School of Education's new high school curriculum gets kudos from nation's leading historians.
The American Historical Association presented Jan.
4 two of its top awards to members of the School of Education’s Stanford
History Education Group for its efforts to promote a high school history
curriculum that draws on original source material rather than relying on
textbooks.
“This is a great honor,” said Sam Wineburg, the Margaret Jacks
Professor of Education, who directs the Stanford History Education Group. “What makes it particularly
noteworthy is that the AHA gives two awards annually that touch on teaching,
and we won both.”
Wineburg and his colleagues Daisy Martin and Chauncey Monte
Sano were awarded the James
Harvey Robinson Award for the best teaching
innovation, digitally or in print, for their book Reading Like a Historian: Teaching
Literacy in Middle and High School History Classrooms. Martin and Monte Sano, who both
earned their PhDs from the School of Education, co-founded with Wineburg the
Stanford History Education Group, where this new approach to teaching history
was developed. Martin is now a senior researcher at the Stanford Center for
Assessment, Learning and Equity, and Monte Sano an associate professor
of history and social studies education at the University of Michigan.
The
book shows teachers how to use original source material, such as primary
documents, charts, graphic organizers,
visual images and political cartoons, to encourage students to ask questions
and draw conclusions about historical events. Each chapter begins with an
introductory essay that sets the stage of a key moment in American history,
beginning with exploration and colonization of North America and ending
with the Cuban Missile Crisis. It then offers source material to explore these
subjects, as well as suggesting additional resources on the Internet and
offering guidance for assessing students’ understanding of core historical
ideas. The book is aligned with new Common Core state standards, which
emphasize analysis and critical thinking.
The
American Historical Association also presented the William Gilbert Award for the best article on
teaching history to Avishag Reisman, who played a leading role in developing
the Reading like a Historian
curriculum while completing her doctorate at the School of Education. Titled
“The Document Based Lesson,” the article presents the findings of Reisman’s
study of the effects of the curriculum at five schools in the San Francisco
Unified School District where it was introduced in 2008. She found that students gained significantly in historical
thinking, factual knowledge and reading comprehension.
Reisman is currently a visiting assistant professor at Teachers College,
Columbia University.
