Sam Wineburg Keynotes the Fourth Annual Teaching American History Symposium

Kelly A. Woestman

“An Antidote for an Ailing Profession or a $836,000 Boondoggle: The Future of the TAH Program,” will be the subject of the fourth annual TAH Symposium keynote address by Professor Sam Wineburg. Professor Wineburg is the executive producer of the U.S. Department of Education’s National History Education Clearinghouse and is professor of education and, by courtesy, a professor of history, at Stanford University. A cognitive psychologist, Wineburg will share his direct involvement in TAH grants and closely examine whether the implementation of this federal program is having any long-term impact on how history is being taught or whether it is simply a professional development opportunity whose potential, along with the massive federal dollars in support of history education, is being wasted. His work engages questions of identify and history in modern society and how today’s “Facebooked youth use the past to construct individual and collective identities.” Wineburg’s wide-ranging twenty-year research career offers insight into the teaching of history at all levels and asserts that professors and teachers are asking the wrong questions of their students and often focus too much on the “one damned thing after another” concept of history. Instead, Wineburg asserts, we should be focusing on history as being “a way of knowing” instead of a collection of required facts and dates required of all students.

Besides examining the impact of TAH grants and the current state of history education research, Wineburg will discuss specific examples of how to implement what his extensive research projects demonstrate as effective teaching and learning in the history classroom. His most recent study, “’Famous Americans’: The Changing Pantheon of American Heroes,” appeared in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of American History and was featured in a wide range of publications from USA Today to The Smithsonian. Wineburg’s book, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, won the 2002 Frederic W. Ness Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities and has been utilized by numerous TAH grants in their work throughout the country.

This year’s symposium will return to its traditional format of two half-day sessions prior to the annual OAH meeting. Registration will begin at noon on Wednesday, March 25, and a TAH-specific exhibit area will also be available beginning at the same time. After the one o’clock introduction and overview, H-TAH coeditors Charles D. Chamberlain and Kurt Leichtle will chair the discussion centering around “Evaluation–What Difference Does it Really Make?” As diverse groups of partners work together to implement TAH grants, panelists who are not primarily outside evaluators will lead the discussion of how TAH grants incorporate the results of their internal and external evaluations to improve their programs. Alex Stein, TAH team leader at the U.S. Department of Education; Larry Cebula, Eastern Washington University and Washington State Digital Archives; Matthew L. Harris, Colorado State University-Pueblo; and Thomas Christian, Thorp (WA) School District, compose this panel that will help identify relevant issues for the audience to discuss with one another.

After a short break, a second panel will feature Daniel J. McInerney, Utah State University; Linda Sargent Wood, Arizona State University; and Donald Schwartz, California State University-Long Beach, focusing their discussions on “Historians and History Educators: The Better Angels of Our Nature?” H-TAH coeditor and H-Net President Kelly A. Woestman chairs this panel that will examine how TAH grants are changing the work of historians and of history departments in the short term. The panelists will also ask the audience what long-term changes they see within this component of TAH grant program partners.

Wednesday evening at six o’clock will feature the start of a Dine Around Seattle event for symposium attendees. Informal groups will be encouraged to dine together at local restaurants (cost NOT included in registration fee). Sign-up sheets with additional details will be available during the symposium.

On Thursday morning, a breakfast featuring small group discussions and the opening of the exhibit area will start the second day of events. Existing and new listmembers should feel free to organize some of these discussions via H-TAH prior to the conference via the online discussion community at <http://www.h-net.org/~tah>.

Thomas Thurston, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University and H-TAH coeditor, will chair the third panel that begins at 9:15 a.m. on Thursday. Panelists discussing the role of teachers and school coordinators in designing and implementing TAH grants include Pam Gothart, Madison County (AL) Schools; Mark Marchildon, Del Norte (CO) High School; and John Robison, Cooperating School Districts (MO). Together they will help the audience engage in discussions centered on how effective TAH grants are in achieving the program’s founding mandate of enhancing teachers’ knowledge of American history. Furthermore, they will share their insight into how this increased expertise translates into improved student learning and, additionally, will address whether teachers are being treated as equal professionals when TAH grants are designed and implemented and the long-term impact of grants on the teaching of American history. Peter Knupfer, H-Net executive director, and Kelly Woestman will lead a question and answer and wrap-up session at 10:45 a.m. before a short break preceding Sam Wineburg’s keynote address.

H-TAH is open to anyone interested in Teaching American History grants and is not restricted to project directors. Further TAH Symposium 2009 details are available by subscribing to or searching online at <http://www.h-net.org/~tah>.

Registration for the TAH Symposium is now open and we invite anyone interested in the future of TAH grants and their impact on our profession to join us. For more information, please visit: <http://www.oah.org/meetings/2009/>.

Kelly A. Woestman is professor of history and history education director at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, and serves as coeditor of H-TAH and H-Net president.