Cognitive Strategies Metacognition Historical Thinking Carly Brown EDP

Cognitive Strategies, Metacognition & Historical Thinking Carly Brown EDP 504 Tutoring System Spring 2011

Before we begin, here is how you can navigate throughout the tutorial… These arrow buttons will guide your journey, allowing you to go back or go forward. If at anytime you would like to return to the home screen, click on the brain icon… Let’s get started!

Start Here! Purpose Historical Thinking Wineburg’s Cognitive Heuristics Activity: Rosa Parks & the Montgomery Bus Boycott Metacognition Case Study: Kohlmeier Works Cited HOME Teaching Resources

Purpose The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce secondary history teachers to cognitive and metacognitive strategies to facilitate historical thinking in the history classroom.

What is Historical Thinking? “The ‘process of using historical information including deciphering content, perspective, point of view, and perceived facts, ’ (Chowen, 2005) via inquiry into and analysis of multiple, often primary, sources for deliberative conclusions. ” (Pelligrino, 2010) Still a little unclear?

What is Historical Thinking? • Video: “What is Historical Thinking” (8 min) You’ve probably heard the term “historical thinking” before but this video will introduce the various facets of historical thinking and its importance in the history classroom. Pay attention to the video… there might be a quiz! (Cannot access You. Tube or link broken? )

Oh no! Don’t Worry… In the event that you cannot access You. Tube or if the link is broken… Go here. Click on the video entitled “What is Historical Thinking” After finishing the video…

Video Quiz 1. __________ is the reading, analyzing, and writing that is necessary to tell historical stories. Answer

Video Quiz 1. Historical Thinking Back

Video Quiz 1. __________ is the reading, analyzing, and writing that is necessary to tell historical stories. 2. What is an original document/object created at the time under study? Answer

Video Quiz 1. Historical Thinking 2. Primary source Back

Video Quiz 1. __________ is the reading, analyzing, and writing that is necessary to tell historical stories. 2. What is an original document/object created at the time under study? 3. Can primary sources tell different stories about the same historical event? Answer

Video Quiz 1. Historical Thinking 2. Primary source 3. Certainly, this is why comparing primary sources (known as corroboration) is necessary! Back

Video Quiz 1. __________ is the reading, analyzing, and writing that is necessary to tell historical stories. 2. What is an original document/object created at the time under study? 3. Can primary sources tell different stories about the same historical event? 4. True/False: Teaching historical thinking is included in most state standards for social studies. Answer

Video Quiz 1. Historical Thinking 2. Primary source 3. Certainly, this is why comparing primary sources against each other (corroboration) is necessary! 4. True! Teaching historical thinking is not only important, it’s required by many state standards. Good Job! Let’s continue!

Why is Historical Thinking Important? • Getting students to think historically is one of the greatest challenges facing social studies educators. • Successful historical thinking allows students to become active “doers” of history, rather than consumers.

Now that you have a sense of what historical thinking is… let’s explore Sam Wineburg’s three cognitive heuristics that students can use to begin thinking historically…

Click on a bubble to explore that cognitive heuristic… Corroboration A heuristic is a “rule of thumb, ” or a strategy that can be used in a variety of similar situations. Historical Thinking: Wineburg’s Cognitive Heuristics Contextualization Sourcing After exploring all 3 heuristics, let’s continue…

Corroboration • Corroboration is the “act of comparing documents with one another. ” • Stated as a heuristic: “Whenever possible, check important details against each other before accepting them as plausible or likely. ” (Wineburg, 1991)

Sourcing • Sourcing is the “act of looking first to the source of the document before reading the body of the text. ” • Stated as a heuristic: “When evaluating historical documents, look first to the source or attribution of the document. ” (Wineburg, 1991)

Contextualization • Contextualizing is the “act of situating a document in a concrete temporal and spatial context. ” • Stated as a heuristic: “When trying to construct historical events, pay close attention to when they happened and where they took place. ” (Wineburg, 1991)

Activity: Rosa Parks & the Montgomery Bus Boycott • Now that you have been introduced to Wineburg’s heuristics for historical thinking, let’s practice. • In the following activity, you will explore several documents and passages about Rosa Parks and the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. (This will seem familiar… think back to the Historical Thinking video. )

The common narrative states… Rosa Parks was a tired seamstress who refused to give her seat on the bus to a white man in Montgomery, AL. Parks was consequently arrested. When African Americans in Montgomery heard of Parks' arrest, they decided to boycott the buses. While this story seems logical and even plausible, was Rosa Parks actually unaware of the consequences of her actions? Is this really how the Montgomery Bus Boycott began? Using historical thinking strategies, let’s explore…

• Here, you will find several tabs with various names on them. Read and examine each tab, including side bars. Make sure to keep Wineburg’s cognitive heuristics in mind! While reading, complete the following chart.

Click on a bubble to explore that cognitive heuristic… Corroboration A heuristic is a “rule of thumb, ” or a strategy that can be used in a variety of similar situations. Historical Thinking: Wineburg’s Cognitive Heuristics Contextualization Back to activity Sourcing

Corroboration • Corroboration is the “act of comparing documents with one another. ” • Stated as a heuristic: “Whenever possible, check important details against each other before accepting them as plausible or likely. ” (Wineburg, 1991)

Sourcing • Sourcing is the “act of looking first to the source of the document before reading the body of the text. ” • Stated as a heuristic: “When evaluating historical documents, look first to the source or attribution of the document. ” (Wineburg, 1991)

Contextualization • Contextualizing is the “act of situating a document in a concrete temporal and spatial context. ” • Stated as a heuristic: “When trying to construct historical events, pay close attention to when they happened and where they took place. ” (Wineburg, 1991)

Print and complete this chart (Page 1) while reading. Document Sourcing (Who & When) Letter from Robinson to the Mayor Letter from Durr to Director of Highlander Folk School Robinson on the Boycott Leaflet Campaign Abernathy Remembers the First Meeting of the Montgomery Improvement Association Handbill from Central Alabama Citizens Council Rally Martin Luther King Jr. Speaks to the Crowd Bayard Rustin’s Diary “Me Too, ” Interview About the Boycott After completing the chart, let’s continue. Main Points

Completing the previous chart required that you use the sourcing heuristic to decipher the author and when the document was written. Next, let’s corroborate and contextualize these documents. Answer the following questions on Page 2 of packet: 1. Do these documents show proof of corroboration? In other words, what details are consistent? What details are not? 2. To put these documents into context, organize them in chronological order. Do you have any prior knowledge of other related or unrelated events that occurred around the same time as the Montgomery Bus Boycott? How might this knowledge help you place these documents/events in historical context?

Now we have used sourcing, corroboration, and contextualization to assess these documents! Let’s conclude with some final questions. After posting on the blog and reading former responses, it’s time to continue!

Without knowing it, the act of answering the questions on the blog has just required you to practice metacognition! Metacognition is essentially thinking about your own thinking processes. Let’s explore metacognition and its importance to historical thinking…

What is Metacognition? • Metacognition is the knowledge people have about their own cognitive processes. In layman’s terms, metacognition is “thinking about thinking. ” • This aspect of thinking is usually late developing. Therefore, high school students need help and scaffolding to think about their learning metacognitively.

Why is Metacognition Important? • Metacognition is the essential component of effective learning as it enables students to coordinate… Reflection Thinking strategies … to accomplish learning goals and outcomes.

Metacognition & Historical Thinking Having students reflect metacognitively on historical thinking heuristics and how they were beneficial, will help make using these heuristics routine. “As students learn skills to make them successful in learning historical content, an intrinsic motivation to learn becomes evident, thereby prompting deeper learning. ” (Pellegrino, 2010) What does metacognitive reflection on historical thinking look like?

Metacognitive Reflection on Historical Thinking Metacognitive reflection on historical thinking is essentially asking students to reflect of the process of historical thinking. How did this experience relate to the last time you read this document? What was most difficult about reading this passage? How did you decide what information from the text was most meaningful? How did this document compare your prior knowledge about the topic?

Now that you are familiar with… • what historical thinking is, • some cognitive heuristics that lead to successful historical thinking, • and metacognitive reflection… Let’s explore a case study in which historical thinking via the use of cognitive heuristics and metacognitive reflection was successful… Jada Kohlmeier’s “Experiencing World History through the Eyes of Ordinary Women”

Jada Kohlmeier, a world history teacher, was frustrated with her students’ lack of appreciation for history. She became curious as to “whether developing and using a consistent series of strategies with various primary documents could teach students to think like historians. ” (Kohlmeier, 2004) Sound familiar?

Kohlmeier chose three documents for her lesson: • An interview with a Russian peasant living under Stalin • A memoir of a young girl living during the Cultural Revolution in China • A set of letters written by a woman to her merchant husband during the Renaissance

She then developed a three strategy plan that was designed to guide students through a deeper analysis of each document, accompanied by a “historian’s journal” in which her students would reflect metacognitively on the process. Explore each element by clicking on it. Graphic Organizer Web Socratic Seminar Discussion Historical Essay Historian’s Journal After exploring each strategy and the Historian’s Journal, click to continue.

Graphic Organizer Web Kohlmeier believed that having students complete the web would help them organize their thinking. She explains that “each question is designed to encourage the student to consider not only what the document is saying, but also why and how the document was created. ” (Kohlmeier, 2004) This web was completed for each document.

Socratic Seminar Discussion Kohlmeier conducted a Socratic seminar to allow the students to take historical perspective, an aspect not explored by the webs. The class discussion allowed students to “share their initial impressions with the classmates and generate further questions by probing the documents. ” (Kohlmeier, 2004) Each discussion started with an opening question (e. g. , Was Ji-Li a true revolutionary? ) Kohlmeier says that “these seminars allowed us as a class to explore the texts at a deeper level, adding that crucial layer of (Kohlmeier, 2004) historical empathy to the analysis of the documents. ”

Historical Essay An essay was written for each document.

Historical Essay • Kohlmeier had the students write a historical essay for each document that “required them to create a picture of the time period we studied using both the information from the documents and their prior knowledge. ” • This process allowed students to realize that “historical information is often unavailable, biased, or even inaccurate, thus influencing the historical account. ” (Kohlmeier, 2004)

Historian’s Journal Kohlmeier asked each student to write in an “Historian’s Journal, ” in which they would record their impressions of the documents and the strategies, essentially reflecting metacognitively about the three-step process. She believed this metacognitive reflection was necessary because she was asking her students to think in new and challenging ways. This journal would help them become “aware of their own thinking by having them describe their decision-making processes. ”(Kohlmeier, 2004)

Historian’s Journal after the Web After completing the web, students wrote in their journals about the process of creating the web, answering questions such as: Ø “How did you decide what information to put in your web? ” Ø “What was the most difficult aspect of making the web? ” Ø “What was the most rewarding? ” Ø “How did this experience compare to the last web? ” Do these questions sound familiar? Think about your blog post!

Historian’s Journal after Socratic Seminar After each Socratic Seminar, Kohlmeier and her students conducted a debriefing session allowing students to share their and record their thoughts about… Ø Strengths Ø Weaknesses Ø Suggestions for improvement … for the next seminar.

Historian’s Journal after the Historical Essay Each student’s essay included a metacognitive section in which they described how the strategies influenced their understanding of the document.

Impact of Historian’s Journal Kohlmeier reported that her students “benefited greatly from exploring their own thinking and increased their appreciation for the challenging tasks as historians. ” Having students reflect metacognitively served as one of the most important parts of Kohlmeier’s unit, as it helped to facilitate and instill historical thinking strategies.

You have reached the end of the tutorial! To conclude your participation in this tutorial, complete a final blog post! Here are other pages you might want to visit to find out more about cognitive strategies, metacognition, and historical thinking… Works Cited Teaching Resources

Works Cited Chowen, B. W. (2005). Teaching Historical Thinking: What Happened in a Secondary School World History Classroom. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas as Austin, 2005). Kohlmeier, J. (2004). Experiencing World History Through the Eyes of Ordinary Women. Social Education. 68(7), 470 -476. historicalthinkingmatters. org National History Education Clearinghouse (creator), nhecvideo (poster), (April 5, 2010), What is Historical Thinking. Retrieved from http: //www. youtube. com/user/nhecvideo. Pellegrino, A. (2010). Critical Thinking in History: A Misnomer? National Social Science Journal. 34(1), 113 -122. Wineburg, S. S. (1991). Historical Problem Solving: A Study of the Cognitive Processes Used in the Evaluation of Documentary and Pictorial Evidence. Journal of Educational Psychology. 83(1), 73 -87.

Teaching Resources • www. historicalthinkingmatters. org • www. teachinghistory. org • Seixas, P. & Peck, C. (2004). Teaching Historical Thinking. In A. Sears and I. Wright (Eds. ) Challenges and Prospects for Canadian Social Studies (109 -117). Vancouver: Pacific Education Press. • Wineburg, S. S. , (2001) Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching The Past. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. • Investigating US History