the majority is a different religion than themselves. A small number of schools in Northern Ireland are integrated schools and are attended by roughly equal numbers of students of each religious tradition. All three types of schools are funded by the government of the United Kingdom, and all follow the guidelines of the Northern Ireland Curriculum. 2. Students in Northern Ireland begin school two years earlier than those in the United States, and presecondary schools are known as primary schools; grade levels are designated accordingly. Thus, a P3 (primary year 3) student is equivalent to a first grader in the United States, a P4 student is equivalent to a second grader, and so on. The first year of secondary schooling is usually referred to as year 8 (V8), and students in that grade are equivalent in age to sixth graders in the United States. When noting the grade level designation of students in this study, then, readers in North America will need to subtract two years in order to obtain the corresponding grade level. Because of differences in grade level designations in the United Kingdom, mean-

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while, readers will need to subtract one year to find the equivalent grade in England: A P4 student in Northern Ireland will be the same age as a P3 student in England. I observed most of the history lessons taught in the integrated primary school during approximately a three-month period from September to December, for a total of38 observations lasting about 40-50 minutes each. Combining interviews with classroom observations had the advantage of allowing comparisons of students' responses to what they had learned in class, as well as providing the chance to ask questions about the content that arose in the course of instruction. Students' names have been replaced with pseudonyms. Although students in Northern Ireland occasionally indicated that they were aware women were treated differently in the past, the subject was neither a part of the curriculum nor a topic that often arose in the course of conversation with students. (\\Then I asked if people treated each other differently in the past, no student mentioned gender relations.) In addition, although relations between Protestants and Catholics are parallel in some ways to ethnic relations in the United States, that conflict is so far removed from resolution that it would make no sense to ask students about changes over time; it is the continuity (or deterioration) of community relations, rather than their improvement, that is most striking in Northern Ireland. Such perceptions may not extend to students who live in economically depressed rural communities (Barton, 1996) or other areas that do not clearly represent images of U.S. "progress"; as noted earlier, more research is warranted on the range of historical narratives told by families in the United States. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, coins and bills carry the portrait of the queen, and in Ireland they bear pictures of animals and musical instruments; one teacher there had a half-dollar candy novelty coin, and she asked me whether we really still had Kennedy's portrait on our money after he had been dead 35 years. Even when curricular requirements refer to narratives, their meaning is very different than in the United States. As an example of "constructing basic historical narratives," for example, the Northern Ireland Curriculum suggests that "pupils could give a description oflife in a Victorian big house or workhouse" (Department of Education Northern Ireland 1996 [History Key Stage 2], p. 3); such descriptions are not the kind of story-like format U.S. educators would likely associate with the term "narrative." Children's appropriation of these stories, when it occurs at all, may be a feature of early adolescence rather than childhood, for that is a time of strong pressure to identify with sectarian organizations, and it is these organizations that often are responsible for promoting particularistic perspectives on the national past. Although research has shown that children in Northern Ireland may develop sectarian attitudes from an early age (Connolly, 1999), there is no clear evidence that specifically historical knowledge or interpretations forms a significant component of such attitudes among primary students. Although migration from Scotland and England in the 17th century represented a major social and demographic development, this movement does not figure prominently in families' stories about the past both because it is so far removed in time and because the people involved (Protestants) are concerned with asserting their legitimacy as residents of Northern Ireland. Although many Protestant families feel a close affinity with Scotland, emphasizing the narrative element of family migration would be tantamount to admitting their position as outsiders in an otherwise united Ireland.

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References Anderson, B. R. 0. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread qfnationalism. London: Verso. Angvik, M., & von Borries, B. (1997). Youth and history: A comparative European survry on historical consciousness and political attitudes among adolescents. Hamburg, Germany: Kbrber-Stiftung. Apple baum, D. K. (1984). Thanksgiving: An American holiday, an American history. New York: Facts on File. Appleby,]. 0., Hunt, L. A., &Jacob, M. C. (1994). Telling the truth about history. :'-Jew York: Norton. Barton, K. C. (1995, April). '~\1y mom taught me"; The situated nature qfhistorical understanding. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED 387 404. Barton, K. C. (1996). N arrativc simplifications in elcmentary children's historical understanding. In J. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on teaching: Vol. 6. Teaching and learning in history (pp. 51-83). Greenwich, CT:JAI Press. Barton, K. C. (1997). "Bossed around by the Queen": Elementary students' understanding of individuals and institutions in history. Journal qf Curriculum and Supervision, 12,290-314. Barton, K. C. (2001). "You'd be wanting to know about the past": Social contexts of children's historical understanding in Northern Ireland and the United States. Comparative Education, 37, 89-106. Barton, K. C. (2002). "Oh, that's a tricky piece!": Children, mediated action, and the tools of historical time. Elementary SchoolJournal, 103, 161-85. Barton, K. C. (2005). "Best not to forget them": Adolescents' judgments of historical significance in Northern Ireland. Theory and Research in Social Education, 33, 9-44. Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (1996). "Back when God was around and everything": The development of children's understanding of historical time. American Educational ResearchJournal, 33, 419-54. Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (1998). "It wasn't a good part of history": National identity and ambiguity in students' explanations of historical significance. Teachers Coll~l!,e Record, 99,478-513. Bennett, W. L. (1988). News: The politics afillusion. New York: Longman. Brophy,]., & VanSledright, B. (1997). Teaching and learning history in elementary schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Brown, T. (1933). Awakening from the nightmare: Irish history in some recent literature. In The Princess Grace Irish Library (Ed.), Irishness in a changing society (pp. 64--77). Gerrards Cross, U.K.: Colin Smythe. Bruner, J. S. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bryson, C., & Curtice, J. (1993). The end of materialism? In R. Jowell,]. Curtice, A. Park, L. Brook, K. Thomson, & C. Bryson (Eds.), British-and European-social attitudes. The 75th report: How Britain differs (pp. 125-43). Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing. Butterfield, H. (1931). The Whig interpretation qfhistory. London: G. Bell. Carr, D. (1936). Time, narrative, and history. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

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Carretero, M.,Jacott, L., Limon, M., Manjon, A. L., & Leon,]. A. (1994). Historical knowledge: Cognitive and instructional implications. In M. Carretero &]. F. Voss (Eds.), Cognitive and instructional processes in history and social sciences (pp. 357-76). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Cercadillo, L. (200 I). Significance in history: Students' ideas in England and Spain. In A. Dickinson, P. Gordon, & P. Lee (Eds.), International review ifhistory education, vol. 3. Raising standards in history education (pp. 116-45). Portland, OR: Woburn Press. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once andfoture discipline. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Connolly, P. (1999). Sectarianism: Children and communiry relations in Northern Ireland. Coleraine, Northern Ireland: Centre for the Study of Conflict, University of Ulster. Cornbleth, C. (1998). An American curriculum? Teachers College Record, 99, 622-46. Department of Education Northern Ireland. (1996). TIe Northern Ireland curriculum. Kf!JI stages 1 and 2: Programmes if stu& and attainment targets. History. Belfast: Her Majesty's Stationary Office. Elson, R. M. (1964). Guardians if tradition: American schoolbooks if the nineteenth century. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Epstein, T. (1998). Deconstructing differences in Mrican-American and EuropeanAmerican adolescents' perspectives on U.S. history. Curriculum Inquiry, 28, 397-423. Feagin,]. R. (1975). Subordinating the poor. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gallagher, C. (1998, April). TIefoture ifhistory? A pleafor relevance. Paper presented at the Schools History Project Conference, Leeds, England. Gamson, W. A. (1992). Talkingpolitics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gans, H. (1975). Positive functions of poverty. AmericanJoumal ifSociology, 78,275-89. Hallden, O. (1986). Learning history. Oiford Review ifEducation, 12,53-66. Hardy, B. (1968). Towards a poetics of fiction: An approach through narrative. Novel, 2, 5-14. Hobsbawm, E., & Ranger, T. (1992). TIe invention iftradition. New York: Cambridge. Hunt, M. P., & Metcalf, L. E. (1968). Teaching high school social studies: Problems in rd/ective thinking and social understanding. New York: Harper and Row. Husbands, C. (1996). W7zat is history teaching? Language, ideas and meaning in learning about the past. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Kaase, M., & Newton, K. (1998). What people expect from the state: Plus "a change .... In R.Jowell,J. Curtice, A. Park. L. Brook, K. Thomson, & C. Bryson (Eds.), Britishand European-social attitudes. TIe 15th report: How Britain differs (pp. 39-56). Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing. Kammen, M. (1991). Mystic chords ifmemory: TIe tranifOrmation iftradition in American culture. New York: Knopf. Katz, M. B. (1989). TIe undeserving poor: From the war on poverry to the war on welfare. New York: Pantheon. Kelty, M. G. (1929). The supervision of history. In W. H. Burton (Ed.), TIe supervision if elementary sulljects (pp. 347-455). New York: D. Appleton. Lee, P., Dickinson, A., & Ashby, R. (1995, April). Some aspects ifchildren's understanding if historical explanation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. Levstik, L. S. (1986). The relationship between historical response and narrative in a sixth-grade classroom. TIeory and Research in Social Education, 14, 1-19.

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Levstik, L. S. (1989). Historical narrative and the young reader. Theory into Practice, 28, 114-19. Levstik, L. S. (2001). Crossing the empty spaces: Perspective-taking in New Zealand adolescents' understanding of national history. In O. L. Davis,jr., E. A. Yeager, & S.]. Foster (Eds.), Development qfhistorical empathy and perspective taking in the social studies (pp. 69- 96). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Levstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (1996). "They still use some of their past": Historical salience in children's chronological thinking. Journal qfCurriculum Studies, 28, 531 - 76. Levstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (1997). Doing history: Investigating with children in elementary and middle schools. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Levstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (2001). Committing acts of history: Mediated action, humanistic education, and participatory democracy. In W. Stanley (Ed.). Critical issues in social studies researchfor the 21st century (pp. 119-47). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Levstik, L. S., & Pappas, C. C. (1987). Exploring the development of historical understanding.Journal qfResearch and Development in Education, 21, 1- 15. Lifton, R.]., & Mitchell, G. (1995). Hiroshima in America: A halfcentury qfdenial. New York: Avon. Loewen,]. W. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everythingyour American history textbook got wrong. New York: New Press. MacDonagh, O. (1983). States qfmind: A stucfy qf Anglo-Irish conflict 1780-1980. Boston: Allen & Unwin. MacIntyre, A. (1981). After virtue: A stucfy in moral theory. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. McBride, I. (1997). The Siege qfDerry in Ulster Protestant mythology. Dublin: Four Courts Press. McCully, A. (1999, April). Teaching controversial issues as part qf the peace process in Northern Ireland. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal. McKeown, M. G., & Beck, I. L. (1990). The assessment and characterization of young learners' knowledge of a topic in history. American Educational Research Journal, 27, 688- 726. Nash, G., Crabtree, C., & Dunn, R.(1997). History on trial: Culture wars and the teaching qf the past. New York: Knopf. Pelta, K. (1991). Discovering Christopher Columbus: How history is invented. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner. Phillips, R. (1998). History teaching, nationhood and the state: A stucfy in educational politics. London: Cassell. Romanowski, M. H . (1996). Issues and influences that shape the teaching of U.S. history. In]. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on teaching, vol. 6. Teaching and learning in history (pp. 291-312). Greenwich, CT:jAI Press. Ryan, W. (1976). Blaming the victim. New York: Vintage. Schwartz, B. (1990). George Washington: The making qf an American symbol. Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press. Schwartz, B. (2000). Abraham Lincoln and theforge qf national memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Segall, A. (1999). Critical history: Implications for history/social studies education. Theory and Research in Social Education, 27, 358- 74.

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Seixas, P. (1993a). Historical understanding among adolescents in a multicultural setting. Curriculum Inquiry, 23, 301-27. Seixas, P. (1993b). The community of inquiry as a basis for knowledge and learning: The case of history. American Educational ResearchJournal, 30, 305-24. Shemilt, D. (1998, November). Constructivism deconstructed: Towards a new pedagogyfor school history. Paper presented at the Conference on Teaching, Learning, and Knowing History, Pittsburgh. Siskind,]. (1992). The invention of Thanksgiving: A ritual of American nationality. Critique IffAnthropology, 12, 167-91. Stewart, A. T. Q (1977). The narrow ground: Aspects qfUlster, 1909-1969. Belfast, Northern Ireland: Blackstaff Press. Taylor-Gooby, P. (1998). Commitment to the welfare state. In R. jowell,]. Curtice, A. Park, L. Brook, K. Thomson, & C. Bryson (Eds.), British-and European-social attitudes. The 15th report: How Britain differs (pp. 57-76). Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing. VanSledright, B. A. (1995). "I don't remember-the ideas are all jumbled in my head": 8th graders' reconstructions of colonial American history. Journal qf Curriculum and Supervision, 10, 317-45. VanSledright, B. A. (1996). Closing the gap between school and disciplinary history? Historian as high school teacher. In]. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on teaching, vol. 6. Teaching and learning in history (pp. 157-289). Greenwich, CT:jAI Press. VanSledright, B. A. (1997). And Santayana lives on: Students' views on the purposes for studying American history. Journal ofCurriculum Studies, 29, 529-57. VanSledright, B. A. (199711998). On the importance of historical positionality to thinking about and teaching history. The International Journal qf Social Education, 12(2), 1-18. VanSledright, B. A., & Brophy,]. (1992). Storytelling, imagination, and fanciful elaboration in children's historical reconstructions. American Educational Research Journal, 29, 837-59. Wallace, M. (1996). Mickey Mouse history and other essays on American memory. Philadelphia: Temple. Wells, C. G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Towards a sociocultural practice and theory Iffeducation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wcrtsch,j. V. (1998). fvfind as action. New York: Oxford University Press. Wineburg, S. S. (1991). On the reading of historical texts: Notes on the breach between school and academy. American Educational Research Journal, 28, 495-519.

Chapter 16

"You'd be wanting to know about the past" Social contexts of children's historical understanding in Northern I reland and the U.S.A.

Keith C. Barton

A lO-year-old girl in the United States once told me that after learning about Martin Luther King,jr., at school, she went home and asked her mother how old she was when he was killed "because Ijust wanted to know." Three years later, another I O-year-old girl, this one in Northern Ireland, told me nearly the same thing-she had seen a documentary about Martin Luther King on television, and she asked her mother what else she knew about him. One of these girls lived in a comfortable Midwestern suburb, one in a small Ulster village beset by political conflict, but their experiences reveal features of historical understanding shared by children in both settings-the role of both schools and the media as sources of historical information, the importance of relatives in providing personal connections to the past and, perhaps most surprising, the active attempt by young children to deepen and extend their knowledge of the past. Yet the differences in the girls' backgrounds also point to how historical understanding can vary from one setting to another. As this study will show, children in Northern Ireland and the United States bring very different perspectives to their encounters with history, and they hold different assumptions about the importance of the topic. Although both these girls wanted to know more about King, for example, their interest sprang from nearly opposite sources. For the girl in the United States, King symbolized a key element in her own identity-his experiences were a part of her history, part of the story of how "we" as Americans learned to treat each other fairly. As she and many of her classmates pointed out, knowing about the history of raee relations in the United States helped them understand how they should treat African Americans. But the girl in Northern Ireland was separated from King by differences in ethnicity, nationality and religion; for her, King's story was not her own-she did not suggest that his life provided her with a sense of identity or any lesson for herself in the present. Like most of the primary students I interviewed in Northern Ireland, she was interested in history because it was about

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others, because it provided insight into societies removed in time and place. This research suggests that therein lies a fundamental difference between the historical perspectives of young children in the two locations-those in the United States think the purpose of history is to learn about themselves and their own background, while those in Northern Ireland think it is to learn about the lives of people in other times and places.

Background During the past two decades, researchers in North America, in the United Kingdom, and on the European continent have conducted numerous studies of students' historical understanding. This work has produced a more complexand more optimistic- view of children's thinking than the Piagetian studies that dominated the field before the 1980s. Like most cognitive researchers, those who study historical understanding have abandoned the quest for universal stages and have focused instead on the way children think about one particular subject- in this case, history. (On the limitations of Piagetian studies of historical thinking, see Booth, 1984; on the transition in cognitive theory from global to domain-specific thinking, see Gelman & Baillargeon, 1983; Wellman & Gelman, 1992.) These studies have focused on establishing what students know about history and the nature of their thought processes as they work with historical information-including, for example, their ideas about time, evidence, causation, perspective and significance (see, e.g., Wineburg, 1991; Seixas, 1993a, 1994; Carretero,jacott, Lim6n, L6pez-Manj6n, & Le6n, 1994; Barton, 1996, 1997 a, 1997b; Barton & Levstik, 1996; Levstik & Barton, 1996; Brophy & VanSledright, 1997; VanSledright, 1997; Epstein, 1998; VanSledright & Kelly, 1998; Lee & Ashby, 2001). Although researchers have investigated a variety of specific issues and employed a range of methods in these investigations, two consistent findings stand out. First, even young children know something about the past, both about specific historical events and about patterns of change over time. Secondly, the way students think about history-the way they attribute causation, for example, or the way they evaluate evidence- is not always consistent with the work of professional historians. These findings have important instructional implications, for, by taking account of students' prior knowledge, teachers can more effectively build on what children already know or address their misconceptions. In addition, by becoming aware of patterns in children's thinking-such as how they respond to multiple sources to reach conclusions about the past-educators can design instruction that promotes more complete and sophisticated understandings of the past. But studies of children's knowledge of historical patterns and of their facility with the methods of historians tell only part of the story. In order to understand historical thinking more fully, researchers must situate perspectives on the past within the social and cultural contexts in which they arise. In most fields of

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learning, educators are well aware of the importance of context. A generation of theory and research in cognitive psychology has yielded widespread consensus that the study of human thought must take into account the social settings and purposes that guide learning; thinking cannot be regarded as a mechanistic, content-free activity divorced from the cultural contexts in which it is situated (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Rogoff, 1990; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Levine, Resnick, & Higgins, 1993; Cole, 1998; Wertsch, 1998). This perspective accords well with the practical knowledge teachers gain in their classrooms: Children from different economic, ethnic, or geographic backgrounds bring distinct bodies of knowledge to school, along with their own ideas about the nature and purpose of education-ideas shaped by their families and communities. To understand how children learn, educators must recognize the influence of these wider contexts. Studies both within and outside the United States demonstrate the fundamental importance of social settings for literacy, numeracy and vocational skills. But to date, researchers have produced few studies of the contextual factors surrounding children's understanding of the content of history. Although the last decade has seen an increase in research on children's thinking in the field, this work too often treats the discipline of history as a given-thus historical understanding becomes equated either with the content of textbooks and curriculum guides or with descriptions of "historical thinking" or "what historians do." But textbooks and other historical discourses invariably are the products of particular social contexts (Kammen, 1991; Levstik & Pappas, 1992), and studies that limit their scope to populations with shared perceptions of the nature and purpose of the discipline are unlikely to reveal the range of meanings people attribute to the past. Research in the United States, for example, suggests that children from a variety of backgrounds share many basic features of historical knowledge and understanding-including their views on the nature of evidence, the direction of historical change, the role of individuals in history and the purpose of learning the subject (Barton, 1997b; Brophy & VanSledright, 1997). Yet these understandings are not universal: Perspectives of children from varied ethnic backgrounds can diverge significantly from those of their peers, as demonstrated by the research of Epstein (1998) in the United States and Seixas (1993a) in Canada. VanSledright (199711998) thus argues that history educators-both researchers and practitioners-should devote more attention to students' historical "position"-that is, the way in which their thinking is affected by the cultural or family messages they have absorbed about the past. The research reported here-based on two studies of young children, one conducted in the United States and one in Northern Ireland-attempts to do just that. Although this kind of sociocultural approach can illuminate many aspects of children's developing historical' understanding (Barton, 2001), this analysis focuses primarily on ideas concerning the purpose oflearning history-particularly how those ideas are bound up with social, political and pedagogical factors shaping

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historical representations in specific social settings in the two countries. The comparative dimension of this research is crucial for, as the interviews with the two girls at the beginning of this paper indicate, these studies revealed both similarities and differences in children's perspectives on the past. Systematic comparisons of the elements that go into these developing understandings can thus help illuminate the process by which individuals make use of the "cultural tools" (VVertsch, 1998) surrounding history in different national contexts. 1

Findings The use of similar methods in Northern Ireland and the United States allows for systematic comparisons of the historical thinking of children aged 12 and below in the two settings. Although these studies provided information on numerous aspects of that thought, this analysis concentrates on two features that are critical from a sociocultural perspective-the forms of historical representation found in the social settings in which children learned about the past, and the conclusions students had reached about the purpose of historical learning. By examining how these features compare cross-culturally, this research yields information on the nature of children's historical thinking in the two countries and points toward the possibilities and limitations of their ideas as they approach the more formal and systematic study of history in secondary school. 2

Sources of children's historical understanding Although history is sometimes portrayed as the ultimate in boredom for young children, students in both the United States and Northern Ireland consistently maintained otherwise; indeed, many considered themselves historically knowledgeable individuals who were actively engaged in learning more about the past. During interviews, nearly every student said he or she thought history was interesting, and these avowals seemed genuine and sincere; indeed, many students explained that they thought history was a school subject precisely because it was interesting. Nor did students simply answer "yes" when asked if they were interested in history; they brought up their interest in the topic before being asked, they gave examples of how they had pursued that interest, and they described themselves as consciously interested in and knowledgeable about history. In both countries, students thought of themselves and others as active learners about history-as people with definite interests in the past. These conceptions were intimately connected to the settings in which they had learned about the subject-from relatives, from print and electronic media, at museums and other historic sites, and in school. Students in both countries mentioned relatives more often than any other source of historical information. During interviews, those in the United States often explained that they knew about specific time-periods or events because they had learned about them from their parents or grandparents. Referring to

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a picture of suffragists, for example, Amber explained that she had learned about women not being able to vote in the past because "my mom taught me," and, as Wayne said more generally, "My mom and dad tell about history and their parents and a long time ago. ":l Similarly, students in Northern Ireland identified family members as important sources of knowledge in nearly every interview. P3 Sophie noted that "My grandad was born about 50 years ago and teaches me a lot about how it was a long time ago," and P5Jeffrey explained, "I go to my granny's, and she tells me about the wars."4 Students in both locations considered themselves willing and active participants in these discussions of history. They unanimously said they liked listening to their relatives talk about history, and some explained that they had sought out information from their parents about topics covered in elass. U.S. student Kenny, for example, explained, "We've talked about something in school, and then I'd go home and ask my parents something .. . and then we get started on a talk about how history happened." Similarly, P5 Maura noted that "My daddy always watches films about them [historical times] ... and I ask him different things that happened a long time ago--he's very old-I ask Daddy wee questions about what happened long times ago, and why they happened." Students saw this exchange as a central component of historical learning and anticipated they would one day fulfill the same role as their relatives. U.S. student Charles, for example, explained that people study history "because it's something that happened a long time ago, and you want to know what happened so you can teach your kids some stuff about it." And as P5 Joanna observed, "Whenever you get older and you have kids, you can tell them what it's like, and if it does change, you can tell them what it was like whenever you were young.'" In the U.S. study, the second most frequcntly mentioned source of historical information was the media, particularly television and movies. Students often referred to these sources when explaining how they knew about specific topics (such as the Westward movement) or about life in the past generally. U.S. students also sometimes mentioned learning about history from print media, such as works of historical fiction or biographies of historical figures. Although the media figured somewhat less prominently in interviews with students in Northern Ireland, they also frequently mentioned learning about history from books, television, and videos. Sometimes they gave specific examples-Horrible Histories books, or videos such as Oliver Twist-but students more often talked about these sources in general terms; as P5 Reece noted, "In the holidays there's lots of programs on about it [history], and sometimes if we're off school cause we're sick we might watch the programs about it." Despite their frequent lack of specific examples, though, these students were confident of the importance of the media; as P5 Desmond said, "I wouldn't have known anything about these kind of pictures only for TV, really." In Northern Ireland, historic sites were particularly important sources of historical information. The region has three major outdoor history parks with

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extensive reconstructions of historic and prehistoric settlements, and many students had been to one or more of these sites, as part of either a school trip or a family visit. Others had been on similar outings to other museums or historic sites throughout Northern Ireland (and in a few cases, in England or the Republic of Ireland). As P7 Stuart said, "Me and my family usually go out for an outing on Sunday, like to Devenish Island, and I learn a lot of history then." Students in the United States also mentioned places or events in their community as a source of historical information: Several noted going to local or national historical landmarks with their families, and others mentioned learning about history during visits to museums. Compared with those in Northern Ireland, though, U.S. students mentioned such sites less frequently and recalled fewer specific details from them. Finally, schools provided an important source of children's knowledge about history and of their interest in the topic. In the U .S. classrooms-where the two teachers in this study consistently engaged students in inquiry-oriented historical projects-students often greeted the arrival of the history portion of their day with enthusiasm. Although attention occasionally waned during some lessons, these periods were infrequent and brief. Similarly, students in Northern Ireland talked positively about their experiences in classrooms and seemed to e~oy the projects and discussions in which they took part; indeed, their most frequent complaint about studying history was that they did not do more of it! During interviews, students in both countries only occasionally mentioned school as a source of specific historical knowledge, but this infrequency may be due to the fact that the content of the interviews was not directly related to their curricular topics, and because it would have been superfluous-for students in whose classrooms I was a daily visitor- to explain things they knew I had already observed.

Children's ideas about the purposes history

of knowing

During the classroom observations and while talking with students in the United States and Northern Ireland, I found little evidence that primary! elementary teachers in either setting systematically addressed the purpose of knowing history (neither do television programs or museums, for that matter); as a result, students are left to make their own inferences about why the subject is important. In the U.S. classrooms studied here, the teachers sometimes asked students why they thought history was important, but, in keeping with the open-ended nature of their instruction, they allowed students to speculate freely on the purposes oflearning about the past without ever guiding them toward a single answer. Near the beginning of the year, students often explained that history is important because "you would want to know it," "it's interesting" or "you would need to know," and their attempts to elaborate sometimes went no further than referring back to the subject itself; Angie, for example, said that

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without studying history, "you wouldn't know what the president's names were and stuff." Some students continued to give such vague answers throughout the year. But after students had begun creating personal histories, investigating their family histories, and conducting research projects on change over time, most gave more complicated and explicit explanations of the importance of history. Nearly all students pointed to the need to create a narrative that explained the present- particularly a narrative that provided individual and collective identities. Frequently, students talked about learning history because of the need to know about their own past or that of their families. Jeremy, for example, explained, "I think it's fun to learn about yourself, stuff that you didn't know," and Sean explained that "you would want to remember special moments in your life" and that "you might have family members who were killed in World War II." Nichole thought history was important to study "to find out who all your ancestors are"; as Tonya put it, "If you didn't have history, how would you know who's related to you and who's not?" At other times, students focused less on their personal connections to the past and explained instead that knowing history was a way of making sense of the present state of the world. Near the end of the year, Kenny noted that history is important because "everybody's curious," and began to explain that whenever he starts to watch a hockey game on television, he has to go to bed before it's over. The next morning, he explained, he's always curious to find out who won. Thinking his explanation had played itself out, I moved on to another topic, but he brought the discussion back to his analogy and explained that, with history, "It's just the opposite of watching a hockey game, because you couldn't see the whole thing, but you see ... how it ended; you want to know how it got started and stuff. It's just like seeing half of everything, I mean, you just want to get that other half, and when you find that other half, it answers millions of questions that changed the world." As with several students in the U.S. portion of this study, history provided Kenny a way of understanding how the world got to be the way it is today. Over the course of the year, students increasingly combined these two ideas about the purpose oflearning history by describing how history explained their own place in the broader sweep of human affairs. As they encountered new topics in their studies, they frequently related them to the present day and explicitly located themselves within that historical context. By the end of the year they confidently identified significant events in history that had affected their own lives in the present. Anthony, for example, noted that "if the immigrants didn't come over, we would not be here," while Gary also noted that immigration was "how our grandfathers, and great-grandfathers and stuff got here"; he also referred to a picture of the Westward movement by observing, "These are our forefathers." The use of first-person plural pronouns was the most obvious manifestation of students' location of themselves within history:

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Referring to we, us, or our became a staple of historical discussions throughout the year. The two events students most frequently mentioned as having an impact on themselves were the Civil Rights movement and the American Revolution. In both cases, students described these events by referring to their own place in history, and they almost invariably used the word we. Michael, for example, noted that the Civil Rights movement was important because "if Blacks didn't stand up for themselves, we'd still, like, be, like, beating them up and stuff," and that the American Revolution was important because without it, "we'd be ruled by England. "John also explained that "if we didn't fight [the Revolution], then we would still be a part of England, and we wouldn't be called the United States of America, and we wouldn't actually be completely free." Darren explained that the Civil Rights movement was important "so that we'll understand how and why we are now," and Brandon noted that it "affects us now, so we know not to do it. Ifwe didn't know about it, we would still treat Blacks like that now." The explanation that knowing history provides a guide to action in the present was a common one. John noted that knowing history "helps us to, like, treat other people"; when asked what he meant, he explained, "Like when the Nazis, like Hitler tried to rule the world, we might have, like, tried to do that in the future ifit didn't stop or something, and then, now that we found out what happened, everybody knows how to be, like, sort of nice to other people, instead of making all these wars." Similarly, Kathy and Curtis had been talking about the importance of the Civil Rights movement when they were asked whether knowing history would influence people's opinions; in the following excerpt, Curtis anticipated my question: INTERVIEWER: Do you think knowing about history would CURTIS: Change your mind or something? INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

Well, yeah, because if I didn't know that there was, like, a war, kind of like, having Black people, maybe I would be really mean to Black people. CURTIS: And didn't know that immigrants came, you would probably treat the immigrants mean and stuff because they were from another country and talk another language. KATHY: And if I didn't rcally know about Martin Luther King and all that, then it would be like, "Oh, it's just a man who did this, doesn't really matter," or something like that.

KATHY:

Both Kathy and Curtis considered history significant because it helped them understand their place in the eountry today; knowing about the Civil Rights movement mattered to them because that knowledge helped explain their relationship to other people. For U.S. students, the purpose of history was to create

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a narrative that provided them with a sense of identity-history became a way of explaining their place in society. When students talked about the importance of history, they often pointed to the need to know about their individual pasts and those of their families; as they studied topics more remote in time and place, they referred to the foundation of the United States as a political unit, the creation of modern technology and the origins of contemporary social relations. Moreover, students linked their individual identities to the broader society of which they were part: In describing significant historical events and patterns, students located themselves within a larger narrative-explaining not only where they fit into history but also how knowing about history helped them understand how to live in the present. These students consistently used pronouns such as our and we in talking about history; for them, history was important because it helped them understand how their country began and how they should treat each other. Reflecting the family contexts in which they had learned about the past, students thought they would one day hand this information down to their own children." But these were not the reasons students in Northern Ireland gave for studying history. Very few suggested that lessons could be learned from the past, and those who did so tended to be vague about what those lessons might be; as P7 Timothy noted, "In case something was done wrong, it wouldn't happen again." Nor did students in Northern Ireland point to history as a way of establishing individual or collective identity. Some thought topics such as the Vikings were important because "they had a lot to do with the English, with fighting" or because "they're part of Ireland," or even because "some people's ancestors might be Vikings," but these students did not suggest that historical events provided themselves or anyone else with a sense of identity in the present. WIost notably, when talking about such topics they almost never used first-person pronouns-the we and our that are an indispensable part of U.S. students' discussions of history. If the rationales of U.S. students were relatively unimportant to students in Northern Ireland, what did they think was the purpose of history? When asked directly, students gave a variety of answers; some suggested that history demonstrates how lucky they are to be living in the present ("with good warm clothes and friendly schools and all") or that it might be useful if someone got a job to do with history (like working in a museum) or took an exam in history. (The U.S. students sometimes gave similarly pragmatic answers, although they were more likely to suggest the possibility of appearing on a quiz show than taking an exam; see also VanSledright, 1997, for similar responses.) But the most frequent reason students gave for learning history was nearly the opposite of U.S. students' rationale: History is important in order to learn about people who are different. Year 8 student Hamish put it succinctly-he said that history is important "to understand the way other people lived and went about their daily life." This theme ran throughout students' explanations of the rationale for studying both particular topics in history and the subject in general; they

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consistently pointed to differences between past and present-the more differences the better-as the reason for their interest in history. Explanations of this kind were so numerous that it would be difficult to report them all, but the following quotations provide some representative examples: It's lovely, it's wonderful to see what you haven't, what you've missed before you were born. (P3 Morna) We get to know what happened a long time ago, and that's very interesting, cause it's very kind of different than we do it now, so it is. (P4 Alexander) It's very interesting because you learn what other people used to live like, not what we used to live like, and what they used to wear and how they used to act and all . . . because now we know how people act, but we didn't know how they act, and it's very interesting finding out about other people. (P6 Nuala)

It just gives you a different point of view than ourselves to look at, it gives you what life was like then, not now. (P7 Patricia) Several students suggested that this kind of curiosity about others is a basic human attribute. P7 Carla, for example, said, "It's just interesting to know what it was like if we had been there, and people 50 years from now will be keen to know what it's like for us." Students frequently linked this desire to know about others to their belief that they would one day be expected to pass on the information. P5 Liam gave the following justification for learning about history: You'd be wanting to know about the past, and if you grow up and then somebody asks you about history and you didn't learn, you'd be all, "What's that?"- asking questions- and if you learn it you'll just know it like that, and then you'll tell people about it, and you'll grow up and you'll want to be like what you are [the interviewer], telling people. Thus while students in both Northern Ireland and the United States believed that they would one day be responsible for telling others about history, they differed fundamentally in their understanding of the purpose of such an intergenerational transmission of knowledge. For U.S. students, telling others about history meant giving them a sense of identity- establishing where they fit into their family, their community, and their nation. For students in Northern Ireland, telling others about history meant providing information that would

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allow them to move beyond themselves and see what life was like for other people, in other times and places.

Representations of history and conceptions of purpose Students in Northern Ireland and the United States learn about history in many of the same kinds of settings- not only at school but from relatives, the media, and historic sites. Beneath these similarities, though, lie fundamental differences in children's ideas about the purpose oflearning history. As already noted, in neither location was there much evidence that students were explicitly told the purpose of history, and as a result they had to infer it from the nature of their encounter with the subject. So how could students who experienced history in substantially similar settings reach such drastically different conclusions about its purpose? In particular, how could an area of knowledge so closely linked to interactions with relatives lead U.S. students-but not those in Northern Ireland-to see history as a means of establishing identity? The answer lies in the particular historical content that children encountered in the two settings, especially the congruence- or lack of congruence-between family stories and public history. In the United States, the history that students encounter in public forums (whether schools, museums or cartoons) is almost always a story of national development: Students learn about the original inhabitants of the Americas, their conquest by European explorers, the colonization of the Eastern seaboard, the fight for independence from Britain, and the development of the new nation- increasing prosperity, industrialization, geographic expansion, and the extension of rights and opportunities to new sections of the population. The historical figures children encounter from a young age are people who playa role (albeit sometimes mythical) in this story of progress and national development- Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Betsy Ross, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King,jr. Sometimes the nation's past is presented in a positive light, and sometimes it is portrayed more critically-but whether positive or negative, history in the United States is invariably the history of us, the history of our nation. Learning about others-about medieval Europe or ancient China or the Malian empire or even the Aztecs- is rarely a part of young children's encounter with history; such peoples are not often represented in school, in historic sites or in the media. (In many states, students finally study world history at school in grade 6 or 7.) The classrooms in the U.S. portion of this study did not differ substantially from this pattern: Although the teachers used instructional methods that were considerably more open-ended and activity-oriented than typically found in the United States (and although they introduced history through personal and family history projects-also a deviation from common U.S. patterns), the curricular content to which students were exposed largely still revolved around a narrative of national development.

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It's little surprise, then, that U.S. students see history as a way of forming identity, for not only their own families but also impersonal public forums tell them stories of origins. The personal transmission of historical knowledge, combined with the story of national development that children encounter all around them, encourages them to see all history as their own story: Their relatives tell them about their own past and that of their family, and schools and the rest of society tell them about the past of their country. These two stories may become connected as students hear about their relatives' participation in the Vietnam War, or the U.S. Civil Rights movement, or the expanded opportunities for women during World War II. All history is about us, and children make the logical connection between the we of family histories and the we of the national past; they rarely encounter historical content that is not related to either personal or national identity, and the connection between the two requires little imagination. As this study and others demonstrate, U.S. students from a wide variety of backgrounds consciously and explicitly relate history to their sense of identity (VanSledright, 1997; Barton & Levstik, 1998; Hahn, 1999). But the relationship between history and identity in Northern Ireland is more complicated, not least because it involves highly charged political issues. Although children in Northern Ireland also learn about history from relatives, they experience a fundamental discontinuity between their personal and family histories and much of the history they find presented in the rest of society. Outside home, the public forums to which young children are exposed generally avoid suggesting that they identify personally with the history they see represented. In the media, for example, children rarely encounter topics related to the history of the north ofIreland: Television programs, movies, and books are produced in England or the United States, and few deal with topics children might identify with directly-the history they encounter in the media is invariably about others. 7 The historic sites prevalent in Northern Ireland also distance history from present-day issues or a sense of identity. Many date from prehistoric eras (burial mounds or stone circles, for example) and these are the work of people so far removed in time that it is difficult to think of them as the forerunners of modern society- as an older version of "us." But even more recent sites are presented to the public in such a way that their connections to the present-particularly their role in English-Irish relations- are obscured. Those that focus on the last 200 years, for example, typically emphasize social history-how people lived and worked-rather than political events or social movements. Even sites closely linked to political developments present those events as a matter of chronology- simply listing a series of confrontations-rather than tying them together into an overall story. As presented to the public, historic sites in Northern Ireland do not represent components in a story of national development the way Colonial Williamsburg, Independence Hall, or Civil War battle sites do in the United States.

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Particularly notable is the content of the pre-secondary school curriculum in Northern Ireland. Unlike in the United States, students do not study a narrative of national development-they do not learn about the people or events that led to the creation of modern-day Northern Ireland. Most of the topics they study (both those required by the National Curriculum and those in popular supplementary units) focus on people far removed in time or spaceVikings, Mesolithic people or Ancient Egyptians. In addition, instruction emphasizes using historical skills such as the analysis and interpretation of evidence rather than retaining the details of specific historical narratives; indeed, throughout the United Kingdom, both historians and educators often distrust narrative history as "an unacademic, slightly immature and unreliable mode of analysis" (Husbands, 1996, p. 46). Even when students encounter topics where connections to the present are more immediate- in units focusing on the Irish Famine, Victorian Life, or daily life during World War II- the emphasis remains on reaching conclusions about what life was like at the time, rather than on studying how the events of a given period led to the structure of contemporary society. School, the media, and historic sites, then, all avoid making connections between history and national identity. They focus instead on antiquity, on social history, or on strict chronology. This lack of attention to the development of the current social and political structure of the region is hardly surprising, for there are two conflicting historical narratives in Northern Ireland-one Unionist and one Nationalist-and they are opposed at nearly every point. To tell a story of national development would mcan making choices between the two, and doing so would have serious political consequences-denunciation, loss of funding, and very possibly violence. Many educators in Northern Ireland argue that institutions such as schools and museums should tackle controversial issues by holding the competing national narratives up to rational and public scrutiny, so that children and adults could make more informed decisions in the region's highly charged political atmosphere (e.g., Gallagher, 1998; McCully, 1999). But in most public institutions in Northern Irelandparticularly those to which young children an~ most often exposed-the price for examining stories of the nation's recent history is simply too high, and thus these institutions bypass the issue by focusing on the distant past, on social history, and on chronology. The public settings in which children are likely to be encouraged to identify with stories of the national past, on the other hand, are explicitly sectarianmarches, demonstrations, memorials, or meetings of overtly or implicitly political organizations. The current political conflict is inextricably linked to issues of identity, and these issues often revolve around history. The 1641 rebellion, the Siege of Derry, Penal Laws, and Bloody Sunday- for many people, these historical events and others provide crucial elements of their sense of self (Buckley & Kenney, 1995;Jarman, 1998). The students in this study, though, demonstrated no overt familiarity with Unionist or Nationalist stories of the

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national past: They almost never mentioned such perspectives during interviews or classroom observations, even when asked if they could think of important people or events from history. There are a number of possible explanations for this absence: Students may not have felt comfortable expressing such perspectives to an outsider; they may not have associated sectarian figures and events with the kinds of history they were asked about in a school setting; they may have been less politicized than students from more overtly sectarian neighborhoods in urban centers; or perhaps children's identification with sectarian perspectives on the past develops later in adolescence. But regardless of the reasons for the absence of Nationalist or Unionist historical perspectives in these students' responses, it is clear that the connection they made between history and identity was much weaker than among U.S. students, who are practically incapable of discussing the past without using words like we, us and our. In the United States, then, nearly all sources of historical information for children reinforce the idea that history is about "us": Schools, television, families, holidays, museums- all tell the story of the national past and encourage students to locate themselves within that story. Personal and public history are one and the same, and even historical controversies in the United States revolve around identity-they are debates about who we are and how we got to be here. And, as this research shows, children develop this sense of identity from a young age: By fourth and fifth grade, students have come to believe that history tells them who they are and where they fit into national life. But in Northern Ireland, personal and public history do not reinforce each other; the public history young children encounter at school, in museums, or in the media is not usually connected to the experiences of their families or their communities. This is the crucial variable that accounts for the differences in students' understanding of the purpose for learning history in the United States and Northern Ireland. The discontinuity between personal and public history leads students in Northern Ireland to enter adolescence believing that the purpose of history is to learn about other people and how they lived. But in the United States, the similarity of personal and national history leads students to think the subject should focus on the origins of themselves and the society of which they are a part.

Discussion and implications The practical implications of this study are especially important, for history provides fertile ground for ongoing and contentious debate in both Northern Ireland and the United States-and not only among academics, but in society at large. These debates are inextricably connected to conceptions of appropriate educational practice. Yet in neither country are such discussions grounded in a firm base of evidence about how children's ideas develop. In the United States, adults are widely skeptical about the historical knowledge of children- they are more likely to dismiss them as ignorant of history than to take their ideas seriously. In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, adults often

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assume that children know too much about history-that they learn sectarian stories of the national past "at their mother's knee" (Stewart, 1977, p. 16; Byrne, 1997), and that these perceptions last throughout their lives. Both these perspectives lead to a certain pessimism about the potential for teaching history to children-in the United States because they don't know enough to pursue the topic meaningfully, in Northern Ireland because their ideas are so deeply embedded that instruction is unlikely to have much influence. Studies such as those reported here can provide a means of testing these assumptions and evaluating the extent to which prior learning influences children's encounter with history. For educators in the United States, one of the most encouraging findings of this research-consistent with studies such as those by Brophy, VanSledright, & Bredin (1993) and Levstik and Barton (1996)-is that children from a young age are interested in and knowledgeable about history. By fourth grade, children have learned about the past from a variety of sources outside school, they have actively begun to seek out historical information, and they consciously think of themselves as historically interested and aware individuals. Moreover, this study shows that history can be more than an amusing diversion: It can become a critical source of children's identity-a means of defining who they are and oftheir place in a larger community. When classroom experiences build on children's backgrounds-by engaging them in the study of personal and family histories, for example, and by linking those stories to larger issues and patterns in the nation's past-history becomes a highly relevant and personally meaningful field of study. Indeed, as reflected in the comments of several students in this study, the insights gained from historical study can provide a guide to action in the present. This is not to suggest that simple exposure to historical content will magically achieve such lofty goals: Crafting a relevant and meaningful approach to history requires that educators engage in an ongoing and reflective attempt to link instruction to students' lives, and to do so in a way that allows students to see the connections between their own identities and those they share with others. Guidelines for such an attempt lie beyond the purpose of this paper, although a number of authors have begun to suggest ways educators might initiate this process (Seixas, 1993b; Kobrin, 1996; Levstik & Barton, 1997). But in a country where disparate groups struggle to find common ground, and where public discourse and participatory citizenship appear to be in a state of crisis, educators should be encouraged by the fact that history can help students think through critical issues of identity and social relations. At the same time, U.S. educators must consider the limitations of history that focuses too exclusively on identity. Stories of who we are typically also become stories of who we aren't: Establishing loyalty to a community usually means defining others as lying outside that group. Such exclusiveness may be useful when trying to establish pride in the unique experiences of a particular community, but when the past of an entire nation is under consideration, narratives that focus only on limited sections of the population will exclude

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many whose experiences deserve to be recognized. In the United States, the story of the nation's past has for too long ignored or minimized the role of women, minorities, and working people, and as a result national history-and national identity-have been equated with the limited interests of a small segment of its citizens. In this study, students' explanations that studying immigration and the Civil Rights movement teaches us how to treat them suggests the limited horizon of their sense of American identity. History educators in the United States, then, must consider not only how to link history to students' identities, but also how to expand their ideas about the relationship between history and identity. That would mean, first, overcoming the exclusiveness that accompanies stories of the nation's past: Instruction should systematically portray the diversity in U.S. history-not simply by including a more varied set of characters into the traditional story of settlement, expansion, and technological progress, but by emphasizing how diverse people have interacted-workers and owners, women and men, and people of diverse geographic origins. By studying how complex the varieties of American identity have been (and continue to be), students may be less likely to equate that identity with a single story or a particular segment of the population. In addition, students would benefit from learning how the concept of American identity itself has been contested over time; that is, they should learn not only about the role of women or ethnic and religious minorities in history, but also how people have sought to be included as part of the nation's story-and how others have fought to have them excluded. A diHerent set of challenges faces educators in Northern Ireland. There, too, students encounter history from an early age, but perhaps the most encouraging conclusion of this study is that such history does not revolve exclusively around sectarian stories of the nation's past-indeed, those stories are avoided in most of the public forums in which young children learn about history. Primary students' belief that the purpose of history is to learn not about their own past, but about people who are different, should be a highly significant finding, for developing students' understanding of and respect for cultural differences has been a statutory objective of both primary and secondary schooling in Northern Ireland throughout the past decade (Northern Ireland Curriculum Council, 1990; Smith & Robinson, 1996). In a country beset by conflict between members of differing religious communities, this effort constitutes a critical educational objective: Students are unlikely to overcome the long-standing intercommunity tensions in Northern Ireland unless they grow up recognizing that people different from themselves also deserve to be treated with dignity and respect-the "parity of esteem" that has become a ubiquitous but elusive watchword in the region. Primary students' developing historical interest in the lives of people different from themselves might provide a solid foundation for a lifelong commitment to a diverse society. But ironically, secondary educators in Northern Ireland do not always perceive the children who come to them as being either knowledgeable about

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or receptive to studying history at school, and only a minority of students continue to enroll in it once the subject is no longer required. What accounts for the pessimistic viewpoint of some educators, and for the apparent diminution of students' interest in history as they proceed through the secondary history curriculum? In Northern Ireland, the potential for the subject to lapse into irrelevance is perhaps thc greatest obstacle to sustaining students' interest. Although continuing to learn about distant societies would match their initial interests and expectations, once the creative and hands-on activities of the primary years~making Viking ships and World War II ration cards, and visiting burial mounds and round towers~give way to more formal study, students may not be able to sustain their interest without an expanded rationale for pursuing the subject. The need for a deepened appreciation of history's purpose is particularly crucial during the years of secondary schooling, for those years are a time of strong pressure to identify with sectarian viewpoints, including the politicized and divisive perspectives on the national past that provide much of the substance and justification of such views. Under those circumstances, "school history" stands in danger of being eclipsed by more immediate, more personally relevant, presentations of the past: The glorified story of the oppression or triumph of one's own community may have a more powerful appeal to young adolescents than the academic study of distant times and places~unless such study also has a compelling rationale. The challenge for secondary educators, if they are to sustain students' interest while also improving community relations, is to capitalize on children's prior interest while engaging them in a consideration of why history might provide enduring interest and relevance for contemporary society. If history in the secondary curriculum remains a purely "academic" topic, it seems unlikely to fulfill this goal. The findings of this research should be of particular interest to history educators in the United States and Northern Ireland, but its comparative aspects also point to broader international implications. As Hahn's (1998) work on political understanding demonstrates, cross-national comparisons can help illustrate the underlying premises that guide teaching and learning~premises held so completely yet unconsciously that they may blind us to alternative ways of conceptualizing the process by which students develop understanding either within or outside formal educational institutions. By exploring similar questions in diffcrcnt national settings, we can gain a more complete picture of the range of variation in children's thinking, as well as a b etter understanding of the process by which that thinking is related to social and cultural contexts. The two studies reported here are particularly useful for promoting reflection on the history curriculum, for the perspectives of children in the United States and Northern Ireland are to some extent mirror images of each other: Although they have learned about history in similar settings, they have drawn nearly opposite conclusions about the nature and purpose of historical study. The contrasting features of these conclusions throw into sharp relief the undcrlying

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premises of historical representation in each location and provide the opportunity to rethink prevailing assumptions about the aims of history instruction. For educators outside these two countries, this research might prompt more careful consideration of the reasons for teaching history to children. It is tempting to regard history's purpose in largely unproblematic terms. Scholars sometimes write as though the question of "what history is for" is a settled issue, or they may distinguish between popular and academic uses of the past- the proper goal of schooling being the latter. As this research shows, though, ideas about the "proper" goals of history can differ dramatically in different national settings, and these ideas are bound up with a range of social, cultural and political factors. Moreover, even when teachers and other educators do not explicitly address the purpose of history, children develop a set of logical and consistent ideas around the topic- and these too differ cross-nationally. If not only historical representations but also children's perceptions of history are socially constructed, educators would do well to reflect on whether those constructions are consistent with the broader purposes they hope to achieve through the subject. Instead of taking the purpose of history for granted (or simply ignoring the issue) educators might consider what implicit messages they send and whether those represent the most meaningful uses of history in their own contexts. The research reported here might inspire educators in a variety of roles- classroom teachers, curriculum developers, museum personnel, etc.-to take responsibility for crafting an approach to history that is consistent with the needs of their societies, rather than abdicating that responsibility through deference to academic historians, politicians, or publishers of texts.

Conclusions The research reported here illustrates, in part, how children in Northern Ireland and the United States construct their understanding of the nature and purpose of history, and it suggests that those constructions are related to differing historical representations in the two countries. In both, children are surrounded by history-not only at school, but in the media, at museums and historical sites, and through the stories their families tell. And long before they begin secondary school, children think of themselves as historically conscious individuals: They know about history, they're interested in it, and they want to learn more. The differing representations of the past in the two societies, however, lead students to nearly opposite conclusions about its purpose. Influenced by stories that connect themselves, their families, and their country, students in the United States conclude that history is important so that they will know who they are-both individually and in the context of the broader society. In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, stories of the origin and development of contemporary political and social relations are too controversial to present in primary schools and most other public institutions, and few chil-

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dren's books or television programs focus on the region; as a result, students conclude that the purpose of history is to learn about others and how they lived. In both countries, history is the subject of ongoing discussion and disagreement; in both, the past forms the basis for fundamental conflicts about where society has been and, by implication, where it is going (or should go, or can go). Children's interest in history provides educators with the opportunity to prepare them to enter intelligently into these debates- in Northern Ireland, by building on their interest in the lives of people who are different, and in the United States, by helping them understand the origins of the society of which they are a part. At the same time, educators should carefully consider how their curriculum can avoid the obstacles to such refinement in children's thinking. In the United States, this might be accomplished by acquainting students with the relationship between diversity and identity in history and by helping them understand how perceptions of identity have been negotiated throughout the nation's past. In Northern Ireland, students might be given the opportunity to consider the contemporary relevance of historical study in the face of potentially compelling sectarian viewpoints. In both countries- and elsewhereeducators' understanding of the potential for historical study with children can be broadened by considering the range of ideas about the purpose of historical study that exist in differing national contexts.

Acknowledgements This research was funded in part by a fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Additional assistance was provided by the Cincinnati Branch of the English-Speaking Union and by the University of Ulster, Coleraine. The author would like to thank Harry McMahon and Alan McCully of the University of Ulster, Coleraine, for their generous assistance, as well as Vivienne Pollock and Pat McLean of the Ulster Museum, and the principals, headteachers, teaching staff, and students of the participating schools. This paper has benefited immensely from thc insightful comments of Alan McCully, Linda Levstik, Bruce VanSledright, Margaret Crocco, and Stephen Thornton.

Notes 1. Research methods for this study are described in Chs. 8 and 15 of this volume. 2. Although the U.S. portion of the study is more limited in scope-focusing on only two grade levels and two classrooms-its generalizations are supported by their congruence with several other studies of the source and nature of U.S. children's knowledge of history, as noted throughout the paper. 3. All students' names have been replaced with pseudonyms to protect their privacy and that of their families . 4. Children in Northern Ireland begin school a year earlier than kindergartners in the United States; thus a student in primary grade 4 (P4) is equivalent in age to a U.S.

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second-grader, and the fourth- and fifth-graders in the U.S. portion of this study are equivalent to P6/P7 students in Northern Ireland. Grade designations in Northern Ireland also differ by one year from those in the rest of the United Kingdom: A primary grade 4 student in this study would be equivalent to a primary grade 3 student in England. The first year of secondary schooling in Northern Ireland is designated in this paper as year 8 (the equivalent of sixth grade in the United States). 5. A number of North American studies have reported similar findings on the importance offamilies and the media both as sources of children's historical knowledge and as influences on their conceptualization of the nature and meaning of the past (see, for example, Brophy ct al., 1993; Seixas, 1993a; Levstik & Barton, 1996; Epstein, 1998). 6. Other U.S. studies have yielded strikingly consistent portraits of the relationship between students' understanding of history an d their sense of national identity (see, e.g., VanSledright, 1997; Barton & Levstik, 1998; Hahn & Hughes, 1998). 7. As citizens of the United Kingdom, many people in Northern Ireland (especially Protestants) think of themselves as British, but the British media rarely reciproeatethat is, British media sources rarely integrate Northern Ireland into their stories of the British past, and thus children do not often see their ancestors portrayed as part of that past. Similarly, many works of historical fiction are published in the Republic of Ireland, and these might form a means of identification for Catholic children in particular, but such books rarely focus on Northern Ireland, and their distribution there pales in comparison to those by British or U.S. authors. Irish television also receives only limited reception in Northern Ireland, and much of its programming originates in Britain or the United States.

References Barton, K. C. (1996). Narrative simplifications in elementary children's historical understanding. In]. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on teaching: Vol. 6. Teaching and learning in history (pp. 51-83). Greenwich, CT:JAI Press. Barton, K. C. (1997a). "I just kinda know": Elementary students' ideas about historical evidence. 7heory and Research in Social Education, 25, 407- 30. Barton, K . C. (1997b). History- It can be elementary: An overview of elementary children's understanding of history. Social Education, 61, 13- 16. Barton, K. C. (2001). History education and national identity in Northern Ireland and the United States. 7heory into Practice, 40, 48-54. Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (1996). "Back when God was around and everything": The development of children's understanding of historical time. American Educational ResearchJoumal, 33, 4 19-54. Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (1998). "It wasn't a good part of history": Ambiguity and identity in middle grade students' judgments of historical significance. Teachers College Record, 99,478-513. Booth, M. (1984). Skills, concepts, and attitudes: the development of adolescent children's historical thinking, History and 7heory, 22, 10 I- I 7. Brophy,]., & VanSledright, B. (1997). Teaching and learning history in elementary schools. New York: T eachers College Press. Brophy,]., VanSledright, B., & Bredin, N. 1993). ( What do entering fifth graders know about U.S. history? Journal qfSocial Studies Research, 16117, 2- 19. Brown, ]. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning, E,aucational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42 .

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Buckley, A. D., & Kenney, M. C. (1995) Negotiating identity: Rhetoric, metaphor, and social drama in Northern Ireland. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Byrne, S. (1997). Growing up in a divided sociefJ: The influence ofconflict on Belfast schoolchildren. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Carretero, M.,jacott, L., Limon, M., Lopez-Manjon, A., & Leon,]. A. (1994). Historical knowledge: Cognitive and instructional implications. In]. F. Voss & M. Carretero (Eds.), Cognitive and instructional process in history and the social sciences (pp. 35 7~ 76). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Cole, M. (1998). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Epstein, T. (1998). Deconstructing differences in African-American and EuropeanAmerican adolescents' perspectives on U.S. history. Curriculum Inquiry, 28, 397--423. Gallagher, C. (1998, April). The future of history! A pleaJor relevance. Paper presented at the Schools History Project Conference, Leeds, England. Gelman, R., & Baillargeon, R. (1983). A review of some Piagetian concepts. In]. H. Flavell &. E. M. Markman (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology, vol. 4: Cognitive development(pp. 167~230).l\ew York: Wiley. Hahn, C. (1998). Becoming political: Comparative perspectives on citizenship education. Albany, :'\JY: State University ofN ew York Press. Hahn, C. (1999). Challenges to civic education in the United States. In]. Torney-Purta, ]. Schwille, &]. Amadeo, (Eds.), Civic education across countries: Twenty jOur national case studiesfrom the lEA Civic Education Project (pp. 583~607). Amsterdam, Netherlands: The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Hahn, C., & Hughes, M. (1998) The lEA Civic Education Project, phase I in the United States: Overview to the project and teaching and learning about democracy, political institutions, citizenship, and national identifJ. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA. Husbands, C. (1996). T+'hat is history teaching? Language. ideas and meaning in learning about the past. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. jarman, N. (1998). lvlaterial conflicts: Parades and visual displays in Northern Ireland. New York: Berg. Kammen, M. (1991). l'vfystic chords ofmemory: The traniformation oftradition in American culture. ]\"ew York: Vintage Books. Kobrin, D. (1996). Beyond the textbook: Teaching history using documents and primary sources. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Lave,]. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lee, P., & Ashby, R. (2001). Empathy, perspective taking and historical understanding. In O. L. Davis,jr., E. A. Yeager, & S.]. Foster (Eds.), IIistorical empat~~ and perspective taking in the social studies (pp. 21 ~50). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Levine,]. M., Resnick, L. B., & Higgins, E. T. (1993). Social foundations of cognition. Annual Review ofPsychology, 44, 585~612. Levstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (1996). "They still usc some of their past": Historical salience in children's chronological thinking. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 28, 5 31 ~ 76. Lcvstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (1997). Doing history: Investigating with children in elementary and middle schools. Mahwah, l'{J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Levstik, L. S., & Pappas. C. C. (1992). New directions for studying historical understanding. Theory and Research in Social Education, 20, 369~85.

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McCully, A. W. (1999, April). Teaching controversial issues as part qfthe peace process in Northern Ireland. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, April. Northern Ireland Curriculum Council. (1990). Cross-curricular themes: Guidance materials. Belfast, Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland Curriculum Council. Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press. Seixas, P. (I 993a). Historical understanding among adolescents in a multicultural setting. Curriculum Inquiry, 23, 301-27. Seixas, P. (1993b). The community of inquiry as a basis for knowledge and learning: the case of history. American Educational ResearchJournal, 30, 305-26. Seixas, P. (1994). Students' understanding of historical significance. Theory and Research in Social Education, 22, 281-304. Smith, A., & Robinson, A. (1996). Education for mutual understanding: The initial statutory years. Coleraine, Northern Ireland: Centre for the Study of Conflict, University of Ulster. Stewart, A. T. Q (1977). The narrow ground: Aspects qfUlster. 1909-1969. Belfast: Blackstaff Press. VanSledright, B. A. (1997). "And Santayana lives on": Students' views on the purposes for studying American history. Journal qfCurriculum Studies, 29, 529-57. VanSledright, B. A. (1997/1998). On the importance of historical positionality to thinking about and teaching history. International Journal qf Social Education, 12(2), 1-18. VanSledright, B. A., & Kelly, C. (1998). Reading American history: The influence of multiple sources on six fifth graders. Elementary SchoolJournal, 98, 239-65. Wellman, H. M., & Gelman, S. A. (1992). Cognitive development: Foundational theories of core domains. Annual Review qfPsychology, 43, 337-75. Wertsch,J. V. (1998). Mind as Action. New York: Oxford University Press. Wineburg, S. S. (1991). On the reading of historical texts: Notes on the breach between school and academy. American Educational ResearchJournal, 28, 495-519.

Chapter 17

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Linda S. Levstik

In one of those moments of sheer joy, my daughter and I stand on the edge of Olduvai Gorge in the Rift Valley, stunned by the immensity and beauty of the place. I keep a photograph of that moment in my office: mesas of every imaginable shade of red, brown, and orange fading into the distance, a thorn tree in the foreground, three impossibly vibrant yellow and red birds and, if your mind's eye is especially sharp, you might imagine the footsteps of our early ancestors trailing across a then-verdant landscape. Just after I snapped the photograph, the archaeologist working in the small museum at the Gorge joined us. In the course of our conversation he mentioned that the name Olduvai was actually a German corruption of the local name Oldupai. He talked about the importance of former president Julius Nyrere's emphasis on developing national and pan-African histories and how important it was for Tanzanians to locate themselves in both contexts, as well as in world history. From his perspective, history and archaeology could structure the post-colonial world for good or ill. In consequence, he argued, educators bore considerable responsibility for the breadth and accuracy of the historical perspectives they introduced to students-including in the names they gave to historic places. That conversation at the Gorge seems an appropriate way to introduce the two studies that follow, first because it reminds me of the exhilarations and tensions of cross-cultural work, and second, because the backdrop for the conversation makes clear the complexity of "understanding" history across different settings. And both these studies are about complexity: The complexities of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research as well as those of historical thinking in different cultural and disciplinary contexts. The first study took me to New Zealand, or, to be more precise, an opportunity to go to New Zealand led me to the study. My college participates in an overseas student teaching consortium. Supervision assignments rotate among members of the consortium, and my sabbatical leave coincided with an opportunity to supervise students in Christchurch, New Zealand. I applied as a visiting scholar at our partner institution there, hoping to combine supervision and research responsibilities. Conducting research in another country presents

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interesting challenges, not least of which involves negotiating different institutional research review procedures. The layers of approval required by my university's Institutional Review Board seemed cumbersome to my colleagues in New Zealand, where simpler procedures apply, and the entire process took much longer than I had anticipated. The kind of informed consent required of study participants and their parents also struck some parents as odd, and one father described the process as indicative of American litigiousness. All of this added to my concern that prospective research sites would be put off by the paperwork load and perceive the project as an instance of American intrusiveness. Further complicating matters, I sought access to a student population relatively representative of New Zealand's cultural as well as economic diversity. In the end, four schools agreed to participate, as did a diverse enough group of students to make the work possible. I would never have had such access had it not been for my colleagues in Christchurch who helped me avoid the more egregious errors of cross-cultural and long-distance communication. With paperwork and school sites in place, I considered how to negotiate cultural differences. I knew from previous experience that New Zealanders tended to be polite but cautious with Americans, waiting, one Kiwi colleague told me, to see what kind of American they were dealing with. She thought students might respond similarly. In later interviews students did express mixed feelings about the United States. They wanted to visit (especially Disneyland), were eager to ask me about my country, but weren't happy about what they described as bullying behavior by the U.S. government. Of equal concern to me was how students might perceive me and my questions in relation to New Zealand's internal racial and ethnic differences. Not only did I want to make sure the timeline task I developed for the study fairly represented different histories, I wanted to position myself in such a way that students would be comfortable talking to me. In the United States I rely on my role as a teacher educator, inviting students to share their thinking so that future teachers will be better prepared to teach in more interesting ways. Most American students respond to this opportunity with enthusiasm. As a foreigner entering New Zealand's schools I thought I might need a more locally relevant entry point. I tested several alternatives on my colleagues in New Zealand, finally deciding to capitalize on my foreignness. I decided to ask students to develop a timeline best suited to helping me or another foreigner understand the history of New Zealand. As Keith noted in regard to his work in Northern Ireland, capitalizing on outsider status turns out to be an excellent entree on several levels. Most importantly, students took time to explain how "difference" operated in their history and in their country. Maori and Pacific Islander students, in particular, clarified cultural references and terms (Pakeha, for European New Zealanders, for instance), family structures (genealogies traced back to the boats that brought the first Maori to the islands), and the like. Being foreign also allowed me to more logically request clarification. I wasn't expected to understand, that was why I was there, and, as has been the case in

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most of my interviews with children, they wanted me to get it right. In retrospect, too, I think this stance resonated with New Zealanders' sense that, as one student explained, Kiwis 'Just might have something to teach the rest of the world." My foreigner stance explained my presence to the students; it also established students' role as cultural informants rather than tcst subjccts- and that seemed to appcal to most of them. Equally important, the timeline task works well cross-culturally. The combination of text and image gives students enough information to generate discussion and debate, the need to negotiate with group members usually absorbs more of students' attention than does the interviewer, and the task leaves students eager to participate in the follow-up interviews. I In two schools, students' enthusiasm led their teachers to spend midmorning breaks trying out and discussing the timeline. I had planned to donate books to the libraries at each school; at the teachers' request, I added a set of pictures so that they could use them with the rest of their students after I left- a pattern I followed latcr in Ghana. I also added another section to international interviews as a result of two teachers' invitation to meet with their classes to explain my work and, as it turned out, field a fascinating array of questions about history, New Zealand, and the enited States. I couldn't use these conversations in my New Zealand research- they only occurred in two classes towards the end of my data collection. I could, however, add an opportunity for students to interview the interviewers when I conducted similar research in Ghana. In retrospect, it seems only fair to open interviews to student questions. Over the years students have asked all sorts of questions after the tape stopped rolling, but I engaged in those conversations without thinking of them as a source of data. In an international context, however, answering questions seemed not just a courtesy, but an interesting entree into students' thinking. Any number of factors can influence students' responses during interviews, but cross-cultural research raises important questions about the extent to which "insiders" explain themselves to "outsiders" as well as the extent to which outsiders understand those explanations. In a later, parallel, study in Ghana (Levstik & Groth, 2005),jeanette Groth and I thought students might respond better to a Ghanaian interviewer, but in pilot testing we found that students responded in more detail when they were asked to talk about their history to us as foreigners. In the end, we used that technique for our study. W e did find that students' choices for the timeline reflected their desire to offer a positive view of their history (omitting the slave trade, for instance). Indeed, several students told us in the interviews that they omitted "bad" things from history. When we asked them why others might make different selections, however, students offered detailed explanations of the historical significance of "bad" things and why Ghanaians (if not Americans) needed to know about them. When I reported on the New Zealand research at a research conference, a Maori woman in the audience raised the question of cultural outsiders conducting interviews, arguing that Maori children would not talk freely to an

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outsider. Similar questions arise in regard to interviews with U.S. students whose race, gender, or ethnicity differs from the interviewers'. Undoubtedly, children respond differently to different interviewers, probably especially in cross-cultural settings. Some things are never shared with outsiders, and some questions "read" very differently in different settings, and even with different intonation, volume, and body language. At best, any interviewer ends up with one piece of a much larger picture. This needn't militate against cross-cultural research; rather, it reminds us that we are engaged in an ongoing conversation that is enriched by cultural humility as well as by diverse perspectives. Maori students in the New Zealand study had a great deal to say about New Zealand history and the intersections between Maori and Pakeha histories. They might well have said more or said things differently had the interviewer also been Maori. We would certainly end up with a fuller accounting of children's thinking if we could triangulate across different interviewer / interviewee combinations. Two notes of caution in this regard: First, apparent similarities in race, gender, ethnicity, or class between researcher and students may not match students' self-identifications. Second, within-group differences, and differences in interviewing skills, complicate any easy assumptions about pairing interviewers and interviewees. The more I study children's thinking about history in different contexts, the more I want to explore these differences and consider how students in different settings and with different people employ history for different aims and purposes. In teaching history, even more so than in conducting research, we cannot assure cultural (or racial, gender, or class) matches between students and teachers. We might, however, prepare more culturally astute teachers by attending to how students explain themselves and their thinking in different contexts and we might better prepare cosmopolitan students interested in and committed to crossing the borders that keep us strangers to one another (Appiah, 2006). As Keith and I compared our separate studies in Northern Ireland and New Zealand, and later, Ghana, the idea that history could best be understood and taught solely as a disciplinary form became less and less useful. History served such different purposes in each of the countries where we studied. The purportedly dispassionate, analytical stance so often offered up as "real" history described only a small portion of the historical work we had investigated. In my early work I conceptualized history teaching and learning as part of a progression from less mature to more mature historical understanding (see for instance, the classroom studies in Chapters 2 and 3). As educators we always hope for more mature, sophisticated intellectual development. But I wasn't satisfied that the features of early historical response observed in the classrooms I had studied were inherently immature expressions of historical thinking. Rather, they appeared to persist over time in more or less sophisticated/mature forms. Wertsch's (1998) work was particularly useful in this regard. Wertsch describes historical inquiry and historical narratives as cultural tools employed to make sense of the past. They don't exist "out there" and they serve more

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than historians' purposes. In New Zealand, for instance, the history (and, more broadly, social studies) curriculum focuses on historical inquiry to inform participatory citizenship, develop and express sub-national as well as national identities, and recognize different current and historic perspectives. Ghanaian curriculum also focuses on citizenship, but emphasizes historically informed discussion about national and pan-African and global development, rather than student inquiry into those issues. Each nation offers its children a past shaped by current concerns and future goals as well as cultural conceptions of the nature of history and history pedagogy. To a large extent, then, research on children's historical thinking investigates the ways in which students appropriate or resist these cultural constructions of history and analyzes the affordances and constraints of the tools available to students for that purpose at a particular moment in time. Immediately after returning from New Zealand, I attended a conference at which Wertsch, among others, spoke. I'd read his paper (Wertsch, 2000) for the conference on the flight from Auckland and looked forward to conversation around some of the issues he raised regarding official and unofficial histories or, as he characterized the problem, "knowing but not believing" official histories and "believing but not knowing" unofficial histories (p. 39). Jet-lagged as I was, I found myself jotting down comparisons between the students with whom he worked in Estonia and those I had just left in New Zealand. An invitation to contribute to Historical Empathy and Perspective Taking in the Social Studies (Davis, Yeager, & Foster, 200 I) provided an opportunity to explore some of these issues in the context of my research in New Zealand. Equally important, the invitation offered an opportunity to address what I considered a confusion regarding perspective and empathy. Empatlry in regard to history makes me uncomfortable. While any number of human interactions might benefit from some degree of empathy, studying history requires quite a bit more- and less-than sharing the feelings of another, including an ability to identify relevant perspectives, to consider how those perspectives shaped human interaction, to recognize that we never fully comprehend the perspectives of other people separated from us by time and space, and interest sufficient to motivate any of this. Or, at least that's what I'd say now. At the time I developed the argument in the article that follows I rejected empathy as a useful descriptor, even though I'd used it myself on more than one in-print occasion. Instead, I described students' attempts to understand others' perspectives as perspective-taking. That really didn't get me very far. The point wasn't getting students to take perspectives. Quite the opposite. The historical issue had to do with the extent to which students could or would consider perspectives as anything other than an extension of their own thinking about the past. Eventually, I settled on perspective recognition and, most recently, Keith and I argued for perspective recognition motivated by care (Barton & Levstik, 2004). In any case, as I analyzed the New Zealand data it seemed to me that students' willingness to contemplate, much less examine, different perspectives shifted markedly depending on how students perceived

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their own intersecting geopolitical, ethnic, and racial affiliations. In the first study that follows, you will notice, for instance, that the students' tolerance for different perspectives increases with distance-and decreases as they try to use history to help resolve local differences. This is particularly clear in the discussion of land claims, where students' conceptions of fairness run up against a history of land appropriation, sale, and resale. As they try to decide how land might be more fairly apportioned, some Pakeha students worry about the consequences ofliving on land once "owned" by Maori. For them, the potential personal cost of "fairness"- some sort of equal distribution ofland-frustrates their attempts at bicultural harmony. It would be interesting to more fully investigate this pattern with different topics and in different settings. The second study that follows drew me back to the edge of the Rift Valley and archaeological ways of making sense of the past. I slid sideways into archaeology following an invitation to evaluate an archaeology education program in Kentucky.l first worked with the Kentucky Archaeological Survey (KAS) some time ago when KAS invited my graduate seminar to develop curriculum for a historic archaeological site, the Jack Jouett House. Developing curriculum offered an interesting opportunity for my students to apply research on children's historical thinking to a related field, think about planning more meaningful field trips, and learn more about historical and archaeological work. In addition to reading research on children's historical thinking, my students scoured the literature for work on archaeology education. They located suggestions on how to teach archaeologists' processes, but no research specific to children's engagement with interpreting archaeological evidence. In consequence, I'd say the curriculum they developed emphasized historical rather than archaeological documentation and interpretation. It introduced students to elements of material culture, but failed to establish the Jack Jouett House as anything other than a narrative stage- a backdrop, not evidence crucial to making sensc of a historical moment. After working on theJackJouett House, I occasionally puzzled over ways to better introduce students to archaeology to deepen their historical thinking. More often, however, my daughter's work as an archaeologist in Arizona fueled my interest in and experiences with archaeology. Visits to Arizona included excursions to archaeological sites that spurred reading and conversation as well as comparisons between historical and archaeological work. By the time Gwynn Henderson from KAS contacted me, I had a few nascent ideas about archaeology's connection to history, but I hadn't really considered formally exploring them. Gwynn, on the other hand, had accumulated considerable experience developing and implementing archaeology education programs. In addition to programs bringing students to local archaeological sites, she and her colleagues visit schools across Kentucky, participate in on-site demonstrations, and train teachers to participate in Project Archaeology, a national program designed to encourage children and adolescents to appreciate and preserve the material past (Smith, Moe, Letts, & Patterson, 1993). After years of

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such efforts, KAS wanted to evaluate their educational programming. Students seemed to enjoy archaeology programs, but what did they actually learn from these experiences? In addition, Gwynn explained that some archaeologists and archaeology educators worried that including students in field work created more problems than it solved. Students might well become more interested in material culture, the argument ran, but they might also become interested in "pot-hunting" rather than site preservation. Indeed, I ran across just such an argument not long ago, when an archaeologist described the havoc wreaked by a centennial celebratory "excavation" conducted on the grounds of a local school. The archaeologist was convinced that the destructive "dig" was a consequence of heightened interest created by an archaeology education program at the school. While Gwynn and I certainly hope archaeology education supports preservation rather than indiscriminate looting or site destruction, to be included in the school curriculum , archaeology education would have to do much more than mitigate site degradation. Instead, we wanted baseline data: What happened when children engaged in archaeology education? What aspects of archaeology made sense to them? What purposes did they ascribe to such study, and how did that relate to their understanding of the past? What sense did they make of ethical issues related to studying and preserving the past? In what ways did students' understanding reflect teachers' and archaeologists' goals for archaeology or history/social studies education? For me, this last question represented one of the most interesting aspects of planning for the archaeology evaluation study. In one of our discussions, I asked Gwynn what she considered to be the purposes of archaeology- what made it worth doing, not only for archaeologists, but for children in schools? Gwynn provided a reading list to catch me up on different philosophies of archaeology and the debates that mark the field in regard to its nature and purposes, and she took my questions about purpose to her colleagues, eliciting lively input on the nature of archaeology and its connections to history and science. After collecting additional recommendations for background sources from my daughter and her colleagues, I started reading. Gwynn did the same in regard to research on historical thinking. \Ne met several times to talk about what we'd learned (or misconstrued) of each other's field, about the intersections and contrasts between them, and about what of all this children might find interesting, useful, or meaningful. Not only did our cross-disciplinary reading help us design a b etter study than either of us might have done otherwise, the need to carefully explain our individual areas of interest and expertise challenged us to be clear about what we already "knew" and why we thought we knew it. I find this part of cross-disciplinary research personally invigorating but also important to good study design. Reviews of the literature aren't just an exercise to prove that you've surveyed both fields, they are an opportunity to immerse yourself in an ongoing (or emerging) conversation. Asolid grasp of the literature helps establish a point of entry: Where will you join the conversation and what might your work contribute to it? Having an ongoing conversation in

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mind shapes the questions you ask, allows you to probe intelligently, and frames the data you collect and analyze. It is especially crucial in cross-disciplinary work because it provides a bridge between disciplines and an opportunity to discuss some of the subtleties and undercurrents in each. Of course, building workable cross-disciplinary research partnerships requires more than common readings, helpful as those are. Gwynn and I spent considerable time making sure we understood and agreed on the research procedures (see Chapter 19). Because we wanted to understand what sense children made of archaeology education, I suggested we identify a "best case" research site where children worked with a highly qualified teacher experienced in teaching archaeology. Based on my previous experience, I expected that a setting that maximized students' opportunities for active learning would allow us greater opportunity to observe student engagement and probe their thinking (see Chapter 1). Gwynn knew Jennie Schlarb, an elementary teacher who taught an extensive "hands-on" archaeology unit to all fifth-graders at her school, seemed comfortable with other adults in her room, and made substantial use of Project Archaeology lessons in her program. When she (and her principal) agreed to participate, we acquired a research site, a grade-level- and challenging time constraints. On the one hand,Jennie's unit lasted several weeks, and that gave us plenty of observation opportunities, including classroom activities, guest lectures, and work at an excavation site. On the other hand, the variety and length of activities argued for the necessity of daily observation, and neither Gwynn nor I could rearrange our teaching schedules to accommodate that. We decided to video tape on the days when we could not be there. I had used video taping in an eighth-grade study (Levstik & Groth, 1999) with good results, but I was a bit nervous about an ever-present camera in an unfamiliar (to me) fifth grade. The eighth-grade study involved students in a school for the creative and performing arts and students' enthusiasm for performance (usually) worked to my advantage. In addition, I was on-site every day, so that the camera served mainly as back-up data. Because the school setting for the archaeology study was more traditional, I worried that the camera might be too intrusive, or, conversely, so inconspicuous as to miss what was going on. As it turned out, so many adults worked in the classroom during the course of the study that students seemed hardly to notice the archaeologist-cum-camera-person who managed to capture class activity without disrupting it. As an observer, I think I more often found the number of adults and children in such a small space distracting than did the students. As one student assured me, when I worried about our intrusion, the level of activity was "normal" in this class. Interestingly, too, in followup interviews conducted three years later, students remembered all the activity as exciting and wished they'd experienced similar excitement in succeeding years. In the end, the tapes captured crucial data that helped explain some students' responses in the interviews. You will notice in the article, too, that in

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contrast to the curriculum my graduate students developed for the Jack Jouett House, Project Archaeology materials engaged students with archaeologists' processes almost to the exclusion of interpretation or narrative. In later interviews, then, students described archaeologists' work in considerable detail, but recalled relatively little about the history of the site they were excavating. In consequence, they also struggled to explain the larger significance of artifacts uncovered at the site (or elsewhere). They understood that artifacts "tell a story" but, lacking a more substantial historical framework, sometimes struggled to construct a coherent narrative . Video-taping solved one time-related dilemma; high stakes testing created another. We wanted to interview all participating fifth-graders at the completion of their archaeological study. Unfortunately, up-coming state assessments meant that we would have two days to interview over 70 students. Gwynn and I needed to find, recruit and train interviewers who knew enough about archaeology to use the protocol and probe intelligently. Gwynn recruited enough archaeologists to finish small group interviews in the time available. I trained the interviewers. Somehow I didn't think this would be all that complicated. Mter all, protocols structure the interviews; kids are endlessly fascinating and generally willing to talk, and we developed possible questions to ask if a protocol question didn't work or a response needed to be clarified. What could go wrong? We held training sessions, emphasizing the "no wrong answers" approach, practicing ways of talking that would reassure students, reminding interviewers that we were interested in how students thought and what students had to say, not what the interviewers knew or wanted to say. I trained interviewers to explain their role as archaeologists trying to figure out how to teach people about their field. They were to tell students that they, the archaeologists, needed to understand how fifth-graders thought about the things they were learning so that it could be better taught. Just as in the interviews in New Zealand, I thought it crucial to establish a situation in which students' educated the interviewers rather than having interviewers interrogating students. On the morning of the interviews we came prepared with enough tape recorders, tapes, and batteries, collections of artifacts and a stratigraphy diagram (a cross-section of an excavation site) for each interviewer. We assigned groups to (relatively) quiet places for the interviews. The students approached the interviews with excitement and some trepidation. In most groups the interviewers set them at ease and the interviews went smoothly. Sometimes an interviewer talked too much, or missed an opportunity to clarify a student response, but overall, they engaged in child-friendly talk and the students responded thoughtfully and enthusiastically. At the conclusion of the first round of interviews, the interviewers said they were exhausted and excited by the experience- surprised by what the students knew and by how hard it was not to intervene, expand on, or correct; frustrated by persistent misconceptions; and anxious to see if their initial perceptions held up over the rest of the interviews. Unfortunately, a couple of interviewers just couldn't trust the

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students to generate useful data. They signaled approval or disapproval of student responses, asked leading questions and generally rendered the data worthless. As I listened to the tapes, I groaned. A student would offer an answer, the interviewer made encouraging or discouraging remarks in response, the student altered his or her comments accordingly. Some shut down entirely. At one point an interviewer became frustrated with students' explanations of the term context, explained the term to them, and then repeated the questions regarding why context might be important in archaeology. From that point on, students responded in monosyllables, escaping the interview as soon as possible. These interviewers left convinced fifth-graders knew nothing about archaeology. Fortunately, the interviews came at the end of the project and involved "only" 12 students. Had we interviewed fewer students we could not have afforded such a loss. Clearly, even in one's own culture, interviewers can alienate children and take their silence for ignorance. Cross-cultural settings increase the possibility of miscommunication, but no setting is immune from this problem. In my experience, children enjoy the opportunity to be heard, and want to interact with other people. As Appiah (2006) argues, the problem of cross-cultural communication can seem immensely difficult in theory .... but ... when the stranger is no longer imaginary, but real and present, sharing a human social life ... if it is what you both want you can make sense of each other in the end. (pp. 98-99) Interviews with children, at their best, represent just such opportunitIes to "make sense of each other." Unfortunately, once children sense that an interviewer has "right answers" rather than "making sense of each other" in mind, an interview is lost. In the studies that follow, cross-cultural and cross disciplinary research offered opportunities to think more carefully about history as a cultural tool and what understanding history means in different contexts. The students in the archaeology study offered a telling comment as they compared archaeology to history. They described archaeology as investigatory, a process of finding and fitting the pieces of a puzzle together. History, on the other hand, struck them as a finished story- the product of archaeological or documentary investigation. The investigation appealed to them considerably more than learning finished stories. Nonetheless, students' notion of archaeology as investigatory contained significant limitations, influenced in part by the instructional metaphors and questions that framed their study. Archaeological study might be more interesting to them than history, but in the end, students expected to piece together exactly what they claimed history offered: a single story about the past. Interestingly, too, the questions that framed their study had less to do with understanding longevity and pattern in human experience, purposes claimed by archaeologists for their field, and more to do with learning how

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archaeologists might process artifacts. Similar patterns appear in many "primary source" lessons where students spend time learning to "read" a source rather than investigating the historical questions that might make the source worth reading. The question remains, then, how teachers might capitalize on students' enthusiasm for archaeological investigation in service of deeper understandings about the interaction of humans, tools, and environments over long stretches of time and space. Similarly, cross-cultural studies encourage humility regarding the conclusions we draw from research in any single culture. History- academic or otherwise- serves very different purposes in different contexts. Investigating across those contexts reminds us that development in historical thinking is not a stable progression, but the product of often contending aims and assumptions about how and what the past means in the present. Perhaps, then, one contribution research makes in regard to historical thinking is to help us carefully consider the consequences of the various histories to which children have access, not just in one cultural setting, but in global context.

Note 1. For an interesting discussion of the power of image and issues of representation, see Mitchell (1994), and for connections between art and cognition, see Eisner (2004).

References Appiah, K. A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world qfstrangers. New York: Norton. Barton, K. C. & Levstik, L. S. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Mahwah, l'{J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Davis, O. L.,jr., Yeager, E. A., & Foster, S.]. (2001). Historical empathy and perspective taking in the social studies. Rowman & Littlefield. Eisner, E. (2004). The arts and the creation qfmind. New Haven: Yale University Press. Levstik, L.S., & Groth,]. (2005). "Ruled by our own people": Ghanaian adolescents' conceptions of citizenship. Teachers College Record, 107, 563- 628. Levstik, L. S., & Groth,]. (2005). "Scary thing being an eighth-grader": Exploring gender and sexuality in a middle school U.S. history unit. Theory and Research in Social Education, 30,233-43.

Mitchell, W.]. T. (1994). Picture theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, S.]., Moe,]. M., Letts, K. A., & Patterson, D. M. (1993). Intrigue qf the past: A teacher's activity guide for fourth through seventh grades. Washington, DC: U. S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management. Wertsch,]. (1998). Mind as action. Oxford: OxJord University Press. Wertsch,]. (2000). Is it possible to teach beliefs, as well as knowledge about history? In P. Stearns, P. Seixas, and S. Wineburg (Eds.), Knowing teaching and learning history: National and international perspectives (pp. 38-50). New York: New York University Press.

Chapter 18

Crossing the empty spaces Perspective taking in New Zealand adolescents' understanding of national history

Linda S. Levstik

Learn your own history, because that is the basis on which your identity is built, and it is that which will allow you to get on living with one another, Maori, Pakeha, and Pacific Islanders... Then you wouldn't be worried whether or not we were bullying you because we are big and you are small. (Former U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand,Josiah Beeman)l

Ambassador Beeman's admonition to learn history provides an interesting point of departure for a discussion of historical thinking and perspective taking in an international context. To begin with, it is rich in irony. There are the oddities of that last sentence-are New Zealanders supposed to realize that they aren't being bullied, that size isn't the cause of the bullying, or that U.S. bullying isn't worth worrying over? Then there is the amazing claim that learning "your own history will allow you to get on living with one another." A brief review of his own country's troubled history in this regard might have given the Ambassador pause. Attention to the debate over the history curriculum in New Zealand should have brought him to a full stop. But the Ambassador is much like many others who assume that there is a universal history "out there" just waiting to be learned. He appears confident that such a framework will reconcile disparate groups and allow them to move on to more important things-"living with one another" rather than worrying about U.S. bullying, for instance. In practice, of course, history is a much messier enterprise than Ambassador Beeman seems to think. There is no single way of making sense of the past, especially in multicultural, post-colonial nations where groups and individuals calIon different historical narratives to either reinforce or overturn the status quo. As a growing number of studies show, ethnoracial, gender, family, and class affiliations influence historical understanding. 2 And, despite Ambassador Beeman's claims to the contrary, a nation's geoposition influences historical thinking. As I will suggest throughout this chapter, where a people perceive themselves to be situated globally-their relations with other nations and how distant from centers of power they feel themselves to be-shapes how history is perceived, taught,

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and learned. 3 Studying global as well as more local influences suggests alternatives to current conceptions of what it means to make sense of the past, and underscores the importance of cross-national comparisons of historical thinking, especially in regard to perspective taking.

A sociocultural perspective on historical thinking Cognitive theorists and researchers in other disciplines have argued for some time that cognitive development takes place within a sociocultural context that establishes the parameters of expert practice. 4 As learners move from novice to more expert practice they learn to use an array of cultural tools. In the act that we conceive of as historical thinking learners or agents exercise their agency through the use of the cultural tools available in social settings for particular purposes at a particular historical moment. 5 Of course cultural tools represent potential rather than actual activity. It is only through use that some portion of their potential is realized. In this sense, learning is a form of mediated action where the available cultural tools both facilitate and constrain practice. The term history applies to an array of such tools-asking historical questions, evaluating evidence, organizing events chronologically, building interpretations, creating historical narratives, and more. Each of these tools developed over time to meet particular social and cultural purposes related to making sense of the past. As a result, historical thinking is not so much an individual as a social act framed and constrained by elements which are themselves sociocultural constructs. Historical thinking develops in the interactions and tensions between and among thinkers, settings, means (tools), and purposes. Historians may privilege one set of cultural tools over another, or one purpose or stance toward history over another, but they are not the only members of society who need or want to make sense of the past. Various groups engender a sense of pride in community by recalling a past that not only explains communal roles and rules, but sustains and empowers groups and individuals in contemporary struggles.6 Through ceremonies and celebrations, arts, architecture, and artifacts, monuments and memorials, media and family practices, different groups send powerful and often contradictory messages about the meaning of the past. 7 Individuals, too, make personal use of the past. Some people derive pleasure from surrounding themselves with artifacts of the past, taking on the role of someone from the past, or simply knowing a great deal about a specific historical event or individual. Still others seek insight into human experience, or hope understanding the past will enable them to act more intelligently and humanely in the world. 8 Some simply want to understand how things came to be the way they are. Most people probably incorporate more than one of these stances in their understanding of history, appropriating some of the cultural tools sanctioned by historians while ignoring- or never being exposed to- others.

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Consider, for instance, the kind of historical thinking suggested by the information exhibition stance common in many schools. History is not employed as a system of analysis, as a means of connecting to a larger community, or as an approach to understanding the human condition. Instead, it functions as an opportunity to display data, either for personal gratification or to avoid failurc and its accompanying humiliations. In classrooms where this is the primary approach to history, students are unlikely either to be introduced to or to employ concepts such as evidence, significance, interpretation, empathy, or perspective taking, even though these cultural tools are fundamental to other stances towards history. Of course different learners act within and against the possibilities and constraints of different contexts. One student may acquiesce to the expectation that history is little more than an accumulation of information; another may rebel, seeking other ways of understanding the past. In the case of the latter, other settings, other purposes, access to other cultural tools, or the character of the individual student may supercede the classroom context.

National narratives in multicultural societies I find one of these cultural tools-national historical narratives-especially interesting. Narratives of national history serve a wide array of purposes, challenging our understanding of what it means to "think historically." This is particularly the case in multicultural nations where competing narratives not only make it difficult to agree on what constitutes national history, but challenge students' willingness to develop empathy for or take the perspective of those perceived as "other." In a multicultural society, when, how, and if groups and individuals are included in the nation's historical narrative is fraught with controversy. Because national history is often understood to explain how groups and individuals connect with the larger society, it takes on uniquely personal significance. Indeed, perceiving oneself or one's group as connected to the past may provide a sense of personal as well as collective worth. 9 In contrast, individuals and groups left out of historical narratives may perceive themselves and be perceived by others as second-class citizens, cut off from the rights and privileges enjoyed by more favored citizens. lo In New Zealand, for instance, Alton-Lee, Nuthall, and Patrick documented somc of the ways in which racial hierarchies were introduced and reinforced in the social studies classroom through a systematic elevation of European experience over that of native peoples. I I Seixas too, noted that the tradition of Western history prevalent in Canadian schools could force a "minority" student either to "[build] a significant past around his or her own particularistic concerns or [adopt] the authoritative grand narrative while relegating self and family to the margin outside of 'really' significant history."12 Studies in the United States suggest, too, that students there often struggle to reconcile a national narrative of American exceptionality, freedom, and progress over time with the persistence of problems related to race, gender, class, and ethnicity. These students evoke the offi-

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cial narrative, shaping it to address their concerns with equity and "fairness."I:l Unfortunately, as Wertsch l4 argues, their lack of in-depth knowledge about the narrative to which they have access constrains their ability to frame alternative narratives or effectively critique the ones with which they disagree. Schools in Northern Ireland, on the other hand, face a different challenge. In this country a narrative of nation-building, national progress and national identity would be extremely difficult to sustain. As Barton notes, "stories of the origin and development of contemporary political and social relations [in Northern Ireland] are too controversial to present in primary schools and most other public institutions."1 5 Schools direct attention away from personal and national connections to the past, focusing instead on how different people lived in the past. Not surprisingly, students in Northern Ireland tend to conclude that the purpose of studying history is to learn about other people and how they live.

National narratives and perspective taking As these studies demonstrate, national narratives can have a powerful influence on students' historical thinking. While this finding has a number of implications for the development of historical thinking, I wish to focus on the impact of national narratives on perspective taking. By this I mean the ability to recognize some of the sociocultural and political forces that shape human behavior, now and in the past. 16 In focusing on perspective taking, I am arguing that understanding why people acted the way they did in the past, not just how they acted, is an important aspect of historical thinking. Why people acted as they did is, of course, an elusive question. It requires an imaginative leap across the space between self and "other." This is not to suggest that imagination is all that is necessary. Perspective taking requires combining imagination with the other tools of history described earlier. And even when we combine these tools we only approach, but never fully understand, the attitudes, beliefs, values, and "givens" of another time and/ or place. J7 While it may seem reasonable, to the extent possible, to try to understand the past in its own terms, perspective taking is an extremely divisive issue, especially in multicultural, post-colonial nations. Debates surrounding the U.S. history standards and Smithsonian exhibits stand as examples of the depth of hostility even modest attempts to present different perspectives on national history curricula can generate. IS Similar arguments swirl around alterations in the history curriculum in New Zealand. Middleton and May describe the situation in New Zealand as one in which "conservatives' primary objective is to preserve religious or other traditional values; 'liberal-left' arguments . . . conceptualize education mainly as a means of achieving democracy and equality; and the ... 'libertarian-right' . . . emphasises- to varying degreesindividualism, competition, privatisation and diversity in a free-market setting."J 9 Add to this "Maori political movements, minority ethnic/cultural interests, various feminisms and other movements for sexual equality, and

370 Linda S. Levstik advocates for particular educational or religious philosophies" and it is clear that the history curriculum is not neutral territory. As in the United States, the social studies curriculum in New Zealand (of which history is a part) became a forum for the expression of many of these competing interests. The 1997 Ministry of Education curriculum document acknowledges these perspectives, but in the end takes the stand that the purpose of social studies is to "enable students to participate in a changing society as informed, confident, and responsible citizens."2o In order to accomplish this task, the Ministry suggests organizing social studies into strands (social organization, culture and heritage, place and environment, time, continuity and change, resources and economics) and processes (inquiry, values, social decision-making) aimed at providing students with, among other things, "essential learning about New Zealand society."21 This represents a departure from the traditional emphasis, prior to secondary school, on culture study rather than national history. The move to solidify national history in the schools also presents educators with the task of deciding what of New Zealand's past constitutes a history appropriate for use in schools. While other countries with racially and ethnically diverse populations adopted the rhetoric if not the reality of multiculturalism, New Zealand is officially bicultural (Maori and Pakeha).22 In a bicultural formation, "a kind of parity between indigenous and white settler cultures becomes crucial."23 This policy is challenged daily by the multicultural reality of life in New Zealand. Indeed, in the revised social studies curriculum, the New Zealand Ministry of Education calls for attention to bicultural and multicultural aspects of New Zealand history. In accord with the bicultural aspect of this mandate, the Ministry charges educators not only with recognizing and valuing the "unique position of Maori in New Zealand society," but with examining issues of racism, promoting non-racist attitudes in the school and wider community, studying the effects of colonization on Maori and Pakeha, and tracing the influence of Maori culture on New Zealand's social, cultural, political, and religious beliefs and systems. 24 Mter acknowledging "the importance to all New Zealanders of both Maori and Pakeha traditions, histories and values" the Ministry also charges schools with recognizing the multicultural nature of past and present New Zealand. 25 Finally, schools are reminded that students may need to meet more than one set of cultural expectations. Arguing for the importance of perspective taking, the Ministry urges that students "consider how past experiences and actions are perceived, interpreted, and revised and how these perceptions and interpretations may influence people's views and actions in the future ."26 As is generally the case in curriculum development, this is not the disinterested, distanced, "reasoned objectivity" advocated by some as the aim of history educationY Rather, the specifics of the situation in New Zealand yield a national history curriculum that is complex, multivocal, contested, and in flux. Recognizing the potential disparity among versions of history encountered in different cultural settings-families, neighborhoods, racial and ethnic

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communities, for instance- educational policy makers recommend a pluralist curriculum for specific sociopolitical purposes. On the one hand, students are encouraged to acquire the cultural tools that will enable them to develop and express sub-national (i.e., Maori) group identities. On the other hand, they are expected to take on a national identity that is assumed to prepare them for active participation in debate about the character and direction of the nation. 28 In order to direct attention to the different systems of ethnoracial classification used in New Zealand, including consideration of the various constituencies empowered or disempowered by these classifications, educators are expected to introduce three cultural tools: "inquiry," "values exploration," and "social decision-making."29 Students are then expected to use these tools to study social justice and welfare issues, cultural diversity, and respect for the environment in historical context. Next, they are to use what they have learned to suggest possible strategies for dealing with these issues in the present and future. In sum, history and social studies are expected to involve identification, imagination, and perspective taking, employ analytical skills common to the discipline of history, and encourage students to be socially active citizens. Earlier drafts of this document evoked a firestorm of criticism. Some critics argued that it focused too much attention on national history-the current social studies curriculum emphasizes world cultures prior to secondary schools-while others claimed that it represented a form of political indoctrination rather than the 'rigorous, reasoned study they associated with history.3o This, then, was the backdrop against which I investigated adolescent New Zealanders' perspective taking in the context of national history. When I began my work the new curriculum was not fully in place. The Ministry of Education had distributed guidelines and recommendations, and the public dispute over the history curriculum had at least temporarily dropped out of the headlines. I interviewed students who were familiar with the old social studies curriculumlargely the study of world cultures rather than the study of national history. I was interested in what ideas and understandings these students brought to national history, what influence their study of world cultures had on their conceptions of a national past, and what, if any, national narrative they employed in assigning historical significance to people, ideas, and events connected to New Zealand's past. I wondered, too, about their willingness to take on perspectives other than their own.

Setting and procedures The study was conducted in four schools in New Zealand. Three of the schools were within a large urban area and the fourth was located in a small community within the commuter shed for the same urban area. The socio-economic status of schools in New Zealand is described in deciles from one (lowest) to ten (highest). The schools in the study included one each of decile one, eight, nine, and ten. Students were identified by school personnel to represent a range of

372 Linda S. Levstik achievement levels and an equal number of boys and girls. In addition, I specifically requested access to Maori, Pacific Islander, and European/Pakeha populations. Because each school drew on the surrounding neighborhood for its students, and neighborhoods tended to be predominantly one group or the other, interview groups were also predominantly one group or the other. Maori and Pacific Islander children were concentrated in the "decile one" school. A second school (decile ten), largely European in ethnicity, had a number of Asian students, relatively recent immigrants to the neighborhood, and two Asian children (one each from China and Hong Kong) were included in the interview pool there. One child in the commuter shed school (decile nine) identified as part Maori, none as Pacific Islander or Asian; at least four children in the fourth school (decile eight) self-identified as having some Maori heritage. Two children self-identified as North American, one Canadian, and one United States American (although he was born in New Zealand, he considered himself American because his parents were born in the U.S.). I developed a semi-structured interview similar to one used in a previous study with American adolescents. 31 This included a task requiring students to choose from among a set of twenty-three captioned historical pictures, as well as a set of broader questions designed to explore their understanding of his torical significance. These were derived from a variety of sources in the U.S. and New Zealand. 32 In order to make comparisons between the American study and this one, I attempted to select pictures in categories similar to those used in the U.S. study-political/military, social (including attention to race, class, ethnicity and gender), technological, and economic history. I then met with a public historian in New Zealand whose work involves introducing school-age children to national history in museums and (previously) living history contexts. I also visited historic sites, museums, and a living history park, read curriculum guidelines, reviewed children's literature on New Zealand, met with colleagues with expertise in New Zealand's children's literature, sat in on portions of a teacher training program, attended an educational confercnce, and interviewed teacher educators as well as teachers in training. 33 As a result of this feedback, I eliminated a picture that failed to elicit much interest or provoke conversation. The final set of pictures, captions, and interview protocol are described in the Appendix. I audio taped interviews with 49 students between the ages of eleven and thirteen, and conducted all interviews with single-sex groups of either three or four students. 34 In addition to asking questions from my formal protocol, I frequently probed students' responses in order to explore more fully the reasoning behind their answers. Following the interviews I transcribed the tapes, tabulated students' choices, analyzed interview transcripts and drew conclusions from them through a process of analytic induction. After identifying thematic strands in students' responses, I subjected the transcripts to a systematic content analysis in which I categorized responses according to coding categories based on those strands, and to categories developed in the

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u.s.

study. I then analyzed the coded data using cross-case analysis and constant comparison. During the process of coding and analysis, I explicitly searched for differences in girls' and boys' explanations, and for differences between age groupS.35 The resultant set of descriptive generalizations form the basis for my discussion of children's perspective taking in the context of a loosely constituted and fluid "master narrative" of national history. 36

Coming to terms with the master narrative As I began my interviews in New Zealand I recalled the national image typical of the American adolescents I had studied previously. Not unlike their adult counterparts, these U.S. students perceived their nation to be exceptionalpossessing a unique set offreedoms and opportunities guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and supported by a beneficent technology. Not only did they expect their nation to expand these freedoms and opportunities to previously disenfranchised groups and individuals, they also expected the United States to set a moral standard by "stand[ing] up for people," and "help[ing] other countries."37 Curious about New Zealanders' national self-perception, I began by asking a New Zealand public historian what he considered to be the prevailing national self-image. He described a pride in national difference, a pioneering spirit, sense of initiative and willingness to experiment. A Kiwi, he suggested, was thrifty, practical, and handy, able to "fix anything with a bit of #8 wire." Referring to the experience ofVVWII, he called up an image of Kiwis fixing up and using what their more wasteful American counterparts threw away. This image largely matched what other sources said of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century New Zealanders.38 To some extent, these same sorts of things are said of any pioneering people. If pioneers maintain their hold on the "frontier," their descendants generally perceive them as resilient, industrious, and the like. What makes New Zealand's pioneer myth especially interesting is that it exists alongside an even larger sense ofliving on the edge, not just of a frontier, but of the world. As one prominent New Zealand author suggests, "our strength is in our independence, our boldness, and in being sufficiently on the edge of things to be able to assess what is happening elsewhere .. . . W e are the well at the bottom of the world."39 The "archetypal" New Zealanders sprung from this well- "good keen men" and "independent women"-have a "healthy disrespect for authority and rrely] more on their own sense of what's right and what isn't."4o This image of an inventive, clear-eyed margin that speaks truth to power is part of the national narrative reflected in students' responses during the interviews.

Living on the clear-eyed margins Perhaps the image of marginality strikes an American so clearly because it is such a contrast to U.S. students' assumption of the centrality of their nation not

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just to their own lives but to the world. In contrast, New Zealanders described their country as distant from centers of influence and somehow "behind" the rest of the world. All students, for instance, expressed surprise that New Zealand created the world's first old age pension and only one knew that New Zealand had been among the first to give women full suffrage. 41 A common response to events from New Zealand history was to assume that New Zealand was "last." As one girl picked up the picture of women voting, for instance, she said, "Let me guess, we were probably last with that" and her peers laughingly agreed. In all but two groups students asked me if they were "as smart as other kids in the world." They commented, too, on how little the rest of the worldparticularly Americans-knew of New Zealand. "You probably know all about America," Linlee commented. "And we know about America, too. But they [Americans] don't know much about here." A boy in another group made a similar point, explaining that "you have American history in your schools, and we don't have anything like that." Part of this response may be explained by the overwhelming influence of American and British media, to say nothing of American commercial hegemony. Because of the high production costs of television in a country with a relatively small market for advertisers, New Zealand commercial television is dominated by cheap American and British imports. The film market is also dominated by imports, most often from the United States. But this is only a modern sign of a colonial past that focused New Zealanders' attention on Britain and the West, rather than on themselves, the Pacific, and Asia. Not only did New Zealanders fight for the British Empire and adopt many cultural and social patterns from Britain, but Britain was their major trading partner. In addition, while colonialism did not have the benefits Maori had hoped would come from the Treaty ofWaitangi,42 there is a sense among some Maori that British imperialism was preferable to the depredations of war and settlement that preceded it. 43 Finally, because New Zealanders' independence from Britain came peacefully, they did not need to establish a clear and separate national identity in quite the way rebelling colonies such as the United States, Kenya, or India did. As a result, New Zealand's national narrative remained reasonably fluid, with a curriculum that more often focused outward toward other places than inward on national history.44 Given the centrality of their colonial experience, the continued friendly relations with Britain, and the current political, social, and economic influence of the United States, it is hardly surprising that students express interest in Britain and the United States. It is also understandable that they sometimes described a David-and-Goliath-like relationship with both. This was particularly apparent as students discussed banning nuclear ships from New Zealand's waters as well as New Zealand's protests against French nuclear tests in the Pacific. While only two groups selected each event as a final choice for the timeline, one or the other often stayed in the pool of pictures until the very end of the selection process. More importantly, both pictures invariably generated a

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good deal of conversation among the students. In considering the significance of these pictures, for instance, students generally began by discussing their aversion to nuclear "stuff," conflating nuclear power with nuclear bombs and the testing of those bombs in the South Pacific. In a statement typical of this sort of response, Rene argued that antinuclear protests "stopped nuclear bombs." Similarly, a group of boys explained that "it's so dangerous-nuclear power isn't so bad, but nuclear bombs and stuff [are]." They commented that "if we had nuclear stuff we'd have to spend a lot more money on stuff we don't need." Once students established that nuclear weaponry and testing were problems, they moved on to discuss American intervention in New Zealand's affairs. Knowing that the United States tried to force New Zealand to allow nuclearpowered vessels into New Zealand's waters, the students described the United States as "stubborn" and an international "bully." "The United States threatens New Zealand's defense," Kyle argued. When Ellen suggested that the United States "wouldn't like it if we tested in their waters" Sally added that "what you do to them [United States], they'll do it back." "Yes," Ellen said, reflecting a common concern across groups, "they could bomb you." In another group, Joseph explained that "if they [Zealanders] didn't protest, we could have been blown away." Ellen could not understand why the United States failed to realize that the ban on nuclear power and nuclear testing was good because the oceans "wouldn't get bombed anymore. You can't drink water that is contaminated." With the ban in place, Alexi said, "everybody might survive." Ultimately, though, the students thought that the United States should not intervene in New Zealand's business, regardless of whether New Zealand's policies were good. As Jason argued, "we can do whatever we want in our backyard." And, echoing Ihimaera, Alexi suggested that New Zealand ')ust might have something to teach the rest of the world" about this issue. 45

The moral weight of the past These early adolescents wielded their national narrative in interesting ways. Although they were unclear about some (or even most) of the details of some events, they retained a sense of the moral weight of the past. New Zealanders stood up for what was right, even when they "could have been blown away" by a behemoth such as the United States. Because they perceived that their nation could not easily intervene in the affairs of other nations, they recognized the importance of paying attention to other parts of the world. This allowed them to imagine learning from as well as teaching other people valuable lessons learned from history. They regularly ascribed significance to events that, in their minds, did just that. 'just to say that Kiwis did actually go over [fight in World War II] and help out, you know what I mean? That is important," Kiri explained. Karen argued for the inclusion of World War II on the basis that it "put New Zealand in touch with other people," and Kiwis learned from these encounters, too. As Stefan explained, "sometimes, especially like the Jews in

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WWII, they thought, 'Oh, if we just go along with it, it's not going to get too bad' but it just kept getting worse, and worse, and worse." New Zealanders "learned that you just don't tolerate any type of racism or anything." Teaching the world was, from the students' perspectives, a challenging proposition. While they saw themselves as paying attention to the rest of the world, they did not think the world returned that attention. As a result, events that centered world attention on New Zealand were deemed significant. When students selected Captain Cook's explorations for the timeline, for instance, one criterion was that Cook's reports back to England "told the world about [New Zealand]." Acknowledging that Cook and the Endeavour weren't the first Europeans to mention the islands, students nonetheless marked Cook's trip out because, as Chris explained, "he wasn't the first, Abel Tasman was the first, but [Cook] told the world about it." Tom added, "he told Europeans." All but three groups (all three at the predominantly Maori/Pacific Islander school) also added Edmund Hillary46 to the timeline because his explorations of Everest and Antarctica attracted international attention and "people learned from them." Other pictures such as women's suffrage and the pension were identified as significant because they were "firsts." As Reed explained, women's suffrage was significant because New Zealand was "first to give females the chance." "That will always be in the history books," Arden said. Reed added that this was like 'Jenny Shipley. She'll always be in the history books, too, so like the first female Prime Minister." By providing a moral lesson to the rest of the world, too, students thought both women's suffrage and the old-age pension enhanced New Zealand's international status. Stefan was most articulate about this argument: Because New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote, and that's important because all people should be treated equally, and New Zealand's the first country to kind of figure that out. They kind of break away from the tradition that women were weaker and shouldn't be allowed to do stuff like that and should just stay at home, and they broke that tradition. Yeah, and it worked, and Kate Sheppard helped and stuff and that just led to stuff allover the world, or the "first world" anyway, and women were allowed to work and vote. Overall, this national narrative encouraged students to see their country as a participant in a reciprocal relationship with Western nations. New Zealand learned from the West, usually about how other people met and solved or failed to solve problems. In return New Zealand offered the world a different perspective-the water from the well at the bottom of the world, if you will. New Zealand emerged as a strong ally of the West, but with a willingness to resist pressure from Western powers and an insistence on what students perceive to be moral,just, and fair treatment of people. Fairness was an important criterion for determining historical significance

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among these students. Two of their top choices for the timeline, women's suffrage and the Treaty of Waitangi, along with education and the pension were, from the students' perspective, ultimately about fairness. In sharp contrast to their American and Irish contemporaries, every group identified women's suffrage as one of their choices for the timeline. The Treaty of Waitangi was selected by all but two groups, making it the third most often selected picture (Captain Cook's explorations tied with women's suffrage), education was chosen by seven groups, and the pension by five. Students explained that all four pictures were significant, at least in part because they demonstrated the move toward "equal opportunity" and "fairness" for all New Zealanders. In considering the significance of women's participation in New Zealand history, for instance, each group declared that equal participation in public life was "only fair." Even in the one group of boys where there was a brief suggestion that women's suffrage had nothing to do with them , they ultimately included it on thc grounds that women "helped run the country" and therefore the right to vote was "quite important."47 A few students also suggested that males and females might think differently about the significance of women's suffrage, but even this was a distinctly minority viewpoint. As one group of boys pointed out, with more women in the population than men it was only fair that both groups vote. Boys also argued that women were "as important" as men, could do the same kind of work, and possessed skills that were necessary to the country.48 In discussing women's contributions to New Zealand history, they noted that educating women as well as men for jobs was important because women who have skills can "go on and teach other people how to do it." Girls said similar things, adding that, because men always had power and there was "discrimination against woman kind," it was especially important that women have the vote. "Men would roll over us more" without the vote, one girl explained. "It's only fair that women have an equal say." Jason pointed out that the country needed the labor of both men and women, especially during the wartime and Depression, and that it made no sense to discriminate. Moana declared that if "men have everything ... it isn't fair." Among the predominantly Maori and Pacific Islander groups, there was additional discussion regarding the length of time it took for women to get the vote. In one group, Kiri lifted up the picture of women voting, read the caption, and asked, "1893, eh? And why not before that?" Her classmate, Tiana, nodded, equally unimpressed. "When did men first get to vote?" she asked. In a group of boys, Tama asked what there had been to vote for, suggesting "votes for women are important, unless men couldn't vote either." When Peter explained that "before only men voted," Tama declared "then women getting to vote, that's only fairl" Interestingly, after declaring that it was only fair that women and men share equally in public life, students in each group also acknowledged gender inequities in private life, especially in families. Women worked more at home, they

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agreed. Shawn explained that "less men take care of the house" and that would need to change "to make it more even." Several noted that seeing women in public positions- Prime Minister Jenny Shipley49 for instance- provided important "role models for other women." These public figures, they argued, were evidence that women "can do the job same as a man." "Yes," Ames said, "They can do exactly the same jobs [as men], and then other women learn that they can do that, too." Several of the boys cautioned that despite the prominence of some women, inequities remained. Hamilton explained that women did not have equal numbers in Parliament, nor did they run as many businesses as men. Tama and Meara mentioned that women did more work at home "because they have the babies," a point made by at least one student in each of the girls' groups. Seven groups also selected state support for education as an instance of fairness "because it gave everyone, rich or poor ... the right to read, and to an education, so when they grow up to get jobs, they would know how to read and write." Before that, Reed said, ')ust the people who could afford it could go to school, then, like everyone could." As did most of the students who commented on the significance of education, Ames thought that public schooling made it possible for "everyone to get an equal education. Most schools in New Zealand now are pretty much equal." They agreed, too, that an equal education meant an equal chance at employment. In fact, every group mentioned this as an argument for the importance of education, whether they eventually put it on the time line or not. As Kiri noted, "a lot of people, especially in this area [the decile one school] wouldn't be able to go to school, and there's a lot of people, if it was for money, they wouldn't be able to go to school. It's like we're the next generation, and we need to be able to work so we make money and so we can bring up our families." "You can't do much without an education," agreed Tiana. Although all groups indicated that giving retired people a pension was "only fair," only five selected the pension as among the eight choices for the timeline. Nonetheless, their conversations as they considered the pension illustrates the function of "fairness" as an organizing principle in their historical thinking. This was particularly vivid, too, because the Shipley administration had just cut cost-of-living increases for pensions and at least one student in each group was able to explain something about the controversy this caused. Students in two of the schools (decile one and decile eight) were clear about the inability of adults to put aside enough money for their old age. When asked why that was so, Riwia responded by explaining that raising a family absorbed most people's income and left them little to save. "They've worked all that time, and taken care of all of us," she said. "It's only fair that we take care of them when they get ald." Students in the wealthier schools were less specific, expressing concern, as Judith did, that "without [the pension] some old people just wouldn't survive," or suggesting that the pension was not historically significant because "it would have happened eventually anyway."50

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In assigning significance to events representing "learning from others," "teaching the world," and "fairness," these students crafted a historical narrative with distinctive moral underpinnings. They imagined that their national history could provide them with a glimpse of "what should be and what is not yet."51 They identified pieces of evidence that, strung together, provided them with some assurance of a particular kind of progress over time, some notion that good would ultimately triumph. A fundamental part of this progress was the extension of "fairness." To some extent, their belief in the significance of the extension of fair treatment to all people allowed them to recognize that there were different perspectives on events. This was particularly so when they knew the people or were associated with them in some way. At the same time, their lack of historical background left them with little understanding of what might constitute those perspectives. They could imagine themselves in a particular historical situation, and they recognized the importance of different perspectives in relation to their studies of distant countries, but they lacked the historical depth to understand alternative realities in their own country. Particularly in regard to race and ethnicity, they struggled to imagine other perspectives. 52

Imagining other perspectives: Race and ethnicity Just as the persistence of racial and ethnic tensions challenged U.S. children's national narrative of American exceptionality and progress, so too did they generate confusion and controversy among the New Zealand students. It was one thing for them to represent issues that took place far from home as examples of fairness, or as moral lessons for other nations. They could apply their "Quest for Fairness" narrative to the holocaust, for instance, but struggled with how to explain where "fairness" lay in disputes over land or fishing rights at home. Was the Treaty ofWaitangi, for instance, an example offairness? All of the students agreed that it was, yet failed to agree about what kind of fairness was at issue. From the perspective of most of the Pakeha students, the Treaty resulted in sharing land, and they perceived sharing as fair. That "Maori and Pakeha could both settle in New Zealand and not fight over the land" was reiterated in all but one of the predominantly European New Zealander groups. Yet individuals in each group acknowledged that the Treaty had not worked out fairly. Stefan tried to explain what happened: "[The Treaty] is where the Maori decided to get along with the Whites, supposedly, and Whites were actually coming to New Zealand." In this instance, Stefan presented the story as most European New Zealand students told it-an agreement whereby Maori and Pakeha decided to get along. But Stefan adds a "supposedly," indicating that this commonly told narrative may not be true. In fact, he does not believe it, and suggests an alternative story: "The Treaty was sort of a passport for Whites to come to New Zealand but it didn't work out quite the way the Maori had thought it would. They got ripped off, some of the land, you know. The Whites bought it for three purple beads and a musket 'cause the Maori didn't know

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the value rfproperty (emphasis mine)." In this version of events, "sharing" is not an issue. The Maori lose their land out of a combination of Pakeha greed and Maori ignorance. While Stefan understands that the Maori lost their land, he does not have a framework that might explain that event from a Maori perspective. The only story to which he has access is one that explains the loss of land as a scam that might have been prevented had the Maori understood the Western notion of "the value of property." As a result, as Alexi explained, "we've got Maori claiming land now." Her classmate Ellen agreed, "The Maori want land the Pakehas have." Not all of the students saw the loss of Maori land as either unfair or relevant to present disputes. Sally explained that the Treaty was "important for Maori because they got to keep land, and forests , and fisheries. It was between the Maori and the English Pakehas." Alan made a similar point, explaining that Maori used the Treaty "whenever there's something wrong. They always go back to the Treaty and find something that helps. " Dougal agreed, explaining that "they say they didn't get enough land." When asked if this was an accurate assessment of the Maori's situation, Dougal responded by saying "It's hard to tell what Maoris should have had, because there's lots of different tribes and things .... There must have been something wrong with the Treaty because there's still trouble over it." After listening to her peers explain that people were still fighting over the fairness of the Treaty and its aftermath, Rachel shrugged her shoulders, dismissing the entire dispute, and said, "well, Maori do." In her opinion the fight was one-sided and more of a concern to Maori than to any other New Zealanders. As had their Pakeha peers, Maori and Pacific Islander students agreed that the Treaty of vVaitangi was significant because it was about fairness-"how Maori would be treated" - but understood the issue rather differently than did most of the European New Zealand students. Ripeka explained that the Treaty was "how the Maori and the Pakehas came together to make a compromise about land, that's what I think, and just to think that the Pakehas tricked . .. they signed this bit of paper that said, well, we'll have this kind ofland and that sort of land." Her classmate, Irihapeti interrupted, saying "Well, what I'm going to say is, the Treaty ofWaitangi, its about fighting over your land, and if the teachers were to go over that ... there would be a lot more to tell than just a few little battles they had." Ripeka agreed, adding, "it would be, because like Pakehas don't actually rely on the land that much, do you know what I mean? The Maori used the land as much as they could, and I think we could learn from that, from the things they've left behind." In another group, Kiri explained that she thought the Treaty was important to her as a Maori, "because I want to be part of that past, and what happened with Maoris." When asked what might have happened without the Treaty, issues of cultural power and racism became more specific and further complicated students' notions of fairness. Without the Treaty, there would have been no queen, most agreed, though Hamilton was sure that someone else would have

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colonized New Zealand. "The French, probably," he said. Reed and Paul, however, thought that the country would have stayed Maori and "White people would have to live like Maori, rather than the other way round." Paul added, "The Maori people could live where they wanted." When I asked if Maori had been able to live where they wanted under British rule, the four boys in this group said that had not always been the case. "Maori are protesting this now," Paul said. "Before they owned it, but ... " his voice trailed off. Frederick explained that "some people don't like the White people," and was cut off immediately by Reed, who said "and some Whites don't like Maori." "Without the Treaty," Paul said, "then the Maoris and the Whites would be fighting." In another group, Hamilton suggested that it "would be fair to give Qand] back" but it would be very complicated. "I reckon everyone should have the same like, should all be equal. You shouldn't get anything just because you're Maori, or you shouldn't get anything just because you're Pakeha." Reed had a different idea about what was fair. "The Maori," he said, "when their ancestors signed the treaty, they said they could have that land .... They could have said we don't want you on our land, it's ours, but they let us come here." "Yes," Robert said, "and then we took all their land." Frustrated, Robert said, "I think we should all just live peacefully." When asked how that might be accomplished, Reed precipitated this lively exchange: Send them all to Auckland! NO! FREDERICK: Give them back what's rightfully theirs! RESEARCHER: And that would be? REED: It was all theirs before Cook came. ROBERT: SO they should have? REED: All of it? Maybe not all of it, but quite a bit of it? ROBERT: More than 50 per cent. FREDERICK: No. REED: No, they didn't have to let us take it. FREDERICK: Now they want it back. REED: Now that we've taken over. REED:

ROBERT:

None of the Maori or Pacific Islander students engaged in this sort of exchange. While they thought the Treaty was important, and that it represented an occasion when Maori were dealt with unfairly, they did not mention returning land to Maori people. They suggested instead that the Treaty represented an opportunity for coexistence lost to greed-the Pakeha could have learned to use the land more wisely if they had worked with rather than against the Maori. In fact, coexistence appeared in every group as a corollary of students' fairness principle of historical significance. Just as they had argued that certain events were significant because they represented matters of fairness, students also argued for the significance of events that brought diverse

382 Linda S. Levstik people to New Zealand. As Kiri explained in regard to the Treaty ofWaitangi, "that's how the Maori and the Pakeha came together." Similarly, Captain Cook's explorations were significant because they precipitated European immigration to the islands. "He told all the Europeans about us," Hamilton said, "and they came here." When students selected the first Polynesian settlement in New Zealand for the timeline, they explained their choice by saying, "They were the first people to come in contact with, eventually." Immigration, too, represented one way in which New Zealand became more diverse. "[Immigration] is a good thing," Reed explained. "If they hadn't have come way back then there wouldn't be as many cultures in New Zealand." When asked why that was a good thing, Reed explained that "people can learn off of each other, like different languages and things like that. I think that's pretty important, because like lots of people that come from other countries can learn from our culture and we can learn off them and what's different between their home country and ours." After listening to Reed, Robert suggested that this gathering of people learning from each other had a larger significance, too. "Like our governments and theirs would be like closer because you see on like the news that different countries are fighting and all, and if they [the immigrants] come to our country they will think that this is not a bad place." Reed interrupted, "and not fight with them?" "Yeah," Robert said. Among this group of four boys, three had relatives who were first generation immigrants. "My dad was born in Zimbabwe," Reed said. "My Auntie was born in England," added Arthur. Paul's aunt was born in Scotland. Only Robert claimed to be a "full-on Kiwi." Asked if that meant none of his ancestors had been immigrants, Robert said they were "Kiwis all the way back." Unlike the "Quest for Fairness" narrative that was positively perceived across all groups, some students had reservations about coexistence and about immigration. As I noted earlier, some ofthe Pakeha students expressed discomfort with what they understood of Maori complaints about loss of land and culture. In this instance, however, students from Maori and Pacific Islanders as well as Pakeha backgrounds expressed discomfort with aspects of immigration. In one group of Maori and Pacific Island boys, for example, an argument erupted over the inclusion of immigration on the timeline. When Witi suggested putting it on the timeline, Peter adamantly refused. "I don't like it! It's not important!" he declared. Witi objected, saying, "That's no kind of reason." Peter continued to object, exclaiming that there were already enough immigrants in the country. "That's sad," Witi said. "If we didn't let immigrants in, than she [the researcher] wouldn't be here." When I explained that I was a temporary visitor rather than an immigrant the conversation moved on to who immigrants were. "Are they just poor people, or can anybody be an immigrant," Tama asked. "Some of us wouldn't be here," Witi explained, "if it weren't for immigrants." Peter, however was adamant. 'Jenny Shipley's giving all the Chinese people everything." Tama agreed. "They're the ones who've

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got more than most people." "And," said Peter, "it should be for the ones who are born here." These comments were, at least in part, a reflection of the recent influx of Asian immigrants, some in the wake of the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China. In at least two groups, too, immigration was associated with the presence in the community of refugees from the former Yugoslavia. In the end, only five groups included immigration on their timeline. This marks an interesting contrast with their peers in the United States who tended to view the U.S. as a nation of immigrants and understood themselves as the direct descendants of immigrants. In contrast, the New Zealand students recognized immigration as part of their history, but tended to perceive themselves either as "full-on Kiwi," Maori, or Pacific Islander. As I asked each group about their own immigrant history, one boy described ancestors emigrating from Ireland in the face of the potato famine, four students mentioned emigration from China and Hong Kong, and at least one person in each of the twelve groups identified British ancestry. Maori and Pacific Islander students provided the most richly elaborated discussion of their immigration and ancestry. When asked what would happen if children didn't learn about this aspect of the past, Kiri said "I think you would feel empty ... . It's just like people who are fostered, and they don't have any parents, and they ask, 'how did I get here,' that sort of thing."

A preference for perspective taking at a distance Overall, students reported that they were less interested in studying New Zealand history than in learning about other parts of the world. As one girl, Heather, explained in response to a question about her historical interests, "being in New Zealand, you're expected to say New Zealand, but I know the general outline, you know, but that wouldn't be like my favorite subject. I'd like somewhere different, like India, or Egypt, with the mummies." All twelve interview groups expressed interest in learning about the United States, eight groups preferred Britain, and three wanted to study India. Students in four groups mentioned that they either already had or intended someday to live in the United States and "needed to know about your history." "I lived in America," Hamilton explained, "and I reckon they've got a more interesting history because before with the slaves and stuff, that's probably more interesting than any of our history. I'd pick to study about the slaves and stuff." Other students who had lived or traveled in Canada, Australia, and Japan thought these countries more interesting than New Zealand. In each group students expressed interest in studying "really different kinds of places" or people and events in the news, "for instance this new guy in Serbia and stuff." When asked why they felt this way, students explained that these places, people, or events were more interesting and that it was "important to know what people were doing before your time." As one boy, Tainui, noted, "I think it's just like soap operas and that sort of thing ... a show like Shortland Street" [a popular television soap

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opera]. Tainui also suggested that teachers might consider the soap opera aspects of history as they planned instruction. "Maybe if they were making it like that, but we didn't know we were learning," he mused. "If they were going to teach us something?" Other students suggested that learning the history of distant peoples made them "think differently about stuff," and "understand a different point of view." No doubt some of this can be explained by a curricular focus on world cultures. Students had more background knowledge ofIndia or Egypt, for instance, than of New Zealand's history. In addition, as Tainui suggests, learning about people in other parts of the world is a bit like watching a soap opera, or, perhaps, reading a novel. In the context of a distant place and past, students contemplate other perspectives with relative safety. Investigating the perspectives of people in Ancient Egypt or India, for instance, does not necessarily challenge students to reconsider the perspectives of their own local communities of identification. 53

Conclusion Student responses indicate that they were better prepared to "think differently" and "understand a different point of view" in regard to distant rather than local "others. " One feature of their willingness to consider alternative perspectives in international contexts was their belief that it was important to do so. Students in the U.S. might also be better prepared to engage in perspective taking outside of national history, but they expressed little need to learn about other countries. Unlike their New Zealand counterparts who preferred to study about other parts of the world, the American students tended to think it was more important to study their own national history. Perceiving themselves as the teachers of the world, they were not inclined to think they had much to learn from the world. New Zealanders, on the other hand, have access to a national narrative that inclines them to pay attention to the world beyond their shores. The fluidity of this narrative, with relatively few fixed points of reference or reverence, leaves students open to the possibility of learning from as well as teaching other people. 54 The students I interviewed were willing- even anxious- to engage in dialogue with other parts of the world. As I mentioned earlier, part of this has to do with geoposition and the distribution of global power, as well as the specifics of the colonial past, and perhaps to the fact that they were being interviewed by someone from another country. It should not be surprising, however, that a small island nation distant from the Western centers of power with which it is culturally and politically allied should focus outward, nor that its children should reflect this orientation. Such an orientation may not focus a great deal of attention on national history, but it does incline students to recognize that alternative perspectives prevail in the world, and that it is important to understand these perspectives. N ew Zealand students' willingness to recognize different perspectives in distant places stands in marked contrast to their discomfort with perspective

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taking in more local settings. Membership in local communities of identification makes it difficult for these students to take the perspective oflocal "others." Thus Stefan, operating within a global setting, claims that New Zealanders learned from the distant Nazi Holocaust that racism is always wrong, while Reed, operating within a local setting suggests that all Maori move to Auckland. It is not that Reed does not know that an alternative perspective is possible. Indeed, some of his peers vigorously protest against his views. Rather, taking on a different perspective on this issue would require a degree of separation from Reed's own community of identification and involve a level of discomfort for which he is unprepared. Because R eed identifies with European New Zealanders he does not want to understand a Maori perspective. H e has a personal stake in believing that the Maori somehow gave the land away- they could have said no, he declares-and shouldn't complain now about their choices in the past. R eed cannot distance himself enough from a European perspective to consider any other. In addition, the national narrative available to him provides little help. Reed and his peers have not studied national history. What they have available to them is a history cobbled together from bits and pieces- holiday celebrations, media presentations, family, literature, and the like. Some have a richer array of information from which to choose. Stefan, for instance, is an enthusiastic participant in workshops held at the local history museum where he has worked with artifacts and primary sources. In his comments, too, he references discussions with his family about issues of race, gender, and ethnicity. Some of the Maori and Pacific Islander students also have access to historical narratives rooted in their own communities of identification. They recall exposure to the Whakapapa, stories told on the marae, visits to former home sites and the like as sources of their historical information. Most, however, have very little historical information at their disposal. As a result, they do not have particularly historical schema to apply to these oddments about the past. Instead, they apply social relations schema-fairness, morality, getting along together- and link them in a familiar narrative arc-characters in the past experience some crisis, they rise to the occasion, meet and overcome the challenge, learn from the experience, and share what they've learned with others. This narrative allows students to retain their sense of identification with the past and to see their nation or community of identification and, by extension, themselves, as moral. It does not, however, provide them with the tools necessary to make sense out of the continuation of inequity, injustice, or immorality in the nation or local community. Despite students' difficulties with perspective taking in a national context, New Zealand's new curriculum challenges schools to focus more on perspective taking in national history at a much earlier age. If the Ministry's recommendations are followed, instruction would engage children from primary school onwards in in-depth inquiry into issues of social justice from past to present. The curriculum designers express the hope that historical study of this kind will provide students with some of the tools necessary for effective citizen-

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ship. The responses of the students in this study and the experience of other nations suggest caution in assuming that this will be the case. First of all, national history is invariably contested. As a result, groups and individuals attach enormous importance to the form history takes in school. Given the politically charged consequences of curricular choices, it will be a challenge for teachers to approach national history from the perspective suggested in the curriculum documents. This is not to suggest that national history be ignored; rather, that perspective taking presents a different set of challenges in national history than it does in more distant, less personal and less highly charged settings. Second, neither students' willingness to look beyond their own position, nor their curiosity about the lives of other people in other places and times necessarily prepares them to deal with perspective taking in their own nation. We know very little about making that imaginative leap, especially in relation to historically rooted and persistent social problems. These youngsters appear to have an advantage in their outward orientation and their willingness to cross the spaces between themselves and distant others. Perhaps the combination of careful attention to developing the tools of inquiry and the content of history suggested in the new curriculum standards will help students apply perspective taking to their own history. North American examples are not promising in this regard. These New Zealand adolescents, however, tend to combine an emphasis on connecting to a personal past- as do American students-with an expectation that history teaches about how other people lived-as do Northern Irish students. It is the latter understanding, if nurtured, that may help them to understand national history in ways more likely to meet the goals of the proposed curriculum. It will be interesting to see what impact an earlier introduction of national history will have on this process, and whether the suggested emphasis on inquiry, perspective taking, and social justice survives in the classroom.

Notes I. C. Brett, "The Beastly Beatitudes of] osiah Beeman," the Press (30 April 1999), 5. 2. B. A. VanSledright, "And Santayana Lives on: Students' Views on the Purposes for Studying American History," Joumal qfCurriculum Studies, 29 (1997): 529-57. 3. K. C. Barton, '''You'd be Wanting to Know about the Past': Social Contexts of Children's Historical Understanding in Northern Ireland and the United States" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA, 1998); K . C. Barton and L. S. Levstik, "'It wasn't a Good Part of History': National Identity and Students' Explanations of Historical Significance," Teachers College Record, 99 (1998): 478-513; Linda S. Levstik, "'The Boys we Know; the Girls in our School': Early Adolescents' Understanding of Women's Historical Significance," IntemationalJoumal qfSocial Studies, 12(2): 19-34; Y. Su, "Changing Minds: How Elementary Social Studies Textbooks Both Reflect and Change Society," IntemationalJoumal qfSocial Education, 12 (1999): 76- 104;]. V. Wertsch, Mind as Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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4. B. Rogoff, Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive Development in Social Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 5. Wertsch, Mind as Action;]. V. Wertsch, P. Del Rio, and A. Alvarez (Eds.), Sociocultural Studies ifMind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 6. K. C. Barton and L. S. Levstik, "National Identity" ; Linda S. Levstik, "The Relationship between Historical Response and Narrative in a Sixth-Grade Classroom," Theory and Research in Social Education, 28 (1986): 114-19; L. S. Levstik and K. C. Barton, '''They Still Use Some of their Past': Historical Salience in Elementary Children's Chronological Thinking," Journal if Curriculum Studies, 28 (1996): 531-76. 7. A. K. Appiah and A. Gutmann, Color Conscious: The Political Morality if Race (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); B. Barber, Jihad vs. Mc World (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996);]. Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); T.]. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999); D. W. Cohen, The Combing if History (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994); M. Kammen, Mystic Chords if Memory: The Transformation if Tradition in American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1991). 8. M. Greene, Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education the Arts and Social Change (New York: Teachers College Press, 1995). 9. Ibid. 10. K. C. Barton and L. S. Levstik, "National Identity"; Bodnar, Remaking America; T. Epstein, "Makes No Difference if you're Black or White? Mrican American and European American Adolescents' Perspectives on Historical Significance and Historical Sources" (paper presented at the annual meeting of American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, 1994); P. Seixas, "Historical Understanding among Adolescents in a Multicultural Setting," Curriculum Inquiry, 23 (1993): 301-27. 11. A. Alton-Lee, G. Nuthall, and]. Patrick, "Reframing Classroom Research: A Lesson from the Private World of Children," Harvard Educational Review, 63 (1993): 54-84. 12. P. Seixas, "Mapping the Terrain of Historical Significance," Social Education, 61 (1997): 27. 13. K. C. Barton, "You'd be Wanting to Know about the Past"; Barton and Levstik, "National Identity"; Epstein, "Makes No Difference"; Levstik and Barton, "Historical Salience"; VanSledright, "Santayana Lives." 14. Wertsch et al., Sociocultural Studies. 15. Barton, "Social Contexts," p. 49. 16. S. Foster, "Using Historical Empathy to Excite Students about the Study of History: Can you Empathize with Neville Chamberlain?" Social Studies, 90 (1999). 17. Foster, "Historical Empathy"; Greene, Imagination; Tom Holt, "Thinking Historically: Narrative, Imagination, and Understanding," in D. P. Wolf(Ed.), The Thinking Series (NewYork: College Entrance Examination Board, 1990). 18. C. Hartman, "McConnell Decries Exhibits' 'Political Correctness' ," Lexington Herald Leader (July 29, 1999), A8; G. Nash, C. Crabtree, and R. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching if the Past (New York: Knopf, 1997). 19. S. Middleton and H. May, Teachers Talk Teaching. 1915-1 995: EarlY Childhood Schools and Teachers Colleges (Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore Press, 1997). 20. Ministry of Education, Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum: Getting Started (Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education, 1998), p. 8. 21. Ministry, Getting Started, pp. 10-11. 22. The term Pakeha, or foreigner, refers to non-Maori. While it can be a pejorative, it

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43.

44. 45.

Linda S. Levstik remains in use in public documents and was used by the students and teachers alike to describe themselves and others. It is also used throughout the Ministry of Education documents to refer to non-Maori. N. Thomas, "Kiss the Baby Goodbye: Kowhaiwhai and Aesthetics in Aotearoa New Zealand," Critical Inquiry, 22 (1995): 116. Ministry of Education, Social Studies in the New Zealand Cumculum (Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education [Tahuhu 0 te Matauranga], 1997), p. 21. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid. Foster, "Historical Empathy." D. A. Hollinger, "National Solidarity at the End of the Twentieth Century: Reflections on the United States and Liberal Nationalism," Journal if American History, 84 (1997). Ministry, Social Studies. R. Openshaw, "Citizen Who? The Debate over Economic and Political Correctness in the Social Studies Curriculum," in P. Benson and R. Openshaw (Eds.), New Horizonsfor New Zealand Social Studies (Palmerston North, New Zealand: Educational Research and Development Press, 1998), pp. 19-42. Barton and Levstik, "National Identity." See, e.g., S. Coney, Standing in the Sunshine: A History if New Zealand Women since thry Won the Vote (Auckland: Viking!Penguin Books, 1993); P. Crawford, Nomads if the Wind: A Natural History if PolYnesia (London: BBC Books, 1993); A.Salmond, Two Worlds: First Meetings between Maori and Europeans (Auckland: Viking, 1991 ); K. Sinclair, The Oiford Illustrated History ifNew Zealand (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). The teachers in training had undergraduate degrees in a variety of fields and were working towards initial certification. In one group only two boys participated. All other groups had three or four. Because differences by gender or age were rare I have chosen to provide examples of responses that represent both sexes and a range of grade levels throughout this paper. I use the term "master" to imply that colonial histories tend to be the history of the colonists! masters rather than of the colonized! mastered. A "master" narrative tends also to become the official narrative sanctioned in the curriculum, and the one for which students are accountable on tests of academic achievement. Barton and Levstik, "National Identity," p. 490. Coney, Standing; W. Ihimaera, The Legendary Land: Auckland (Auckland: Reed Publishing, 1994); Sinclair, Oiford History. Ihimaera, Legendary Land, p. 32. Ibid.,p. 151. While women in some other places (i.e. Wyoming, Utah, Pitcairn Island, and the Isle of Man) could vote before women in New Zealand, New Zealand was the first country in the world where a campaign for women's suffrage was victorious (see Coney, Standing). The Treaty of Waitangi is generally considered the beginning of British colonial rule in New Zealand. Although never ratified, Maori and Pakeha agreed to submit themselves to British sovereignty in exchange for the cessation of warfare, not just between Maori and Pakeha, but among Maori as well. Land settlements made as part of the Treaty are still disputed and were not upheld in practice. D. Cohen, "New Zealand No Longer Tries to be 'More English than England'," The Christian Science Monitor (1998). Openshaw, "Citizen Who?" Ihimaera, Legendary Land.

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46. Hillary was not one of the set of pictures presented to students. Instead, he was spontaneously suggested by students in response to being asked if! had left anything significant out of the pictures that they were using. 47. K. Sheppard (1847-1934) was a key figure in the women's movement in New Zealand. She had strong views on electoral reform, prison reform, international peace and arbitration, vegetarianism and health, as well as women's rights. She kept in contact with her American and British women's rights colleagues and her success was noted by them in their work (see Coney, Standing). 48. At the time of this study Jenny Shipley was Prime Minister of New Zealand and several women had just been elected to mayoral seats. 49. One group of boys suggested that women were "probably more important" than men because "they look after the homes and all, most of thc time, and they have the babies." A New Zealand colleague suggested that this response might have been reflective of a recent unit of study that included attention to puberty, reproduction, and the like. 50. This claim was made despite the students' almost universal dislike for Mrs. Shipley. Their disapproval was never attributed to Mrs. Shipley's gender and, when asked, they almost always pointed out that thcre were a number of women in public lifeHelen Clark, for instance-whom they supported. 51. Greene,Imagination, p. 3. 52. Ibid. 53. Barton and Levstik, "National Identity." 54. While individual students had some background information on people and event pictures on the timeline task, only Cook, the Treaty of'Vaitangi, and Prime Minister Jenny Shipley were universally familiar. Edmund Hillary appeared to be the other national figure with whom most students were familiar, and was the most frequently suggested addition to the timeline.

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Appendix I Materials used in interview task-captions and picture descriptions Materials consisted of twenty-three laminated photocopies and accompanying captions (captions are written using New Zealand standard spellings), as described below:

First Polynesians.

The first Polynesians came to New Zealand beginning in about 950 BeE. According to tradition, a voyager named Kupe named the country Aotearoa. In the 1300s a wave of immigrants arrived, possibly from Hawaiiki, in outrigger canoes. They brought taro, yam, kumara, the rat, and the dog. They settled on the islands, and lived there for over three hundred years before Abel Tasman named the country Nieuw Zeeland.

Captain Cook. Captain Cook and the Endeavour arrive in New Zealand in 1769. Cook soon learned that Maori inhabitants of the islands were powerful, aggressive, and brave. Cook sailed all around New Zealand, producing an accurate map of the country that was used for the next 150 years. This voyage put New Zealand on the European map of the world. Treaty ofWaitangi. In 1840, after years of warfare, some 50 Maori chiefs signed the Treaty ofWaitangi, ceding sovereignty to the Queen of England. In return, the Queen guaranteed the Maori possession of the lands, forests, fisheries, and other property. The treaty was never ratified, and within ten years was held by the Pakeha courts to be invalid. Despite this, the date of the signing is generally held to be the "founding day" of New Zealand as a British colony. The treaty remains a source of disagreement and civil dissent. Gold rush. When gold was discovered on the South Island the gold rush brought thousands of miners to New Zealand, increasing the population of the South Island, and changing New Zealand's economy. Gold became New Zealand's largest export. Land wars.

In 1860 Wiremu Kingi's claim to the Waitara started the Maori Land Wars; vast tracts ofland were confiscated from rebel groups.

Immigration.

Immigration is an important way in which the population of New Zealand changes over time. From the first Polynesians who came to Aotearoa to people from Asia and Eastern Europe who enter now, immigration has been a part of New Zealand. In the 1870s the government helped European immigrants and their families to settle in New Zealand. Today, people of Maori, Pacific Islander, European, and Asian ancestry form the population of New Zealand.

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Education. When the central government took over the responsibility for primary education in 1877, school committees could compel (force) all children between 7 and 13 to attend school. This was an important addition to the responsibilities of central government and a move that made it possible for all children, rich or poor, to at least learn to read and write. Railroads. With the coming of the railroads huge new tracts ofland opened up for settlement. As new settlers moved away from towns, conflicts over land ownership often arose. Dunedin. In 1882 the first refrigerated cargo ship left New Zealand for England. Once cargo could be kept cold, New Zealand could export meat as well as wool. Sheep became a very important part of the New Zealand economy. Women's sziffrage. New Zealand was one of the first countries in the world to grant women the right to vote. While some states in the United States allowed women to vote in some elections before 1893, they couldn't vote in national elections until more than twenty-five years after women got the vote in New Zealand. Despite the vote, women could not serve in Parliament or be Cabinet Ministers. They were active, however, "behind the scenes" and in reform activities. Pension. A typical scene at the post office when old age pensions were paid out (1898). The pension was considered a citizen's right, earned by years of paying taxes. At first, this money was given only to men who were very poor and had "good morals." Later it was extended to all those who contributed to the pension system. This was the first old age pension in the world. John Seddon. RichardJohn Seddon began a new, democratic style of politics in New Zealand. Under his administration, a number of reforms occurred that appeared to give "ordinary" people more power. Seddon sought all the publicity he could get, such as this picture from a construction project, to advertise the public works and railway construction projects begun during his administration. Cook Islands. In 190 I, New Zealand annexed the Cook Islands. Cook Islanders now make up about one-fifth of New Zealand's population. Cars. The development of the car gave people freedom of movement, which led to rapid changes in New Zealand society. Automotive import and the classroom [sic error in original publication].

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Appendix 2 Interview protocol Have you ever seen a timeline in your classroom or in books? Do you know what they're for? This is a timeline that begins almost 3,000 years ago, and these are pictures from different times between then and now. Each one has a caption that explains a little about it. You're going to work together as a group to decide which of these should go on a timeline that would help a foreigner like me to understand New Zealand's history. You can only pick 8 pictures, so you have to decide which are the most important to explain NZ history. Do you have any questions before we start? Remember, when you start, you'll need to read the captions on each one, and then talk to each other about which ones you think are important enough to include on a timeline that will explain NZ history to someone from another country. If there are any words in the captions you don't understand I will help you with them. After students complete task: I. Hold up each picture and ask: Why did you choose this one? 2. Hold up pictures not selected and ask: Why might someone else have picked this picture? 3. Do you think girls/boys would choose differently than you did? 4. Are there any pictures that you don't think anyone would pick? 5. Are there some pictures that you think should have been on the timeline? Pictures I missed? 6. What is history? The past? 7. Why do people study history or the past? 8. How do historians learn about history or the past? 9. How do you learn about history or the past? 10. What parts of New Zealand's history would you most want to learn about? II. What other histories, in other parts of the world, would you like to learn about? 12. Now it is your turn to ask questions. What questions do you have for me, either about the timeline, or the research, or anything else that interests you?

Chapter 19

Digging for clues An archaeological exploration of historical cognition

Linda S. Levstik, A. Gwynn Henderson, and Jennifer S. Schlarb

In the late 1980s in the United States, concern for the protection of cultural resources spurred archaeologists to attend to K -12 archaeology education. 1 The overriding purpose of archaeology education focused in three areas: convincing archaeologists and educators of the importance of teaching archaeology, developing resource guides, curricula and lessons for use in the classroom, and presenting testimonials as to the effectiveness of these materials and programs. Student learning was not really assessed and to date, few efforts in the United States have investigated the impact of archaeological study on children's historical thinking. 2 Although we sympathize with the desire to preserve and protect evidence of the material past, this goal alone cannot justify the inclusion of archaeology in already crowded school curricula. Archaeology education can, however, be justified on more substantial and educationally sound grounds: Its analytical emphasis on the deep past, on collective rather than individual behavior, and on understanding behavior as including both people and objects acting on each other in particular sociocultural and historical contexts.:l To the extent that students incorporate these understandings into their thinking, we argue that they are more likely to value common as well as individual good; collective as well as individual behavior. Further, they are more likely to recognize the ways in which culture shapes and is shaped by human/ object interaction. And, finally, broader, deeper understandings of human variety and change over time should better prepare citizens to understand and respect the perspectives of their fellow citizens, inclining them towards negotiation rather than confrontation. As Gaddis suggests: You can hardly do without history as a discipline, because it's the means by which a culture sees beyond the limits of its own senses. It's the basis across time, space, and scale, for a wider view. A collective historical consciousness, therefore, may be as much a prerequisite for a healthy wellrounded society as is the proper ecological balance for a healthy forest and a healthy plant. 4

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By extending the potential for collective consciousness further into the past, archaeology expands students' opportunities to learn from past experience, to become "prepared to respect the past while holding it accountable ... less given to uprooting than retrofitting ... [valuing] a moral sense over moral insensibility."5 While neither historical nor archaeological study inevitably or exclusively produces such outcomes, we consider it worthwhile to investigate the ways in which archaeology contributes to students' historical thinking and, ultimately, to their preparation for citizenship. To this end, we investigated a group of fifth-grade students' archaeological background knowledge, and the impact of school and field-based archaeological experiences on their conceptions of archaeological questions, processes, and interpretations, and their perceptions of the purposes underlying archaeological studies of the past. Our study involved a collaborative effort among a team of three archaeologists, a history education researcher, three research assistants and a classroom teacher. For five months, seventy-four fifth-grade students (aged 10-11,) at Sylvan Elementary School studied archaeology in a unit combining lessons from Intrigue qf the Past 6 lessons developed by the teacher, and class visits from archaeologists who led students in artifact analysis activities and showed them tools and slides of archaeological fieldwork in preparation for their visits to the historic archaeological site and the museum. Sylvan fifth-graders are urban/suburban elementary public school children experiencing an in-depth introduction to archaeology for the first time. Of the seventy-eight students in the fifth grade, we collected data on seventy-fourthirty-eight males, and thirty-six females-at three sites: Sylvan Elementary School, a historic archaeological site, and an anthropology museum. Sylvan houses 607 students from kindergarten to fifth grade in a middle class neighbourhood in a midsize city in the Upper South. School records identifY 77.3 per cent of the students as "White," 15 per cent "Black," 0.5 per cent "Hispanic," 1 per cent "Asian and Pacific Islander," and 6.3 per cent "Other." Of this population, 32 per cent are enrolled for free or reduced lunches, and 19 per cent for extended day services. 7 Ashland, The Henry Clay Estate, served as the historic archaeologicallocation. Archaeological research at Ashland began in 1990 with the goal of collecting information about the lifeways of the plantation's former inhabitants. 8 Education of school-age children is a formal component of archaeological work at Ashland. In Spring 2002, when the students in our study visited the site, excavation focused on remnants of possible slave quarters. Students worked under the guidance of archaeologists at several of the excavation units using trowels to uncover artifacts, screening soil for artifacts, and placing findings in labelled bags. In addition, they washed artifacts and toured the restored/ reconstructed nineteenth century home on the grounds of the estate. The third site, the nearby university's small anthropology museum, offered exhibits of prehistoric and historic inhabitants of the region.

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Method In order to make sense of students' constructions of archaeology in the context of this multi-site study, we used an observation and interview-based design, collecting data during and shortly after students took part in the unit on archaeology. All class sessions and fieldwork were audio and videotaped; interviews (3-4 students per group) were audiotaped. We first analysed data by identifying a set of thematic strands in transcripts of participants' responses in interviews and discussions, and subjected the transcripts to a systematic content analysis, categorizing responses/ discussions according to those strands. Coding included a systematic search across data sources for negative or discrepant evidence. We then analyzed the coded data, using cross-case analysis (in which we group answers responding to the same items or topics in the tasks and interview) and constant comparison (in which we compare students' responses across data sources). This resulted in a set of descriptive generalizations regarding students' prior knowledge and their conceptions and misconceptions regarding archaeology and the relationships among archaeology, history, and understanding the past. In the discussion that follows we focus on students' background knowledge, as well as their definitions of archaeology, the work of archaeologists, the purposes of archaeology, the evidential nature of artifacts, the creation of evidence-based archaeological interpretations, and the significance of context. Finally, we discuss some of the implications of these findings for supporting students' engagement with historical study in pluralist democracies.

A meagre supply of background knowledge Students at Sylvan Elementary report no prior experience with the formal study of archaeology. What several of the male students do report is an early interest in digging-in suburban gardens, amongst the buried leavings of construction work, and in sandboxes. Jim captures some of the boys' fascination: "I like to dig," he begins. "I don't know if! would have called it archaeology before this year ... when 1 would dig I would think either someone buried something really deep or it was really old." When the interviewer asks Jim exactly where he digs,Jim explains: "I dig in like my friend's back yard and my backyard and well, at myoid house there's this one place where they'd dug up the yard and it was just like sand and there were tons of rocks and we weren't sure if these were bones and we thought they were bones and we could break them really easy, so we weren't sure." These boys do not, however, separate archaeology from other forms of "digging," for rocks, mammoth bones, or fossils, for instance. Both boys and girls report watching television shows about archaeology, largely about "Old World" civilizations-Egypt, Greece, and Rome-or early hominid discoveries. Although their out-of-school experiences are relatively few, it is worth noting that they incline students to view the field with interest and considerable enthusiasm.

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Defining archaeology Because students regularly review definitions of terms introduced in the unit we analyzed patterns and variations in their definitions across data sources, probing for explanations of and elaborations on the definitions they recited with such fidelity. References to study, the past, culture, and humans / people occurred most often as elements in students' definitions. Nonetheless, considerable variation appears, especially in the final interviews. All but one of the 20 interview groups started out responding to the question "W'hat is archaeology?" with some version of "studying the past." At their most basic, these definitions recognize archaeology's link to studies of the past, but do not distinguish archaeology from other ways of studying the past, emphasize the role of material objects, or assign purpose to archaeological work: [Archaeology is] the study about the past. Of people who lived before us .... DOUG: It's the study of past life. MERRIT: I think it's the study of the history of the past. The way people used to live.

CALLIE:

AL YSSA:

In all but two groups, students gradually built more elaborate definitions. In their first elaborations students refer to culture as a defining attribute of archaeology: "Archaeology is the study of the past and past culture," one student suggests. While culture is certainly a feature of archaeological investigation, students provide very vague descriptions of this concept: "The way people used to live," for instance. In three groups, students elaborate by explaining that culture refers to how people in the past "got their food, their different traditions, their legends, religion" and "how they did things, what they did, how they made things, how they lived, basically." Another student in a fourth group provides an interesting-and unique among study participants-commentary on culture as "how [people] adapted." In three other groups, some variation of "how they did things" appears in response to questions about what culture means. Overall, students use the term as analogous to liftstyle. Interestingly, though, they do not connect material objects very directly to culture, only occasionally referencing "how they made things," focusing instead on folkwayslegends, foods, and the like. All but three groups also include artifact analysis in their definition of archaeology. As Cleo explains, archaeologists search out artifacts and "figure out how old they are and how people from the past ... make [them]." Students could rarely, however, identify what resources might have been used in the production of particular artifacts. Indeed, students are generally uninformed about the make-up of common items: glass, nails, or textiles, for instance. As a result, they often struggle to understand the connections among artifacts, the

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technologies necessary for their production, and the kinds of cultures that these artifacts imply. Overall, student definitions rarely attend to such distinctive features of archaeology as materiality or context, or to the connections between these features and evidence-based interpretations. Their understanding of culture emphasizes the customs, foods, and costumes approach found in many schools. Even for adults, of course, culture is a slippery term, so it should come as no surprise that ten- and eleven-year-olds struggle with it. Rather, what is important here is that telling students that archaeology involves studying past cultures tells them very little. If they understand culture in non-material ways, and archaeology focuses on material objects, students cannot but be confused about how archaeology connects to culture. Students' definitions also suggest that they struggle to fit archaeology into a familiar narrative of progress over time, although with an interesting twist. The dominant narrative in the U.S. depicts history as a march of progress: over time the world improves, challenges are met and overcome, and Americans can expect to continue to solve problems and improve their lives. Studies in the U.S . find that students attribute past belief~, goals, values, and choices, whether in regard to race, gender, or fashion , to ignorance. 9 According to the students in our study, however, people in the past may have more to offer than object lessons in bad judgment. Instead, the past might inform the present-by finding cures for diseases or learning how to be more peaceful- in order to generate further progress. Students' willingness to consider that the past might have something to teach-aside from avoiding mistakes-suggests potential for richer and deeper historical and cultural studies than currently exist in many U.S. schools. Asking students, not only what archaeology is but also what archaeologists do provides further evidence of student thinking in this regard, especially as that thinking relates to the processes and purposes of archaeological work.

Tools and tasks: Processes for solving archaeological puzzles Across the activities in the archaeology unit, instruction focused on the work of archaeologists. At one point, for instance, an archaeologist brought to class some of the "tools of the trade"-trowels, measuring tapes, and the like. Later, at the excavationsite, students saw these tools in use and used some themselves. At another point, archaeologists in the classroom introduced various tools for establishing context, including grids and stratigraphy. Again, students saw grids in use at the excavation site and, in at least one excavation unit, used a grid. Archaeologists at each unit also pointed out stratigraphy-generally less clear on site than in the diagrams used in class activities. Students also engaged in some interpretive tasks and visited the anthropology museum to see other interpretive displays based on anthropological and archaeological data.

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These activities did not, however, all link one with the next. While class work used historic artifacts related to the same time period as Ashland and students recovered historic artifacts during their fieldwork at Ashland, all but one museum display focused on interpretations of prehistoric objects related to indigenous people. As a result, students were exposed to archaeological processes in the context of an historic site and archaeological interpretations in two different contexts: historic artifact analysis during a classroom activity and prehistoric artifact analysis in the anthropology museum. 1O They never saw well-developed interpretations about Ashland that were direct outgrowths of the processes they observed. Not surprisingly, they struggled with some of the connections between processes and interpretations, and, when asked what archaeologists do, focused more on processes-tools and tasks, active investigation, solving puzzles- than on interpretation or reporting results. When questioned about archaeologists' work, students first mention tools used and tasks performed in fieldwork. Initially, they simply list tasks- sometimes in rather disjointed and non-specific ways-that they observed archaeologists do or engaged in themselves: LIZ: They dig up dirt. First they get some mud strained and have little

mounds, and squares, and they shovel, and dig, and you have a little brush, and you want to dab and you have a little table, and put dirt in, dirt goes out and artifacts stay in. Over the course of the study, too, students distinguish between the active work of archaeologists and 'just thinking, just making inferences about" the past- the processes they describe as characteristic of historians. In these cases, they describe archaeologists operating as do forensic scientists. In four interview groups, for instance, students refer to piecing together the past- literally, as when Fred explains that archaeologists "look for missing pieces, and the pieces that they find, they have to put together," and more metaphorically as when Millie says that the whole process is "like a puzzle." "You can take a piece of something," she explains. "It's like missing the piece of the puzzle that you're putting together." Archaeologists, students explain, search out artifacts- the puzzle pieces-in order to tell "the whole story" of the past. The end product of archaeological work, then, is a story. Finally, students recognize archaeologists' reporting function. As Bailey explains, archaeologists are supposed to make their work known to the public: "They write a report- that's recording." Overall, though, students provide only intermittent evidence that they understand the nature or function of those reports, or that they understand that the reports relate to the "story" archaeologists are supposed to be putting together.

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Learning from the past:The place of purpose in archaeology Because the archaeology education literature makes a number of claims regarding the purposes of archaeology in the classroom, and because what educators intend may differ markedly from what students comprehend, we asked students to consider the purposes of archaeology. "Why," we asked them, "do people do archaeology?" Overall, student responses parallel findings from studies of children's and adolescents' historical thinking: People study the past to connect themselves to ancestors, understand other people, prepare for further study, improve the present, and satisfy personal interest. I I Most groups begin by explaining that "understanding the past" and especially "our" [United States] past, constitutes the primary purpose of archaeology. Sam explains that people do archaeology "to find out about the past of America." Casey and Tucker suggest that people study archaeology "so we can know more about our past" and "learn about ancestors and stuff." For the most part, students appear to refer to collective ancestry: all "Americans" rather than a student's particular genetic ancestry. However, when students respond in these ways, they rarely refer to the power of archaeology to bring to light the lifeways of "ordinary" and often unnamed people. This was the case even though the curriculum to which they were exposed involved excavating the material culture of those who left few written records of their experiences-the enslaved people living on the Ashland Estate. Students also suggest that studying archaeology provides information on how differently people live over time and in other places. Trey, Cal, and Rory, for instance, think it is important to know that many people "do things different from the way we do things." Perhaps, too, people's "ancestors did something and they might compare it to how we live today," explains Lena, and Leah adds, "we want to know this because everybody has a different culture- how they did each thing, like how they made their food, how they made their friends." After listening to his peers, Alex adds something familiar from other studies of historical thinking: People learn about the past "so they can teach kids, so we can grow up and go to college." When pushed to explain why knowing about the past might be worthwhile, students most often respond by claiming that learning about the past helps us avoid repeating past mistakes. Some of these "mistakes" are quite specific-"putting poison in our food," "stumbling into dangerous places," and "going back to the seventies." Other students suggest that archaeologists might find that ancient people knew cures helpful to people in the present. In addition, if archaeologists found that people were more peaceful in past times,judy wonders if we "maybe can do what they did." And, again, students argue that studying the past shows progress over time: "better graphics in video games," "some of the clothes," "things that would make our lives easier." In two groups, students return to the forensic analogy, arguing that archaeology assists in discovering causes of

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death. "If! were to die," Millie explains, "my mom would know who I was and how I died." Among this array of utilitarian reasons for studying the past, only Martin suggests that not knowing about the past might leave people "believ[ing] things that aren't true." "It could wreck history," he declares. Several students also agree that people do archaeology because "it's just interesting." While this response appeared in only four groups when the interview question related specifically to archaeological purpose, across all the data sources, the majority of students report that they find their own experiences with archaeology intrinsically interesting. They enjoy finding other people's material culture, enjoy the element of mystery or puzzlement, revel in sorting and washing artifacts, and enthusiastically engage in speculating about the lifeways of past people. And, while they can generate a variety of purposes that might motivate others- particularly adults-to engage in archaeological study, the fascination of discovering pieces of the past is the purpose that they find most personally motivating.

How artifacts tell us about the past The initial lesson plan in Project Archaeology's Intrigue qf the Past defines three terms: archaeological site, archaeology, and artifact. After explaining that an archaeological site is "a place where human activity occurred and material remains were left," and archaeology is "a method for studying past human cultures and analyzing material evidence (artifacts and sites)," the lesson plan defines an artifact as "any objcct made or uscd by humans." The lesson plan then calls for students to bring "an object (artifact) or photograph from home that tells about their own or their family's past." 12 At first glance, this seems a fairly straightforward introduction to archaeology. The lesson appears to emphasize the investigative nature of archaeology while introducing students to the concept of material remains as evidence of past human activity. In addition, this first lesson links students' personal or familial material world to archaeological reconstructions of the past. History educators, among others, have long advocated just this kind of engagement with personal history. 13 As the data from this study suggests, however, this lesson also may inadvertently support misconceptions and confusions about the nature of artifacts and evidence-based archaeological interpretation. When asked to explain what artifacts have to do with understanding the past, students make sense of artifacts as story elements, as evidence, as clues in a mystery, and as embedded in a context.

Artifacts as elements in story construction Students most commonly describe artifacts as elements in a single "whole story." Rafe, for instance, not only explains that each artifact "gives new meaning" to the stories told by other artifacts, but claims that an individual

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artifact also "tells one story." Millie adds that "the story" of the past is composed of multiple artifacts found in context. She suggests that once artifacts are taken out of context "you can't really tell the story because you don't know the location, so you can't really tell if they go together." This conception of the relationship between artifacts and story sometimes appears as a puzzle metaphor. Students explain that artifacts are "pieces of a puzzle" that can be put together to tell "the story of the past." Cleo describes this process quite clearly: "If they found something and it was in all little pieces you could try to put those pieces together" and then, she says, you might know "how it relates to the past." As they use the story metaphor, students discuss the partial and ambiguous nature of archaeological stories. They describe how careful observation of artifacts-the puzzle pieces-leads to better inferences and a more completebut singular-story. Students understand that removing artifacts from a site can "mess up the story" a site might tell-one student says it would be the same as tearing pages out of a book-but they struggle to explain context as it relates to archaeology. For some, context is the array of artifacts that allows archaeologists to discover the "real story" rather than simply make "educated guesses." Others describe some version of a classmate's analogy: "artifacts are like the characters in a story. The context is like the plot, so without the plot, you don't have a story."

Artifacts as evidence in solving mysteries At no point did students use the word evidence in relation to artifacts. The Intrigue of the Past materials to which they were introduced make only occasional references to artifacts as evidence. If There are lessons that imply that artifacts are evidence, but no instructional chain explicitly addresses what artifacts are evidence of. Despite this lack of curricular attention, some students do connect artifacts to cmcrging conceptions of evidence, though they never use the word evidence. The forensics references mentioned earlier, for instance, indicate that at least some students understand that artifacts might become evidence under certain circumstances. Students' language does reflect an understanding of archaeology as detection and speculation. Qualifying words appear regularly in their descriptions: maybe, sort of, I guess, we don't know, somehow, could have been, and the like. The following conversation about a bone implement captures the students' communal inference-making and the tentativeness of their conclusions:

It looks like it was a little kid's blowgun, or something like that. Animal RORY: Or it could be an animal HEDDA: The bone of an animal that was one day a spear or something because it's sharp so they could get the animals. RORY: They probably used it so often that it dulled down. RORY:

JACKSON:

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This type of speculation appears in each of the interview groups and was a regular feature of class and fieldwork. In the following exchange, students interpret a set of artifacts, offer alternative possibilities, and call background knowledge into playas they speculate, first about a projectile point, and then about an accompanying set of artifacts: I say spear. Cause if you look at an arrow, what's usually its size? This one's big. HARLEY: Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't want to carry that around. MITCHELL: They could have eaten fish. They could have speared the fish. MITCHELL:

JOSHUA:

Soon, the group moves on to a small mortar. They must have eaten wheat and corn to make it into cornmeal and stuff like that; they'd have to grind it. INTERVIEWER [circling the indentation in the mortar with her finger]: Now this is a very little space here. HARLEY: I know! JOSHUA: That was exactly what I was thinking! ... HARLEY: SO maybe wheat? MITCHELL: No. HARLEY: Like maybe crack nuts and that? JOSHUA: Small plants. MITCHELL: Maybe it's a nutcracker! JOSHUA: So how would archaeologists know? MITCHELL: It must have been a hard life. JOSHUA: No, because HARLEY: Because we're lazy! MITCHELL: Exactly! We can go to a store. HARLEY: We just chow down. MITCHELL: It would be hard. HARLEY: It would be awesome. MITCHELL:

As the conversation continues, students consider how easily evidence might be overlooked or inadvertently removed from a site, and Joshua raises an even more important question regarding the nature of artifacts: I have a question. How can you tell if some of this stuff is artifacts? You really have to have some background cause if I was like digging and I saw this, well, I might keep it because it was a pretty rock and I wouldn't think it was like an axe.

JOSHUA:

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Historical thinking in archaeological context Student responses to this experience with archaeology indicate that archaeological study can contribute to many of the goals of both archaeology and history educators. At least in the context of this study, students do understand archaeology as an activity motivated by questions about how people lived in the past. They understand that the material remains of the past help answer archaeological questions, that those remains are partial, and that, given more artifacts in less disturbed sites, archaeologists can construct more complete accounts of past cultures. This view of archaeology as an open-ended, on-going inquiry represents a sharp contrast with their descriptions of history-a subject they perceive as largely a completed, non-negotiable narrative. And, while students do not always make clear connections between material remains and the cultures that produce them, or describe behavior as a function of human/ material interaction, they do recognize that careful observation of artifacts leads to better inferences and a more complete "story." A word of caution is in order here. Because of its materiality, archaeology would appear to offer students concrete opportunities to create multiple, evidence-based interpretations. We find little evidence, however, that the students in our study understand that an archaeological story represents one among several possible, plausible, evidence-based interpretations. Rather, they see artifacts as elements in a single, whole story. Moreover, when asked to explain what "story" a group of artifacts might tell, students tend to create interpretations that rely more heavily on familiar narrative structuresproblem, climax, resolution-than archaeological evidence, often abandoning evidence in favour of maintaining a story line. This pattern also appears in other studies of historical thinking. We suspect that equating "story" with interpretation contributes to this problem, but evidence from this and other studies also suggests that building evidence-based interpretations requires more than a change in metaphor. Rather, interpretation requires considerable scaffolding. While existing research is more suggestive than definitive in this regard, it is clear that students as young as fifth grade recognize multiple perspectives and the possibility that multiple interpretations might result from these perspectives. 15 In the curriculum to which these students were exposed, however, little attention focuses on multiple, evidence-based interpretations or "stories." Indeed, in an early lesson in Intrigue if the Past the authors explain that " [a] rchaeologists use observation and inference to learn the story of past people" (emphasis added). In a later lesson in which students excavate wastebaskets, the authors explain that the artifacts in the wastebaskets represent only "a small piece of our culture." There is nothing, however, to suggest that these artifacts might support various interpretations of "our" culture. There is little or no attention to the provisional or perspectival nature of artifactual interpretation. Rather, artifacts are presented as having some inherent meaning-a singular

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meaning that can be read correctly by knowledgeable archaeologists. Students are encouraged to imagine artifacts as "messengers from the past."16 There is poetic appeal to this approach; unfortunately, its unintended consequence is to support misconceptions about the nature of archaeological and historical interpretations. Similarly, while piecing together a puzzle captures some features of archaeological work-archaeologists do piece artifacts together-this metaphor works best at the artifact rather than larger interpretive levels. An array of sherds may end up as an identifiable pot that is, at a very literal level, complete. The same cannot be said of any assignment of meaning to the pot. At best, archaeologists develop multiple evidence-based interpretations of the past and spend years arguing over which constitute the best explanations-stories, perhaps, but not a story. To the degree that students conceive of artifacts as elements in a story, pieces of a puzzle, or points of forensic evidence, they tend to conclude that a single explanation is theoretically, if not practically, possible. Moreover, they really do not connect the completed stories, puzzles, or mysteries very closely to their other ideas about culture. These results are not surprising. First, the curriculum to which they were exposed did not focus on how tools shape behavior, on the technologies that produce particular tools, or on multiple interpretations. Second, during their study of archaeology, students had opportunities to talk to archaeologists about their work and to participate in some of that work themselves, but they did not engage in the full range of archaeological activity, especially in regard to interpretation. This is not to say that the activities in which they engaged could not accomplish some of these goals, only that these activities illuminate some aspects of archaeology while obscuring others.

Why do archaeology in schools? The answer to "why do archaeology in schools?" is not a simple one. Recently, archaeologists, like historians, have begun to more explicitly consider the purposes of archaeology, its values and the benefits it provides, and to debate its goals. 17 As a result, practitioners in the field are beginning to recognize that archaeology provides benefits not only for archaeologists but for the many participants and publics who use it. To the extent that archaeology's primary social contribution is seen as the production and dissemination of new information about the past based on the systematic study of the archaeological record, archaeology education's purpose becomes one of engaging students in "exploring the history of humanity, and appreciating the value of our collective experiences over the millennia."18 While we agree that these are worthy goals, they miss a connection we want to make between valuing collective experience and intelligent participation in a pluralist democracy. R.A Wertime comes closest to our conception of purpose when he suggests that "by virtue of its missionrecovering the past and articulating it to the present-[archaeology] embodies the concept of the common good. Archaeology is a mirror held up, not to

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nature but to humanity. To excavate the past is to polish that mirror, that we may better see ourselves and know more clearly who we are."19 We would add two caveats to Wertime's statement. The first is the concern we have expressed throughout our discussion regarding making clear the tentative nature of "recovering the past." The second concern focuses on pronouns and perspectives. It seems to us that in polishing \'\Tertime's metaphorical mirror, we would be best served to see- and help our students to see- not just ourselves, but others, and know more clearly who they are and were. To the extent that archaeology education does this, archaeological inquiry can provide insights important, not only to understanding human experience, but to deliberations about the common good. To accomplish this, students need a variety of carefully planned experiences. These include attention to not only archaeological processes (deposition, disturbances, and the like), and the processes of archaeologists (scientific method, excavation, analysis, interpretations), but to a humanistic study of the past in all its diversity and time depth, emphasizing: the longevity of human experience; that over this long span of time, humans developed and continue to develop complex systems of beliefs, goals, values, and behavior; that these cultural patterns are not inevitable, but change over time; that because material culture shapes and is shaped by human activity and agency, material remains-artifacts- illuminate human behavior; that archaeological interpretations provide evidence-based, tentative, and perspectival descriptions of human/material interactions over time that can help us consider our own interactions with the material world, as well as what cultural patterns and practices we might want to keep, alter, or discard. Given this kind of focus, archaeology would be contextualized as crucial to understanding the full scope of human experience, providing material evidence of human agency, as well as of the materiality of human behavior, within the widest possible array of topics, issues, and problems. It would be conceived of as linked, not only to the disciplinary study of history and the social sciences, but to the preparation of citizens better able to live and work in a pluralist democracy and more willing to act for the common good in an interdependent world .

Notes I. E. Friedman, "Preface," in K. Smardz and S.]. Smith (Eds.), The Archaeology Education Handbook: Sharing the Past with Kids (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2000), pp. 1326; B.]. Little, "Archaeology as a Shared Vision," in B.]. Little (Ed.), Public Benifzts qf Archaeology (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2002), pp. 4-19.

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2. For further discussion of the development of archaeology education, see P. ]. Higgins and K A. Holm, "Archaeology and Precollege Education: A Literature Review," Practicing Anthropology, 86(3--4) (1986): 24-8. For discussion of the goals of archaeology education, see F. P. McManamon, "The Many Publics for Archaeology," American Antiquity, 56(1) (1991): 121- 30, and P. L. Jeppson, and G. Brauer, '''Hey, Did you Hear about the Teacher Who Took the Class out to Dig a Site': Some Common Misconceptions about Archaeology in the Schools," in L. Derry and M. Malloy (Eds.), Archaeologists and Local Communities: Partners in Exploring the Past (Washington, DC: Society for American Archaeology, 2003), pp. 77- 96. 3. See B. G. Trigger, A History qfArchaeological 7hought (Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); V. M. LaMotta, and M. B. Schiffer, "Behavioural Archaeology: Toward a New Synthesis," in 1. Hodder (Ed.), Archaeological 7heory Today (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 200 I), pp. 14-64; M. B. Schiffer, Behavioural Archaeology (New York: Academic Press, 1976); M. B. Schiffer, Formation Processes qf the Archaeological Record, 1st ed. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1987); 1. Hodder, the Archaeology qf Contextual Meanings (Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); 1. Hodder Interpreting Archaeology: Finding Meaning in the Past (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). 4. ]. L. Gaddis, the Landscape qf History: How Historians Map the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 129. 5. Ibid. 6. S.] . Smith,]. M. Moe, KA. Letts, and D. M. Paterson, Intrigue qfthe Past: A Teacher's Activity Guide for Fourth through Seventh Grades. (Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, 1996). 7. Demographic data was provided by administrative personnel at the school and school district. All children participated in the instructional aspects of the archaeology unit; four students did not have permission to participate in the study. An additional twelve students' audio taped interviews could not be used because of technical difficulties. These students are, however, represented in audio and video tapes of other study-related activities. Extended Day Services are provided for students whose performance falls below grade level expectations. Services include tutoring, homework assistance, and academic and/ or health evaluations. 8. The archaeologists worked for the Kentucky Archaeological Survey, an organization jointly sponsored by the Kentucky Heritage Council and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. The Survey's mission is to provide a service to other state agencies, to work with private landowners to protect archaeological sites, and to educate the public about Kentucky's archaeological heritage. Information on on-going investigations can be found in W. S. McBride, Archaeology qfHenry Clay's Ashland Estate: Investigations qfthe Mansion, rard, and Pri1!)'. Archaeological Report 281. Program for Cultural Resource Assessment (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 1993), W. S. McBride and K A. McBride, Preliminary Archaeological Investigations at Ashland, 15FA206, Lexington, Kentucky. Archaeological Report 245 (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 1991); W. S. McBride and M. Esarey, "The Archaeology of the Ashland Privy, Lexington, Kentucky," in K. A. McBride, W. S. McBride, and D. Pollack (Eds.), Historical Archaeology in Kentucky (Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Heritage Council, 1995), pp. 265-95, and N. O'Malley, D. W. Linebaugh,]. W. Duwan, and R. B. Clay, ''A Brilliant and Pleasant Light": NineteenthCentury Gas Lighting at Ashland, Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky. Technical Report 413, (Lexington, KY: Program for Archaeological Research, Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, 1999). 9. See K. C. Barton, "Narrative Simplifications in Elementary Students' Historical

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Thinking," in J. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in Research on Teaching, vol. 6, Teaching and Learning History (Greenwich, CT:JAI Press, 1996), and B. A. VanSledright, In Search qf America's Past: Learning to Read History in Elementary School Classrooms (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002). 10. While the museum included some historic exhibits, student activity centred on prehistoric artifacts and exhibits. II. See L. S. Levstik, and K. C. Barton, Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001); P. Seixas, "Historical Understanding among Adolescents in a Multicultural Setting," Curriculum Inquiry, 23 (1993): 301- 27; P. Seixas, "Students' Understanding of Historical Significance," TIeory and Research in Social Education, 22 (1994): 281-304; B. A. VanSledright, "And Santayana Lives on: Students' Views on the Purposes for Studying American History," Journal qfCurriculum Studies, 29 (1997): 529- 57; B. A. VanSledright, "'I Don't Remember- The Ideas are AlIJumbled in My Head': 8th Graders' Reconstructions of Colonial American History," Journal qf Curriculum and Superoision, 10 (1996): 31 7-45. 12. Smith et aI., Intrigueqfthe Past, p. 9. 13. See, for instance, M. O. Tunnell and R. Ammons, TIe Story qf Ourselves: Teaching History through Children's Literature (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993). 14. Smith et al., Intrigue qfthe Past, p. 9. 15. The challenges of engaging fifth-graders in historical interpretations are vividly clear in B. VanSledright, In Search qf America's Past (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002), and L. S. Levstik and D. B. Smith, '''I've Never Done This Before': Building a Community of Historical Inquiry in a Third-Grade Classroom," in J. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in Research on Teaching, vol. 6, Teaching and Learning History (Greenwich, CT:JAI Press, 1996), pp. 85- 114. 16. Smith et al., Intrigue qfthe Past, p. 9. 17. See LaMotta and Schiffer, "Behavioural Archaeology," p. 41; Little, "Archaeology as Shared Vision"; Smardz and Smith, Archaeology Education Handbook; L. Derry and M. Malloy (Eds.), Archaeologists and Local Communities: Partners in Exploring the Past (Washington, DC: Society for American Archaeology, 2003). 18. Smardz and Smith, Archaeology Education Handbook, p. 376. 19. R. A. Wertime, "The Boom in Volunteer Archaeology," Archaeology, 48(1) (1995): 66- 9,71-3.

Afterword

As we hope we've made clear, we enjoy doing research, whether we're working with students or analyzing data, and we enjoy sharing the results in articles, presentations, workshops, and books for teachers. We also find the intellectual exchange with other educators invigorating. None of us works alone; we all benefit from a diverse community that includes colleagues investigating related questions, employing interesting and creative research designs, and thinking carefully about the implications of research for enhancing children's educational experiences. As demonstrated by recent attempts to declare a single research paradigmrandomized controlled trials-the "gold standard" for "scientifically-based" research, misunderstandings persist regarding what educational research can do. Policy-makers who expect research to generate results immediately applicable to a broad sweep of school settings argue that much of educational research has no practical value (Institute of Educational Sciences, 2003; Kaestle, 1993). Over the years, researchers themselves also have distinguished between "basic" and "practical" research in ways that exacerbate claims regarding the impracticality of educational research. Kerlinger (1959), for instance, argued that the primary function of research was theory building, not the identification and solution of practical problems in education. He conceded that the advancement of theory might lead to solutions for practical problems, but he dismissed it as a primary motivation for research. Not surprisingly, critics argued that such a dichotomy rendered educational research virtually useless (Ebel, 1973). In the years since 1959, plenty of others have vied for the position of arbiter of educational research on similarly specious grounds. (For discussion and critique of social studies research, see Shaver, 1994; Stanley, 2001 ; Stanley et al., 1985; Barton, 2006. For a brief overview and response to the Institute of Education Sciences guidelines, see H ass, 2004.) In our view, many of these distinctions are as unfortunate as they are wrongheaded, beginning with establishing randomized controlled trials as some sort of paragon of scholarly virtue. As we have tried to point out throughout the book, there is nothing quite so basic or practical as asking questions about how

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people learn. Without such information, there can be no reasonable intellectual basis for randomized controlled trials, classroom interventions, or policy decisions. Not every study of children's thinking offers some sort of grand-scale "best practice," but research on historical thinking provides building blocks on which context-sensitive classroom interventions might be based and tested. We see our own research and the research we hope to encourage as doing just that. The deeper and better understood the research base, the more likely it is that instructional practices will change. Given the influence of context on historical thinking, however, those changes will probably never be as sweeping as policymakers claim to want. If nothing else, research in different national settings points out some of the ways in which ideas about history and history education reflect national as well as more local patterns. One of the more important conclusions we can draw from these differences is the responsiveness of historical thinking to a sort of historical zei(geist operating in the nation. We don't want to overdraw the point here: Alternative histories, multiple purposes for history, and conflicts related to historical interpretations and history education operate within and against mainstream understandings of the uses of the past in many (perhaps all) nations. But national differences suggest a fair degree of conceptual flexibility when it comes to thinking about the past. We can no longer assume that because children in one country tend to understand history as stories of "how we got here" that others might not consider history as an exploration of others' lifeways or a search for patterns in human experience. Arguments for implementing one curricular approach over another may have cultural or political grounds, but at least at this point they cannot claim one as more or less "natural" than another. Patterns in the acquisition of aspects of historical thinking may well persist across contexts, but we have only barely begun to investigate that possibility. It would be worthwhile to know, for instance, what features of historical thinking seem most amenable to change in different settings, how vernacular histories operate in relation to different national and local contexts, and how different histories inform students' ideas about variation and change in human experience. One area in particular need of attention is how students make sense of history as gendered. Considering global attention to the status of women, the intellectual activity surrounding gender and history, and a largely unexplained achievement gap between males and females on history assessments (as well as the prevailing sociocultural framework for much of history education research), we might expect more attention to this area (Hahn, Bernard-Powers, Crocco, & Woyshner, 2007). At present, however, the research is more suggestive than definitive, glimpsed in passing in studies of other aspects of historical thinking, or ofrelated disciplines (Barton, 2008; Hahn, 1998; Hahn et al., 2007; Levstik, in press). Only a few studies focus attention on gender and history in national contexts, and only a tiny proportion of the studies that include gender even peripherally also include cross-cultural or cross-national comparisons. A Dutch

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study found, for instance, that after taking a women's history course, girls slightly outperformed boys on tests of women's history, but boys continued to outperform girls on more "traditional" historical content (i.e., World War II) (ten Dam & Rijkscharaoeff, 1996). The Dutch girls also described women's history as interesting and worth studying, offering optimistic accounts of women's success in gaining equality with men. In another study of Native American Indian girls' reading of Disney's Pocahontas, young Indian women offered an optimistic description of cultural reconciliation as a feature of history in popular culture (Aidman, 2001). In both cases, the studies' authors argued that students cast the historical narrative as a story of progress in order to avoid being seen as part of a group perceived as lagging behind (ten Dam & Rijkscharaoeff, 1996; Aidman, 2001). It would be interesting to find out how widespread this response might be. When Linda and a colleague, Jeanette Groth (Levstik & Groth, 2002), investigated eighth-graders' conceptualizations of the significance of women's experiences in the context of a study of Antebellum U.S. history, they, too, found that students considered women's experience historically significant. Early in the study, boys as well as girls tended to describe women as oppressed and men as oppressors, but after examining a varied set of documents, their final projects described multiple perspectives and multiple expressions of agency by women and men. Nonetheless, some of them worried about "reverse sexism" -studying women at the expense of men-even while claiming that they had never worried about or even noticed the reverse situation. These glimpses into the relationship between gender and conceptions of the past argue for more carefully focused and theorized analyses. How do students come to understand agency separate from the exercise of political power or attached to different life circumstances? How does using gender as an analyticallens in history instruction affect students' ideas about women's and men's agency? Are there differences in how males and females conceptualize different aspects of the past? Do they employ different strategies for making sense of the past? What changes might occur if students encountered instruction that took the relationship between men and women seriously enough to emphasize different turning points, causes, or outcomes? Similar questions might be pursued regarding other aspects of diversity. In our work on historical significance, for instance, we've noticed that students (and teachers) in more diverse classroom settings tend to pay more attention to difference in regard to historical significance-they look for greater degrees of representation in their choices for the timeline, for instance. Several studies uncovered differences, too, in the ways African American and White children in the U.S. and immigrant children in Canada established historical significance (Seixas, 1997; Epstein, 2000; Foster, Hoge, & Rosch, 1999). A bare handful of studies examine aspects of young people's historical thinking among other cultural groups (Aidman, 2001; Schweber, 2004; Schweber & Irwin, 2003). Given the politics of difference, and how imprecision so easily leads to

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bad ideas, we need well-designed and well-executed studies to help us understand how students' personal and group affiliations influence their thinking about the past. Tyson (2006) argues for an additional caveat: Researchers cannot mine various communities for data and then leave without giving something back to the schools and communities they studied. This returns us to the issue of "value added" research design. Creative researchers would do well to consider not only how research findings might address educational problems in general, but how the process of research could have more immediate benefits for study participants. As we explained earlier, tasks designed to motivate interest and generate conversation in a research setting often work just as well for instruction and assessment in the classroom. Further, the kinds of analyses used to interpret students' responses to tasks are often useful analytical tools for teachers. We've worked with several teachers, for instance, who use timeline exercises from our research as formative assessments. Not only do teachers learn what aspects of the past students already know about or find confusing, they note patterns of interest that they can build on in later instruction. These benefits accrue in large measure through collaborative rather than "hit and run" research. This means discussing research designs with teachers, adapting tasks to the immediate needs of students, and providing feedback within appropriate privacy constraints so that time spent with the researcher will enhance rather than detract from students' academic expenence. Much of our work has focused on children and early adolescents. As we said earlier, Piagetian age and stage constraints framed much of the conversation about the development of children's thinking when we began our work. Assumptions about young children's inability to manage abstractions led some educators to think there was little point in teaching them history. Few researchers persist in organizing historical thinking around age-based, invariant stages, but in the world of schools, older students still receive far more exposure to history than do younger ones. While there are a number of reasons for the absence of history and social studies from the elementary curriculum, it doesn't help that there is so little research to help us design appropriate instruction for young children. We simply do not have the body of research on emergent learning that characterizes literacy, mathematics, and science. Brophy and Alleman (2006) examine some aspects of history within the context of cultural universals (changes in food, clothing, and shelter over time), we have included primary age children in our chronology study, and Linda worked with firstgraders in one long-term study. More commonly, research on historical thinking begins in fourth or fifth grade. Fourth- and fifth-grade students are likely to be readers, they usually have some formal history instruction by fifth grade, and they can manage inquiries that more closely resemble the activities of historians than can younger children. Research on emergent historical thinking, where researchers try to capture aspects of children's thinking prior to more formal encounters with "conventional" disciplinary practice is much

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more rare (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005). The young children in Ruby Yessin's class (Chapter 3), for instance, didn't analyze dense primary documents with a historian's rigor, but they certainly engaged with the past through reading fiction and non-fiction narratives, and discussing aspects of the past with each other, their teacher, and class visitors. They discussed, displayed, and used historic artifacts, asked questions about the past, collected and analyzed evidence, and explained what they thought the evidence meant. In fact, their thinking about the past was often quite sophisticated and their historical study provided a meaningful context for developing literacy skills. Paying careful attention to young learners and the contexts within which their ideas about history and the past emerge might help educators make more informed decisions about curriculum and instruction in the early years, but it also makes sense if we want to understand later development. It seems absurd, in fact, to theorize about historical thinking without some understanding of its early roots. Lacking such perspective, history educators work at a distinct disadvantage in the classroom and in the highly politicized negotiations surrounding curriculum, teaching and learning standards and accountability measures. In sum, although we know a great deal more about children's historical thinking now than was the case when either of us entered the field, gaps remain, especially in regard to diverse and very young learners. Anyone interested in conducting research on historical thinking enters a well-populated field, but with plenty of work still to be done. Our intent isn't to establish some sort of approved way to organize that work. Rather, we hope to encourage an intellectual and epistemological hybridity that is open to diverse perspectives and innovative designs, provides access to historical thinking at different ages, among different populations, and in different contexts, and generates the kind of intellectually invigorating community of which we would all like to be a part.

References Aidman, A. (2001). Disney's Pocahontas: Conversations with Native American and EuroAmerican girls. In S. R. Mazzarella & N. O. Pecora (Eds.), Growing up girls: Popular culture and the construction ofidentity (pp. 133-158). New York: Peter Lang. Barton, K. C. (2006). Introduction. In K. C. Barton (Ed.), Research methods in social studies education: Contemporary issues and perspectives (pp. 1-10). Greenwich, CN: Information Age Publishing. Barton, K. C. (2008). Students' ideas about history. In L.S. Levstik & C.A. Tyson (Eds.), Handbook ofresearch on social studiesN ew York: Routledge. Brophy,]. E., & Alleman,]. (2006). Children's thinking about cultural universals. Mahwah, l\{J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford,]. (Eds.) (2005). Preparing teachersfir a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco, CA:Jossey-Bass. Ebel, R. L. (1973). Some limitations of basic research in education. In H. S. Broudy, R. Ennis, & L. 1. Krimerman (Eds.), Philosophy ofeducational research (pp. 122--30). New York:John Wiley & Sons.

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Epstein, T.L. (2000). Adolescents' perspectives on racial diversity in U.S. history: Case studies from an urban classroom. American Educational Research Journal, 37, 185-214. Foster, S.]., Hoge,]. D., & Rosch, R. H. (1999). Thinking aloud about history: Children's an d adolescents' responses to historical photographs. Theory and Research in Social Education, 27, 179-215. Hahn, C. L., Bernard-Powers,]., Crocco, M., & Woyshner, C. (2007). Gender equity and social studies. In S. S. Klein (Gen. Ed.), B. Richardon. , D. A Grayson, L. H. Fox, C. Kramarae, D. S. Pollard, & C. A. Dwyer (Eds.), Handbookfor achieving gender equiry through education (2nd. ed., pp. 335-59). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hass, B. (2004). The brouhaha surrounding scientifically-based research. Stmiford Educator. Retrieved April 4, 2007 , from http://ed.stanford.edu/suse/news-bureau/ educator /fa1l2004 / index.html Institute of Education Sciences (2003). Identifying and implementing educational practices supported by rigorous nJidence: A user friendly guide. Washington, DC: Department of Education. Kaestle, C. F. (1993). The awful reputation of educational research. Educational Researcher, 22(1), 23, 26-3\. K erlinger, F. N. (1959). The mythology of educational research: The methods approach. School and Sociery, 88, 149- 151. Levstik, L. S. (in press). Teaching women's history with research in mind. In M. Crocco & C. Berkin (Eds.), Teaching U.S. women's history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levstik, L. S., & Groth,]. (2002). Scary thing, being an eighth grader: Exploring gender and sexuality in a middle school U.S. history unit. Theory and Research in Social Education, 30, 233- 254. Schweber, S. A (2004). Making sense rif the holocaust: Lessons from classroom practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Schwcber, S. A, & Irwin, R . (2003). "Especially special": Learning about Jews in a fundamentalist Christian school. Teachers College Record, 105, 1693-1719. Seixas, P. (1997). Mapping the terrain of historical significance. Social Education, 61, 2227. Shaver,]. (1994). The future of research on social studies. In M . R. Nelson (Ed.), The future rifthe social studies. Boulder, CO: Social Sciences Education Consortium. Stanley, W. B. (2001 ). Critical issues in social studies reseanhfor the 21st century: Research in social education. Greenwich, CN: Information Age Publishing. Stanley, W. B., Cornbleth, C.,Jantz, R . K. , Klawitter, K., Leming, ]. S., Nelson,]. L., Shaver,]. P., & White,]. L. (1985). Review rif research in social studies education, 19761983. Bulletin 75. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. ten Dam, G., & Rijkschroeff, R . 1996). ( Teaching women's history in secondary education: Constructing gender identity. Theory and Research in Social Education, 24, 71-88. Tyson, C. A (2006). Research, race, and social education. In K.C. Barton (Ed.), Research methods in social studies education: Contemporary issues and perspectives (pp. 39- 56). Greenwich, eN: Information Age Publishing.

Index

Kote: page numbers in bold refer to figures action, mediated 68,297,300 active classrooms 5 Adams, L. see Sixth Grade study Adler, M. 25 adolescents: historical understanding of 10, 19-21,27; moral development of 10, 19- 21,27,38- 9 African American history 3- 5, 66, 135- 6, 164-5,187- 8,241,252,255 see also civil rights movement age, of children, and understanding time 75-6,88- 9 agency, historical 97, 153-4, 159-82, 307-9,315- 17 Alexander, P. A. 110 Alleman,]. 411 alternative conceptions 155,160-1,273 ambiguity see also Great Depression; racism; sexism; Vietnam war: of historical context 30 I; making sense of 260-2; and vernacular histories 251 American history: American exceptionalism 245- 6, 256- 7, 279-80; Antebellum 80-5, 87-8, 90- 1,121, 191,193-4; colonial era 82,85,87- 8, 90, 117, 168-9, 193- 5,203,276; Columbus 33-5, 37-8, 74-5, 224, 254, 316; emphasis on morality 250; Great Depression 255-6, 281-2; origin of the U.S. 244-5; progressive expansion of rights/freedoms 246-8 (see also civil rights movement); Revolutionary War 167-9,244,276-7,340; technical progress 248-9; Vietnam war 250- 1, 256-9,279-81

American Revolutionary War 167-9, 244,276- 7,340 Americans, African see Mrican American history; civil rights movement Americans, Native 118-19, 135-6, 141, 224,247,253- 5, 255, 276-7,279-80 see also civil rights movement analogy, use of 35 Antebellum 80-5, 87-8, 90-1,121,191, 193-4 Appiah, K. A. 260- 1, 364 archaeology 360-2; compared with history 403-4; and cultural protection 393; defining 396-7; education in 393, 404-5; as forensic science 398-401; and historical thinking 394, 403-4; and history (study, Levstik) 360-5, 393-405; as hobby 395; and narrative 397-8, 403; purpose of 361, 399-402; as puzzle 364, 398,401,404; as study of past/past culture 396- 7 artifacts: in classroom 6, 40, 65-6, 108, 126,129,141,166,203,213,217, 385; cultural (see tools); in narrative construction 400-3; as physical remains of past 203, 213, 363, 365, 367,394-8,400- 5,412 arts, and historical understanding 97- 8, 114,137, 143,367 Ashby, R. 170-1 Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate 394 audience, importance of 25 authority, of sources 24, 210 Bakhtin, M . M. 297-8

Index Bardidge, B. 38-9, 56 Barthes, R . 197 Barton, K.: dissertation research 151- 8, 293; evidence, role in historical understanding 154, 209-25; individuals! institutions, understanding role of (study) 97,153-4,159- 82, 307-9,315- 17; perspective, studies in (Northern Ireland us. US.) 299, 323-51; on perspective recognition 359; purpose, of history (study, Northern Ireland us. US.) 296-9, 323-51; research, criteria for designing 63-5,148-53,162- 3,232- 6,292- 3; research, development of intercsts in 61-2, 148; on Seixas 153- 6,235; significance, historical and students' views (study, with Levstik) 232, 236- 7, 241-72; significance, historical and teachers' views (study, with Levstik) 232, 236- 7,273-91 ; significance, historical (US. study) 230- 91, 333- 54; theory, role in research 153- 7,231, 235, 297; thinking, historical (study) 151-8,293; time, change over (Northern Ireland study) 299, 300- 27; time, change over (US. study) 299, 323-51 ; time, historical understanding of (study, with Levstik) 71- 107 Beck,1. 110-11, 170 Beeman,]. 366 Belenky, M. F. 57 believing us. knowing 359 bias: of historical evidence 218, 222- 3; of memory 218 Bill of Rights 246- 7, 253, 259, 266, 276--8, 373 biographies 4, 322, 337 Bodna~].230- 1,251

Bradley, N. C. 74 Bradley Commission on History in Schools 32, 209 Bredin, N. 170, 210 Bremner, R . 2 British Informal School Model 2 Britt, M. A. Ill, 170 Brophy,]. 110-11, 170, 183--4, 199,309, 411; on role of historians 210 California History Social Science Framework 32 caning 309- 10 caning, significance of 309

415

Carretero, M. Ill, 171 Carver, G. W. 35--6, 53, 55, 136 causation see change over time change over time, understanding see also time: analyzing reasons for 185-7, 197; emphasis on new inventions 306-7; as having ideal plot 198; historical significance 231 - 1; material culture 306-8; and narrative 184, 314-15; Northern Ireland study 299, 300-27; in Northern Ireland us. U.S. 292,302,304,31 4-15; in positive linear sequence 189-94, 311-15; social!economic factors for 307-8 charisma, of teachers 49- 51 Charting a Course 32 children, cognitive development 4; domain specific theory 31 - 2, 110, 112, 149,229-30; global stage theory 6,31,62- 4,67 , 109; and historical understanding 109- 12; impact of social! cultural setting 211, 335, 366; and social studies 31; understanding time 73- 4 chronology see also time, understanding: and curriculum 72; and historical significance 231 - 2; and learning history 94-5; and narrative 304-6; and specific eras! eventslrelationships 142 citizenship 359, 385- 6, 393- 4 eivic responsibility 7- 8 civics, teaching of 298 civil rights movement 164-6,277, 333,340- 1; Bill of Rights 246--7, 252-3,259,266,276-8, 373;focus on individuals in 171-2; significance of 245- 8, 253, 277 , 283; teaching in schools 278-9 clues, visual, and understanding time 75, 78-9 coaching, by teachers 25 cognition, theories of see under theories Cole, M. 248, 297 , 300-1 see also tools, cultural colonial era 82,85,87-8,90, 117, 168- 9, 1935, 203, 276 Columbus, C. 33- 5, 37-8, 74-5,224, 254,316 controversial issues 237, 249,261-2, 320-3, 326, 345 see also ambiguity; silence on 282-6 Cook, Captain 376- 7, 381 - 2, 390 cosmopolitan students 358

416

Index

culture 58-9 see also tools, cultural; and archaeology 393; archaeology, as study of past 396-7; emphasis on 231; and historical significance 237- 8, 241-3 , 279; and historical understanding 110, 112; impact on cognitive skills 112, 335,366; material 75, 78- 9, 82-3, 11 5-17, 140, 306-8; popular 131-3, 249; students, as cultural informants 357 curriculum 409; benefits of studies for 347-51 ; and chronology/historical time 72; controversy in 237,345; criticism of 30-1; in Great Britain 292-3, 321; history as part of 10--11 , 19,39,57,173- 4,298-9; mixing with other subjects/ contexts 35; and National Council for the Social Studies 173; in New Zealand 359, 369-70, 385- 6; in Northern Ireland 298, 320- 1, 348- 9; omissions in 33, 56, 254, 260- 1, 282- 6, 321; pluralist 370-1; resistance to change 232; social studies 30; time in 62; in U.S. III , 232,298 dates, use by/understanding of children 86-9 de Soto, H. 253, 266 deficit thinking 155 developmental stages see children, cognitive development Dewey,]. 142,209,223 diaries, as sources of historical evidence 213 Dickinson, A. 170- 1 differcnces, tolerance for 359- 60 discipline 35, 58-9 distortion, of historical thinking 200- 2 diversity, and history as linear sequence 193,201,324 domain specific theory 31-2,110,112, 149 Donaldson, M. 3-4, 156 Downey, M . 73, 75-6 Dr QJiinn, Medicine Woman 316 dynamic perspective, of history 94, 142- 3 Dyson, A. H. 48-9

economicl social factors, and understanding change over time 307-8 Educational Programs in Informal Classrooms (EPIC) 2

educators see teachers Egan, K. 22, 199 Elson, R . M. 322- 3 emancipation see civil rights movement; suffrage Emancipation Proclamation 253--4 emotional response 26, 27; and personal identification 21 - 2 empathy: Bardidge on 39, 56; and personal identification 21 - 2; and perspective 359 encouragement 26 EPIC see Educational Programs in Informal Classrooms epistemology see theories Epstein, T. 94,112,114,210,221; on historical significance 230- 1, 241 - 2 evidence, historical 154, 156; artifacts as 401, 403--4; bias of 218, 222- 3; and narrative 219- 20; significance of 217- 18, 220--1, 229; sources of 211-13; studies on 210- 11 exceptionalism, American 245-6, 256- 7, 279-80 exclusivity and exclusion 347 expert-novice approach 154-5 fairness, and historical significance 376-81 fame, and historical significance 235 family 336-7; activities as intertexts 129-31; histories, and historical understanding 1- 2, 151; impact on student ideas 153, 155- 6; as source of historical information 240, 255, 315-16,333; stories as intertexts 126- 9 fashion see culture, material fiction, historical 3- 4, 210 see aLm nonfiction finding out 47-9 First Grade study (Levstik, historical understanding) 4-5, 7-8, 30-60 foreign countries, conducting studiesl research in 294- 5, 297- 9, 300-3, 335-7,349-51,355-8 freedoms see civil rights movement; suffrage Friedman, K. C. 72--4 Furth, H. G. 171 Gabella, M. S. III, 114,210 Gaddis,]. L. 228, 237- 8, 393 Gagne, R. M. II

Index gatekeeping, by teacher 32 Gelman, S. A. 110 gender 164-6 see also women; differences, in child and adult perceptions 73; differences, in classroom 59; and individuals, focus on 164; of interviewers, relevance of 357~3; in national history, studies of 409~ II ; and national identity (U.S.) 244, 247, 255 , 276~7, 235, 363~9,409~11; students, association with 277; studies, of historical significance of women's experiences (Levstik and Groth) 410 genre, concept of 231 Gerstle, G. 273, 277, 235 Ghana 357~9 Gilligan, C. 33, 54 global stage theory 6, 31, 62~4, 67, 109 good teaching, definition 3, 59~60 Goodlad,]. 50 grand contributions vs. vicious crimes 240, 242,259~60 Grant, S. C. 237 Great Britain, curriculum in 292~3, 321 Great Depression 255~6, 231~2 Groth,]. 357~9, 410 grounded theory ISS guidance, of adults, and children's performance 143~9 Gutmann, A. 260~ I Hallden, 0. 171 Hardy, B. 4, 13,22 Henderson, G. 360, 393~405 Hillary, E. 3 76 historians 236; and historical thinking 111~12, 154; understanding role of 210, 216~13, 333~4 historic sites, as source of historical information 240, 317~ 13, 337~3 historical figures: choice of, role models 33; student comparison with 39 historical time see time history see also evidence; significance; sources; thinking; understanding: about people who arc different 341~2; alternative 155, 160~1, 273; of America (see American history); African American 3, 135~6 (see also civil rights movement); compared with archaeology 403~4; in context of social studies I 73~4; in curriculum IO~II, 19,39, 57, 173~4, 293~9; and

417

defining identity 244, 366; distortion of 172~3, 196, 200~2; dynamic perspective of 94, 142~3; of everyday life 166~ 7; figures, as role models in 33, 39; historical understanding and family histories: family I~2, IS I; as image of an idea 240~ I; individuals, understanding of role in 97, 153~4, 159 32, 307-9, 315~17; institutions, understanding role in 159~32; as justification of current thinking 235~6; as legitimation for present 244-51, 277; as limited in expanse 195~7; local 94, 142~3; mistakes, learning from 250~3,255~6,262,273 , 324, 367, 399; and morality 246, 373~9; and myth 55, 224, 256, 253, 273, 273, 230, 326; narrative simplification of 55, 133~205, 364; national 274; and national identity 240~72, 323~6, 340~1,344-6, 359, 374, 376; and negative events 33, 53~6, 231, 233, 235~6, 343; official vs. unofficial 359; and passing on knowledge to future 373~9; periodization 234; personal us. collective 255, 253; for pleasure 367, 400; as positive linear progress 91, 95~6, 113, 152, 154, 134-94, 200~ I, 243~9, 311~15, 324; as prison with no escape 326; and promotion of social unity in present 243; purpose of

SO,

296~9, 300~27, 333~46, 341~6,

343,350,353; and self discovery!self awareness 49, 54; simplification! condensation of 55, 133~203, 199~20 I; social 94, 142; synoptic perspective of 94, 142; themes in 4-5 history, world: historical thinking studies, focus not on 233~5 History Day 6, 22~3 Hitler, A. 15~13, 21, 340 hobbies 367, 395, 400 Hollinger, D. A. 274 holocaust 15~13, 23, 55, 379, 335 home life see family hoped for best interest 19, 22 3 see also border areas Huck, C. 2 identity: collective 240~2, 260, 341; and historical significance 240~73; history as means of defining 244, 366; national, and gender 244, 247, 255,

418

Index

276-7,285,368-9,409-11; national (New Zealand) 374, 376-7; national (U.S.) 240-72, 292, 323-4, 340-1, 346,359,369-71; in Northern Ireland 325-6,344-6; personal 21-2, 345-6 image of an idea 240-1 images see pictures immigration: American, significance of 244, 276; New Zealand, significance of 382-3 individuals: and gender, focus on 164 individuals, understanding of 97, 153-4,319-20; and distortion/ misinterpretation 171-3; focus on 159, 167-9,171-2,315-17; as positive role models 33; and prior knowledge 160-1; reinforcement by media 315-17; and role in history 159-82, 307-9,315-17 institutions, understanding of 97, 153-4, 307-9, 315-17; ignorance/ misunderstanding of 169-70; and prior knowledge 160-1; and role in history 159-82 instruction, school see teaching interest, building 46-7 internally persuasive discourse 297-8 intertexts, categories of: family activities 129-31; family stories 126-9; popular culture 131-3; teaching 134-41 interviews 363-4 see also studies, techniques in; benefits/drawbacks of 64-5, 148; combining with observation 152-3; interviewer, relevance of race/ gender/ethnicity 357-8; materials used in 101-5, 180,266-8,290-1, 390-1; pictures/captions used in 77, 101-5, 180; questions used in 106-7, 181-2,290-1,392; responses in (historical significance study) 270-2; role in historical thinking studies 148-9; success of, and prior knowledge 149 Intrigue qf the Past see Project Archaeology inventions, and understanding change over time 306-7 journals, as sources of historical evidence 213 Judy,]. E. 110 Kammen, M. 230-1, 258-9, 323 Keil, F. C. 31, 110

Kennedy,]. K. 10 Kennedy,]. F. 196, 214, 221 Kentucky Archaeological Survey 360 Kerlinger, F. N. 408 King, M. L. 36,54, 135, 165-6, 188-9, 253, 333, 340 see also civil rights movement; knowledge of, misleading 172-3,196,201-2 knowing vs. believing 359 knowledge, prior 395; as barrier 296; and historical thinking 149; and historical understanding 295-7; and understanding of individuals/ institutions 160-1 Langer, S. 94 Lee, P. 170-1 Leigh, A. see studies, historical thinking Lemke,]. 108 Levstik, L. 354; archaeology and historical understanding (study) 360-5, 393-405; on empathy 359; on historical literature for children 3-4; on historical significance of women's experiences (study with Groth) 410; on historical significance (study in Ghana, with Groth) 357-9; and historical thinking (study, with Pappas) 5-6,49,54-5,73,75-6, 183; on historical understanding (First Grade study) 4-5, 7-8, 30-60; on historical understanding (Sixth Grade study) 4, 6-8, 10-27; on narrative and historical response 4-6, 10-27; on perspective recognition 359; on perspective (study, New Zealand) 355-60, 366-86, 371-3,384,390-2; research, criteria for designing 3-4, 7,63-5,232-6; research, development of interests in 1-4; research, influences on 1-4; on researchers' relationships with children 5, 64-5; on Seixas 235; significance, historical and teachers' views (study, with Barton) 232, 236-7, 273-91; theory, role in research 62-3, 231, 235, 358; time, historical understanding of (study, with Barton) 71-107 Lewin, K. 69 libraries/librarians, role of 12, 45 Lincoln, A. 165, 196,202,253 literature, children's see also sources: author emphasis in 26-7; biographies as 4,322, 337; as focus of approach to

Index history 11-27; historical fiction as 3-4, 210; textbooks 24,322-3 Little House on the Prairie II, 88, 13 1-3, 316,320 Loewen,]. W 258, 323-4 McAulay,]. D. 73-4 McCully, McCully, A. 293-4, 397 McKeown, M. 110-11, 170 Malinowski, B. 246 Martin, A. 30 May, H. 369 media: as cultural tool 315-17, 319-20, 333,337,374; reinforcing role of individuals 315-17; as source of historical information 240,315,337 memory: bias of 218; and controversy 261-2; function of 245; historical 230; and historical significance 232, 240-2; and ideal plot structures 198; memorization 40; and narrative II, 198; and oral tradition 198-9; patterns of 297; public 232, 240-1, 260 Middleton, S. 369 mind, primary act of mind 4,302 Ministry of Education, Policy on Social Studies Curriculum (New Zealand) 370 Mink, L. 0. 199-200 mistakes, learning from 250-3, 255-6, 262,278,324,376,399 morality 385; detachment 54; development in adolescents 10, 19-21, 27, 38-9; emphasis in American history 250; and history 246; moral response stance 4, 6; moral weight, of past 378-9; multiple-lens 39, 56-7; role of education in 57; teachers' emphasis and 56-7 motivation, historical 21, 220 multiple-lens morality 39,56-7 museums, as source of historical information 240 myth, and history 55,224,256,258,273, 278,280,326 NAEP see National Assessment of Educational Progress narrative 1-2, 4--6; as accurate representation of past 199-200; as antidote to "mythical history" 326; and archaeology 397-8, 403; artifacts, role in 400-1, 403; avoidance

419

of 321-2, 325-6; chronological 304--6; competing 292; as cultural tool 302; to explain present 339-41; historical events, as part of 199; and historical response 10-27; and historical thinking 183-205; history as 22, 152,364; and ideal plot 198; and memory/recognition II, 198; and misunderstandings 324--5; in multi-cultural setting 368-9; national 292, 369-71; and national identity (Northern Ireland) 296-7; and national identity (U.S.) 240-72, 323-4,340-1,346,359;aspart of human consciousness 302; and perspectives 369-71; as primary act of mind 4, 302; quest for freedom 302; simplification of 55, 183-205, 364; student retellings 6, 295; as truth 48-9, 210; and understanding change over time 184, 314--15; without noise 197 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 30-1, 40, 229-30, 234 National Center for Historical Understanding in Schools 229-30 National Commission on Social Studies 209; Charting a Course 32 National Council for the Social Studies, curriculum recommended by 172-3 National History Standards Project 71, 108,209 National Standards for United States history 172-3 Native Americans 118-19, 136, 140, 253-5,266,276-7,277,279-80 need to know 39, 49-50; and emotional response 27; historical response 19-21 negative, historical events 33, 53-6, 281, 283,285-6,343 New Zealand: curriculum in 359, 369-70, 385-6; influence of media on 374; and national identity 374, 376-7; perspective, historical (study, Levstik) 355-60, 366-86, 390-2 noise, narratives without 197 nonfiction, as historical resource 47-9, 220 Northern Ireland 292-354; compared with U.S. study 292, 302, 304, 314--15; and controversial issues 320-3, 345; curriculum, and politics 298-9, 320-1, 348-9; on historical progress

420

Index

309-11,318; identity in 325-6, 344-6; narrative, avoidance of 321-2, 325-6; narrative and national identity 296-7; purpose of history in 296-9, 323-51; study, aims and methods 300-6; study, findings 306-14 nuclear, anti- 374-5 numerical reasoning, and visualizing time 74,88-9 Oakden, E. C. 73-4,82 observation, in classroom 11-12, 149-52, 162,303-4,362 Ohio State University; the 2 omissions: in curriculum 33, 56, 254, 282-6, 321; significance of 260-1; of violence 33, 53-6 oral tradition, and memory 198-9 Pappas, C. 5-6, 49, 54-5, 62, 73, 75-6, 183 partner classes 45-6 past see also present; time: comparing with present 79-80, 83-6, 120-1; making sense of (see understanding, historical) pension, old age 377-8 performance: of children, and adult guidance 148-9; girls us. boys 409-10 periodization 234 personal identification 345-6; and emphasis in literature 26-7; historical response 18-22,50; and personal issues 141 personal pronouns, usc of 244-5, 275-8, 339-41 perspective: of care 33, 53; dynamic and synoptic 94, 142-3; and empathy 359; and historical narrative 369-71; and historical thinking/understanding 229-30; studies in, Barton (Northern Ireland/U.S.) 299, 323-51; studies in, Levstik (New Zealand) 355-60, 366-86,371-3,384,390-2 photographs see pictures Piaget,J. 411; global stage theory 6, 31, 62-4, 67, 109; narrative vs nonnarrative frameworks 4 pictures: relevance of aesthetic issues 125-6; selection criteria 76-7, 234-5; as sources of historical evidence 213; used in studies 67, 101-5, 245, 312-13; for visualizing historical time 67,67,101-5

pilot studies, benefits of 236 pluralist curriculum 370-1 praise 26, 35 present day: comparing with past 79-80, 83-6, 120-1; history, as justification of 285-6; history, promoting social unity in 243; legitimation by history 244-51, 277 Presley, E. 235, 249, 268 progress, of history 91,95-6, 113, 152, 154,248-9; change over time 189-94, 311-15; as distortion 200-1; diversity 193, 20 I, 324; supporting economic/ political conservatism 323--4 progress, technical: and historical significance 248-24 progression, sequence of 152, 154 Project Archaeology 360, 362-3, 400 pronouns, personal, use of 244-5, 275-8, 339-41 props, use of 6, 65-6 see also artifacts punishment, corporal 309-10 purpose: of archaeology 361, 399-402; of history 50,296-9,300-27,338-46, 341-6, 348-50, 358; of studies 66; of teachers 33-9 puzzle, archaeology as 364,398,401,404 quest for freedom narrative 302 racism 3, 40, 122, 251-4, 278-9, 370, 376, 385 see also civil rights movement reading: providing time for 25; tolerance of difficulty 20-1 recall/ recognition, and narrative II, 198 relationships, social, and change over time 308-11 reliability, of sources 213-17, 219, 224 repression, and historical significance 240-2, 273 research see studies resources see sources response, historical: categories of 13-15; factors influencing 15-18; flow of 18-19; influence of classroom on 10-11; and narrative 10-27; need to know 19-21; personal identification 18-22,50; search for truth 18-19,21, 39,56; sharing 18; subjective 49-50 retellings, of narrative by students 6, 295 revisionism 1-2 Reynolds, T. see studies, historical thinking

Index role models: historical figures as 33 role models, choice of historical figures as 33 Rosenblatt, L. 3-4, 21 Rosenzweig, R. 228, 284 Rumsey, S. 59-60 salience see significance Schlarb,]. 362,393-405 science, forensic, archaeology as 398-40 I Seixas, P. 69, 368-9; cultural influences on history 112, 155- 6; on historical significance 235; historical thinking, theory on 153-6, 163; and vernacular histories 251 self, awareness I discovery of 49, 54 semiotic theory 68 sexism 3, 251 - 2, 254-4, 259 see also suffrage; reverse 410 sharing 24-6; and historical response 18 Shemilt, D. 210, 326 Shils, E. 246, 248- 9 Shipley,]. 377- 8 significance, historical: and changes in popular culture 249; and chronology 231-2; of civil rights movement 245-8,253,277,283; and cultural background 237-8, 241-3, 279; Epstein on 230-1, 241-2; and fairness 376-81; and fam e 235; of historical evidence 217-18, 220-1, 229; of immigration 244, 276, 382-3; and memory 232, 240-2; and national identity 240-73; and negative events 33, 53-6, 281, 283, 285- 6, 343; of omissions, in curriculum 260-1; Seixas on 235; students' views on (Levstik/Barton study) 232, 236- 7, 241 - 72 ; teachers' views on (Levstik/Barton study) 232, 236-7,273- 91; and technological progress 248-24; and understanding change over time 231-41; U.S. study 230-91,333-54; of war 250- 1, 280-1 silence: code of 282-6; as ignorance (in interviews) 363-4 simplification, of history 55, 183-205 Simpson, 0.]. 235, 249, 253, 268 Sixth Grade study (Levstik, historical understanding) 4, 6- 8, 10- 27; categories of response 13- 15 slavery see Americans, African

421

social! economic factors, and understanding change over time 307-8 social studies 32, 35, 209; and cognitive skills 31; in Elementary School curriculum 30; history, in wider context of 173- 4 sources, of historical information I understanding 213, 240 see also evidence; authority of 24, 210; biographies 4, 322, 337; criticism of 26-7; family 126-31,153,240,255, 315-16,333,336- 7; fiction 3-4, 210,337; historic sites 240,317-18, 337-8; historical evidence 211-13; on individuals' role 319-20; media as 240, 315, 337; museums 240; nonfiction as 47-9, 220; primary 222, 364; reliability of 213-17, 219, 224; selection of 24-5,3 3-5,45,48-9, 161; textbooks 24, 322- 3, 335; vacations 129-31 standards, for historical education 71, 108, 15~ 172-3, 183,209,229-30, 238 stereotypes 56, 294-5; challenging 278-82; and literature 2 student experts 25-6, 45 studies: archaeology and history 393- 405; atheoretical 153; benefits of pilots 236; collaboration, role of 150-2, 163, 233, 293- 8, 356, 394, 411; conducting in foreign country 294-5, 297-9, 300-3,335-7,349- 51 ,355- 8; criteria for designing 3-4, 7, 63-5, 149-51 , 292-3,360-3; cross-cultural 355- 86, 390-2; cross-disciplinary 360-5, 393-405; and evidence 210-11; on evidence, use of 209-25; and gender, in national history 409- 11; gender of students, relevance of 260, 271-2; historical significance (Barton, U.S. study) 230- 91, 333-54; on historical thinking 151-8; and historical thinking (Levstik/Pappas) 5-6, 49, 54-5,73, 75-6, 183; on historical time (Levstik/Barton) 61 - 107; historical understanding, role of individuals/institutions 97 , 153-4, 159-82, 307-9,315-17; historical understanding (Levstik, First Grade study) 4-5, 7-8, 30-60; historical understanding (Levstik, Sixth Grade study) 4, 6-8, 10- 27; implications

422

Index

of results for teaching 96-8, 137, 150, 173- 4,202- 3, 222-4, 347-51; international comparative 293-9, 294-5,300- 3,335- 7, 349- 51, 355- 8; pilot studies, benefits of 236; and prior interpretative frameworks 295-6; purpose of 66; role in improving practice 96-8, 137, 150, 173-4,202-3, 222-4, 283, 347- 51; study protocols 106,181,269,392; techniques in 5- 6, 12- 13, 149- 52,235,242-3; on understanding role of individuals! institutions 97, 153-4, 159- 82,307- 9, 315-17; use of timeline in 231-8, 243, 254-5,275-85,356-7,374-8, 382- 3, 410-11; value added components in 233,411 Sturt, M. 73-4,82 suffrage, women's: in New Zealand 374, 377-8; in U.S. 247- 8, 255, 277, 282 synoptic perspective, of history 94, 142 Tanzania 355 see also New Zealand teacher education initiatives, Educational Programs in Informal Classrooms (EPIC) 2 teachers: charismatic 49-51; coaching by 25; collaboration with 150-2; influence on child cognitive development 31 - 2; moral stance 53-6; purpose of 33- 9; responsibilities, and perspective 355 teaching: development of, and results of studies 96- 8, 137, 150, 173- 4,202- 3, 222-4,347-50; focus on positive 53-5; good 8, 59-60; as historical intertext 134-42; intertexts, categories in 134-41; moral role of 56-7; oversimplification 55, 183-205, 364; role in developing historical thinking 156; as series of relationships 33; and student adaptability 58; studentdirected activities 42-3; teacher manipulation of 24, 26-7; techniques of 43-9; the world 378 technology see culture, material; progress Teff, H. I television 88, 131, 133, 320; as cultural tool 315-17, 319-20, 333, 337, 374; reinforcing role of individuals 315- 17 tests 40, 294 textbooks 322-3, 335 see also sources; as arbiter!authority 24 Thanksgiving 244,247,276-7

Thelan, D. 228, 284 theories, cognitive 153-6, 163 see also theorists by name; alternative conceptions 155, 160-1, 273; domain specific 31-2, 110, 112, 149,229-30; expert-novice 154-5; global stage 6, 31,62-4,67; grounded 155; mediated action 68, 297 , 300; progression, sequence of 152, 154; role in designing research 68-9, 153-5,297; semiotic 68; transactional 4 thinking, associative 114, 121- 5 thinking, historical 97- 8 see also progress; studies; alternative conceptions 155, 160-1,273; and archaeology 394, 403-4; deficit thinking 155; distortion of 200- 2; and historians 111-12, 154; narrative in 183- 205; and perspective 229-30; and prior knowledge 149; role of teaching in developing 156; six elements of (Seixas) 153- 6, 163; studies, and curriculum development 409; studies, not focused on world history 233-5; vs. historical understanding 229 thinking, reflective 209 thinking, societal I 71 Thornton,S. 32,63-4, 71 - 3, 75 time, understanding 61-9,84-5,93 see also change, over time; and age of children 75-6, 88- 9; and children, cognitive development 73-4; comparison with present 79-80, 83-6, 120-1 ; conclusions and summary 92-6; and cultural issues 61, 73; in curriculum 62; and numerical reasoning 74, 88- 9; perception of duration 71-3; personal!calendar! clock time 61-2,73; study method 76-81,106-7 ; use of dates 86-7 ; and visual clues 75, 78- 9; vocabulary for 81-9,95,184-5 timeline, use in studies 231- 8, 243, 254-5,275-85,356-7,374-8,382- 3, 410-11; study protocol 106, 181, 269, 392 tools: artifacts as, in classroom 6, 40, 108, 126,129, 141, 16~ 203,213,217,385 tools, cultural 297, 300-2, 324-5, 358- 9, 371; medialtelevision as 315-17, 319-20,333,337,374; and mediated action 68, 297, 300; narrative as 302 trade books, as intertexts 133-4

Index triangulation, methodological 152 trips 129-31 truth: and historical understanding 229; narrative as 48-9, 210; search for, historical response 18-19, 21, 39, 56 un-coerced communication 49 understanding, historical see also change, over time; response, historical: and adolescents 10, 19- 21,27; and archaeology (study, Levstik) 360-5, 393-405; and arts 97- 8, 114, 137, 143, 367; and cognitive skills 109-12; and cultural issues 110, 112; and diversity 193; and family histories 1- 2; and individuals and institutions 97,153-4,159-82, 307-9,315-17; and perspective 229- 30; and prior knowledge 295-7 ; social context of 334-5; of society and social institutions 171- 2; sources of 336- 8; and truth 229; vs. historical thinking 229; and young children 10 understanding time see under time unwished for worst interest 19, 22-3 U.S. studies: change over time 292, 302, 304, 314-15; historical significance 230-91 , 333-54 vacations, as source of historical information 129- 31 value added components, in studies 233, 411 VanSledright,B.A. 170, 183,218-19, 309; on cultural impact on understanding 300, 335; on role of historians 210 vernacular histories 230-1, 260-2, 286; and conflict/ ambiguity 251; vs. official histories 251-9,275 video-taping 362-3, 395 Vietnam war 250- 1,256-9,279-81 , 280-1 Vikings 41 - 2, 118,310- 11,341 violence 254, 321; historical perception of 54-5; omission of 33, 53- 6

423

visual clues: interpreting 119- 20; relevance of aesthetics 125- 6; and understanding time 75, 78- 9 visualization, of time see time, understanding vocabulary: personal pronouns 244-5, 275-8, 339-41; for time 81 - 9, 95, 184-5 Voss,]. F. III Vukelich, R. 63-4, 71- 3, 75 Vygotsky, L. S. 148- 9 Waitangi, Treaty of 374, 376- 7,377- 81 Wallace, M. 249 Warren, R. P. 240 wars: American Revolutionary 167- 9, 244,276- 7,340; significance, reasons for 250-1 , 280- 1; Vietnam 250-1, 256-9,279-81 ; World WarII 15- 18, 23,92, 129, 14~ 173,250,261,267, 375 Wellman, H. M. 110 Wertime, R. A. 404-5 Wertsch,]. V. 369; on cultural tools 297, 300-2, 324, 358-9; on mediated action 68, 297; quest for freedom narrative 302 West, C. 240, 242, 259-60 West,]. 73 White,]. 59-60 White, R. T. II Wilson, S. M. 50 Wine burg, S. S. 50, III, 210, 218 Winner, E. 143 women: historical significance of women's experiences (Levstik and Groth study) 410; in New Zealand's history 377- 8; and reverse sexism 410; sexism 3, 251-2, 254-4, 259; suffrage 247-8, 255,277, 282,374,377-8 word webs 43-4, 44 World War II 15-18,23,92,129,140, 173,250,261 , 267,375- 6 Yessin, R. see First Grade study