The History Learning Project: A Department “Decodes” Its Students

Abstract

It is a story replicated in many history classrooms during the course of a semester. Students have once again done poorly on an assignment or exam. Their essays are the sites of massive, undifferentiated data dumps. They have paraphrased primary sources instead of analyzing them, ignored argumentation, confused past and present, and failed completely to grasp the “otherness” of a different era. A few students, as always, have done extremely well, but many have done poorly. What is wrong with these students? How can a teacher help them understand history?

Bibliographic data

Díaz, Arlene, Joan Middendorf, David Pace, and Leah Shopkow, “The History Learning Project: A Department “Decodes” Its Students,” Journal of American History, Vol. 94, No. 4 (March 2008), pp.1211-1224.

External source

https://hlp.sitehost.iu.edu/articles/diaz_et_al_2008__the_hlp_a_department_decodes_its_students.pdf