Students Making History: Deep, Permanent, and Transferable Understanding through Conceptual Modeling

This poster presentation focuses on the ways in which conceptual modeling illuminates, supports, and enhances historical thinking. Conceptual modeling helps transform passive students into engaged scholars, by giving them the opportunity to practice the skills of the discipline.

The modeling pedagogy has three major goals, that students: 1. develop a historian’s habits of mind—coherent, inductive reasoning based on evidence that has been vetted for accuracy, bias, and completeness—which leads them to a deeper understanding of history; 2. are able to see the complex interplay of forces in action in history and honor that complexity by viewing events through a broad set of lenses; and, 3. can apply their knowledge and skills to new data and in different disciplinary contexts.

The four phases of the conceptual modeling pedagogy—preparation, development, discussion, and deployment—are designed to give students the opportunity to develop theory and derive meaning from historical evidence. The presentation will show how the conceptual modeling pedagogy enables students to attain concepts and skills central to historical inquiry and understanding through their engagement in a range of scholarly activities that give them greater understanding of both the nature of history and the analytical skills necessary to make meaning out of historical data

Modeling relies on students to develop their own theories through induction and deduction, construction and deconstruction (James, 1922). In searching for the patterns revealed in historical events--in discovering the forces of history--students are engaged in authentic disciplinary work. As the process (model development) and product (theory) are generated by them, they are owned by the students. Students are thus engaged in the creative construction of historical knowledge. Through modeling, students learn to form their own frameworks—i.e. they engage in historical theory making (VanSledright, 2011). By providing the opportunity for them to be authentically engaged in historical inquiry—to induce theory and derive meaning from historical evidence—students learn the habits of mind and disciplinary practices (Timmins, Vernon, Kinealy, 2005; Lévesque, 2008) that give them a set of skills that are permanent, broad, and transferable.

The poster will display:

• A brief overview of the framework and theoretical foundations for conceptual modeling;
• student analyses of and responses to the pedagogy;
• logistical information to help with planning and execution (this will be made available in handouts and online, as well);
• images of the process and of sample models.