April 25, 2022

Using Primary Sources to Enhance the Teaching-Learning Process

A A class should not simply be a space where students learn through rote memorization. Instead, class sessions should allow the students to develop their critical thinking skills. We as educators want our students to be able to answer not only "What happened?" but "How do you know?" and "Why do you believe your interpretation is valid?"

Inculcating the power of using primary sources in the teaching and learning process definitely helps us achieve that goal. A Primary Source is a first-hand, original account, record, or evidence about a person, place, object, or event. Primary sources help students develop and refine cognitive, investigative, deductive reasoning, and problem-solving skills. In addition, students conclude information they have found through deciphering primary source materials.

...history becomes personal and relevant for students when they practice historical thinking strategies to examine primary sources led by their own curiosity and wonderings...

Using a variety of primary sources, teachers address the whole spectrum of learning styles. Two approaches that we as educators can try in a diverse classroom are as follows:

Historical Thinking:

A "historical thinking approach" to primary sources often taken for granted unlocks a world closed to young learners. History becomes personal and relevant for students when they practice historical thinking strategies to examine primary sources led by their own curiosity and wonderings.

Additionally, historical thinking skills empower the students to think critically about all the information they receive from various sources daily. When teaching how to think, it's important to make thinking visible. We, as educators, need to show the students how historians think and help students on a similar journey.

When introducing the historical thinking approach, make sure that the students know the different instructional strategies concerning this approach. For example, they are: sourcing, contextualizing, close reading, using background knowledge, reading the silences, and corroborating. Any teacher's goal (and his or her students' goals) in reading and thinking like a historian should be to treat any account that claims to present a full story of the past with scepticism.

Any new approach to teaching will undoubtedly encounter some difficulties and challenges. For example, when teachers practice this initially, students need to be taught routines and procedures for historical thinking, and such a technique will require several iterations to perfect. Another challenge is to be able to find relevant primary sources timely. But these surely can be overcome with timely planning ahead of the sessions. Educators also need to create an environment that is psychologically safe for students so that they can contribute without the fear of judgement.

Accountable Talk:

Another instructional technique that is built upon the use of primary sources can is "Accountable Talk." Here, the students ask for clarification, cite evidence, respond to classmates and further develop something that a peer said. This technique will allow students to learn by doing and invite students to immerse themselves in the language of the discipline they are currently studying. Accountable talks can also act as a superb formative assessment tool as it allows teachers to understand the students' level of thinking, knowledge and growth in discipline-specific vocabulary.

This technique would also come up with a few challenges of its own. It will take time for the class to be comfortable with accountable talk. And secondly, this will require the teacher to establish expectations and procedures.

For accountable talk to be successful, a teacher needs to design a model for the students and show them how they can be respectful of the ideas of their peers and take an active and responsible part in the discussion.

The bottom line is that the students need to be taught to "think like historians" not because they will become professional historians but to prepare students to tolerate complexity, adapt to new situations, and resist the first answer that comes to mind. Without critical and strategic thinking, learning history or for that matter any subject is meaningless.

Posted in Blogs and tagged Blogs, Teaching-Learning Process, Historical Thinking, Accountable Talk
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