Stronger History Education through Collaboration

Gwen Moore

With new projects and partners, OAH is working harder than ever to improve history education. From the classroom to the living room, from universities to foundations, individual teachers to like-minded associations, OAH is building connections that help enhance teaching, disseminate scholarship, share expertise between faculty, and stimulate a wider interest in history.

The list below summarizes current initiatives. Some, such as the OAH Magazine of History, are long-term efforts; others, such as the 50-State Survey, Teaching Talking History, and the "Innovations in Collaboration" conference, have arisen during the past year.

In addition to these specific initiatives, OAH works closely with the American Historical Association (AHA), the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), and the National Council for History Education (NCHE) in various ongoing ways. For example, over the summer OAH assisted AHA in convening a working group to establish benchmarks that the U.S. Department of Education could use in evaluating the professional development of history teachers who participate in its Teaching American History Grants program. All four of these organizations--AHA, NCSS, NCHE, and the Department of Education--are involved in the "Innovations" conference and are discussing new ways of building collaboration between K-12 and college faculty and other historians.

Innovations in Collaborations Conference is a national conference sponsored by OAH, AHA and NCSS. Scheduled for 26-28 June 2003 in Alexandria, Virginia, the conference aims to foster greater collaboration between precollegiate, and college faculty with the goal of enhancing history teaching and enriching the learning experience of students. (See page 6.)

The Fifty-State Survey is a major research project to study the status of history education in the fifty states and the District of Columbia. The goal of the survey is to gather for the first time in one place, information on certification requirements for history teachers, history standards for the K-12 curriculum, high school graduation requirements for history, and statewide resources for teachers. Once completed, the survey will provide a comprehensive overview of the state of precollegiate history education.

OAH Magazine of History is a quarterly teaching publication begun in 1985. Designed for classroom use, each issue focuses on a theme or topic of recent scholarship in American history, and provides readers with articles, lesson plans, bibliographies and current historiography. A new column, “Bringing History Alive,” draws on the expertise of experienced teachers at both the university and precollegiate levels.

Talking History is a thirty-minute radio program that takes history to a wider public by airing weekly on public radio stations across the country. Host Bryan Le Beau and a team of knowledgeable interviewers discuss topics of interest with nationally known historians and authors in a lively format.

Teaching Talking History brings the radio program to the classroom. As a new column in the Magazine of History, it suggests creative ideas for using “Talking History” as an effective teaching tool.

Teaching the JAH combines pedagogy and scholarship in an online resource. Each segment includes a “teaching package,” which features an article from the print journal, along with supporting documents that demonstrate how that article might be taught in a U. S. History survey course.

Teaching History Resource Center on the OAH website provides timely items of interest and links to and information about publications, resources, and activities for teachers of history.

McKinzie Symposium is a joint venture of the OAH and the Department of History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City now approaching its eighth year. The conference attracts local and regional secondary and middle school social studies teachers for two days of workshops and professional development opportunities. The OAH president and two colleagues are the keynote speaker and workshop presenters.

Focus on Teaching sessions have become an integral component of the OAH annual meeting. For the past sixteen years specially designed workshops and presentations bring historians from the college, high school, and middle school levels together to discuss techniques and methods for improving lectures, historical pedagogy, use of documents in the classroom, and other aspects of teaching. OAH invites teachers from nearby school districts to each annual meeting and offers certificates of professional development to recognize the faculty who attend.

Teaching Units are written by teachers for teachers and are developed in conjunction with UCLA's National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS). Each unit is based on primary documents in United States history and contains lesson plans and reproducible images.

Other Partnerships begun in the past year aim to improve connections between teachers and historians and to foster professional development for history educators:

U.S. Department of Education will bring 360 teachers, curriculum specialists, and historians--recipients of the 180 Teaching American History grants given out in 2001 and 2002--to Memphis next April for a symposium within the 2003 OAH Annual Meeting.

The College Board has included the OAH Magazine of History in its seminar packets for teachers new to the AP History Program, is consulting OAH on the new AP Central website, and invites OAH representatives to speak at its summer AP reading in San Antonio.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is exploring the possibility of establishing professional development travel fellowships with OAH and the two organizations are discussing how OAH might assist with Gilder Lehrman's expanding History High Schools program.

Gwen Moore is education coordinator, OAH.