CONNECTING THE PAST TO THE PRESENT: STUDENT MEANING …

CONNECTING THE PAST TO THE PRESENT: STUDENT MEANING MAKING IN A MIDDLE SCHOOL WORLD HISTORY CLASSROOM

by Michelle R. Anderson B.A. Education, Western Michigan University, 1995 M.A. Humanities, Central Michigan University, 2003

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of University of Pittsburgh in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Education/Ed. D.

University of Pittsburgh 2011

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

This dissertation was presented by

Michelle R. Anderson It was defended on August 15, 2011 and approved by

Dr. Patricia Crawford, Associate Professor, Department of Instruction and Learning Dr. Meryl Lazar, Assistant Professor, Departmental of Instruction and Learning Dr. Amanda Thein, Assistant Professor, Department of Instruction and Learning

Dissertation Advisor: Dr. John Myers, Associate Professor, Department of Instruction and Learning

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Copyright ? by Michelle R. Anderson 2011

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CONNECTING THE PAST TO THE PRESENT: STUDENT MEANING MAKING IN A MIDDLE SCHOOL WORLD HISTORY CLASSROOM Michelle R. Anderson, EdD University of Pittsburgh, 2011

This descriptive study investigates the ways that students in an Ancient History class make meaning of past events by relating them to their present lives and experiences. The study is grounded in theories of historical thinking, particularly focusing on the concepts of presentism and its usefulness for examining classroom teaching. The following two research questions guided the study: 1) How do students make connections between the past and present? 2) When given the opportunity in writing and discussion, in what ways are students engaging with distant events in the past? The research site was a middle school in a medium-sized city located in the Midwest. Data was collected in the Fall of 2010 over the course of eight weeks during two units of study (Ancient Civilizations Review and Ancient Greece). The following data sources were collected: five audio-recorded classroom discussions and other instruction, twelve interviews with students and student assignments and journal entries. The analysis revealed two categories of the students` thinking about the relevance of past events: (1) conflating the past with the present and the challenge of presentism, and (2) translating and adapting the past to the present. The data showed that some students viewed history from a presentist perspective that did not distinguish sufficiently between time periods. However, many students also applied lessons from the past to their own lives by associating historical ideas and themes to their individual experiences, which was especially evident in the discussions. Students tended to make sense of

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history by assigning meaning to the concepts they were studying in a personal manner and by finding similarities between the past and present.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE ................................................................................................................................X

1.0

INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................1

1.1

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM ...............................................................2

1.2

RESEARCH QUESTIONS ..............................................................................3

1.3

IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY ...................................................................5

1.4

CONCLUSION .................................................................................................6

2.0

LITERATURE REVIEW .........................................................................................8

2.1

OVERVIEW OF HISTORICAL THINKING.................................................8

2.1.1 Knowledge of the past...................................................................................9

2.1.2 Interpretation of the past............................................................................11

2.2

MEANING MAKING IN HISTORY.............................................................12

2.2.1 Private meaning ..........................................................................................13

2.2.2 Private meaning ..........................................................................................16

2.3

ENGAGING LEARNERS IN THE HISTORY CLASSROOM ...................19

2.3.1 Methods for supporting meaning making in the classroom ......................22

2.4

CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................28

2.5

SUMMARY ..................................................................................................... 29

3.0

METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................31

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3.1

QUALITATIVE METHODS .........................................................................31

3.2

THE RESEARCH SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS..................................32

3.3

DATA COLLECTION ...................................................................................35

3.3.1 Class discussions .........................................................................................37

3.3.2 Writing assignments ...................................................................................37

3.3.3 Student interviews.......................................................................................38

3.4

DATA ANALYSIS ..........................................................................................39

3.4.1 The coding process......................................................................................39

3.4.2 Trustworthiness of the data........................................................................42

3.5

SUMMARY ..................................................................................................... 43

4.0

FINDINGS............................................................................................................... 45

4.1

STUDENTS' CONNECTION BETWEEN THE PAST AND PRESENT ....46

4.1.1 Conflating the past with the present and the challenge of presentism......46

4.1.2 Translating and adapting the past to the present ......................................56

4.2

ENGAGING STUDENTS IN THE STUDY OF HISTORY THROUGH

WRITING AND DISCUSSION......................................................................................67

4.2.1 Facilitating student thinking ......................................................................67

4.2.2 Students' learning preferences ...................................................................75

4.3

CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................80

5.0

DISCUSSION ..........................................................................................................84

5.1

STUDENT CONNECTIONS AND MEANING MAKING...........................86

5.1.1 The nature of the relationship students develop with the past..................86

5.1.2 Ms. Stewart's pedagogy and instructional strategies ................................88

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5.2

SUGGESTIONS FOR SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHERS .............................90

5.3

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ..........................................94

5.4

CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................97

APPENDIX A ..........................................................................................................................98

APPENDIX B ........................................................................................................................105

APPENDIX C ........................................................................................................................107

APPENDIX D ........................................................................................................................110

APPENDIX E ........................................................................................................................112

APPENDIX F ........................................................................................................................113

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................115

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