The role of language in learning history

Coffin, C. (2006). Learning the language of school history: The role of linguistics in mapping the writing demands of the secondary school curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38(4), pp. 413–429.

Background

History is a subject area where there has not been a strong research focus on student writing although there has been considerable work on ‘reading’ history and historical understanding.

Aims

The author aimed to use linguistic analysis to develop an empirical description of the types of written texts typically required by secondary school history curricula. This description was integrated into teaching and learning activities that were designed to facilitate students’ writing skills and develop historical knowledge.

Sample

The sample consisted of approximately 1,000 history texts written by students aged 11-17 from 17 Australian secondary schools.

Method

Two types of data were collected. One set consisted of writing samples representing history writing required in schools; another set consisted of ethnographic data such as syllabus documents and textbooks. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with educators and academics in related fields to provide insight for interpreting student writing.

An educational linguist and 17 history teachers then used the findings of the linguistic analysis to collectively design units of work and materials which had explicit learning outcomes relating to both writing development and the history curriculum.

The evaluation of these materials comprised a case study approach involving interviews with teachers and students, classroom observations and detailed analyses of selected students’ texts written before and during the implementation of the approach. The overall aim was to establish how teachers’ attitudes and understandings of the role played by language in history and students’ writing had changed after the intervention.

Findings

The analysis found that the types of writing required by the history curriculum could be seen as having three main purposes – ‘recording’, 'explaining' and 'arguing'. As students progressed up higher stages in secondary school history curriculum, the emphasis would shift from recording, to explaining, and then to arguing.

As evidenced in their lexical and grammatical choices, teachers showed a significant growth in their level of explicitness with reference to the language system, which they began to see as integral to learning history. Also, students’ writing improved, demonstrating more purposeful text organization and clearer structure than before the intervention.

Implications

The author asserts that a focus on text and language is not incompatible with teaching historical content. The two dimensions of subject learning and writing development can be productively integrated, and, by raising students’ consciousness of the form and function of the different types of writing, teachers help students produce more purposeful and clearly structured texts.

Original article retrieved from EBSCOHost.