In Teaching History for the Common Good, Barton and Levstik present
a clear overview of competing ideas among educators, historians,
politicians, and the public about the nature and purpose of
teaching history, and they evaluate these debates in light of
current research on students' historical thinking. In many cases,
disagreements about what should be taught to the nation's children
and how it should be presented reflect fundamental differences that
will not easily be resolved. A central premise of this book,
though, is that systematic theory and research can play an
important role in such debates by providing evidence of how
students think, how their ideas interact with the information they
encounter both in school and out, and how these ideas differ across
contexts. Such evidence is needed as an alternative to the untested
assumptions that plague so many discussions of history education.
The authors review research on students' historical thinking and
set it in the theoretical context of mediated action--an approach
that calls attention to the concrete actions that people undertake,
the human agents responsible for such actions, the cultural tools
that aid and constrain them, their purposes, and their social
contexts. They explain how this theory allows educators to address
the breadth of practices, settings, purposes, and tools that
influence students' developing understanding of the past, as well
as how it provides an alternative to the academic discipline of
history as a way of making decisions about teaching and learning
the subject in schools. Beyond simply describing the factors that
influence students' thinking, Barton and Levstik evaluate their
implications for historical understanding and civic engagement.
They base these evaluations not on the disciplinary study of
history, but on the purpose of social education--preparing students
for participation in a pluralist democracy. Their ultimate concern
is how history can help citizens engage in collaboration toward the
common good. In Teaching History for the Common Good, Barton and
Levstik: *discuss the contribution of theory and research, explain
the theory of mediated action and how it guides their analysis, and
describe research on children's (and adults') knowledge of and
interest in history; *lay out a vision of pluralist, participatory
democracy and its relationship to the humanistic study of history
as a basis for evaluating the perspectives on the past that
influence students' learning; *explore four principal "stances"
toward history (identification, analysis, moral response, and
exhibition), review research on the extent to which children and
adolescents understand and accept each of these, and examine how
the stances might contribute to--or detract from--participation in
a pluralist democracy; *address six of the principal "tools" of
history (narrative structure, stories of individual achievement and
motivation, national narratives, inquiry, empathy as
perspective-taking, and empathy as caring); and *review research
and conventional wisdom on teachers' knowledge and practice, and
argue that for teachers to embrace investigative,
multi-perspectival approaches to history they need more than
knowledge of content and pedagogy, they need a guiding purpose that
can be fulfilled only by these approaches--and preparation for
participatory democracy provides such purpose. Teaching History for
the Common Good is essential reading for history and social studies
professionals, researchers, teacher educators, and students, as
well as for policymakers, parents, and members of the general
public who are interested in history education or in students'
thinking and learning about the subject.
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