Studying Colonization in Eighth Grade: What Can it Teach Us about the Learning Context of Current Reforms?

Abstract

This eighth-grade study is situated in the larger arena of current policies concerning the reform of history and social studies education, After describing how the study and others like it might be useful in informing reform policy considerations, this report provides a brief portrait of how the teacher taught a unit on North American Colonization to outline the classroom context. Second, it describes six eighth-graders' prior knowledge of colonial American history derived from in-depth interviews conducted before the students studied the historical period, Third, a section then is devoted to interview responses from the six students that were collected about two weeks after the conclusion of the history unit. This third section addresses the ways in which students made sense of the content in the context of their classroom experiences. Drawing from the work on context of studying history done by Dickinson and Lee (1984) particularly, results are discussed in the context of three interrelated but problematic points concerning current reforms: (a) enhancing historical understanding (beyond mere fact acquisition), (b) constructing compelling rationales for the study of history, and (c) developing more powerful and valid assessment tools.