Volume 8, Issue 1 2019 Archives

Index

Goh Chor Boon

Volume 8, Issue 1 2019

The “Black Rain” – A Re-assessment on the Dropping of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” on Japan

Author/s:

Goh Chor Boon (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School History In 1965, Masuji Ibuse, a native son of Hiroshima, published his Black Rain (Kuroi Ame).[i] The novel is masterful reconstruction of death from radiation sickness based on the diary of a Hiroshima survivor plus interviews with some 50 hibakusha or victims of the atomic holocaust. Ibuse’s […]

Goh Chor Boon (National Institute of Education, Singapore)

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
History

In 1965, Masuji Ibuse, a native son of Hiroshima, published his Black Rain (Kuroi Ame).[i] The novel is masterful reconstruction of death from radiation sickness based on the diary of a Hiroshima survivor plus interviews with some 50 hibakusha or victims of the atomic holocaust. Ibuse’s sensitivity to the complex web of emotions in a traditional community torn asunder by this historical event has made Black Rain one of the most acclaimed treatments of the Hiroshima story.

This article aims to demonstrate how “assessment” issues go beyond testing of historical understanding, meeting examination requirements, teaching strategies and other pedagogical concerns, to include wider implications of how historical knowledge is reviewed and re-assessed by historians and history educators. It was motivated by a recent discussion I had with two upper secondary history teachers who have been teaching for five to seven years. Both do not teach beyond the dropping of “Little Boy” on Hiroshima and “Fat Man” on Nagasaki to indicate their end of their teaching on the Pacific War in August 1945. When asked why is there no discussion on the aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bombs, one teacher replied that it is not in the syllabus, while another admitted that she has no knowledge of the topic to generate discussion with the pupils.[ii] In short, pupils’ historical knowledge on the end of the Pacific War literally ended with the dropping of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”. They are not able to judge and evaluate America’s decision to drop the bombs and to appreciate the impact of the decision.

If we are passionate about teaching History, and to impart the craft of the historian to our pupils, we have to give pupils a more holistic understanding (or “Total History”) of the events in history and their relevance to our lives today. We need to allow our pupils to appreciate – and to interpret – the wider implications of development of events in the past and present. This implies that to promote historical understanding and meaningful assessment for learning, we need to anchor decisions on ‘what’ and ‘how’ to assess to the clarity of purpose, that is, the ‘why’. Pupils would then be able to appreciate concepts of Change and Continuity, Cause and Consequence (or Causation), Similarity and Difference, and Historical Empathy. It is also important to note that, if the teacher has his/her biased interpretation of a historical event, such as the war in the Pacific, it is likely to be reflected in his/her narration of events. The sources selected could also reinforce the teacher’s biased interpretation. We all know that History is one subject that provides opportunities for the teacher to influence the perceptions of pupils towards the historical past, especially controversial, turning-points events.

One of the stated learning outcomes related to the end of the War is to “empathise with people who have lived through trying times under extreme conditions” (Division, 2012: 29). The “people” referred to were those living in Singapore or broadly human beings whose lives were devastated by war. We know that History is one of the best subjects in the curriculum to develop empathy in the young. Historical empathy involves the ability to look at people, events and issues in the past as the people in the past would have looked at them. This means that our pupils will be expected to comment on history from the point of view of someone who was living at that period of time under discussion. To understand what happened in the past they must learn to set aside their own ideas and background and picture themselves in the past. The pupils need to think about feelings, motives, attitudes, beliefs and opinions of the people living in a specific place and time in history. To do this, they have to use their imagination. History as narratives deals with basic and powerful emotions familiar even to younger children (Egan, 1979; Levstik and Barton, 2008). Understanding history is more than just equipping pupils with knowledge. We need to make them see the significance of events, to develop insights into the social and moral values that led to the unfolding of events within the particular historical circumstances.

Assessing Historical Discussion

Author/s:

Keith C. Barton

Barton, Keith C. (Indiana University) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School pedagogy Discussion can be a valuable element of history classrooms, and assessing participation can provide an important means of improving students’ engagement in this valuable form of communication. Doing so requires that teachers identify the specific skills of historical discussion that they want students to […]

Barton, Keith C. (Indiana University)

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
pedagogy

Discussion can be a valuable element of history classrooms, and assessing participation can provide an important means of improving students’ engagement in this valuable form of communication. Doing so requires that teachers identify the specific skills of historical discussion that they want students to master; teach those skills systematically; and develop practical procedures for collecting information on students’ participation. This article suggests guidelines for teachers to consider in preparing for each of these tasks.

For most history teachers (and others in the humanities), classroom discussion is an inherently appealing practice. After all, professional historians discuss their work with each other—and with the public—all the time, so introducing students to this part of the discipline seems an authentic way to move beyond the traditional tests and essays found in most history classrooms. In addition, it seems self-evident that discussion can increase students’ engagement, sharpen their intellects, develop their verbal skills, and model how to take part in civil discourse with those whose ideas differ from their own. Notably, an important predictor of students’ commitment to democratic values is the extent to which they have experienced an “open” classroom climate in school (reviewed in Knowles & McCafferty-Wright, 2015), and one of the characteristics of such classrooms is that they encourage students to engage in a relatively free exchange of ideas through discussion of social and political issues (which often overlap with history). With all these reasons in its favor, most history teachers these days look for opportunities to regularly engage students in classroom discussion.

Assessing those discussions, however, is another matter. Many teachers hesitate to formally evaluate students’ participation in discussion, for a number of related reasons (Hess, 2002). First, some teachers feel—not without reason—that holding students accountable for the quality of their discussion may inhibit participation. Students may be so afraid of making a mistake, that is, and so they minimize their engagement for fear of losing credit. Conversely, teachers may worry that students will be so focused on getting a good grade that it will render discussion inauthentic: Students may simply follow scoring guidelines without regard to their true thoughts on the topic, or without concern for the inherent benefits of sustained intellectual discourse. And finally, teachers may despair at the possibility of creating an assessment measure that adequately captures the nature of historical discussion. They may feel less qualified to evaluate a discussion than the more familiar format of an essay, for example, or they may feel that forms of discussion are so diverse—even idiosyncratic—that there is no way to create a common rubric that would apply to each discussion and each student.

These are valid concerns, and teachers must grapple with them. Nonetheless, there are good arguments that the value of assessing classroom discussion outweighs such challenges. Perhaps the most important is that we should assess students on those things we consider important. With presentations and written work, we do not assess students on their memory of historical trivia, but on their ability to construct a well-reasoned argument and communicate it clearly; we therefore send a clear signal that reasoning and communication is more important than remembering trivia. If we truly believe that historical discussion is important, then we should signal that through our assessment practices (Hess, 2002). Otherwise, students may come to regard discussion as a distraction from the “true” historical work of writing—a perspective that is already reinforced by the essay-focused nature of external examinations.

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What Does It Mean to Make Inferences?

Author/s:

Edward Tan Yu Fan

Edward Tan Yu Fan (National Institute of Education (Singapore) Keywords History Approaches to teaching history While the objective of classroom history is not to create little historians, it – at the very least – aspires to convey and inculcate a host of transferrable skills to students. The value of these skills should not be understated. The […]

Edward Tan Yu Fan (National Institute of Education (Singapore)

Keywords
History
Approaches to teaching history

While the objective of classroom history is not to create little historians, it – at the very least – aspires to convey and inculcate a host of transferrable skills to students. The value of these skills should not be understated. The historical discipline was a product of a series of intellectual developments during the 18th and 19th century, and it was closely intertwined with that of state-formation and nationalism. This cozy relationship led to the birth of academic history in the German universities as a means of training civil servants by heightening one’s sensibilities towards competing narratives, a multitude of sources, and the need to piece them together into a single coherent narrative with causal links (Shotwell, 1939). The value of source-based skills does not lie in the training of historians, but rather the honing of critical thinkers who can make sense of an increasingly complex world around them.

While there is no single prescribed “historian’s process”, a commonality that runs across all historical work is the act of drawing inferences through the examination of sources. It is a foundational part of the discipline, yet it is also a skill that is often neglected when it comes to teaching it in the classroom; writing frameworks are always brought up but inferences are rarely taught. This is likely a product of the apparent irreducible complexity of the skill, leading many to pass it off as a thought process that cannot be scaffolded and dissected to any meaningful degree.^[i] As a result, the ability to make inferences was relegated to the innate ability of the student, with minimal actual guidance on the thought processes behind making inferences – and a lot of emphasis on how a paragraph presenting that inference should look like. This notion of irreducible complexity permeates the way we teach in the classroom, and the way we assess for this skill. Aside from the problems with the way the process of drawing inferences is being laid out in the classroom, there are also wider problems with the way the skill is currently situated within the historical inquiry process, which in turn influence how “inference questions” are asked.

Assessment for Learning in History: Maximizing Error Analysis to bridge students’ learning gaps in answering Source-Based Case Study Questions

Author/s:

Ong Daphne Rachel

Ong Daphne Rachel (Broadrick Secondary School (Singapore)) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Approaches to teaching history Assessment Introduction Source-Based Case Study (SBCS) is a compulsory part of the formal history assessment in Singapore. It falls under Assessment Objective 3 which requires students to “interpret and evaluate source material” (MOE, 2013). Since this is an important […]

Ong Daphne Rachel (Broadrick Secondary School (Singapore))

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
Approaches to teaching history
Assessment

Introduction
Source-Based Case Study (SBCS) is a compulsory part of the formal history assessment in Singapore. It falls under Assessment Objective 3 which requires students to “interpret and evaluate source material” (MOE, 2013). Since this is an important component in the current assessment framework, history teachers spend a significant amount of time helping students to master the requisite source-work skills. In addition, they would frequently be engaged in the task of setting and marking SBCS assignments. Some of these teachers would strive to give feedback to help students know where they stand and how they can improve. They would normally include comments and some may write copious amount of feedback. While these teachers held good intentions when writing feedback, for example, to help students improve their performance, anecdotal evidence suggests that students were likely to skim over written feedback and instead concentrate mainly on the marks and grades awarded. This action on the part of the students, however, negates the purpose of Formative Assessment (FA) “as one that is specifically meant to provide feedback on performance to improve and accelerate learning” (Sadler, 1998, p. 77).

Another issue hindering student improvement in answering SBCS questions is their over-reliance on the teacher, especially in going through detailed explanations for each question after the marking process, and then for students to merely address the corrections by copying given answers. This situation can be described as “learning is being taught” (Watkins, 2003) where the traditional roles of the teacher as the provider of all knowledge and that of the student as the absorber of passed down knowledge play out in the context mentioned above. While doing corrections may suggest that students have comprehended their mistakes, anecdotal evidence again suggests the ineffectiveness of this approach as the recurrence of the same mistake being made by students appears very high. One reason is because most students – without being consciously aware – are just copying the model answers without ever thinking about the question again. While some students may independently re-look and try to make sense of these answers before tests and examinations, a large number of them can experience “rumination”, a state in which students get stuck on their mistakes and wander around them without learning how to find a solution (Panadero & Alonso-Tapia, 2014). Moreover, the copying of model answers erroneously reinforce the idea that the teacher’s answer is the only logical or correct one while discarding the possibility of other acceptable answers (which the students are not exposed to).

This article aims to share how designing a comprehensive error analysis lesson package, which was implemented at Broadrick Secondary School (BSS), can serve as a means for thinking about a student-centered approach to bridge their learning gaps in answering SBCS questions. Teachers can leverage the opportunity of maximizing error analysis methods into an Assessment for Learning (AfL) design by using marking codes, feedback, questioning, gradual release of responsibility, differentiated instruction and self-reflection to engage students in their learning.

AfL as A Way to Learn
AfL or FA “is an active and intentional learning process that partners the teacher and students to continuously and systematically gather evidence of learning with the express goal of improving student achievement” (Moss & Brookhart, 2009, p. 6).

Error analysis becomes a form of AfL when feedback, questioning, collaboration and differentiated sense-making are established into a model of learning. This type of learning follows a socio-cultural model of learning and can be considered as co-constructivist as learning takes place through interacting with others in meaningful contexts and through problem-solving activities (Watkins, 2003).

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Developing Formative Assessments on Evidence for Pre-University History

Author/s:

Celine Oon

Celine Oon (Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education (Singapore) Bertrand Tan (Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education (Singapore)) Keywords History Assessment Introduction Identifying students’ learning gaps is often a challenge for Pre-University History teachers. Besides generic formative assessment strategies such as teacher questioning, think-pair-share and student reflection, formative assessments carried out at the […]

Celine Oon (Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education (Singapore)
Bertrand Tan (Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education (Singapore))

Keywords
History
Assessment

Introduction
Identifying students’ learning gaps is often a challenge for Pre-University History teachers. Besides generic formative assessment strategies such as teacher questioning, think-pair-share and student reflection, formative assessments carried out at the A-Levels also involve getting students to discuss or write essays in response to past year history examination questions. While these tasks provide teachers with some sense of how students are able to manage question items in the A-Level History examination, how much do these essays or Source-based Case Study (SBCS) assignments tell teachers about students’ understanding of historical concepts and skills?[i] Furthermore, how helpful are these assignments in informing the next steps of instruction?

Generally, many pre-University history teachers recognize the value of formative assessment in supporting teaching and learning. Knowing where students ‘are at’ at significant junctures of the learning process can help teachers decide what to do to close students’ learning gaps (Wiliam, 2011). However, in the absence of formative assessments that can be quickly implemented and targeted to elicit information on students’ knowledge of historical concepts and skills, teachers often end up using summative assessment for formative purposes.

Yet, to meet formative assessment objectives, dealing mainly with A-Level History examination questions may have limited utility. The first issue is that lengthy essays make it difficult for teachers to quickly identify particular skills or concepts that need further attention (Breakstone, 2014). The second issue relates closely to the purpose of the assessment. Specifically, A-Level History examination questions require students to synthesize component skills in the course of answering them. Yet, a student’s response to A-Level History examination questions offers little or limited information on precisely where the student’s strengths and weaknesses lie and do not serve as an effective compass pointing teachers towards appropriate instructional interventions. As put forth by the National Research Council (NRC) in Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment, “…the more purposes a single assessment aims to serve, the more each purpose will be compromised” (National Research Council [NRC], 2001: 2).

Using Weighted Hinge Questions (WHQs) to Assess Students’ Causal Understanding

Author/s:

Bradley Soh Chun Ying

Bradley Soh Chun Ying (National Institute of Education) Sim Guo Chen (National Institute of Education) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Approaches to teaching history Introduction Assessment in Singapore’s history classrooms has long reflected our teachers’ enduring focus on preparing students to meet examination requirements. The most common assessment practices revolve around assessing students’ proficiency in handling […]

Bradley Soh Chun Ying (National Institute of Education)
Sim Guo Chen (National Institute of Education)

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
Approaches to teaching history

Introduction
Assessment in Singapore’s history classrooms has long reflected our teachers’ enduring focus on preparing students to meet examination requirements. The most common assessment practices revolve around assessing students’ proficiency in handling source-based case study questions and in using writing frames to answer essay questions asked in national examinations. Furthermore, many of these assessment tasks are typically assigned at the end of each topic or theme in the syllabus. There are, however, significant drawbacks to this assessment approach. First, this approach frequently offers delayed quantitative and qualitative descriptions of learner performance, thus preventing teachers from tracking their students’ learning during the instructional process and adjusting their pedagogical strategies accordingly to address students’ learning needs. Closing learning gaps only after analyzing students’ responses to these assessment tasks would likely require teachers to allocate a significant amount of time to revisit the topic, which may not always be possible within limited curriculum time. Second, such assessment tasks are oftentimes tedious to mark, and the resultant feedback may not accurately identify areas for improvement, especially with regard to the student’s apparent overlapping weaknesses. For instance, an inadequate Structured Essay Question (SEQ) response may be the result of several entrenched weaknesses, such as a lack of familiarity with the historical context, an inability to see relevance between content knowledge and the question requirements, or a specific linguistic difficulty in expressing relevant ideas. When faced with necessary and urgent feedback on numerous aspects of their responses, many history students (especially lower progress ones) are likely to be overwhelmed and demoralized.

To be sure, these assessment challenges are not unique to Singapore: Wineburg (2018) noted that in America, “assessment was history education’s weakest link”, as it “suffered from a poverty of imagination” (pp. 131-132). Any serious considerations towards improving assessment in Singapore’s history classrooms must begin with certain core beliefs we hold regarding assessment as encapsulated in the Singapore Curriculum Philosophy (SCP). The SCP states that assessment designed with “clarity of purpose” is “integral to the learning process” – that is, teachers must first decide “what” and “how” to assess and then use appropriate assessment tools that gather timely, relevant and specific information to “address learning gaps and improve teaching practices” (Ministry of Education, Singapore, 2017). Applying these guiding principles to the enactment of Singapore’s history syllabus and the associated teaching actions, we believe that assessment practices should offer students the opportunity to receive useful and targeted feedback that would help them build better understandings in history. In addressing potential learning gaps and the expectations of what students should have learnt at the respective age levels, it is imperative for teachers to consider developing students’ thinking in history and to assess their ability to make sense of historical knowledge.

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Sparking Joy in History Classrooms

Author/s:

Jackie

Baildon, Mark (National Institute of Education (Singapore)) Chelva Rajah S N (National Institute of Education (Singapore)) Afandi, Suhaimi (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Keywords History Classroom Design Introduction In 2017, then-Minister of Education, Ng Chee Meng emphasized the need for joy of learning in schools. In his parliamentary speech, he commented, “We believe in nurturing the joy of […]

Baildon, Mark (National Institute of Education (Singapore))
Chelva Rajah S N (National Institute of Education (Singapore))
Afandi, Suhaimi (National Institute of Education, Singapore)

Keywords
History
Classroom Design

Introduction
In 2017, then-Minister of Education, Ng Chee Meng emphasized the need for joy of learning in schools. In his parliamentary speech, he commented, “We believe in nurturing the joy of learning so that every child can discover his interests, grow his passions, and love what he is doing. School should not just be about doing well in exams. It should be an exciting place to acquire knowledge and skills, where learning is fun and with the necessary rigour” (Ng, 2017, para. 11). For him, the joy of learning is not merely about having fun in the classroom; it should be balanced with academic rigour. Since then, this has become the prevailing view of the Ministry of Education (MOE) Singapore, and reinforced by the current Minister, Ong Ye Kung in the 2018 Schools Workplan Seminar:

We know that students derive more joy in learning when they move away from memorisation, rote learning, drilling and taking high-stakes exams. Very few students enjoy that. It is not to say that these are undesirable in learning; quite the contrary, they help form the building blocks for more advanced concepts and learning, and can inculcate discipline and resilience. But there needs to be a balance between rigour and joy, and there is a fairly strong consensus that we have tilted too much to the former. Our students will benefit when some of their time and energy devoted to drilling and preparing for examinations is instead allocated to preparing them for what matters to their future (Ong, 2018, para. 29-31).

HSSE Online

Index

Goh Chor Boon

Authors List

Authors List

The “Black Rain” – A Re-assessment on the Dropping of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” on Japan

Assessing Historical Discussion

What Does It Mean to Make Inferences?

Assessment for Learning in History: Maximizing Error Analysis to bridge students’ learning gaps in answering Source-Based Case Study Questions

Developing Formative Assessments on Evidence for Pre-University History

Using Weighted Hinge Questions (WHQs) to Assess Students’ Causal Understanding

Sparking Joy in History Classrooms

HSSE Online

HSSE Online