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Focus:
Consider the question, what common threads
exist between the experiences of people in the early Middle Ages and the
experiences of people today Prerequisites:
This exercise should be undertaken after some preliminary exploration of
the medieval era has already been done. It is a critical exercise and
dependent to some degree on sufficient background knowledge. The
specific background knowledge required is familiarity with social
structures and patterns of historical events, in order that focus can be
brought to consideration of detail, and consideration of implications. Resources:
This lesson is designed to make use the WWW. It requires either: a
laboratory with one computer per student and Internet access, or a
classroom with sufficient computer resources (including Internet access)
as to allow students to work effectively in small groups. Student
Focus:
Students are given a comparative study in the form of web research, to
investigate their choice of area of study related to the Middle Ages
period. By
being given choice of study area, it is envisaged that students would
best develop understanding of the area of interest to them. Students
will be encouraged to draw approach this exercise in a focused way, by
being asked to select their chosen area in, in advance. Student
Task: Working
in pairs so as to develop collective answers and to allow for a broader
spread of research, students undertake web site readings and are to write a short
summary (250 words) on their findings. Further readings are available below.
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History.as.a.Discipline Curriculum.Theory.and.Principles Practical.Approaches
Annotation regarding the nature of History
as a discipline
I am
interested in the application of History within a framework that encourages
students to be aware of the context they / we bring to study. Jenkins
in advocating this position framed the goal this way: To
practice a, “…history that is aware of what it is doing…(rather than) a
history that is not” Jenkins,
K., Re-thinking History, p 6,
Routledge, Wiltshire, 1996 To
facilitate this development of this contextual awareness students undertake an
exploratory and free ranging task involving web exploration from their choice of
area (within an identified but extensive range of choices) and then compare what
they have learned about life in the Middle Ages, to life today. |
Annotation regarding curriculum theory and principles Advocates of situated learning argue that knowledge must be situated in a specific context, relevant to the topic being learnt. This process in theory will then help the learner acquire relevant concepts and in turn these concepts then become knowledge tools. Students however must learn “how” to use these tools, as well as “when” to use them, “why” they should be used, “what” sorts of situations would call for them... etc....basically, the use of knowledge tools needs be accompanied by concurrent judgments on how to best use them. How do you develop these skills? This lesson is designed to help young (year 8) students begin to develop those knowledge tools and to develop some skills in using those tools in context. However it does this in a very oblique way. Students are allowed to explore in an unstructured fashion...but, are asked to structure their results. Sneaky...? There is some context provided, which hopefully will support students to structure their results and provide them with implicit information about the success of their search methodologies, in the form of a guiding task and question. Compare what you have learned about the Middle Ages to something similar you know about today. What are the differences and similarities? Case
studies were conducted by the Australian Commonwealth Government while
investigating ‘quality’ Teaching and Learning. These case studies served to
form the core of development for the National Competency Framework. This
framework included some interesting indicators, which form a central aspect of
this curriculum theory behind this lesson. This lesson provides an opportunity
to facilitate the approach to inquiry of, “...utilise(s)...approaches to
learning, which explore the breadth of modes of inquiry”. For
me, this is an experimental lesson which uses the WWW instead of just my own
site and is less structured than most I write. It is created so deliberately. I
wish to use it as an instrument to begin developing skills...I feel there are
advantages from the lack of structure, including that students will be
encouraged to experiment, assisting students who operate on intuitive thinking
to develop experience in the value of analytic thinking (Brunner, 1966 cited in
McInerney p 92, 1998) and that it will give the students a focus for seeing
reasons for extending their categorising ability to a conceptualisation ability
(Brunner, 1974, cited in McInerney p 94). National
Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning, National Competency Framework for Beginning Teaching, Australian
Teaching Council, element 1-2, p30, Commonwealth of Australia. McInerney,
D and McInerney V, Educational Psychology,
Prentice Hall, 1998 |
Annotation regarding practical approaches to teaching history The
focus of this lesson is on developing an understanding of the links between the
past and the present. Many people have commented on the strength of the
phenomenon of repetition in history, and indeed even without specific repetition
there is much to be gained from review and reflection on the implications of
past experience on our own. Advocates
of the position that we can see today by remembering of the past include Hegel
who in 1830 stated that “...great events and personalities in world history
re-appear in one fashion or another” (1) and later, Marx who in 1852 added to
this by stating that Hegel had forgotten to add, ”...the first time as
tragedy, the second as farce”(2)...but most of all, I like how Parenthesis
described it, saying “History
just burps, and we taste again the raw onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago”
(3). (1)
Cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, p 330:7, Oxford University
Press, 1996, attributed to Hegel, Lectures
on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, translated by H.B.Nisbett,
1975. (2)
Cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, p 452:7, Oxford University
Press, 1996, attributed to Marx, The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852. (3)
Cited in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, p 53:10, Oxford University
Press, 1996, attributed to Parenthesis, A
History of the world in 10 ½ Chapters, 1989. It is
a useful insight to gain in life to see the connections between the present and
the past, nebulous and fleeting as they may be, for they help to provide a
foundation for understanding the world today in some sort of context. This can
be done by gaining broad overviews, or from engagement with detailed
information, especially if some context can be applied to that detail. The devil
is in the detail...or if not, at least some very interesting historical
information is. This
lesson offers students the opportunity to explore in some detail, an area of
interest to them, and then report their findings. In having this focus it
attempts to facilitate the development of students personal involvement, so that
the information students gain is not lost in teacher prescribed social
definitions, nor subsumed in physical and historical data. Cremo and Thompson
appraise the benefits of personal involvement in research and advocate avoidance
of prescriptions for information search, and offer this comment: "…'credible'
knowledge is situated at an intersection between physical locales... and social
distinctions…" Cremo,
M., and Thompson, R., Forbidden Archaeology: The Hidden history of the Human
Race, p9, Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing, Los Angeles 1996 This
lesson takes this principle and attempts to apply it by providing students with
a task that liberates them from instructions other than to explore and then
write about their choice of area. |
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