The Introduction and Development of Historical Argumentation in an Eighth Grade U.S. History Classroom

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine how students used the elements of a historical argument to interpret how equality and opportunity affected marginalized groups in a given historical era. To do this, 150 eighth grade students wrote thirteen historical arguments, and submitted a written portfolio of their work at the end of the school year. Since these students had not written a historical argument before, they had a scaffolding system in place to guide them with the increasingly complex tasks they faced when writing their historical argument. Students were given a historical argument to write once every two weeks, with a one-week deadline to complete the assignment. Students were expected to use a historical argumentation rubric that was created for the purpose of this study. The rubric is largely based upon the research of Monte-Sano (2010). There were typically seven to eight students in each discussion group, with each discussion group in the same section of the social studies class. The analysis of each discussion group fell into two discrete groups: a met expectations group, which met the basic standards of the writing assignments according to the historical argumentation rubric, and the exceeded expectations groups, which typically used the rubric to write more complex historical arguments. One student was selected at random as a representative of each group to examine how they approached the writing process. The work from each representative student’s discussion group was also analyzed to understand how well students interpreted the elements of a historical argument, their understanding of equality and opportunity, and how they used feedback to improve their historical arguments. The findings revealed that students could use the elements of a historical argument to discuss equality and opportunity, but with varying degrees of success. Students in the met expectations groups struggled with the more advanced tasks in the scaffolding process, while the students in the exceeded expectations groups were able to perform most of these tasks by the end of the school year. Students in both groups struggled with contextualizing evidence in a historical argument, which was the most difficult task in the scaffolding process. Students in both groups could discuss how well they understood the elements of a historical argument, equality and opportunity, and how they used feedback to improve their historical arguments, but with varying degrees of success. The findings indicate that students in both groups struggled to offer the level of reflection needed in their written portfolio. The students in the met expectations groups typically did not offer the level of reflection that the students in the exceeded expectations groups provided.