Jeffery D. Nokes

Elementary Students’ Roles and Epistemic Stances During Document-Based History Lessons

Abstract This article reports on a study that repositioned elementary students in new roles as active, critical participants in historical inquiry—roles that required a more mature epistemic stance. It reports 5th-grade students’ responses to instructional methods intended to help them understand the nature of historical knowledge, appreciate the work of historians, read and reason with greater historical sophistication, and view themselves in more historian-like roles within a school setting. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted at the start and end of the school year to investigate the impact of weekly document-based lessons embedded within a relatively traditional elementary social studies curriculum. Students showed some modest yet significant differences from the start to the end of the school year in the way they viewed texts and themselves in the process of learning history.

Re)imagining Literacy and Teacher Preparation Through Collaboration

This article reports the outcomes of the first 3 years of an ongoing participatory action research (PAR) project that brought together literacy and content-area teacher educators. The purpose of our collaboration was two-fold: (a) to develop shared understandings or theories related to literacy and the place of literacy instruction in content-area classrooms, and (b) to make changes to our work with preservice teachers in order to prepare them to support adolescents’ content learning and discipline-specific literacy development. The findings reveal that the collaborative activities allowed participants to embrace broad notions of text and literacy that are useful in making sense of disciplinary aims and pedagogy. Furthermore, as teacher educators came to shift their thinking about literacy and disciplinary learning and teaching, their work with preservice teachers changed. Implications for future collaborative activities to promote content-area literacy are discussed.

Seeking renewal, finding community: participatory action research in teacher education

This narrative study describes the experiences of a group of teacher educators as they worked together in a collaborative research activity investigating theories of literacy and the preparation of secondary teachers. The collaboration was organized around the precepts associated with participatory action research (PAR). After four years of collaboration, the narratives of the members of the group revealed (a) changes to the practices and identities of the participants, (b) how the group formed a community, and (c) the ways in which the institution supported the work of the group. Organizing collaborative activities around PAR holds promise to not only produce quality research, but to support the improvement of teacher preparation programs and the development of teacher educators. However, this work requires institutional support that fosters collaborative work without mandating either collaborations or outcomes.

Preparing Novice History Teachers to Meet Students' Literacy Needs.

In spite of calls for increased literacy instruction in secondary content classes, there appears to be little change in practice. One reason for this may be that content area literacy courses inadequately prepared teachers to teach literacy skills specific to their content area. This article describes a program that embeds content area literacy instruction in a methods course taken by preservice history teachers. In this course, teaching candidates explore issues of literacy specific to history classrooms. Candidates’ written reflections, examination responses, and course evaluations reveal the development of knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to include literacy instruction in history classes.

The Observation/Inference Chart: Improving Students' Abilities to Make Inferences While Reading Nontraditional Texts

The Observation/Inference (OI) Chart is a strategy that can help students learn to make observations and inferences when reading nontraditional texts such as artifacts, paintings or movies. Nontraditional texts can be highly engaging and provide authentic thinking experiences for students, but they can also be difficult to comprehend. Teachers can use the OI Chart to help students think deeply about texts and to become more metacognitive. The OI Chart gives teachers a framework for providing visible strategy instruction as they teach about, model, and give opportunities for students to practice observing and using those observations to make inferences. Included are two examples of powerful history lessons that use OI Charts to help students read a painting and a movie.

Historical Reading and Writing in Secondary School Classrooms

Little of the reading and writing that takes place within traditional secondary school history classrooms mirrors the literate processes of historians. However, Nokes argues in this chapter, historical literacies, such as a consideration of sources and the cross checking of information, are vital for twenty-first century readers. Teachers help students develop historical literacies by exposing them to the texts historians use, to historians’ thinking strategies, and by requiring students to read and write to construct and defend interpretations like historians do. In reconceptualized history classrooms, teachers consider students’ epistemic stance and introduce them into a discourse community of student-historians. Although much research remains to be conducted on the impacts of historical literacy instruction on students’ development, current research supports this important trend in secondary history classrooms.