Harold Marcuse, Reading notes on:

Mario Carretero, James Voss (eds.),
Cognitive and Instructional Processes in History and the Social Sciences
(Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1994)
UCSB: D16.2 .C64 1994

(H. Marcuse's homepage)

page created Feb. 2, 2005, last updated

Table of Contents (back to top)

1. Young people's understanding of politics and economics / A. Furnham
2. Children's understanding of the concept of the state / A.E. Bert
3. Stages in the child's construction of social knowledge / J. Delval
4. Dimensions of adolescents' reasoning about political and historical issues : ontological switches, developmental processes, and situated learning / J. Torney-Purta
   Discussion of Chapters 2-5 : cognitive development and representation processes in the understanding of social and historical concepts / J. Linaza
5. Learning to reason in history : mindlessness to mindfulness / G. Leinhardt...[et.al] --
6. Understanding history for teaching : a study of the historical understanding of prospective teachers / G.W. McDiarmid
7. Constructing the learning task in history instruction / O. Halldén -- Controversial issues in history instruction / C.L. Hahn
   Discussion of Chapters 6-9 : what do people consume history for? (If they do).
8. Learning history as a process of knowledge consumption and construction of meaning / A. Rosa
9. Outcomes of history instruction : paste-up accounts / I.L. Beck and M.G. McKeown
10. How students use texts to learn and reason about historical uncertainty / C.A. Perfetti...[et.al]
11. Contextualized thinking in history / S.S. Wineburg and J. Fournier
    Discussion of Chapters 10-12 : promoting narrative literacy and historical literacy / M.J. Rodrigo
12. Struggling with the past : some dynamics of historical representation / J. Wertsch --
13. (Re-)Constructing history and moral judgment : on relationships between interpretations of the past and perceptions of the present / B. von Borries --
14. Historical knowledge : cognitive and instructional implications / M. Carretero...[et.al] --
15. Historical reasoning as theory-evidence coordination / D. Kuhn, M. Weinstock, and R. Falton
16. The collapse of the Soviet Union : a case study in causal reasoning / J.F. Voss...[et.al]
    Discussion of Chapters 13-17 : the cognitive construction of history / A. Riveère.

Notes (back to top)

• 21 [Furnham]. Long quotation after Furnham & Stacey 1991, 192f; relates to Habermas:
  " ... a number of characteristics common to all stage-wise theories: (a) A stage is a structured whole in a state of equilibrium; (b) Each stage derieves from the previous stage, incorporates but transforms the previous one and prepares for the next; (c) Stages follow in an invariant sequence; (d) Stages are universal to all human[s] at all times in all the countries. (e) Each stage has a stage from coming-into-being, to being.
  All stage-wise theories appear to have a number of implicit assumptions; that the sequence of development is fixed that there is an ideal end-of-state towards which the child and adolescent inevitable progresses and that some behaviors are sufficiently different from previous abilities that we can identify a child or adolescent as being in or out of a stage."
  34 [Furnham, after Connell 1971, table 2.1=australian researcher, 119 interviews]: after age 9 children begin to recognize political alternatives and notice opposing positions. Then they take positions and develop lasting preferences, which are at first specific to issue and not linked. Later they become coherent sets, perhaps ideology. Still later child may recognize self as a potential or actual political actor with choices.
  39f [Furnham]: Kourilsky 1977's research on children learning economics showed that children can learn "concepts that developmentally they are considered to be too young to learn.
• 49u [Berti]: history textbooks follow a chronological, not hierarchical organization, so there isn't a foundation of concepts.
  50m: Jurd 1978b's research shows that anachronism and ethnocentrism give rise to misunderstandings of terms like family, work, church, commerce, democracy, govt, state, empire, priest.
  65-75: copy for 500, on misconceptions(unif. of Germany, Kuwait/Iraq, Yugoslavia)
• 86 [Delval]: Inhelder & Piaget 1955's concept of "formal thought:" requires considering possibilities beyond the current moment.
  88 stages.
  1. reality is immediate and perceptible. No understanding of systems, only personal relationships. Resources are abundant, no concept of scarcity. Desire is only prerequisite for achieving goals. Society is a rational order made to satisfy human needs.
  2. [89] starting 10-11 years old. Social is not political. Change is a process that takes time (later age: also qualitative change as well as quantitative).
  3. From age 14 on: importance of context is understood, as are systemic constraints. Anticipation of risks

  96f: construction of knowledge by subjects (children), as opposed to transmission of fully understood concepts from adults. In constructivist model, as norms and values change new connections/explanations emerge.

• 110 [Torney-Puerta]: Concrete presentation of information is not enough for early adolescents to begin to see historical events as "processes without single causes, embedded in contexts, and carrying lessons for the present." Need also: interaction with peers during organization and processing of information.
  113f: early learning of facts (Lincoln freed slaves) may remain fixed at lower levels of understanding longer.
• 144 [Leinhardt et al] interview with Mallon, who named case constructions as a series of dialogs: with the sources, among all relevant documentation. Then interpretation, i.e. relating things causally and imputing intention. Third level is dialog with other scholars/intellectual community over larger meaning of interpretations.
  145: 4 foci of historical research: events and people, structures and institutions, themes and trends, and metastructures of historiography [Leinhardt 1993].
• 165 [McDiarmid]: in interview teacher of historiography seminar Pter Vinten-Johansen said: "History is a series of interpretations and viewpoints that are based in evidence but various readings fo the very same evidence--issues of selectivity, the background of the historian--would eventuate in different outcomes. .... [The students] need to see that history is not simply a series of chronological recapitulations. That it involves a process of understanding not just what happened, but how and why it happened as it did."
  166: McD identified 8 goals V-J seemed to try to achieve:
  a. accurate chronology as essential first step in understanding
  b. record of the past lends itself to multiple interpretations
  c. a given event can only be understood in context in which it occurred
  d. historian must link event to context in order to produce an interpretation of the event
  e. writing history requires placing oneself in someone else's shoes and seeing thru their eyes
  f. historians impose ordierliness that belies confusion and uncertainty of reality
  g. interpretations should be judge according to how well thesis is supported
  h. history is written for the present, and will thus need to be periodically reinterpreted.
  172: Vinten-Johansen: "history is a series of interpretations and viewpoints that are based in evidence, but verious reading os the very same evidence--issues of selectivity, the background of the istorian--would eventuate in different outcomes."
• 201-219: Carole Hahn (Emory), work with 4 master teachers, "Controversial Issues in History Instruction." Copy for 500.
• 225 [discussion by Rosa]: What should be taught in history courses: The ready-made products of experts, or the skills needed to become an expert? Should students learn reasoning, and/or move toward understanding?
• 257[Perfetti et al]: "Real learning in history entails going beyond imple stories to interpret, construct explanations, and generally to negotiate uncertainty surrounding the events."
  260: "Historical literacy involves not only the learning of historical events, but also the use of interpretive reasoning. Reasoning about historical topics, like reasoning in other domains, requires a use of evidence, argument, and interpretive strategies.

References (back to top)

p. 75: M.G. McKeown and I.L. Beck, "The assessment and characterization of young learners' knowledge of a topic in history." AERJ 27(1990), 688-726.

p. 101: B. Inhelder and J. Piaget, De la logique de l'enfant a la logique de l'adolescent (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955): The growth of logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence (London: Routledge, 1972).

p. 158: G. Leinhardt, "History: A Time to be Mindful," in: Leinhardt, I.L.Beck, C. Stainton (eds.), Teaching and Learning in History (Hillsdale,NJ: Erlbaum, 1994), 209-255.

p. 182: T. Holt, Thinking Historically (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1990).

p. 217: L. Cuban, "History of Teaching in Social Studies," in: J. Shaver (ed.), Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning (NY: Macmillan, 1991), 197-209.

p. 218: K.P.Scott, "Achieving Social Studies Affective Aims: Values, Empathy, and Moral EDevelopment," in: J. Shaver (ed.), Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning (NY: Macmillan, 1991), 357-369. [UCSB doesn't have, 2/2/05]

p. 232: D. Middleton and D. Edwards (eds.), Collective Remembering (London: Sage, 1990).
Conversational remembering : a social psychological approach / David Middleton and Derek Edwards -- Artefacts, memory and a sense of the past / Alan Radley -- Collective memory, ideology and the British royal family / Michael Billig -- The reconstruction of Abraham Lincoln / Barry Schwartz -- Ronald Reagan misremembered / Michael Schudson -- The social construction of remembering and forgetting / John Shotter -- Organizational forgetting : an activity-theoretical perspective / Yrjo¨ Engestro¨m ... [et al.] -- Sharing knowledge, celebrating identity : community memory in a service culture / Julian E. Orr -- Folk explanation in language survival / Carol A. Padden -- Social memory in Soviet thought / David Bakhurst. [UCSB: HM251 .C54 1990]