An article in the March 2018 number of The Journal of American History tackles the problem of adequately assessing what students have (or have not) learned in their college history courses. In “What Is Learned in College History Classes?“, co-authors Sam Wineburg, Mark Smith, and Joel Breakstone piloted and refined a few different assessments to measure how well both high school and college history students had mastered a few of the learning objectives laid out in the AHA History Tuning Project. The authors sought to understand how well students could evaluate potential primary sources for relevance, interpret primary sources in the broader context of their era, and explain how primary sources supported a particular historical claim.
If you teach history at any level, I encourage you to read the article. While its aim is to exhort history profs to develop relevant and meaningful assessments before some bean-counter in the Assistant Associate Deanlet’s office or the accrediting agency imposes some kind of irrelevant numerical assessment rubric from above, it’s a good read for other reasons. For one thing, it gave me some great ideas for tweaking the primary source analysis assignments I use in my courses, and reminded me to underscore in teaching precisely those things which as practicing historians we do automatically – check the date of a source, figure out who wrote it, figure out in what way it might be useful in answering the question we’re investigating.
*extreme Ricardo Montalbán voice* — “Welcome to Historiography Island!”
The article also prompted me to interrogate my own teaching: to what extent am I working to convey “content,” and to what extent am I working to convey “competencies” or “skills” or “critical thinking”? Am I combining these tasks appropriately in the most effective manner? How can I do that better in a lecture hall with 90 students (my current teaching gig)? How might I do that differently in a classroom with 35 students (the enrollment cap at the local community college)?
In arguing for the importance not just of assessments but of the learning that such tools are meant to assess, the authors mentioned something that is ever before me as I teach: my history class is most likely the last history class students will ever take in their lives. Students take the history survey at the college level because it is a requirement. I have taught the survey at the university and/or at community college for four out of the last five years, and I can count on one hand the number of students in my courses who had declared a major in history. Alas, I can also count on one hand the number of students in my courses who were “undecided” on their major. At the university, freshmen are pressured to declare a major before they take a single college course — that way they can be moved efficiently through the system in the least amount of time, a desirable goal for those who are taking on student loans and for higher education institutions seeking to reduce the number of years to graduation. But not ideal for learning, for exploring, for discovering.
That pressure to specialize (in something “practical”) and that pressure to graduate quickly combine to make the general education courses that much more important. Any of us who teach history or literature or humanities requirements to freshmen and sophomores are engaged in a crucial endeavor. We are the last in the line, offering the last opportunity most of these young people will ever have to study these disciplines under the guidance of a professor. Most of them probably see the class not as an opportunity but as a chore, a requirement to be fulfilled. So it’s on us to see what they can’t, and to help them see it too – if not while they’re in our classes, then at some point after they leave them. We are random, unexciting NPCs (non-player characters) in the game of their lives, trying to entice them to embark on what appears to be the Most Boring Sidequest ever. “Here are some ideas for your journey,” we say, gesturing to our texts, which are not magic and offer no special protections or powers and will just weigh them down and make them pause and ask questions when the goal of life, as they see it, is to be done with questions, to be done with learning, and start (making a) living.
And they are not to be condemned for thinking such things, for this is what they have been taught to value: what can be quantified in points or grades or dollars. This is who they are when they come into our classrooms. Some of us want to be the guru on the mountaintop, holding our precious wisdom above their reach and making the journey to a greater understanding possible only for those chosen few who will recognize at the outset the value of the struggle to master the knowledge we have on offer. And that is one model of pedagogy, though that’s not how I roll. “Freely you have received,” said the Lord; “freely give.” I may be ascetic in the study, but in the classroom, all is bounty, all is joy – even for the tough truths, even for the rough parts.
“The study of history,” Wineburg and his co-authors conclude, “should be a mind-altering encounter that leaves one forever unable to consider the social world without asking questions about where a claim comes from, who is making it, and how time and place shape human behavior.” I couldn’t agree more. Should I make this goal more explicit for my students from the outset? Perhaps. Still, when I get the course evaluations back that say something along the lines of, “I have always hated history, but Dr. Burnett’s class was different,” or, “I actually looked forward to coming to this class,” I know I’m on the way to doing my job. Because whatever they do or don’t do with historical thinking now, as they’re gaming their way through all the checkpoints of life, I want my students to remember this “side quest” – the search for wisdom — and come back to it later.
For – here’s the open secret! – seeking wisdom is not the side quest, but the whole point of life. So while we do our best to impart knowledge and help them practice skills they can use right now, we must also be ready to simply stand by the path as our students rush past, younger and younger every year, and do our best to mark the way.
In a dark world, we have to hold up some light.
3 Thoughts on this Post
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Thanks for this post.
The teaching situations you describe are very much like the ones I face or have faced in my teaching, and I approach these classes much the way you do. “This may be the last time in your life you’ll ever have the chance to study history in a systematic way. My advice is to take advantage of the opportunity,” is something I’ve said on the first day of class a time or two.
Sometimes I second-guess myself, thinking of a book I found in a community college adjunct workroom: Teaching and Engaging Under-Resourced College Students. As I remember it, the book advocated emphasizing kitchen-table practicalities. The economic and social stresses of students are such that a “seeking wisdom” or a “critical thinking” approach simply wouldn’t register.
The book was helpful in a number of ways. But in terms of humanities courses, that was the message I received. I more or less rejected it. Like you, L.D., I’m enthusiastic about the topic and the work, and students do appreciate that, just as I did back when I was a college student. I continue to work on seeing them and hearing them better, and on creating an environment where that’s possible. I find that the more difficult project.
Thanks for the article link. I’m going to read it.
I wish that Wineberg, Smith, and Breakstone had taken the time to push back against the systemic obstacles to the learning of history created by the business model of higher education. It’s up to individual teachers and those unfortunate institutions to lead the charge. I am skeptical that any meaningful progress will be made as long as the business model of higher education relies on 75 percent of the workforce to be composed of contingent laborers. As I communicated with Professor Burnett last week, I work with two adjunct professors at a central Illinois steakhouse. How do they achieve their personal mastery or have time to communicate with other scholars about what actually works when they are working an additional 30-35 hours a week waiting tables in order to make ends meet? How does the necessary dialogue have time to start?
Secondly, the mental models higher education has toward its “product” aren’t going to change without a serious kick in the pants. The “CEO’s” of higher education really don’t spend that much time fretting about student outcomes. Do the powers that be at the AHA really care that much about the conditions of adjuncts? The system of higher ed works quite well for those at the top of the educational hierarchy. This model of reform is reliant upon the efforts of individuals to work harder. This is akin to me berating Professor Burnett to push harder on the gas pedal of her car. She can have it floored but she’s never going to win the Indianapolis 500 in the car she commutes to work. The system of higher education has to change. This system is the impediment to better learning outcomes. Along these same lines, do you think your college or university is going to invest dollars in changing the way it has done business for years or will it by a newer analytic program that uses more variables to predict student success or failure?
Thirdly, I am all for teaching critical thinking skills which are incredibly important to sniff out all the BS in our lives, but I also realize that I was attached to the study of history because I like puzzles and the subject gives me a lot of intrinsic pleasures, but everyone is different. If you forced me to take an accounting class, I must confess once the final exam was over I seriously doubt I would retain the knowledge the rest of my life.
Sorry if my rant is disjointed, and I apologize for composing it at the keyboard. For the record, I do support the teaching of history in the way advocated by Sam WIneberg in his books.
Thanks for these thoughtful comments.
Anthony, I tell my students the same thing about how their history and humanities courses might be the last time for a long time, or maybe ever, that they are given time to think about something besides the bottom line — though I frame this as humorously as I can — and that they should take advantage of the opportunity while it’s here. I also joke with the juniors and seniors, congratulating them on finally getting those math courses and software courses out of the way so they can get into the class they’ve been wanting to take for years.
I let them know from the outset that I know why they’re there and what they’re up against — and then we talk about all the reasons they will benefit from and possibly come to appreciate being stuck in the little lifeboat of the classroom with me for a semester while the storm rages outside. They generally take it well.
Brian, you’re right about the business model, though maybe the authors didn’t want to open that can of worms. I did find myself somewhat surprised that they characterized most history profs / teachers as saying, “I suck at assessment.” The much more common reaction, at least in my observation, is, “Assessment is a racket” or “Assessment is a bunch of b.s.” Maybe the article begins from the point of resignation and makes the best of a bad situation — a bad situation that’s only going to get worse.
That said, the actual assessments they developed, and their means of scoring them, were quite clever and would actually work as in-class or online quizzes, writing assignments, or exam essay questions — that’s handy.
The course lookup tool at my current university seems to be down right now (because of course it is). But if I recall correctly, there are something like sixteen or seventeen sections of the survey on offer next fall. Two of those sections will be taught by a tenured professor, four of those sections will be taught by a full-time permanent lecturer who has been there for several years, and the remaining ten or eleven sections are not yet assigned, with the instructors currently listed as “staff.” That’s hardly a unique situation — in fact, having six out of sixteen or seventeen intro courses taught by full-timers is probably better than the average, though maybe not by much. Some of those “staff” sections probably won’t be assigned until well into the summer. And, as I have learned, even when sections are assigned a few months ahead of time, the just-in-time employment policies of the university sometimes don’t grant adjuncts access to their courses until August 15, when the semester starts the next week. That’s also probably very common. (Perhaps less common, but also something I’ve experienced firsthand — being underpaid by half in my first paycheck, and then told by someone in personnel, “I’m sorry; there’s nothing I can do about it. You’ll have to wait ’til the next pay cycle.” Unbelievably inhumane. I have friends who would have been homeless had they been shorted half their paycheck.)
In short, we are all part of a system designed to run the university as if it were a profit-making venture, rather than an institution dedicated to the furtherance of knowledge. It’s not good for the tenured, it’s not good for adjuncts, and it’s certainly not good for students. Somewhere up the chain of command, someone has decided to prioritize other needs and other expenses. Parents and students should be up in arms about this. However, know that that uprising can cut both ways. If enough parents and students demand to know why their students are required to take certain courses, but the courses are staffed with overworked and underpaid temporary laborers, the response might well be, “You know, you’re right — let’s reduce the general ed requirements.” That’s the last thing that needs to happen, for sure.
Anyway, it’s a systemic problem — so, other than acknowledging that it is a problem, I’m not sure that the Wineburg et al article could have done much to address it.
But I’m all for lighting a candle and cursing the darkness.