Transcript Navigating World History (2003) pg. 3

Session 1: World History in
General, in these Eras and these
Workshops
Bob Bain and Lauren McArthur Harris
Teaching Globally:
Organization, Power and Movement
in the Ancient World
(Beginnings – circa 300 C.E. )
Presented by
University of Michigan’s
International Institute
School of Education’s History Education Projects
Eisenberg’s Institutes' Global Dimension’ Initiative
June 29-July 1, 2010
Introductions
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Workshop logistics
Participants
Workshop approach
Challenges of teaching and learning World
History and Geography
• Problems/Questions of Beginnings of History
through about 300 C.E.
• Two pictures of a “big picture”
Workshop Goal:
Help Michigan Teachers Meet
the Challenges and Problems of
Teaching and Learning
World History and Geography
So, what are the challenges of
teaching and learning world
history and geography?
Freewrite:
a. What are the challenges you face in
teaching wh/g to your students?
b. What are the challenges you face in
teaching these eras and content to
your students?
Sample of challenges we identified
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Scale: vertical/ horizontal
Teacher: must provide background
Student: memory
Scale: time – students’ concept of time
New content: learning for all;
Presentism: past is foreign country but they were smart too;
or people in past were smarter!
• Curriculum problems: no effective curriculum
• Content knowledge: “whole lot of stuff”
• Assessments: Common? Lack of good assessments
“[W]orld history is the story of
connections within the global human
community. The world historian’s work is
to portray the crossing of boundaries and
the linking of systems in the human past.
The source material ranges in scale from
individual family tales to migration of
peoples to narratives encompassing all
humanity.”
Patrick Manning, Navigating World History (2003) pg. 3
“[W]orld history is the story of
connections within the global human
community. The world historian’s work is
to portray the crossing of boundaries and
the linking of systems in the human past.
The source material ranges in scale from
individual family tales to migration of
peoples to narratives encompassing all
humanity.”
Patrick Manning, Navigating World History (2003) pg. 3
“[W]orld history is the story of
connections within the global human
community. The world historian’s work is
to portray the crossing of boundaries and
the linking of systems in the human past.
The source material ranges in scale from
individual family tales to migration of
peoples to narratives encompassing all
humanity.”
Patrick Manning, Navigating World History (2003) pg. 3
“[W]orld history is the story of
connections within the global human
community. The world historian’s work is
to portray the crossing of boundaries and
the linking of systems in the human past.
The source material ranges in scale from
individual family tales to migration of
peoples to narratives encompassing all
humanity.”
Patrick Manning, Navigating World History (2003) pg. 3
Teaching world history and geography
requires teachers to help students build
connections within the global human
community and among the systems in the
human past while using material that
ranges from the very local to the very
global. Further, it demands that we help
students make connections across
instructional time while engaging their
“pre-instructonal” ideas.
Central Historical and Pedagogical
Problems in “doing” World History
• How to build coherence when working across
such vast temporal and spatial scales?
– Need to move among/between global, interregional, regional, local, and personal “stories”
– Need to move across multiple scope in time
– Need to connect and/or compare across temporal
and spatial scales
• How to help students -- who often live and
think “locally” and “in the present” – to make
such connections?
Missing the key resource
for world history classrooms?
General
National curricula
State standards
Textbooks tables of contents
NEED GOOD COHERENT GLOBAL CURRICULUM!
A conceptually and intellectually coherent
design for a course, both subject
matter and thinking skills
Specific
Lesson plans
Source document collections
Textbook chapters
Conferences & workshops
Teachers’ Challenges
• More familiarity with U.S. history & (maybe)
one or two regions outside the U.S.
• Deciding what to exclude/include
• No “big picture” for world history
• Using multiple disciplines to study the world’s
past
– History and Geography and Economics and
Anthropology
• Seeing & engaging students’ global thinking
Students’ Challenges
• Thinking like historians, geographers and
economists
– Reading disciplinary documents
– Seeing disciplinary significance
– Considering complicated schemes of cause and
effect
WH/G “Habits” of Mind
• Developing the ability to compare within and
among societies, including comparing
societies’ reactions to and interactions with
global processes
• Seeing global patterns over time and space
while also acquiring the ability to connect
local developments to global ones and to
move through levels of generalizations from
the global to the particular.
Source: The College Board. Advanced Placement Program Course Description: World History. (May
2005).
Connecting & Comparing in Time and
Space
• Global
• Interregional
• Regional
• Comparative
– Cross-cultural
– Cross-temporal
– Cross-spatial
How?
• Frame historical problem (nested questions) at
global and regional scales
• Hook learners in the problems/ conjecture
• Investigate the global “case”
• Investigate inter-regional and/or regional
and/or local and/or personal cases
• Continually connect and/or compare the
global and regional “cases”
What’s the story?
• Free write: Big issues, events happened
– WHG Era 1 – The Beginnings of Human Society:
Beginnings to 4000 B.C.E./B.C.
– WHG Era 2 – Early Civilizations and Cultures and
the Emergence of Pastoral Peoples, 4000 to 1000
B.C.E./B.C.
– WHG Era 3 – Classical Traditions, World Religions,
and Major Empires, 1000 B.C.E./B.C. to 300
C.E./A.D.
“Big” Problems/Questions
• What were the changes in human organizations from the
earliest hunter gathers to historic empires? Why did humans
create new relationships and what were the impacts?
• What were the transformations of power within and among
humans and human societies? What were the impacts of
such changes?
• How does the study of movements of people, goods, ideas,
and zones of interactions offer new ways to think of human
history?
• How do we know about things that happened in the past and
how do changes in evidence or in ways to interpret the
evidence affect our understanding of the past and the
present?
One big picture:
Changes in Organization (to 600 CE)
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Stone age communities and economies
Origins of Agriculture and Village life
Development of States
Growth of Civilizations
Construction of “worlds” or zones of
interactions/exchanges
Stone Age communities/ foraging
economies
• Past views: “Noble or ignoble savages”
• Similarities:
– Mobile
– Complex planners
– Cooperation among members (egalitarian?)
– Division of labor (?)
– Tool producers/ users
• Differences?
Agricultural communities
• How did it happen? Where did it happen?
When didn’t it happen? Revolution?
• Impact of sedentary life
– Inventing villages and communal organization
– Changes in Gender relations
– Changes in life ways
• Differences among sedentary/farming
communities
Development of States
• What are states? How do they develop?
– “Rank revolution”
– Multiple tiers of power
– Great Man theory
– Warfare theory
– Hydrolic theory
• Similarities and Differences among states
Civilizations
• What makes a “civilization” a civilization?
– Cities?
– Writing?
– Complex economies and societies?
– Common belief systems?
– Long(er) distance trade?
– Common laws?
– 3-4 types of communities (Cap? Large? Small
towns, Villages?)?
Construction of “worlds” or zones
of interactions
• Connections among large organizations create
“worlds” or “zones of interactions”
– Transcend the local or the regional
– Systems of Exchanges (goods, ideas, beliefs,
technology)
– Afro-Eurasian zone; Meso-American zone; Oceana
zones (essentially three world systems)
Stay tuned for a
Second Big Picture
• Tomorrow morning (Session 6)
• Or see accompanying “Era 1-3: Big Picture”
powerpoint