Collaboration and the Future of Education

Preserving the Right to Think and Teach Historically

Gordon Andrews, Wilson J. Warren, James Cousins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317859420
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Social Science

Current educational reforms have given rise to various types of "educational Taylorism, " which encourage the creation of efficiency models in pursuit of a unified way to teach. In history education curricula, this has been introduced through scripted textbook-based programs such as Teacher Curriculum Institute's History Alive! and completely online curricula. They include the jargon of authentic methods, such as primary sources, cooperative learning, differentiated instruction, and access to technology; yet the craft of teaching is removed, and an experience that should be marked by discovery and reflection is replaced with comparatively empty processes.

This volume provides systematic models and examples of ways that history teachers can compete with and effectively halt this transformation. The alternatives the authors present are based on collaborative models that address the art of teaching for pre-service and practicing secondary history teachers as well as collegiate history educators. Relying on original research, and a maturing body of secondary literature on historical thinking, this book illuminates how collaboration can create real historical learning.

1
Introduction

Passage and implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act has accelerated the trend toward the replacement of craft methods of teaching with various types of “educational Taylorism.” As used in this book, educational Taylorism refers to the use of commercially–or institutionally–developed scripts, aids, texts, or methods that replace the accumulated experience and wisdom associated with teacher-scholars. Raymond E. Callahan’s seminal study of how Taylorism impacted schools, published in 1962, focused primarily on how administrators adopted various business practices. He explains how school superintendents in particular espoused cost accounting procedures that by the 1920s affected class size and teaching loads. ¹

However, the application of Taylorism to classroom teaching practices was not yet common practice when Callahan’s book was published. But in more recent years, educational Taylorism has encouraged the creation of efficiency models in the pursuit of “the one best way” to teach. ² Jonathan Rees, for instance, has asserted that “[s]cientific management in the classroom does not respect the idea that teachers know what to teach their students or how best to teach it.” ³ Adherents of educational Taylorism, wittingly or not, are now moving aggressively and regrettably in the direction of telling teachers exactly what and how to teach, resulting in the erosion of authentic craft methods of teaching, particularly at the elementary and secondary school levels.

Schools have introduced educational Taylorism in many ways, but arguably the most common forms have been in thoroughly scripted textbook-based programs or in “blended” or completely online curricula. Regarding the former, Teachers’ Curriculum Institute’s History Alive! is a very popular program that provides teachers with access to resources they would otherwise lack, such as primary sources, scripted simulations (historical and geographic), and photos. ⁴ Because it enhances their products’ popularity with administrators, publishers routinely guarantee school districts that all lessons will be benchmarked to state standards. ⁵ Teachers are presented lessons in a step-by-step process, involving worksheets, popcorn reading, drawing and coloring historical figures or concepts, and discussing vocabulary or events that rarely move beyond the knowledge level, let alone require students to think historically in ways that historians might deem genuine or authentic. ⁶

Technology-based curricula currently include “blended” or “hybrid” models, or in some cases total online learning. Blended models usually involve two types of experiences. One type is a three-day rotation for which the teacher is literally handed a script to read to students on the first day, followed by two days during which students work in groups answering an “essential” question by assembling a five-panel PowerPoint. ⁷ Another form of blended curriculum makes use of technology offering students the “opportunity” to learn at home and at school. These programs require students to work from home two or three days a week and attend a traditional class two or three days a week, depending on the district. ⁸ Much has been made in educational circles recently about “flipped” classrooms in which students are presented with content outside of class time, usually via videos or lectures online, and then asked to work on application problems during class time. However, as with other blended models, the online component is often scripted in a way that may not be under the classroom instructor’s direct control. ⁹

Quite often the online models remove the teacher from crucial parts of the learning process, and as such, the teacher is transferred into a facilitator of large numbers of students engaged in basic knowledge-gathering and -retention activities. Students read online texts and lectures and then test until they reach the compulsory percentage to pass the chapter. These new curricula include the jargon of authentic methods, such as primary sources, cooperative learning, differentiated instruction, and access to technology. The problem is that the craft of teaching is removed in whole or in part and increasingly, replaced with a process that unfortunately has only the thin veneer of authentic history teaching and learning associated with it. Particularly depressing about this trend is that pre-service teachers are also trained to use the same processes at the expense of learning traditional craft approaches. An experience that should be marked by discovery and reflection is replaced with comparatively empty processes. ¹⁰

Many public and private groups and movements can be blamed for the growth of educational Taylorism. But the crucial issue is: What can be done to combat it? This book provides systematic examples of ways teachers can compete with or perhaps, effectively stymie this transformation in the field of history instruction and learning. The alternatives presented in this book are based on collaborative models that address the craft of teaching for pre-service and practicing secondary history teachers, which also have implications for collegiate history educators. Relying on original research and a maturing body of secondary literature on historical thinking, this book illuminates how collaboration can improve historical thinking and learning.

Most of the book’s examples and related discussion are grounded in the more than decade-long relationships among teachers and students at Portage (Michigan) Central High School (PCHS), Western Michigan University (WMU), and, more recently, Grand Valley State University (GVSU). ¹¹ The relationships that developed in the exercise of individual agency among teachers and students provide the basis for substantive reform and demonstrate the possibilities that lie within the reach of teachers and schools nationwide to develop genuine historical learning processes. This book’s premise is that collaboration needs to be grounded in local relationships among professors, classroom teachers, and pre-collegiate and collegiate students. ¹² Once teachers are given the freedom to engage their students in authentic historical exercises, then products and processes associated with educational Taylorism need not become albatrosses.

The book is organized into three sections. Part I highlights both obstacles to more authentic use of craft-based teaching models and existing efforts that have partly addressed these obstacles. Chapter 2 focuses on one of the most significant obstacles to authentic history teaching and learning: teachers’ overreliance on textbooks. Of course, the driving force behind textbook dependence is not simply teachers’ decisions; it is integrally related to the changing landscape of education nationwide that for more than a generation has been driven by accountability and assessment concerns. Nevertheless, the chapter argues that even textbooks that purport to use the best models of instructional theory and practice and provide teachers with crucial content support are no substitutes for teachers’ disciplinary knowledge and skills.

Chapter 3 provides insights into K–12 classroom teachers’ concerns with current history teaching practices by examining a longstanding Teaching American History (TAH) project’s efforts to provide instructional guidance for teachers in southwest Michigan between 2004 and 2012. Based on observation and survey data, the chapter highlights not only teachers’ concerns but also features of the collaborative nature of the TAH project that were valuable. Although the TAH project no longer exists, understanding its contributions is valuable in helping future collaborative efforts in the field of history.

Chapter 4 explains another project—involving the K–12 and academic partners who are the primary constituents described in the book’s Part III— that illuminates how collaboration impacted the various instructors and students at both the collegiate and high school levels. This chapter provides a baseline of understanding the dimensions of collaboration that infuse other parts of the book.

Part II highlights two important dimensions of craft-based teaching models as applied to history instruction and teacher evaluation. Chapter 5 explains how craft models of teaching are reflected in the criteria used to determine the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History’s National History Teachers of the Year (HTOY) award winners. The award acknowledges a distinctive group of teachers who eschew a process approach and instead, actively pursue their careers using a craft approach. Collectively, these elementary and secondary teachers share a disposition about the teaching of history that provides insightful solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing history education. Based on interviews with several of these teachers, this chapter explores how they developed and implemented their craft, how they saw the connections between teacher training and in-service development, and how a craft approach advances historical thinking. It also provides insights into the vexing problem of evaluating what good history teaching is. These teachers emphasize how nurturing the craft of history teaching is vital to the future practice of teaching and learning for all students.

Chapter 6 explores the elements of a craft-based, collaborative model of teacher evaluation also based on the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History’s HTOY award. Assessment has long been a stress point for history teachers, particularly when they are evaluated by administrators who view history education as a process rather than as a fundamental part of a craft approach. New research involving the HTOY program provides insights into the collaborative model used by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to determine its national winner and what can be learned from that process. A unique element of the Gilder Lehrman’s assessment of teachers is that the previous year’s winner is asked to be a member of the following year’s panel. This places them squarely within a paradigm shift that eludes most teachers over their careers. The national winners typically highlight collaborative efforts as essential to their approaches.

Part III provides detailed examinations of the collaborative efforts that GVSU’s Gordon Andrews and WMU’s Wilson Warren and James Cousins initiated with area high school history teachers and students, specifically those at PCHS and two Kalamazoo-area alternative high schools, Barclay Hills Educational Center and the Climax-Scotts Adult Alternative Education Program. More specifically, this section of the book explains the GVSU and WMU history educators’ focus on historiography as a historical pedagogy to enhance and enrich students’ learning of and interest in history. ¹³ The historiography project portion of the collaborative effort began during the 2011–2012 school year and continues to date.

Chapter 7 provides a baseline for understanding historiography’s pedagogical potential by reviewing the relevant literature on how it has been or more often, has been suggested to be used with high school history students. This chapter not only surveys the literature on how historiography can be used at the high school level, but it especially highlights literature that suggests how collaborative models can be used in this process. This literature is often referenced in subsequent chapters as a touchstone for how this particular collaborative project varied from other models.

Chapter 8 examines the collaboration among GVSU and WMU history educators and PCHS history teachers. In particular, the chapter highlights the PCHS history teachers’ reflections on the historiography project. Kent Baker, Sara Brown, Patricia Johnson, and Tama Salisbury have been the core teacher participants in the project since its origins. Baker is the school’s “History of the Americas” International Baccalaureate (IB) instructor. Johnson and Salisbury are the “Twentieth-Century World” IB instructors. Brown is the school’s media center teacher-librarian. In 2014–2015, Sue Hoffman, one of the school’s ninth-grade United States history (non-IB) instructors, also became part of the historiography project. One of the essential questions informing the collaboration’s investigations was whether or not teachers would find the use of historiography in the classroom a useful method of instruction. Amid their myriad other responsibilities, this chapter addresses the varied ways teachers introduced historiography in the classroom over a three-year period, and whether, in fact, they found it useful. Equally significant to the successful use of historiography in the classroom was the collaboration of the media center’s librarian and her staff. At a time when books and libraries are largely seen as superfluous, too expensive, or both (e.g., there are no libraries in 700 of New York City’s 1,800 public schools and 160 of Chicago’s 700 public schools), this book points to the necessity of the library. ¹⁴ To develop historically relevant research experiences, teachers, the high school librarian, and historians collaborated on the kinds of experiences students need to be successful in college and as citizens.

Chapter 9 looks at the historiography project’s impacts on PCHS students, primarily those in the two IB classes, but also provides some preliminary observations about the impact of historiography on ninth-grade students’ understanding of U.S. history. A guiding assumption of the project was that helping students to comprehend and appreciate the place of historiography would pique their curiosity and also provide them with deeper insights into the discipline itself. Additionally, the project hypothesized that in terms of citizenship education, students should understand that there are vibrant debates within the history profession. The historiography project therefore intentionally introduced opportunities to dispel the notion that history is “one damn thing after another.” Because school is one of “the last shared democratic experiences that we have as a nation,” it is imperative that our students be presented with extant and sometimes nuanced debates over what history means. Based on data collected in three years of the WMU, GVSU, and PCHS collaboration, this chapter will reveal the way historiography helps to remove the occlusions that so often prevent students from achieving a deeper level of historical understanding. ¹⁵

From the beginning of the historiography project, it included a central role for pre-service teachers. Chapter 10 focuses on this part of the project’s design and implementation. GVSU and WMU history educators’ social studies methods students have led the panel discussions that...