What does it mean to understand history? [On-screen header]

Well I think first we have to stop believing that learning history should be equated with learning one historical narrative while history I think is structure in story form and acquires meaning through a narrative x. The practice of history is more complex and fascinating than just the end result which is the story we get to hear or to read in the books. So I think understanding history means that we understand the very nature and structure of historical knowledge. So I think it involves two related but conceptually distinct forms of knowledge. First, we need to understand what I call the substantive content knowledge which is the content of history that we typically get in books, in movies, and it's also equally structured in story form, that we listen, read, or require. And this is the most common understanding that we have of history. So when we talk to people in general and wen we ask them if they know history, if they understand or like history, what comes to their mind is this view of history as a narrative, as a story, and this is important because it helps you create the structure and content of your understanding of the past. But this is just one element. It's just one side of the coin. The other side is what I call such a procedural knowledge of the past which is the knowledge of how we research and make an interpretation of the past. And this knowledge is bound to disciplinary criteria and use of historical thinking ideas and concepts like evidence, continuity, and change, historical empathy, all of these are important because they shape the way we go about doing history. But we don't necessarily see this knowledge when we read a book. You don't see historical empathy in a history book or you don't see a primary source evidence when you watch a historical movie, but as historians, we know that we need all of these in order to create a narrative of the past.

Why do students struggle with asking good historical questions? [On-screen header]

If we have a problem with our car and we go to the dealer of the garage and there is a problem you want it to be fixed. You don't necessarily want to know all the problems behind it. And often kids will act the same in the history class. They want to know the answer right away without the understanding that having the answer is not necessarily what we want them to do. We want them to come up with their own possible interpretation and answer. And this is more complex. A central problem is that students typically confront history in the form of a narrative which is already crafted. It's a textbook. It's a movie. It's a teacher's presentation. And in all of these, the sources are used but they're embedded. They're often hidden in the discourse. So when you put them in front of a primary source document, they're struggling because they don't see how that source was used in order to create an interpretation of the past. So you need to connect the two all the time. I think one very relevant strategy for kids which does not seem to be very intuitive for historians is often to start from the present as opposed to the past so that you may want to start with contemporary sources, a contemporary newspaper article, editorial, even a movie that they may have watched, and then have them realize that the work that they're doing is analyzing contemporary sources. Whether it's a blog, whether it's a movie, or a newspaper clip, it's the same kind of mental activity that is required when you deal with the past and in fact with the past they're additional challenges because you need to think historically in the context of the time which is different from the present. But as least if you start understanding that we look at the past from the perspective of the present and that these skills can also be useful in how we read contemporary evidence might also help them understand that this is a very relevant skill for themselves as citizens.

How can teachers facilitate these changes? [On-screen header]

So I think as a good teacher we need to stop thinking that a good teacher is someone who is in front of the class doing a performance like in the Dead Poets Society, who is there just captivating his audience with a bunch of students mesmerized and saying "More, I want more and more." And this is fantasy. We know it's not how teaching works, and we know it's not how knowledge is being acquired and developed in the students. So we need to work on the model where the teachers become more a coach and a facilitator as opposed to the expert performer in front of the classroom.