Page 129 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 5 How Can I Teach History Powerfully? 101
war may have played in causing subsequent events). These features of the historical knowledge base make it very difficult to decide what history to teach in the schools.
Another challenge is “whose history” to teach (Zimmerman, 2002). As historical study expanded from a main focus on political and military history to social and intellectual history that includes the contributions of traditionally underrepresented groups of people (e.g., women, people of color, children, and the elderly), educators needed to determine whose stories should be included. As Zimmerman argues, the storyline of U.S. history texts has remained the same (i.e., that the U.S. story of freedom is unique, exceptional, and superior to that of other countries), but the story has expanded to include a broader cast of characters. Educators’ development of multiculturalism and culturally responsive teaching has helped bring a greater focus on the stories and contri- butions of traditionally underrepresented groups. However, by including more stories, new dilemmas arise, such as what history to include when time for history in the curriculum is limited.
Principle 5: Coherent Content: To facilitate meaningful learning and retention, content is explained clearly and developed with emphasis on its structure and connections. Coherent content refers to content whose knowledge and skills are connected to each other, whereby the sequence of ideas or events make sense and the relationships are apparent. Coherent content is facilitated through the use of powerful ideas as an organi- zational tool. For example, coherent content does not refer to simply memorizing the causes of the U.S. Revolution in isolation as disconnected facts. Instead, content is coher- ent when students apply the thinking skill of analyzing cause and effect to each cause of the U.S. Revolution and study the causes in relationship to one another. Please see Chapter 14 for a more in-depth description of the principle.
Coherent Content
History in Elementary Social Studies
Even though it now is clear that elementary students can learn many aspects of history with understanding, disagreements remain about how much history to teach in the ele- mentary grades. A few social studies educators prefer to minimize the role of history and instead focus social studies on current events and issues, emphasizing critical discussion and reasoned decision making. Most social studies educators, however, believe that history deserves an important place in the curriculum for several reasons, including its value as background knowledge that students can draw upon to develop contexts for understanding current events and issues.
The underlying powerful ideas (generalizations) that are often referred to by historians as explanations and that students are exposed to in lessons and units include the follow- ing: continuous change is universal and inevitable; the rate of change within a society varies with such factors as the values of a society, the amount of pluralism in the society, and the extent of the society’s contacts with other cultures; events of the past influence events of the present; human beings in different stages of civilization react differently to similar environments, and so forth.
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