Using Artifacts to Foster Historical Inquiry

Page:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The Importance of Historical Inquiry

Developing historical understanding is a central goal for social studies education, but it presents challenges for elementary teachers who wonder about children’s readiness to engage in historical investigation. Many teachers are concerned that young children are disconnected psychologically, lack sufficient background knowledge about the past, and are missing concepts dealing with chronology that are required for any understanding of history.

These challenges are important considerations but they are not insurmountable. Various researchers have shown how engaging students in historical inquiry—turning the study of history into an interpretive practice—can be accessible and exciting even to young students. Children continually strive to make “human sense” of the world (Donaldson 1978), and historical inquiries can bring to life stories about people, places, and times that enhance this sense-making. Although children may feel disconnected from broad historical discussions of political movements, wars, revolutions, and so on, they rarely feel disconnected from discovering what life was like for their teachers, parents, and grandparents when they were children. From constructing personal timelines and learning to divide the past into recognizable eras based on family photographs, young students can build chronological sense using narratives found in their own homes and communities. These stories from the past provide starting places for acquiring and refining the concepts necessary for historical understanding.

Paramount in this enterprise is the teacher’s role in engaging students in what might be called “disciplined inquiry” by harnessing and shaping the natural curiosity that bubbles up in the form of children’s spontaneous questions. The authors of Doing History define disciplined inquiry as “purposeful investigations that take place within a community that establishes the goals, standards and procedures of study” (Levstik and Barton 1997, 13). The rich potential embedded in historical inquiry is lost without a teacher framing and guiding the questions that students ask. Too often, questions encountered in the elementary social studies curriculum remain at very concrete and literal levels. Attention stays on gathering information and detail, sometimes at the expense of analysis or synthesis, and without sufficient regard for the “human sense” behind the facts. Unlike fact-finding questions that tend to shut down inquiry, the focus should be on questions that open up inquiry, go beyond recall, deepen understanding, and expand curiosity. Students can engage in sustained inquiries, even without considerable prior knowledge of history. In fact, as the authors of Doing History suggest, the inquiry can become the process through which students construct their understanding of historical themes. However, these authors caution that “authentic, disciplined inquiry is not easy; teachers must guide and support students at every step of the process—stimulating their interest, helping them develop questions, modelling procedures for collecting information and so on” (77). Despite these requirements, the rewards of inquiry are worth the effort.

The Role of Artifacts in Inquiry

Before introducing an extended scenario about a primary classroom inquiry, I want to comment on the value of artifacts as starting points for purposeful historical investigation. Levstik and Barton write that “although young children who are still developing their reading skills will have trouble using some kind of written primary sources—particularly from more remote time periods—analyzing photographs and artifacts allows them to use important historical materials in an authentic way” (77). There are several reasons why study of a single historical artifact presents an imaginative entry into larger investigations of the past. Children are attracted to the details about people’s everyday lives; physical objects make these lives seem more real and accessible.

Page:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7