History and History Education Archives

Index

Lim Ying Xuan

History and History Education

Asking ‘How’ to Infuse Temporality into Upper Secondary Historical Inquiry

Author/s:

Lim Ying Xuan (Chung Cheng High School (Yishun),(Singapore) Keywords History Approaches to teaching history This article proposes the usage of ‘how’ questions to develop historical understandings and an appreciation of the historical process. ‘How’ inquiries elicit a temporal dimension that is necessary for historical understanding, especially bolstering the concept of chronology. This article contends that more […]

Lim Ying Xuan (Chung Cheng High School (Yishun),(Singapore)

Keywords
History
Approaches to teaching history

This article proposes the usage of ‘how’ questions to develop historical understandings and an appreciation of the historical process. ‘How’ inquiries elicit a temporal dimension that is necessary for historical understanding, especially bolstering the concept of chronology. This article contends that more thought should be put into the pairings of question forms with particularities of the past. Classroom inquiry should be further modelled on the approaches used by professional historians, pairing an often neglected ‘how’ dimension to the ‘why’ dimension that predominates current inquiries. Asking ‘how’ resists a ‘flattened’ form of history that inhibits understanding of second-order historical concepts, and prevents students from falling into rabbit holes of factorization and weighing that are acutely ahistorical and unnuanced. This article contends that students are already equipped with some of the necessary tools for teachers to use ‘how’ more often in classrooms. In the quest for greater historical understanding, asking the historical ‘how’ appears as the next practicable step to help students have a better glimpse into the historian’s craft.

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Historical Investigation: The Importance of Process over Product in the Historical Discipline

Author/s:

Oh Ying Jie

Oh Ying Jie (Beatty Secondary School (Singapore) Keywords History Approaches to teaching history Since its inception in 2014, Historical Investigation (HI) has been an integral part of the lower secondary history syllabus. However, some history educators have found the process to be extremely tedious and many would rather opt for direct instruction or to undertake a […]

Oh Ying Jie (Beatty Secondary School (Singapore)

Keywords
History
Approaches to teaching history

Since its inception in 2014, Historical Investigation (HI) has been an integral part of the lower secondary history syllabus. However, some history educators have found the process to be extremely tedious and many would rather opt for direct instruction or to undertake a simplistic version of HI. This article looks at why HI remains essential to the teaching and learning of history as a discipline and why teachers should place emphasis on “the process” rather than simply on “the product” when designing HI.

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Use of Cartoons to Identify Students’ Alternative Conceptions of History in a (Singapore) School

Author/s:

Lloyd T.C. Yeo

Lloyd T.C. Yeo (Academy of Singapore Teachers (Singapore) Teddy Sim Y.H. (National Institute of Education (Singapore) Keywords History Approaches to teaching history This article uncovers the alternative conceptions that students have of the study of Singapore during the Temasek period through students’ cartoons, in the process deriving implications for future teaching through an analysis of the work […]

Lloyd T.C. Yeo (Academy of Singapore Teachers (Singapore)
Teddy Sim Y.H. (National Institute of Education (Singapore)

Keywords
History
Approaches to teaching history

This article uncovers the alternative conceptions that students have of the study of Singapore during the Temasek period through students’ cartoons, in the process deriving implications for future teaching through an analysis of the work performed by students. The discussions are drawn from a workshop session conducted by a History Master Teacher at the Academy of Singapore Teachers and cartoons from a selected batch of Secondary 1 students from a school that chose to participate in the learning of Singapore’s pre-modern (Temasek) history through the cartooning approach. The investigation of alternative conception demonstrates that students’ concepts of old Singapore can be affected—not surprisingly—to some extent by presentism in the categorical aspects of life identified on Temasek (architecture, religion, royalty, ordinary life). While it is pertinent to rectify students’ inaccurate alternative conceptions, teachers’ responses and class instruction should not devolve into an identification exercise of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ interpretations. Surfacing alternative conceptions creates classroom opportunities to induct teachers into certain aspects of the topic more deeply and to link the alternative conceptions of presentism to other concepts of history such as historical evidence, perspectives, as well as change and continuity, which allow students to better appreciate history along with contemporary issues of heritage.

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The Notables: Making Significant Historical Personalities Come Alive

Author/s:

Rindi Baildon

Rindi Baildon (Singapore American School) Keywords History Social Studies Primary School Historical thinking The study of significant people in history can be an engaging, meaningful, and integrated learning experience for upper primary school students. In this article I describe a project, The Notables, which immersed my Grade 4 students in a series of social studies and […]

Rindi Baildon (Singapore American School)

Keywords
History
Social Studies
Primary School
Historical thinking

The study of significant people in history can be an engaging, meaningful, and integrated learning experience for upper primary school students. In this article I describe a project, The Notables, which immersed my Grade 4 students in a series of social studies and language arts activities designed to help them understand the concept of significance, learn about historical people and events, and develop important research and presentation skills.

In the study of history, key historical concepts such as significance, causation, continuity and change, and evidence are “essential to historical enquiry, the generation of hypotheses, and the appropriate selection, deployment and organization of historical details” (Ashby & Edwards, 2010, p. 35). These concepts are “tools for doing history, for thinking historically” (Seixas, 2010, p. 16). This means that helping young students understand the concept of significance can help them learn about the past. It can help them structure their learning to fully appreciate the role and contributions of key figures in history.

The Notables project uses the concept of significance to integrate language arts curriculum objectives (e.g., developing nonfiction reading skills, research skills, and presentation skills) with key primary social studies objectives, such as students being able to organize information, convey information for particular purposes and audiences, and appreciate the importance of key groups and individuals in their communities (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2008). The concept of significance helps students focus their reading and research, organize information, and understand the role key people have played in their history.

The Notables has been adapted and used successfully with primary students ages 8-12 years old in various international schools. The activities described in this article were implemented with 9-10 year old students at the Singapore American School but can be modified to fit in any curriculum that requires students to learn about historical figures.

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Exploring Controversial Issues in the Primary Social Studies Classroom

Author/s:

Wang Yao Chang Melvin

Wang Yao Chang Melvin (Rosyth School (Singapore) Keywords>Primary Social StudiesPrimary SchoolControversial IssuesClassroom IntroductionThe curriculum is an inextricable part of what prolific author and cultural critic Raymond Williams refers to as the “selective tradition” of schooling (Williams, 1977). What this means is that through the very selection of what is taught in school, only certain knowledge and […]

Wang Yao Chang Melvin (Rosyth School (Singapore)

Keywords>
Primary Social Studies
Primary School
Controversial Issues
Classroom

Introduction
The curriculum is an inextricable part of what prolific author and cultural critic Raymond Williams refers to as the “selective tradition” of schooling (Williams, 1977). What this means is that through the very selection of what is taught in school, only certain knowledge and perspectives will become official and legitimised, while others end up minimised or excluded (Luke, 1994; Versfeld, 2005). Against this backdrop, all educators invariably end up selecting for or against the various competing beliefs and interest groups situated within society.

Yet, the rise of new technologies in today’s global landscape has disrupted the status quo, providing many students unfettered access to alternative views across a spectrum of controversies that surround us – climate change, economic inequality, immigration, racism and how best to address them. It is becoming increasingly difficult for individuals, groups and especially schools to assert that they have sole custody and guardianship of the truth (Apple, 2009).

Given this context, there are pertinent questions that all Social Studies educators should consider. What role should schools play in addressing these powerful concerns of today’s youth? What type of controversial issues should teachers introduce in the classroom? Should teachers act as neutral facilitators or share their personal stance on these matters? Last but not least, what and whose knowledge should teachers teach?

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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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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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Historical Sources In The Classroom: Purpose and Use

Author/s:

Keith C. Barton

Barton, Keith C. (Indiana University) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Historical Sources Abstract Historical sources are a common feature of history classrooms, but the purpose of using them is not always clear, and as a result, instructional activities with sources may not be as effective or meaningful as they should be. This lack of […]

Barton, Keith C. (Indiana University)

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
Historical Sources

Abstract
Historical sources are a common feature of history classrooms, but the purpose of using them is not always clear, and as a result, instructional activities with sources may not be as effective or meaningful as they should be. This lack of clarity stems in part from the fact that there are four distinctly different reasons for using sources, and each carries its own implications for classroom practice. These purposes are 1) illustration and motivation; 2) evidence for historical inquiry; 3) visual or textual interpretation; 4) source analysis. By reflecting on how each of these purposes can play a role in the classroom, which kinds of sources are appropriate for each, and where they fit into an overall sequence of instruction, teachers can ensure that their use of sources deepens and extends students’ historical understanding.

All history teachers know they should be using original historical sources—often misleadingly referred to as “primary sources”—but sometimes they are less clear on the purpose of using them. Students encounter original historical sources in textbooks and accompanying exercises, and they may be required to analyze them as part of examinations. But these encounters are not enough to communicate the purpose of including sources in the curriculum, particularly given that they are often difficult to read and understand. In order to have educational value, teachers need to think carefully about why original historical sources are important, and how their purpose affects their use in the classroom.

Perhaps the lack of clarity about sources stems in part from the fact that there is no single reason for including them, and thus no “right” way of have students engage with them. Rather, there are four distinct purposes for using original historical sources, and each carries its own implications for educators. It is important to think through how these purposes differ and what their role might be in the history classroom.

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Studying and Constructing History: A Historian’s Take

Author/s:

Ivy Maria Lim

Ivy Maria Lim (National Institute of Education (Singapore)) Keywords History Constructing History As a historian, I consider myself very privileged to be working alongside history educators and history teachers. This is a privilege that not many academic historians can enjoy since there are very few university departments that offer a combination of courses in academic history […]

Ivy Maria Lim (National Institute of Education (Singapore))

Keywords
History
Constructing History

As a historian, I consider myself very privileged to be working alongside history educators and history teachers. This is a privilege that not many academic historians can enjoy since there are very few university departments that offer a combination of courses in academic history and history pedagogy such as those offered by HSSE. From my colleagues, I not only gained new insights into history education and classroom teaching, but I have also come to appreciate that there is a clear distinction between what I do as a historian – the locating and reading of primary documents and the very tedious process of reading, corroborating, cross-referencing and finally writing – and what history teachers do in the classroom, that is to teach history as a school subject.

As much as one might consider history to be a subject that seems to be the same at different educational levels – after all, isn’t history about dates and events and people long dead? – there exists a gap between the work that historians do and the histories they write (let’s call it academic history) and the history that is taught in the classroom (let’s call it school history). For one thing, school history appears to have a beginning and end, usually in tandem with the first and last pages of the textbook and the first and last lesson of the school year. It suggests a body of finite knowledge about certain countries, or wars, or historical epochs, that if one studies it thoroughly enough, one might be assured of a pass in the assessments that come with the subject.

In contrast, the historian does not live in such a neat and tidy world. To the historian, the body of knowledge is infinite and the research question one has in mind often has an uncanny knack of metamorphosing into many other questions and leads that always seem much more interesting than the work on hand. While school history tends to be presented in a largely linear fashion with students being taught to “read” sources for answers to assessment questions, the work of a historian is not as straightforward. The historian tends to work in circular fashion – reading documents, starting to write and then realizing more information or research is needed and then it’s back to the archives or library he / she goes. This is, perhaps, the very first distinction between studying history in school and writing history.

Developing Historical Habits of Mind through Inquiry

Author/s:

Suhaimi Afandi

Suhaimi Afandi (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Eulalia Han (CHIJ Secondary School (Toa Payoh)) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Inquiry Teaching Historical thinking Introduction Teaching history is not simply about getting students to learn “the right stories” or getting them to absorb transmitted knowledge about the past; it requires teachers to find means to develop students’ […]

Suhaimi Afandi (National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Eulalia Han (CHIJ Secondary School (Toa Payoh))

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
Inquiry Teaching
Historical thinking

Introduction
Teaching history is not simply about getting students to learn “the right stories” or getting them to absorb transmitted knowledge about the past; it requires teachers to find means to develop students’ historical understanding and to help these students make sense of the knowledge imparted through daily classroom instruction. As many of us already recognize, the knowledge we have about the past is never “given” or “just there” for the taking; the manner in which we come to know what we know about the past requires questioning, imagining, contextualising and (re-)constructing. History education researchers across many national contexts would agree that students need to be taught to understand the nature of historical knowledge – how such knowledge is constructed, how evidence is used to develop interpretations or support claims, how evidence/interpretation is adjudged as valid or credible, etc. – if they are to develop proper understandings about history. Acquiring proficiency in some of these processes calls for a mode of thinking (and an instructional approach) that can enable students to become confident and critical thinkers when studying history. This would involve cultivating certain historical habits of mind that work to develop students’ disciplinary ideas/understandings and help them become more adept at historical analysis. An instructional approach that uses historical inquiry as a pedagogical framework is more likely to provide opportunities for students to develop disciplinary ideas, and offers teachers with potential strategies and scaffolds to help deepen students’ understandings in more exciting ways. This article explores some ways teachers can make “the complex past” more accessible to students by helping them manage historical problems in the classroom while engaging them in disciplined inquiry about the past. It focuses on the use of inquiry as a means to develop good historical habits of mind, and demonstrates this idea by considering the ways students’ ideas (about significance, diversity, causation and accounts) can be developed through historical inquiry.

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HSSE Online

Index

Lim Ying Xuan

Authors List

Authors List

Asking ‘How’ to Infuse Temporality into Upper Secondary Historical Inquiry

Historical Investigation: The Importance of Process over Product in the Historical Discipline

Use of Cartoons to Identify Students’ Alternative Conceptions of History in a (Singapore) School

The Notables: Making Significant Historical Personalities Come Alive

Exploring Controversial Issues in the Primary Social Studies Classroom

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

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

Historical Sources In The Classroom: Purpose and Use

Studying and Constructing History: A Historian’s Take

Developing Historical Habits of Mind through Inquiry

HSSE Online

HSSE Online