Historiography EDCI 658 History of Education Sept 4

Historiography EDCI 658 History of Education Sept. 4, 2006

The Uses of History Sense of our own identity n Better understand the present n – “present-mindedness” n n n Corrective for misleading analogies and “lessons” of the past Tendencies of humankind, of social institutions, and other aspects of human condition Develop tolerance and open-mindedness The basic background for many other disciplines Entertainment Critical thinking skills

Continuity and Change: The Stages of Historical Consciousness n History as Fact n History as Casual Sequence n History as Complexity n History as Interpretation – Moral certain and ambiguity – Absolute truth and relativism

Context and Moral Judgment of History Disagreement among professional historians on passing moral judgment on past events and n individuals using current standards – Ranke – Novick (1988): That Nobel Dream, Historicism Originated in an effort to criticize naturalism, historicism says that knowledge and understanding are inevitably interpretive, particular, perspectival, and contextual, which is consistent with the underlying philosophy and theory of qualitative inquiry (Schwandt, p. 117) n

Objectivity of History n The founding of American Historical profession in the 1880 s-First World War – Establishment of objectivity as the central norm of the profession n World War I-World War II – Historical relativism n World War II-The End of Cold War – Chastened objectivist synthesis, trivializing the relativist critique by partially incorporating it n Mid-1960 s-present – Confusion, polarization, and uncertainty (Novick, 1988)

Ontology, Epistemology, and Methodology Ontology: is the study of being or existence or to study conceptions of reality n Epistemology: is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature and scope of knowledge n Methodology: a body of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline, a particular procedure or set of procedures, or the analysis of the principles or procedures of inquiry in a particular field Wikipedia n

Positivist and Naturalist Axioms Reality Knower/ the known Possibility of generalization Casual links Values Single, tangible, fragmentable independent, dualism Time and contextfree Real causes, distinguishable causes and effects Inquiry is valuefree Multiple, constructed, holistic Interactive, inseparable Time- and context-bound Mutual simultaneous shaping Inquiry is value-bound

Phenomenology and Hermeneutics Phenomenology: rejects scientific realism and the accompanying view that the empirical sciences have a privileged position in identifying and explaining features of a mindindependent world n Hermeneutics: the notion refers to the nature and means of interpreting a test. Construing the meaning of the whole meant making sense of the parts, and grasping the meaning of the parts depended on having some sense of the whole n

The Writing of History n The Beginning” – Old Testament – Herodotus: The Histories, personal observations, surviving records, interviews of witnesses – Thucydides: The History of Peloponnesian Wars, verifiable, relevant facts only, explain events in a way that can be substantiated by evidence – Roman Empire – Renaissance § Machiavelli: The Prince § Guicciardini: History of Italy

The Writing of History Cont. n Leopold History Von Ranke and the rise of Modern – Establishing history as a respected discipline in the universities – Firmly established the notion that all sound history must be based on primary courses and a rigorous methodology: footnotes and bibliography, scientific – Historical-mindedness

The Writing of History Cont. n n The nineteenth-century history – Political, legal, or diplomatic – Ethnocentric, nationalistic Karl Marx – Progressive Theory – Economics interpretation of history, economic determinism – Example. : Charles A. Beard Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis The twentieth-century history – Social history: average men and women, marginalized groups – Women history – Psychohistory – The Impact of IT, computers, statistical packages

References Furary, C. , & Salevouris, M. (2000). The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide. (2 nd ed. ). Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc. n Lincoln, Y. S. , & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. n n Novick, P. (1988). That Noble Dream: The “objectivity question” and the American historical profession. New York: University of Cambridge Press. n Schwandt, T. A. (2001). Dictionary of qualitative inquiry (2 nd ed. ). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. n Wikipedia: http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Wiki