Article Review

Kathryn T. Spoehr, Luther W. Spoehr, “Learning to Think Historically.” Educational Psychologist, Vol. 29, and No. 2 (1994): 71-77.

The academic article, “Learning to Think Historically”, is written by Kathryn T. Spoehr and Luther W. Spoehr. Kathryn T. Spoehr is Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences and Professor of Public Policy at Brown University. Spoehr received her A.B. degree at Brown University in 1969 and did graduate work in cognitive psychology and computer science (artificial intelligence) at Stanford University, where she was awarded an A.M. degree in 1971 and a Ph.D. in 1973, both in Psychology. In addition, Luther W. Spoehr is the Senior Lecturer in Education and History at Brown University. His areas of specialization are History of American Higher Education, School Reform, and Teaching History.
The purpose of the review is to focus on the historical thinking process and how it relates to the modern day classroom. Thinking historically is not remembering dates, names, and places, it is a constructive process used to build knowledge on a subject from all viewpoints. The Spoehrs’ work, and subsequent article, on how the historical thinking process affects the teaching of history is at the forefront of the reform movement in education. The article “Learning to Think Historically” analyzes historical thinking and its relationship with computer based hypermedia in constructing a deeper knowledge on a historical topic.
The article, “Learning to Think Historically”, is divided into the areas of what historical thinking is and how teachers can get students to think historically in the classroom. Kathryn T. Spoehr and Luther W. Spoehr believe the main challenge of a history teacher is developing the student’s ability to think historically. This does not mean, as stated in the article “knowing more facts than anyone else.” The facts of history do not tell the entire story. The authors declare, “that facts do not speak for themselves, and that it is the historian’s job to ask the right questions, to draw appropriate inferences, to make careful judgments when possible (and speculations when necessary), and to arrive at considered conclusions about what it all means.” The article explains the reasoning behind the process from a psychologist’s point of view. The authors emphasize that, “Individual pieces of information in a subject matter, a person’s declarative knowledge base, must be organized to reflect important conceptual relations.” In other words, it is important to know the reasoning behind the process and to answer questions that there may not be a single answer to.
Moreover, the authors believe that “historians and history teachers generally agree that thinking historically involves analysis of change over time, and they generally hope, too, that the student will come to some conclusions about cause and effect.” This requires the student to come to his or her own conclusions. The authors explain, “Having students confront such questions at a personal level requires them to make personal value judgments, to ponder large questions about human nature (just what are people like anyway?) and progress (if things are getting better, or worse, is there anything we can do about it?), and to see themselves very much as products of the history they are talking about.” Spoehr and Spoehr believe that thinking historically “requires more than mastery of facts, it demands a detailed, densely textured analysis of the relations among those facts.” They feel thinking historically is difficult and is even more difficult to teach.
Spoehr and Spoehr maintain “that history is the most difficult subject to teach well in high school. There is convincing evidence that many history teachers themselves have been badly taught and consequently have little idea how to go about teaching the subject to others.” Over the years new advancements have been made in the history teaching field that allows students to gain a deeper understanding of history. Teachers open up the classroom and the textbook to deeper historical explanations. Good teachers use, as argued by the authors, “a variety of knowledge representations—debates, role playing, demonstrations, analogies, and examples—to communicate the subject.” This was only the beginning of good teaching skills.
Hypermedia or computer based instructional methods, has recently been introduced to the high school classroom and supplies students with the skills for historical thinking. The Spoehrs assert, “Hypermedia allows the user to explore a body of knowledge in which any one piece of information has multiple connections to other pieces of information that are related to it in some way.” Hypermedia supplies the user with a variety of text, graphics, and sound that can be used to support instruction. The authors conclude that hypermedia instruction “would be a natural medium for helping students acquire the sophisticated knowledge representations needed for historical thinking and for providing an information base upon which students could practice such thinking skills.” In order for this hypothesis to be proven correct, the authors researched the results of a test conducted by the ACCESS an acronym for American Culture in Context; Enrichment for Secondary Schools.
ACCESS concludes that the overall grades of students using this hypermedia instruction have gone up. The authors note that “the beneficial effects of hypermedia are robust enough that they are evident not only when students write about information they have learned through hypermedia, but also when they discuss ideas they have learned entirely from other sources, such as textbooks and primary source materials.” In the end, this process has not, as stated by Spoehr and Spoehr, “revolutionized thinking historically, but it has made it possible for students to learn to think that way more effectively and efficiently.”
This article brings to light the need for a new way of teaching history. The students need a change of opinion on history. It is no longer, as the authors propose, “the spinach of the liberal arts.” The strength of the article is in the description of what history is and what it is not, along with the new technology available to improve the student’s view of history. History is not about dates, facts, and people. It is about how these events interact and the cause and effect each event has on the other. As the authors explain, “not only can facts in one category be affected by facts in another, but even a single fact can move from category to category, depending on how it is viewed.” Events in history are not exclusive to all other actions taking place. They have economic, political, social, and religious effects that open the event up to a large realm of possibilities.
In the article, the development of the relationship between historical thinking and teaching to think historically is well defined. The authors develop this relationship by defining history and historical thinking as they pertain to the high school classroom. In addition, they combine these definitions with classroom hypermedia activities that, as the authors conclude, “allows the user to explore a body of knowledge in which any one piece of information has multiple connections to other pieces of information that are related to it in some way." The history teacher’s job is to allow the student to examine, interpret, and make inferences about historical events using primary source documents assisted by hypermedia activities and come to conclusions using the sources provided. The authors’ conclusions are exact when proclaiming that “the allure of hypermedia for instruction lies in its ability to engage the user (the student) actively in the construction of knowledge representation, to support multiple instructional uses (tutoring, research, etc.), to support different learning and teaching styles, and to promote the acquisition of multiple representations.”
Historians and history teachers may argue that this article is outdated. Although it was written in 1994, the information in the article holds value over time. Historical thinking as an academic approach does not, and should not change from year to year. On the other hand, technology will change. As technology changes, it will only add more information and resources to a hypermedia field that works to advance student and teacher learning. The article “Learning to Think Historically” is an excellent resource for those wanting to analyze historical thinking and its relationship with computer based hypermedia in constructing a deeper knowledge on a historical topic.