teaching

The Nature of Historical Work and the Art of Teaching History: A Look at the Recent Changes to the AP U.S. History Exam and Framework

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I. AP U.S. HISTORY PAST AND PRESENT

Approximately 500,000 students take the AP U.S. History (or APUSH) exam each year.[1] The purpose of the exam is to give high-school students who have displayed a sophisticated level of knowledge in the subject the opportunity to earn college credit. For many years, however, teachers of APUSH complained about the wide-open style of the exam and the course’s framework. According to Trevor Packer, head of the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program, many teachers found it hard to resist the temptation of filling students’ head with every stray fact out of fear that it would be on the test. In response, Packer decided to initiate a review process of the exam and course guidelines with what he described as “an incredibly expensive and exhaustive effort that any business analyst would have deemed insane given the steady, healthy annual growth in AP participation.”[2]

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Teaching Resource: Historiography 101

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I: FRAMEWORKS

A. Introduction 

Historiography–The critical examination of the various philosophies, theories, and methods that influence historical scholarship.

Historical Agency–This concept refers to whom or what a historian believes to be the primary agent of historical change.

Historicism—The aim to understand the worldview of the culture that produced the primary source materials. Embedded in this concept is that idea that the past is a different world that needs to be studied in its own terms.  

Famous Schools of History…

  • Empiricist
  • Idealist
  • Progressive
  • Marxist
  • Consensus
  • Nationalist
  • Annales
  • New Left
  • New Social History
  • Post-Structuralism
  • Post-Modernism

B. Philosophy of History Trends

Popular History–Based on entertainment value; emphasize drama and excitement

Academic History–Critical analysis and investigation

Nationalistic–Seeking to build a sense of national unity and patriotism among citizens by teaching them about a common past

Moral–History as a means to instill values and moral beliefs

Identity–Historical research as a way to understand beliefs, lives, and ourselves by comparing our lives to those from different places.

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Teaching and Research Resource: History of the Great Lakes States

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HistGrtLks2

For an excellent teaching and research resource on the Great Lakes region, check out History of the Great Lakes States website.

As the site’s creators put it, the site “is an online library for the history of the region once called the ‘Northwest Territory,’ that in the early 1800s became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.”

The site houses various primary sources such as memoirs, travel journals, magazine articles, novels, biographies, maps, etc. Its extensive list of historical subtopics includes religion, politics and government, culture, society, and economics.

For more information watch the below video, or visit the site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdniFLbjPlY

Draft Syllabus—Social Forces that Shaped America (Summer 2012)

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I. COURSE DESCRIPTION

Esteemed political scientist Benedict Anderson wrote that a nation is more than a political entity with geographic boundaries; it is an imagined community. As Anderson explains, it is “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”[1] For Anderson, a nation is a state of mind. Following Anderson’s definition, this course looks at the social forces that have shaped the imagined community that is America.

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