Middle School Students' Historical Sense-Making of Multiple Sources: A Think-Aloud Study

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Civic Literacies: Reading and Writing for Public Engagement

Abstract

This study was about how middle school students read multiple sources about the past and present of their city. Specifically, we examined ways in which these adolescents use written and visual sources intertextually to make historical sense of what has happened in the city and possibly to claim about the city’s future. The primary data source was verbal reports that participants generated while working on a historical multisource reading task. An inductive analysis through visual mapping strategies was performed to describe the patterns of text comprehension, intertextual reasoning, and historical sensemaking that the participants demonstrated.

Authors

• Byeong-Young Cho, Hanyang University

• Hyeju Han, University of Pittsburgh

• Corey Humphrey, University of Pittsburgh

• Emily C. Rainey, University of Pittsburgh