Teaching History through Authentic Learning - Literature review Example

Teaching History through Authentic Learning Introduction The present education system has deviated a lot from the past. First, it has taken up the challenge of globalization, hence embraced technology as an important instructional tool across all levels. Second, it has acknowledged the varying needs of students who come from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, thus implemented multicultural strategies through scaffolding and differentiated instruction. Most importantly, it has made a great shift in focus not just to cater the technological and multicultural needs of students but also address issues of learning styles and difficulties. This paper tackles authentic learning, an important shift in teaching history that combines Piaget’s cognitivism, Vygotsky’s Social Constructivism, and Schank et al.’s learning by doing. The current paper has four parts: introduction, literature review, discussion and conclusion. In the introduction, it provides a trajectory of the curriculum shift towards the use of authentic instruction. In the literature review, it discusses suggested authentic classroom strategies found in the literature. Meantime, the discussion part gives reflections on the merits and demerits of suggested strategies in teaching history. Finally, the conclusion summarizes important points in the discussion and provides a recommendation to education authorities. Traditionally, the teaching of history usually entails memorization of important dates and people. Although this design is still being used today, educators (Schank, cited in Brockman 1995) have expressed their frustration over rigorous focus on historical details but failing to make students understand issues. This failure to achieve understanding happens because instructional design, including lessons, activities and assessment methods focus on knowledge-level learning, which was common in the past, albeit with the popularity of behaviorism. Behaviorism originated from the minds of John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner. With his stimulus-response model, Watson claims that “specific stimuli evoke observable responses in human behavior” (Skinner, 1938, p. 36). Meanwhile, Skinner’s Operant Conditioning argues that pleasant things have energizing effect on people’s behavior, thus people tend to repeat behaviors that are desirable and get rid of undesirable ones. Based on this theory, beginning learners are taught to memorize the alphabet by reciting it everyday. Commonly, teachers in day care centers lead students to sing the alphabet song until everyone is able to recite all the letters. This practice is continued in the nursery level with the articulation of sounds to prepare students for phonics reading. Meanwhile, in history classes, behaviorism applies as students are required to memorize facts and figures. The teacher identifies the year a historical event, then gives a lecture on the important occurrences of that time. At the end of the lesson, the teacher gives an assessment to determine if students retained important facts such as dates, places and people. This old picture of history classes focused too much on building up knowledge, hence left behind comprehension and analyses of issues or other critical-level skills. Piaget’s theory of cognitivism, which was introduced in --- soon permeated the education system. This view promoted the use of tools towards a better understanding of concepts. In application, history teachers utilized pictures, films, letters, biographies and literary writings to aim for better understanding. Lectures were thus supported by visual materials and assessments included explanation or identification of events in a particular time and not just the facts. This approach strengthened knowledge through a better understanding of events (e.g., identifying the reason behind the Civil War, determining how events happened). In sum, cognitivism promoted interpretation, synthesis and analysis of historical truths and experiences. Among activities, debates and panel discussions challenged the ability of students to think out of the box and identify ---. The journey of the history teacher did not stop with cogntivism. It continued to witness the change in historical trend with constructivism. Formulating constructs is the key aim of the Constructivist Theory. According to constructivists, experience is an important factor to construct new ideas (Piaget, in Kamii & Ewing, 2006). Students’ experience should therefore be relied upon to teach new constructs. As Fosnot (in Gray, 2007) claims, “meaningful learning occurs through rethinking old ideas.” Applying this, history students are guided to develop new ideas and not just remember or process concepts. Following this, teachers reinvented the classroom by challenging students to write essays responding to prompts such as hypothetical questions that infer on a historical event, a historical character’s experience, and the like. Given this, students were better challenged to take debates and panel discussions to a higher level by asking them to portray roles of historical figures, address issues the way the person would, considering his/her background and past actions, and so on. Also, in the interest of fun, students were asked to dress up and act like the real historical people in front of the class. Some classrooms motivated students to make stories, soliloquies, and other reflective course requirements. With the ability to infer on events and human motives, higher critical-level skills were tapped including reasoning, judgment/evaluation, social interaction, and even appreciation. Vygotsky’s Social Constructivism extends the thought of constructivism as it recommends social interaction between the learner and a “more knowledgeable other” (28). This other does not necessarily pertain to the teacher as the source of knowledge but any one who has a better knowledge than the learner. History classes anchored on Social Constructivism include inviting professionals in the field, interviewing people in the community, or simply asking students to relate experiences or thoughts with each other. Following the trend, history classes nowadays do not just ask students to play roles or verbally reason out their thoughts in panel discussions. They challenge learners to make scripts, dioramas, sculptures, paintings, plays, and other artworks. With the help of technology, students also make films, videos, computer games, etc. based on historical events and with the help of multiple resources including people they interviewed or photographs the students themselves took on a field trip. Computer applications also allow them to explore history and make historical avatars that demonstrate the past. Furthermore, technology leads students to exchange thoughts with other learners using social networking sites (e.g., facebook, twitter, etc.) school blackboards, forums and distant learning platforms. Basically, learning is now enriched with authentic experience, thus setting aside memorization although the latter could form part of the requirements to pass a history subject. Authentic learning, as many educators call it, provides a more personal and realistic learning experience. In the next part, real classroom experiences of history teachers will be enumerated to cite examples of how authentic learning is applied in the current practice. Literature Review The current literature provides relevant ideas promoting authentic instruction or learning by doing. To obtain a good understanding of authentic learning, let us enumerate some characteristics of this pedagogy based on current literature. According to Lombardi and Oblinger (2007), authentic learning focuses on real-world, complex problems and solutions. Based on this, activities should include role-playing, problem-based activities, case studies and exchange of information in virtual communities. This definition emphasizes real-world experience and problem solving. Thus, an ideal authentic learning program should be considerate of the background of the students in order to determine their realities. Students who are not exposed to a certain environment will have difficulty with it. This is similar to the story of the blind men describing an elephant based on touch. They have different descriptions simply because they cannot see the animal. In the classroom, it will be difficult for students to comment on something they do not experience such as wearing the abaya for the Muslims or kissing the hand of an elder. Such traditions are not practiced in the West. Therefore, issues for debate, role-playing or case study should be relevant to the lives of the students. According to Martell (2013), cultural relevance has a lot to do with students’ performance. In a qualitative study he conducted, Martell interviewed teachers and students to inquire the impact of culture in classroom instruction. Based on the results, students from ethnic backgrounds were more likely to perform better if they could relate with their teacher and the people they were reading about. For this reason, characters in problem solving situations should involve those who have the same ethnicity as the students. Moreover, Lombardi and Oblinger (2007) also describe authentic learning problems as having multiple interpretations and outcomes. Teacher should not rely on a single correct answer to issues they will give for students to react on. Rather, they should encourage students to think of solutions that will benefit all persons concerned, such as those that are humanitarian, cost-efficient, environmental friendly, non-discriminating, etc. Lombardi and Oblinger (2007) also believe that authentic learning should make use of a variety of instructional resources. Students should have options to choose from when trying to research on a given topic. In addition, they should be able to distinguish between a good and a bad source. As such, students of authentic learning are exposed to a good number of resources and they are critical enough to identify if the source is reliable or not. Due to the complexity of the activities, Lombardi and Oblinger (2007) also argue that authentic learning requires cooperative learning. This ensures interaction among students, collaborative work and brainstorming or even just an exchange of ideas. In line with this, they also recommend that authentic activities are expected to take a significant amount of time for students to work on. Such activities do not just take an hour or a session to finish but multiple periods, long hours or a couple of days to ensure the value of the output. Moreover, they should challenge students and not occur as simple tasks that can be completed easily. They should require higher analyses and critical judgment of existing systems and regulations, not just an acceptance of them. In support of authentic learning, Voelker (2008) designed an activity for his history class, called “For and Against.” He believes that multiple choice type of test does not promote understanding of history. Therefore, in order to check for understanding, he gives “For and Against” as an assignment or enrichment activity. This is a writing prompt in which students will explain their side, whether they are for something or support the statement or is against it. This has so far helped him determine if students understood the concepts and if their understanding is correct. Voelker designed “For and Against” upon realizing that students may have different understandings of a historical event after a lecture or discussion. For instance, he cites that some students thought that America was a “new world” to the Europeans in that it was hidden and was only discovered by Columbus. This, of course, was against the idea that the land had been inhabited by some people and offered new opportunities when discovered by Columbus. The first thought did not consider the civilization and culture of the American natives, side by side by the need of the Europeans to find new opportunities for food, shelter, and other things they needed. Such inconsistencies in the minds of the students could cause harm to the history of a nation. Thus, Voelker feels the need to align his students’ understanding to what is real and rational. Discussion The recommendations for authentic learning provided by history teachers themselves impose challenge to all history teachers, especially those who still use multiple choice questions for assessment. In particular, every teacher should understand that there are two types of assessment, one is formal and another is informal. Formal assessments are the pen-and-paper tests usually given at the end of the lesson. These tests measure learning of the students after a lesson, such as those considered as summative tests, achievement tests, etc. Meanwhile, informal assessments are tests or activities that measure learning that is taking place while the lesson is in progress. Unlike formal assessments that are focused on retention of knowledge, informal assessments could measure the values of students, their participation or willingness to learn, their background of the lesson, ability to reenact situations, creativity to imagine an event, and so on. Additionally, informal assessments also encourage participation of students, especially if authentic experiences are involved because such activities give way for students to share their knowledge of the subject matter, show their talent to create, dramatize, dance or sing, and support each other in collaborative output. In particular, authentic activities are more in line with informal assessments because they do not focus on the knowledge aspect. Likewise, they offer learners opportunities to interact with each other, express themselves, share cultures, witness other cultures, work collaboratively, and understand lessons in a realistic perspective. Therefore, history classes should implement a lot of informal activities in order to provide authentic learning. Based on the literature, three recommendations are valued in this paper. These are culturally-relevant activities, “For and Against”, and collaborative output. Martell’s recommendation that activities should have cultural relevance to the students is also highly regarded. Taking from this, informal assessments should focus a lot on culture and ethnicity of the students. As such, it is a must for the teacher to know the background of the students. Therefore, at the very start, the teacher can ask the students to compose their own history, hence impart the very essence of the subject, which according to Voelker (2008) is constructing history the way one sees it. To gain access to this information about the students, a history teacher could inspire students to make their own graphic organizer that contains pictures and events in their life. Students will paste photos of their family, draw their family tree and describe members of their family, draw or make a collage of where they live, ask their parents about their childhood, write recipes of food they usually eat, make a journal of their daily activities, and so on. The graphic organizer may be completed in a week, and the teacher may allot 15 minutes everyday for additional entries to the graphic organizer to check on students’ progress and find out their backgrounds. During which the teacher should be able to establish rapport with students so as to engage them in discussions later on. Culturally relevant activities may be employed in many U.S. history lessons. For instance, in teaching about the Civil War, it will be good for students to imagine living in those times and surviving without taking sides. For this activity, students will be challenged to imagine and read about people of different nationalities who lived in the 1800s or during the Civil War. Their answers should be backed up by readings about the target population. Furthermore, they will express why they should not take sides, thus reiterate Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and develop the idea that racism is a serious threat to freedom and life of a nation. Read More