The pedagogical practices of a 'Document based lesson'

Reisman, A. (2012). The ‘Document-Based Lesson’: Bringing disciplinary inquiry into high school history classrooms with adolescent struggling readers. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44:2, 233-264

Background

The author argued that the design of the ‘Document-Based Lesson’ provides a viable alternative to traditional history instruction. The ‘Document-Based Lesson’, with its modified documents and emphasis on explicit disciplinary strategy instruction, offer teachers a way to improve students’ literacy while developing their content knowledge.

Aims

The author designed and provided an in-depth description of the pedagogical practices of the ‘Document-Based Lesson’.

Sample

The pedagogical practices of the ‘Document-Based Lesson’ were illustrated using two examples.

Method

Historical documents were modified according to three principles of adaptation: focusing (students only read the portion of the document that shed light on the historical question under investigation), simplification (vocabulary, conventionalized spelling and punctuation), and presentation (preserving the document’s original language and tone). Documents were no longer than 250 words, written in large font and surrounded by comforting white space.

In the ‘Document-Based Lesson’, the teachers demonstrated the four strategies of disciplinary historical reading using an overhead projector and a marker: sourcing (considering the document’s source and purpose), contextualization (placing the document in a temporal and spatial context), corroboration (comparing the accounts of multiple sources against each other), and close-reading (considering an author’s use of language and word choice).

Students read between two and five primary documents and worked individually or in small groups to rewrite the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments from a modern-day perspective. Students also answered questions and filled in graphic organizers about the readings. During the final whole-class discussion, students listened both to their classmates and teacher to reconcile conflicting claims in the documents and attempted to build an account of the past.

Findings

Prior to the introduction of the ‘Document-Based Lesson’, students had found history lessons to be boring and to be mostly characterized by dusty textbooks and rote memorization. The findings revealed a gradual shift in cognitive responsibility over time as students started to practice disciplinary reading, first with the help of the teachers in small groups and ultimately on their own.

Implications

The author believes that the ‘Document-Based Lesson’ helped the students to develop the cognitive tools that allowed them to make meaning through the process of inquiry.

Original article retrieved from EBSCOHost.