Building Successful Collaborations to Enhance History Teaching in Secondary Schools
By Kathleen Anderson Steeves

Conclusion: Moving Forward

Reading the abstracts of the TAH projects—or indeed those on the AHA web site—it becomes clear that a great many more projects have sprung up on a local level than most educators have realized exist. By tradition, college and university history departments used to assume that the responsibility for the training of history teachers lay entirely with schools of education, and that accrediting standards precluApril 30, 2007. But this view is disappearing rapidly. An increasing number of history departments are now following the principle that one of their missions should be collaboration with public schools. Ernest Boyer termed this "the scholarship of application." In his essay, "Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate," Boyer pointed out, "New intellectual understandings can arise out of the very act of application—whether in medical diagnosis . . . shaping public policy . . . or working with the public schools. In activities such as these, theory and practice vitally interact, and one renews the other."33

The growing corps of historians who are becoming active in school programs need to broaden their knowledge of the schools. First, they need to understand much better how curricula in the local districts are developed and implemented. Then, if the historian notes that the school curriculum is inaccurate, outdated, or insufficient, he or she may be able to collaborate with teachers when they revise a curriculum, order new texts, or offer to provide a forum or site for discussion on possible future change. By having knowledge about the changes happening in many state education departments, historians can offer to collaborate in planning or revising professional development activities. Although many states have limited monies to provide for consultants, serving on community or state committees can increase the historians' voices in school decisions and therefore strengthen history's place in the schools.

The shared goal of improving student learning in history in secondary schools and higher education dictate logical areas for collaboration. Historians should have the opportunity to observe multidimensional teaching in public schools. It is a special thrill to observe the ways in which good teachers involve all students in history. To see the excitement and energy of middle school students working on the construction of a medieval society or developing a colonial-era village could convince university historians of students' ability to think historically.

While university historians may have a deeper content knowledge than most teachers in secondary schools, they generally have not experienced the variety of methods used by the secondary teacher. Both parties have valuable knowledge to share. We need to overcome the notion that college and university historians have nothing to learn from secondary school teachers. The conversation needs to go both ways. Strong secondary school history teachers work with students who will never attend college, but those students still need to have a solid understanding of history. Collaborations on curriculum are valuable. Seminars on content, new technologies, and new historical research are indeed valuable, but so too is an appreciation by university historians of the setting in which secondary school teachers function. Talking to, listening to, and brainstorming with teachers about the best resources or the best approach to a particular topic, presenting information, or working with students on projects are all of importance to secondary school teachers and students and ultimately to history professors. These connections may be most easily made through university education schools, which already have contacts with secondary schools. Public schools welcome partners who want to be a part of the solution, to work with young people, and to care that these students learn history.

There are so many ways to become involved and to help strengthen history in our schools—by working with secondary teachers and students, by challenging universities to commit to rewarding creative teaching, by funding collaborative research to develop new history materials and methods and measure their value to learners. Schools and students need assistance from those who have the content knowledge to build stronger courses; universities need the collaboration of excellent teachers to engage those college-bound students in the mysteries and delights of learning history.

Each sector of education has its own unique issues to resolve independently, but in these areas of common concern—increasing the value and role of history in the classroom—we can build a much more solid base by working together. Those who write from both camps encourage the relationship; it is up to the two groups to carry it out. The reward will be better-educated students who have an excitement about learning history and a knowledge base to think constructively about themselves and their place in the world. If they choose to do so, they will also have the tools, not just from classes in pedagogy but from a deep content knowledge, to pass it on to others as teachers.


Last Updated: April 30, 2007