Novices Learning Historical Thinking Through Experts' Annotated Historical Texts

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: International Perspectives on Curriculum and Instruction

Abstract

Historical reasoning is not intuitive, and novices read texts differently than experts. We examined whether reading annotated texts could bridge these differences. The annotations reflect facets of historians' reading, such as corroboration and sourcing. 102 education majors were randomly assigned to three conditions of training texts (two primary sources): annotated, labeled annotations denoting historical thinking facets contained in the annotation, and unannotated (control). Participants responded to an essay question and to multiple-choice questions. A transfer task consisted of the same procedure with all three conditions receiving unannotated texts. Both annotation groups outperformed the control group on the essay, but not the multiple-choice questions. Results suggest that even brief exposure to annotations can foster the take up of historians' reading strategies.

Authors

• Shai Goldfarb Cohen, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Iris Tabak, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev