Page 138 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

110 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
consensus and thus not controversial. However, traditionalists denounced the standards as un-American—too reflective of political correctness and excessive multiculturalism, while at the same time insufficiently celebratory of America’s triumphs and heroes. This stance set off a lobbying effort that culminated in a U.S. Senate resolution con- demning the standards.
While there has been much controversy regarding the development of history standards, the revised standards were published eventually in 1996 (NCHS, 1996). The standards address both content and process. Content refers to what knowledge and topics are taught. Process refers to the particular kinds of skills that are taught. Recall how you learned his- tory. For many of us, history education involved rote memorization of dates and recall of facts. However, history is too complex to be boiled down to a set of dates and facts. More- over, history involves more than understanding of content; it also involves a set of pro- cesses or thinking skills. Because our understanding of the past often changes with new research and re-analyses of the past, students need to be introduced to the kinds of pro- cesses and tools historians use in order to draw their own conclusions about accounts of the past to be able to analyze documents, evaluate them for credibility, and draw their own conclusions.
The process standards focus on five groups of historical thinking skills:
1. Chronological thinking. Distinguishing among past, present, and future time; identi- fying the temporal structure of historical narratives or stories; establishing temporal order in the students’ own historical narratives; measuring and calculating calendar time; interpreting data presented in timelines; creating timelines; and explaining change and continuity over time.
2. Historical comprehension. Reconstructing the literal meaning of a historical passage; identifying the central questions that the narrative addresses; reading historical narratives imaginatively; developing historical perspectives; drawing on the data in historical maps; drawing on visual and mathematical data presented in graphics; and drawing on visual data presented in photographs, paintings, cartoons, and archi- tectural drawings.
3. Historical analysis and interpretation. Formulate questions to focus inquiry or anal- ysis; identify the author or source of a historical document or narrative; compare and contrast differing sets of ideas, values, personalities, behaviors, and institutions; analyze historical fiction; distinguish between fact and fiction; compare different stor- ies about a historical figure, era, or event; analyze illustrations in historical stories; consider multiple perspectives; explain causes in analyzing historical actions; challenge arguments of historical inevitability; and hypothesize influences of the past.
4. Historical research capabilities. Formulate historical questions; obtain historical data; interrogate historical data; and marshal needed knowledge of the time and place to construct a story, explanation, or historical narrative.
5. Historical issues-analysis and decision-making. Identify issues and problems in the past; compare the interests and values of the various people involved; suggest alter- native choices for addressing the problem; evaluate alternative courses of action; prepare a position or course of action on an issue; and evaluate the consequences of a decision.
The NCHS (1996) Content Standards are divided into three sections. There are sepa- rate U.S. history and world history standards for Grades 5–12, organized chronologically according to historical eras. For example, one of the eras identified for the U.S. history standards is The Revolution and the New Nation (1754–1820s). Standards associated with this era call for learning about: the causes of the American Revolution, the ideas and interests involved in forging the revolutionary movement, and the reasons for the
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