STEM subjects seem to be prioritized when it comes to K-12 education. This despite the importance of skills – e.g., communication and critical thinking – that can be developed in other content areas.
Way back when I began blogging (more than 10 years ago) I had the opportunity to work on some grant projects focused on teaching history. I admit this was a strange focus for an educational psychologist originally trained as a biologist, but reading about the topic generated an interest in what was and I suppose is called the “historians’ craft”. The craft is the process of “research” allowing the historian to generate a credible account of some specific aspect of history by cross-referencing and reasoning from primary sources. Two things struck me: 1) this work offers a great example of critical thinking and 2) learning history from reading what historians write is dull, but the work of historians seems very exciting. I have used this second many insight many times because it generalizes well to so many academic areas and begs the question why can’t we figure out what likely encouraged our study of a given area is not what we allow our students to do. We tell them what we know, but do not allow them to exercise the same process by which we came to this knowledge.
Anyway, these insights have always encouraged me to promote teachers to function as historians. Here is a great example from Peter Pappas. Included in the post are links to examples generated by his students.