How Eighth Graders in England and the United States View Historical Significance

Elicitation Techniques: Getting People to Talk About Ideas They Don’t Usually Talk About

“…The uniformity of students' responses suggests that despite Singapore schools' espoused goal of developing "critical thinkers," the curriculum had not provided them with a way of thinking about alternative historical narratives. Similar tasks have been used to investigate students' ideas about historical significance in a number of countries (e.g., Barton, 2005;Barton & Levstik, 1998;Levstik, 2001;Peck, 2010;Yeager, Foster, & Greer, 2002) and among varied ethnic groups in the United States (e.g., Epstein, 2009;Terzian & Yeager, 2007). Such studies have provided important information on the socially situated nature of students' perceptions of the meaning and purpose of learning about the past.…”

Üniversite Öğrencilerinin Görüşlerine Göre Çağdaş Dünya Tarihi Konularının Tarihsel Önemi

“…Sexias (1994) found that students preferred wars as the events with a historically importance in the first place out of twenty-nine historical events. Yeager, Foster and Greer (2002) found in a study that American and British students preferred world wars as the most important events having a historical importance. These three studies revealed that student put an importance on the war issues to learn.…”

“…In the third place, students chose the category of technological and scientific developments. Yeager, Foster and Greer (2002) found that US students preferred stepping on the Moon as the most important historical event in the third place. Depending on these two studies, it was found that even though student did not indicate scientific and technological developments as the most important historical events, they put it in the first three events.…”

History Teaching and Narrative Tools

“…While not necessarily problematic for members of a given society's dominant group, the resulting impact can particularly be challenging for the social integration of students from (historic) minority communities. As cultural context, social class, ethnicity, and racialized identities inform both understandings of history and ideas about politics and civic engagement, outright resistance to pre-given and officialized perspectives risk surfacing (Seixas, 1993;Epstein, 1998Epstein, , 2000Yeager, Foster, & Greer, 2002;Barton, 2001aBarton, , 2001bBarton & Levstik, 1998;Barton & McCully, 2004;Sears, 2011;Peck, 2010Peck, , 2011Flanagan, 2013). Youth from marginalized communities, whose historical understandings do not always necessarily resonate with what they learn in schools, may instead rely on outside sources; ones that they can better grasp and easily use for navigating through their lives (Seixas, 1993;Epstein, 1998Epstein, , 2000Yeager et al, 2002;Barton, 2001aBarton, , 2001bBarton & Levstik, 1998;Peck, 2010Peck, , 2011.…”