Barton. Elementary Students' Ideas About Historical Evidence

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I Just Kinda Know: Elementary Students' Ideas aboHistorical EvidenceKeith C. Barton

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aSchool of Education, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, 41099, USA

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To cite this article: Keith C. Barton (1997): I Just Kinda Know: Elementary Students' Ideas about Historical Evidence, Th& Research in Social Education, 25:4, 407-430

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Theoy nd Research in Smiul EducationFall 1997,Volume 25, Number 4, pp. 407430O y theCollegeand University Faculty Assemblyof theNational Council for the Social Studies

"I jus t kinda know": Elementary StudentsrIdeasAbout Historical Evidence

KeithC . BartonNorthern KentuckyUniversity

Abstract'Iltis sftrdy eramitredfourlft and ifth graders' idas about hkbr id e d e n c e Ihmugh ayear-long quulitatiw study of tw o classrooms, If idenfifia igni@vtf sfmgths in sfu-dents' understanding ofthe reliabilityofsmms but also points to drawbacks n their useofmidma?to reach crmclusiotrs. A1fhmgh students mufd examine sources criticnlly, theyrarely djd so sponhnaously, and w h o p i n g hkforical accounts t h y either ignwdexplicit c o n s h t i o n oJfh elinbility 4Jsources w kenfed a21 sources q u d y . Ilaesefind-ings suggest t h t the use of evidence shoufd be a continualand explicitficus ofinstruction,an d that teachersshould h i p s f u d m f s larify tk connectimbetween their concluswns andthe m ' d e n a which supports t h m . This study also suggests thuf students would benefitfrom a more mtitiaus presetrtafion of his u h l nanatioes, and that their interest in mi-densmight be inrreased by focusing on hjsforicaI issues f h t continue to be signj,ficant insociety.

The use of evidence to reach supportableconclusions is one of themost Important objectives of the soda1 s t u d i m r , indeed, of most disci-plines.Throughout this century, educatorshave pointed to the collection,evaluation,and systematicuse of evidence as a critical feature of hs tmc -tion in the field. D e w e y ' s well-known dictum that reflective thought in-volves "active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or sup-posed form of knowledge in lightof the grounds hat support it" (1910, .6) has been echoed by scholars such as Kilpatrick (19251, Wesley (f937),Bode (19401,Huntand Metcalfe (1957),MassialasandCox (I%), andEeyer(1971).More mently,national curriculumstandardsfor social s t u d i e s pointto the role of data collection and analysis in helping students make in-formed decisions (National Council for thek i a l Studies, 1994).History educators frequently demonstrate particular sensitivity tosuch ssues.TheBradley CommissiononHistory inSchools 19881, for ex-ample, noted that history instruction should emphasize critical judgmentin h e use of evidence, and the National Council for History Standards


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r e q u i d that nationaZ standards"reflect the principle of sound historicalreasoning--careful evaluation of evidence" (National History StandardsProject, 1994,p. 3).This concern iswell placed, for it isevidence that sepa-rateshistoricalknowledge from myths, l w d s , and f a q ales;storiesaboutColumbus proving the world is round or Betsy Ross sewing h e first flagare lackingin credibility precisely because there is no evidence to supportthem. and considerable evidence to the contrary).Without evidence, sto-ries about thepast rapidlydeteriorate ntovarious formsof"fancifule l a b -rationJrVansledrightand Brophy 1993).

Research on StudentsFUse of EvidenceDespite its avowed importanceto social studieseducation, the use ofevidence has until recently received PittIe attention by researchers in theUnited States. Theonly indexed entry for the topic in the Handbook of Re-m f c hon Social Stadia TmchingandLaming (Shaver,1991)~ f e r so the use

of evidence by researchers themselves--not by the students they study.The topichas received somewhat moreattention in Britain, where Shemil(1987) dentified four levels of understanding of evidence and methodol-ogy in history. At the lowest level, studentstakeknowledge of the past forgranted and see no problems of evidence or interpretation; they considerhistorical information to be true because the teacher says it is , and theythink primary sou^^ provide direct, textbook-like accounts of the past.At higher levels, studentsconsider historicalknowledge problem tic, real-ize that sources can be biased or incomplete, recognize that h i s t o r i d in-vestigation involves the interpretationof data and he testingof hypoth-eses againstevidence,and see that historical accountsare monstructionswhich makecomw ions that contemporaries might not have perceived oreven understood.Recent research in the United States has bmd h a t students gener-allyfallon the ess reflectiveend of thatcontinuum.Wineburg 1991,1992),forexample, gave severalpassages (fromprimary sources, extbooks, andfiction) describing the same event-the Battle at Lexington Green--to his-torians and high school students, and asked them to explain how theywould rank the reliabilityof each. He found that unlike professionalhisto-rians, students typicallydid not see thepassagesashuman creations:Theydid not construct a willful author behind the text, did not consider theauthors' intentions OF social setting, and were unaware of subtexts. (SeeYeager & Davis, 1994,1995, for similar studies with university students.)StudentsinWineburg's studyeven anked textbooksasmore =liable thanprimary sources,and Gabella (1993)also found that high school studentsregarded history tex@ uncritically and failed to see them as human me-ations.Similarly,whileEppstein(1994a) noted that studentsrecopizd biasin t~xtbooks, he found they nonetheless regard& them as authoritativesourcesof factual information.


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Students' IdeasAbout Hktwical EvidhceStudieswith younger studentshaveyielded similar results.In nter-views with fifth graders, Barton (1993)mcountered a highlyskeptical atti-tude towardhistorical accountsbut found that studentshad no undersmd-ing of the kindsofevidenceupon which such accounts are based. Bmphy,VanSledright, and Bredin (1992)also found that before studying the topic,

fifthgraders had little understandingof what historians do or of the inter-pretive nature of history; after completing a unit on the nature of historyand the work ofhistorians, they had abetter senseof the kindsof evidencehistoriansuse but still understood little of its interpretive nature or how toreconcile conflicting accounts.And levstik (1989)noted that a fifth graderwho had read historical fiction tended to evaluate her textbook's accomtofhistoryin light of fiel'truth"shehad earned from fiction;thusalthoughhistorical fictionbegan toacquaint the studentwith the nterpretivenature~f history, it failed to provide her with an understanding of the kinds ofevidence upon which interpretationsare based.These studies all point to studentsJlack of familiarity with the useand evaluationofhistorical evidence. But while they provide vduable in-sight into students' conceptualizationof historical knowledge, such stud-ies often are limited by a reliance on formal interview techniques. F o r dinterviews aan provide extensive informationon students' thinking, yet amore complete picture requires information onhowstudentsuse evidenceb reach cmclusions in meaningful settings; such settingsmight includeinstruction at school, discussions wikh relatives, independent -ding, orvisits to historic sites. Research isolated from the contexts in which stu-dents are called upon to make use of evid en ce in or out of school-pro-vides only a partid picture of studentshnderstmding of the evidentiaqbasis of history, Current cognitive theory emphasizes the contextualidnature of knowledge-the ways in which social and cultural settings de-terminehowpeople acquire and use infomationand skills(e.g.,Brown etal , 1989;Lave andWenger, 1991;Resnick, 1991;Rogoff, 1990).Amore com-plete portraitof students' approachtoevidence requiresgoingbeyond clhi-cd interviewswith artificial tasks: It requires data fromsttrdmb' use afevidence in theclassroomand n otherculturallysignificantsettings.Mightstudentsdemonstratea less simplistic understanding of evidence if it in-volved situations that occur in their everyday lives?Would they be moreor less critical of historical information that derives from family members?How critical are studentswhen conductinghistorical research at school?

Some recent studies have looked more closelyat the relationship be-tween classmom instruction and studentsknderstanding of evidence(Levstik, 1996;VanSledright and Frankes, 1996;VanSledrigh and Kelly, inpress), and this research has led to a more complete portrait of students"approachtohistory. Inparticular, thesestudieshave identified specificstum-bling blocks children encounter as they attempt to apply what they havelearned in classroomsettings.The findings reported h e r e t h e result of ayear-long investigation combining interviews and extensive classroom


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Keith C Bartonobservation-overhp in mportantwayswith these recent studies.In par-ticular, this work points to significant strengths students brought to theirunderstanding of historical evidence, but it also identifies serious short-comings n their use of evidence to reach conclusims. Both the strengthsand the weaknesses in studenbhderstanding hold important implica-tions for classroom instruction.

Research ProceduxesI conducted this research in the classroomsof Amy Leigh and TmaReynolds, two teachers who emphasized active involvement, open-nddassignments,and students' construction ofmeaning.' Amy's was a com-bined fourth and fifth grade classroom,whiIe Xna's consisted solely offourth graders. Their school was near Cincinnati, in a long-establishedsuburban community consisting primarily of stable residential neighbor-hoods.The students reflectedthe racial and socioeconomicmakeup of the

community:All wereof Eumpean Americandescent (althoughseveral alsomentionedNativeAmericans in theirancestry), andmostcame frommiddleor upper-middle socioeconomic backgrounds;a largepertionhad parentswith collegedegrees and jobs in professionalor managerial fields. Slightlymore than ten percent of the students, on the other hand, lived in thecommunity's small public housing projects, and thus the range of socio-economic backgrounds in the classes was wide. The overall academicachievement of students in the school was high, and the school scoredamong the top ten in the state in each of the first threeyears of the state'snew testingprogram (theyear of this study and the two precedingyears).Both Amy and Tina described their studentsas exhibiting a rangeof aca-demic abilities, but they considered most to be average or above averageacademically.Amy and Tma onsidered themselves interestd in histor~r,nd bothdevoted a great deal of time to the topic. Neither used textbooks. Instead,they conveyedcontent through trade books and their own explanations,combined with studentqented projects, role plays and simulations, andopen-nded writing assignments. Their teaching accorded well with thegeneral principles of effective subject-matter instruction identified byPrawat (1989)andGoadandBrophy(1994). Rather than attemptingtocovera large amount of miscellaneous informationand expecting students toremember isolated bacb, for example,Amy and Tina took time to plan sus-tained instruction n a few topics which they considered important. In ad-dition, Amy and Tm onsistently engaged in interactive scaffoldingofstudents' learning.Rarely did they tell studentsexactly what to do orhowto d o it; rather, they used questions to help students develop and improvetheirown ssignments. BothAmy andTm soencouragedclassand small-group discussion, and they expected students to respond thoughtfully totheir questionsand to each other.


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Students' Idms Abouf Historical E ~ h c eStudentsengaged inavarietyof instructionalactivities re la td tosev-eral historical topics. At the beginning of the year they collected inform-tion on their personal historiesanddeveloped timelines and presentationsabout their lives. They also spent several weeks working in p u p s o in-vestigate changesinaspectsof everyday life (sports,work, household tech-nology, cars, etc.) through the use of books, artifacts, and interviews.Stu-

dents also studied topicssuch as the%em witch trials, relationsbetweenEuropean settlersand NativeAmericans, daily life in the Colonial Era, theAmericanRevolution,and mmigration totheUnitedStates.Studying mostof these topicsincludedtheuse of trade books, primary sources,role playsand simulations, presentations to classmates, and written compositions(oftenfrom the perspective of people aalive at the time).Students enjoyed their study of history, and they often greeted thearrival of the history portionof their day with enthusiasm.Throughout theyear, every student said she or he thought the subject was interesting; in-deed, ome students explained that they thought history was a school sub-ject pmisely because itwas interesting.Many studentsidentified historyastheir favorite subject,and most had a conscious conception of d-iemselvesand others as active learners about history-s people with definite inter-ests in the past. Among theindicatorsof students' interestand enthusiasmwere their diligence in completing classraum projects, their effortsoutsidethe classroom to obtain additional resources, the conversations they initi-a t d with their parents and grandparents on what hey had learned atschool,and the obvious pride they took n presentingexhibits on their per-sonal historiesor other subjects they had researched.Theopenadedand quiry-oriented nature of theseclassroomsp mvidd a uniqueopportunity for the investigationof students'historical un-ders anding. Inorder to investigate ssuden sf thinking I used threeprinci-pal techniques-interviews with students (60th formal semi-structuredinterviews and informal discussions),classroomobservation and partici-pation (including frequent discussions with Amy and T i a regardingwhatstudents knew and were able to do),and analysis of students' written as-signments. The first two of these methods proved particalarly crucial inhelping me gain insight into students' understanding. During the formalinterviews, I showed students a series of pictures fromAmerican historyasked them to put them in order and to talk about the reasons for theirplacement, and hen asked a seriesof questionsabout their understandingof history and aboutwhat they had done in class during he year. BecauseI was also observing in their classmms, I was able to ask very specificquestions in these nterviews,and Iwasable torelatewhatstudentssaid towhat they had heard or read in class.I observe$ intheclassmom on sixty-three occasions--be-ng inAugust and continuing until March (the last time during the year whenformal insbuction was devoted to historybfor a total of approximatelyninety hours; this amounted o approximately eighty percent of students'


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Keith C.Bartonhistory instructionduring the year. A particular advantage of participantobservationwas that it allowed me to observestudentsin a wider rangeofcontexts than interviews alone could have done. Rather than seeingonlytheir responsesto intewiew tasks, I was able to watch andtalkwith stu-dents as they engaged in their everydayclassroom activities. Because stu-dents engaged in so m y roup projects, and becauseAmy and Tm c-tively encouraged olpen+nd&, thoughtful discussion of topics, my pres-ence in the classroom providd me with innumerable opportunities torecord informal and spontaneouscommentsby students?I drew conclusions from these data though a processof amly t tc in-duction.After completing theclassroomobservations,I scanned fieldnotes,interview transcripts,and student compositionsinorder to identifyan. ni-tial set of broad coding categories; these categories were based on he as-pecb of historical thinking dentified by Seixas(1995),on the preliminaryimpressions I developed during fieldwork, and on emerging patterns inthe data. I then subjected thedata to a more systemtic contentanalysis, nwhich I categorizedunitsof data according o theseinitial categories,manyof which were broken down, combined,or a d d 4 to during the course ofcoding. analyzed the coded data using means sometimes referred to ascross-case analpis and constanf cumpartson:I p u p e d thedata from differ-ent studentsresponding to the samequestionsor tasks, identifiedpatternsor ~gularitiesccurring in the data, and then looked for evidenceof thesepatterns (includinga systematic searchfor negativeor discrepantevidence)across different situations, tasks, and interviews.This analysis resulted in a set of descriptive generalizations aboutstudents' thinking, which I then combined into broader analytic domains;I used these patterns to devebp the materials and probing questionsusedin the find setof intewiewswith students,and I askedAmy and Tina (andin some cases, students) for their feedbackonmy observations. (The re-sulting data were coded and analyzed in the same way described above.)In the following section, I discuss the results related to one of these broadanalytic domain~tuden ts 'deas about historical evidenceand its use.

Sources of Historical InformationWhen asked studentsduringtheearlystagesofthe studyhow peoplefind out about the past, neady a l thought the information was handeddown through word of mouth. As Dwayne explained, "Their mom anddad told them before they died, then hey just keep passing it up." Jennyalso explained, "Well, like if Iik adulb lived, and if your grandparentsorsomething were alive, at a certain time, they could tell you." Similarly,Kemy noted, "Maybe it's been passed down through families," and hisinterview partnerCurtisadded,"Throughgenerations."Even when askedabout topics further removed from theirownexperience, tudents thought


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Students' Jdm A h Historical Evidencethe informtion was transmittedorally; h y , or example,said,"Maybean Indian that lives now has it passed on to him from his great-great-grea -grea t-grea t-grea t-grandfathers, who lived back then, and lived tobe ninetyyearsold,and passed down tohim, sonow he could tell usabouth a at'Students also occasionally mentioned that people could learn aboutthe past from books (especiallyafter the school year got underway). Butwhen asked how the people who write h k s now what happened, stu-dentsdesmibed hem as little more than written versions of oral transmis-sion; most thought books about the past were written by people in thepast, who had witnessed events firsthand. Kenny explained that "somebody us t decidd to write it down," and went on to say,

And the history of those books s, people have written them along time ago, and now they've lasted until now, nd they cantell us about back then [...I Or it's about maybe a child livedback here [indicatingan arlier time], andwroteabook way upthere at a latertime], and now t's lasteduntilnow, so it's laskithirty years, fromwhen he was a little &id, and he wrote thebook about his childhood and what it was like back then.

Similarly,Kathy suggested,"Maybe ifpeople a long timeagowrote abooka h theirselvesor something," and Tonyaexplained,"Somepeoplewroteabout it back in h e past, and they passed it up through the generations,like somebody might have written it back here, and passed it to thesepeople." Reflecting thebelief thatbmks aboutthe past had tobe old them-selves,Nichole maintain& that to find out about the past frommcydope-dias, a person would have to find some that are "redly, really old [ . . . I be-cause they would have to saywhat they had back then, nd n newer ones,it doesn't b e tuff hat's old."Students sometimesrecopizd that books abouthistory are writtenIn the presmt, yet they nonetheless thought those were based directly onaccountswhi& had themselvesbeenM e d own through word of mouth.Amber, for example, said, "It couldbe if their familyjust sortof, thestoriesthat kept coming up in the family, like if T had kids and I passed the s to vdown, and maybe they would make a book about it." In the followinginterview excerpt, students demonstrate the same idea:

I n t e r n i m Sopeoplewho write books about things a longtime ago, where do you think they found out howthingswere different?Susan: Well, probably hey lived back then.


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Kei th C. BartonIntm'auer: What about if somebodywanted towrite a bookabout how thingsweredifferent threehundredyears ago? How would they know?Jmn: Theywould probably look it up in the encyclo-pedia.In -ewer: But how about the person who wrote the encyclo-pedia, how do you think they found out?Susan: Probably iftheyhad relatives thatwere a hundredyears old, or eighty yearsold when they died, andthey had a relative, and they find thatout,and fmy relative was a h m d d years old, they wouldprobably tell me.When pressed to thinkof otherwaysto find out aboutthepast, moststudentsmade reasonable suggestions.A few mentioned artifacts.Amber,forexample,said,"Theyget a hat fromback then, and a hat fromnow, andthey compare." Similarly, Angie explained that"theymight find old stuff,from theold days I..] Like if people died or something,you could go to

their house to find olderthings, f theywere sortaold."A few studentsalsomentioned journals or diaries.Jesse, or example, said, "If you could havelike a purnal,"and Nichole said, "Well, they have like diaries and stuff,like when you go on vacation, likeback then, ike you would have aboat,well, you would find out,and you would write that in your journal, likeWewent in the boat today.'" And given that they wem sitting in frontof aseries of historical pictures as I asked them hese questions, several stu-dents observed that you could learn about the past from pictures.

Once tudentshad more experience collecting historical informationin their classroom, theiranswers o interview questions like thesebecamemuch more confidentand varied. Having done their own research usingpeople, photographs,artifacts,documents, and a varietyof ontemporarybooks, students began to list several of these sources n rapid successionwhen asked about sources of historical information. 'Fhe answer to thisquestioneventuallybecameso a p p a m t to studentsthat Idropped it fromthe interviews a1 together.EvaluatingEvidence andReconciling ConflictingAccounts

Whenasked what theywould do if theywere tryingto find outaboutthe past and got differentanswers,most students initiallyhad trouble an-swering. Some simply misunderstood the question. Angie, for example,thought that diffemtanswers might be found because one person waswriting about onecountry, and anotherwas writing about another. Simi-


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Students' Ideas About Historical Evidencelarly,Jemnyhoughth t ne personmightbe talkingaboutAbrahamh-coln, while anotherwas talking aboutGeorgeWashington.Once I gave specific examples of how the issue mightarise, though,most students provided more complicated responses. When asked whatthey would do if they got different information from relatives they inter-viewed for their personal t i m e l i n e ~ g a r d i n g hat their firstwordwas,for instance-they suggested that some people were more reliable assources. John said he would believe his parents rather than his sister "be-cause my sister probably wouldn't remember as much as my mom or dadwould." J e m y lso said, "I'd go by what my parents said, becauseyourparents would know, our aunt or uncle wouldn't know."Mast studentspointed specificallyto the greater reliability of mothers than fakhers. Jer-emy aid, "I'd go with yourmom, becauseyourmomwouId know and notyour dad, because your dad wouldn't keep all the records.Your morn orthe hospital keepsall your records,andyour baby book and all that stuff."Amber agreed, adding,"Your moms are usually around to hear your firstword and dads are probably out working." Jennyalso noted that "I justthink my mom would h ow mo e than my dad would," and Tonya ex-plained, "Mydad iswrong about different thingswith me all the time, andhe gets me and my baby brother mixed up all ~e time."

Severalstudentssuggested lookinga tanother source. Kathy aughedknowingly when asked what she would do if her mother said her firstw o d was mama and her father said it was dnda,and said, "I would pmb-ably get a babybook and look,and if it wasn't in there, henask ike yourgrandma or grandpa."Dwayne also said to look in a baby book; when Iasked him if he thought that would be more reliable, he said, "Yeah, be-cause then fs thm,you remember it because it was on that day, and nowit's gone." One tudentsuggestedmuch the sameresponsebutwith a v a ydifferent example: Kenny and Curtis had initially agreed that conflictingaccountscould onlyby monciled by guessing, butwhenCurtismentionedthe assassinationofJohnF. Kennedy,Kenny pointed to the use of multiplesource:They go around, hey look for clues, Ulqr found people who hadmaybe seen i t"Near the end of the year, students had a chance to apply their ideason evaluatingand reconcilingsource in class: They read twelve differentaccountsof thebattleatLexingtonGreen,and ranked the reliability of each(adapted fromB m e t, 1967).When Amy introduced the activity,shecom-pared it to a controversy that had arisen in a recent basketball game in-volving several of the students (and with which the entire class seemed tobe familiar).Theywere excited about discussingthedifferences ofopinioninvohed, and Amy explained that in this exercise they would be doingmuch the samething:Theyweregoing o look at several diffemnt accountsof thesamewent and decide what they thaught happened.In their initial discussion,students uggestedseveralfactors&at mightinfluence he reliability of the accounts. Even before Amy compared it to


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Keith C.Bartonthe basketball game,Jennyhad askedher, "Areall these colonist people?";when she found out they were not, she said that !heones who we= colo-nisb would probably think thinkthe British started it, and the British wouldprobably think hecolonists did. Johndso said that it would be importantto know whether they were actuarly present at the event. Amy askedwhether it would matter how lung afterwad the accounts were written,and studenis agreed that it would;Darren said if they were writtenmorerecent!y theywould know exactly what happened, but if someone wrotethem a long time afterward, they wouldn't remember as much. John saidthat kmwing whowon hewarmight dso influence what theywrote, sincethey would tend to favor the winners;Jenny dded that if the two sideswere still mad at each otherafter thewar, that would affectwhat heym t eas well.Students had no trouble applying these principles once they beganreading and discussing the individual accounts. The first was that of a"Colonial onlooker" who asserted that the British fired first Somestudenbthought being a colonist would makehim more likely to blame the British;others noted that since he was onlyan "onlooker,"'he probably wasn't oneither side, and that since he was actmily p~sen t , e might be reliable.Thesecond accountcame from a British officer's diary. Like several otherstudents, Nicholepointed out that since it was a diary, he wouldn't knowother people were going. to read itand he wouldbe more likely to tell thetruth*

The third accountwas thatofa c a p t u d British soldier who claimedthat theBritish fired first. Studentsthought hat the fact thathe was "goingagainsthis o m ide" madehim more reliable,but several also p i n t 4 outthat he might just be telling the colonists what hey wanted to hear so hewouldn't be kill&. As NichoZe said, "He's going against the British, so itmight be reliable,but it also might not be, becaus he's just saying hat sothe colonistswon't kill him." The fourth account was a deposition swornto by thirty-four Colonial militiamen, who claimed that the British firedfirst. Angie argued that if thirty-four people all had to come to agreementon the same statement, it wouldn't be very reliable, because each personwouId have had to make compromises for the p u p o reach consensus;her explanationwas so well a p e d that no one suggested an alternativeinterpretation of the reliability of that source.Severalstudents hought the report of the Britishcommander-basedon the reports of the officers who had been present at the battlewouldhave been unreliable: they thought the officersmight have l i d about whofired firstso that they wouldnot get in trouble. Others,however, thoughttheywould be likely to tell the truth because the general.would wentudlyfind out from others what really h a p p e d , and the officers would be ineven bigger trouble if they lied. In one p u p , An@ explained, "I f theytold a lie,and he found out, hemight kill them,becausem y eople aren'tsupposed to lie." (Donnynoted, But they do.")


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Sfudenfs' Idms A h Historical EvidenceStudents agreed h t n account from a London newspaper would

not be very reliable, both because it would be more likely to support theBritish sideand because the informationmight havebeen changed by thetime it was published (twomonths after the battle). Students agreed that aCoIonial newspaper would be just as biased in the other direction. S b -dentsalso thought thatanotheraccount, written fiftyyears laterby a formerminuteman,would be unreliable because he wouldn't be able to remem-ber verywelland because he would want the colonists tolook ik e heroes.Using Evidence toReach ConclusionsIn someways, theLexingtonGreen activity described above was oneof the most successful of the entire year. The exercise was at just the rightlevel of difficulty:The accounts contained enough archaic language thatstudents had to work to decipher the meaning of some passages, for ex-ample,but not sohard they gaveup.Similarly,studentswere able to evalu-ate the reliability of the sources, but these evaluationswere not so imrnedi-ately obvious that they required no discussion. Students also thought theexercise {whichlasted several days)was fascinating:theywew constantlyengaged in the task, and at the end of the first day were shocked at howquickly time had gonebywhen lunch time arrived. Travis pointed out thathe thought itwas interesting becausehe liked 1whg at the differences ofopinion and putting them into categories;Susan thought itwas interestingto read someone's diary.In helping students understand how historians interpret evidence,however, the exercise was less successful. Despite understanding and en-joying the activity, students never saw the connection between what theyweredoing and how people know what happened in history. At the begin-ning of the task, Amy had explained that they would be doing ust whathistorians do--looking at several different accounts and ltrying to figureout which are the most reliable.Froman instructional perspective the pur-pose of the exercise was to give students a better understanding of howhistorians work, yet that was precisely what students failed to understand:They never realized that historical accounts are based on the kindsof evi-dence hey were themselves examining.Sweral indications of this lack of understanding aroseduring the ex-ercise. Jenny noted after reading the first account, far example, that theyshouldwrite on their worksheets that it was ''just his opinion"; sheseemedto think hat some of the accounts would not be an "opinion," but wouldbe the actual description of what happened, Similarly, when Tonya cametoan ntroduction which read, "The Condon Gazf e printed this version ofthe incident on June10,1775," sheconcluded immediately that itwasnotreliable because it wasa "version," Iasked her if that made it different thanthey others, and she said, '"Yeah, ecause it's just made up."

More strikingly, one gmup was discussing an account described asbeing written by "an English author" in 1811.The consensus among the


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studentswas that hemightbe making it all up.When asked how hewouIdhave gotten the informa tion for his description,one student said, "Studyit"; another explained that sinceitwas the shothead round theworld, "hewould haveheardabout it." Onestudent thought the author himself mighthavebeen at thebattle, but theotherswereconvinced that the accountwasjust "made up." None of them understood that his .account would havebeen based on some of the sources they themselves were looking at; theythought he either made up the account or just "heard about it" from otherpeople. At theend of the exerciseseveral students agreedth any accountidentified as having an "author" had to be less =liable, because authorsmake hings up in order to make hem more exciting.Students' lack of understandingof the evidentiary basis of historicalaccounts was clearest the day after they finished working through thesources.Amy asked students who they now thought had fired the first -shot at Lexington Green. A11 the studentshad an opinion, but all agreedthat none of their opinionswerebased on the accounts they had just read:Since they thought none of the sources was completely reliable, they sim-ply explained what they thought "must" have happened-without anyrefenmce to the sources. (Most thought that the coIonists had fired firstsince they had more incentive to start the war.) Amy was surprised thatstudentshad chosen to ignow thesesources; moreover,whenaskedwhetherthey thought that was what historians d e j u s t decide what they think"must" have happened-all a p e d that they did. The idea of basing anaccount on evidence was completely lacking in their explanations.While the Lexington Gwen activity compressed issues of historicalinterpretation intoan easily observable time frame, such issueswere by nomeans acking at other times. Throughout the year, many of studmistas-signments q u i d he use of historical w i d e n c ~ r e a h gersonal a dfamily histories, makingdisplays on changes in everyday life, and design-ing museums of colonial life. In completing these assignments, studentsrarelyattended toissuesof reliability or theevaluation of c d i c ingsources.Despite their valid, common sense ideas, most students never consideredsuch questions, wen when hetask nvolved the collectionand nterpreta-tion of evidence. When completing personal and family histories, for ex-ample, students simply collectedand recorded the necessary information,and nwer attempbed to verify what they found. Similarly,when develop-ing displays on thehistory of everyday life, students had a wide rangeofsource from which to choose,but they failed to consider whether theyshould compare sourcesor seekconfirmation for what they learned. Mostgroups#in fact, foundonebook they liked and based their entire presenta-tion on t; when they did include information from more thanone sou^ e,each was given equal weight, with no attempt to evaluate its reliability.Since these projects did not explicitlyrequire verificationof information orcomparison of sources,students can easily be forgiven for not doing SQ-but it is important to note that in spite of their understanding that sources


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Studenfs' Ideas A h HisfmicalEvidencemight be inaccurate or mightd isagm, they never considered the issue onheir own initiative during dassroorn projects.More striking were the occasions when students neglected evidencealtogether. Just as they had igrlored the primary sources in reaching con-clusions about Lexington Green, students sometimes deveIoped theirprojects without making use of any of the information available.A groupdeveloping a display on the history of household technoIogy,, for example,brought in numerous artifactsand placed them into categories accordingto their age; when Xna asked them how they found out in which categoryeach belonged, they said they "just knew." Another group had used sev-eral different books to investigate changes in work, but when hey startedto develop their presentation, they began by creating new information-based on no sourceswhatever-and completely ignored the research theyhad done on the topic. And when designing museums of colonial life, stu-dents requently responded to questions about the source of their informa-tion by saying, "I just b d a know? Despite the presence in the room ofbooks on the colonial era, photographs of preserved colonial homes, andrep~ductionsfartwork dating from the period, no student attempted touse these sources to supplement or verify what she or he already thought.Just as in the Lexington Green activity, the idea of using evidence to sup-port conclusionsdid not appear salient lor students.

DiscussionThis study demonstrates the complexities of students' understand-ing of historical evidence, Having previously had minimal formal expo-

sure to histov-and even less to thework of historim~tudentsnder-stanclably began the year with littIe idea of how evidence is used to createhis orical accounts. Most thought Ithat historical informa ion was handeddown by word of mouth--an assump ion reflecting the famiIy context inwhich much of their previous historical learning had taken place (Barton,1995). But this personalized understanding of historical information alsoprovided students with seasonable ideas about what made some sourcesmore reIiable than others,aswell as how to reconcile conflicting accounts:They knew that people sometimes rememberdifferently, that personal biascan influence accounts, that direct sources provide different insights thanindirect ones, and that contemporary sources are more reliable than latermemory. These findings aresimilarto those of VanSledright and KeIIy [inpress),who found that somefifthgraders understood that texts couldvavin their validity,and hat students considered authors' points of view im-portant in making judgmentsabout those texts.Students in the present study made impressive use of their under-standing in analyzing primary sources describing the battle at LexingtonGreen. These fourth and fifth graders engaged in precisely the kinds ofhistorical thinking that eluded the high schoolers studied by Wineburg


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Keith C.Barton(1991,1992) nd some of the universitystudents described byYeagerandDavis (1994,1995):They saw each account as cons&ttckdby a willful au-thor, and they carefully and systematicallyanalyzed the potential bias ineach source--the political leanings of the author, the goal the authorwastryingto achieve, the recentnessof thewent, ven the effectsof peer pres-sure. Students' experiences with disagreements, with bias, and withmemory-dI developedoutside the context of school hist o r y ~ u i p p e dthemwith the critical skillsneededfor sound historical reasoning.Butjustas importantIy these studentsregarded texts so critically they consideredthem pure fiction. F a d with conflicting souwctes, students despaired ofestablishingany reliabiIiky and thus rejected them all. VanSfedright andKelly (in press) and Vansledright and Frankes (1%) found similardiffi-culties among the students &ey studied; the fourth and fifth graders inthose studies h ew hat sources could disagree, butthey knewof ao trat-egies for dealingwithsuchdisagreement.

But while the s tudmb in this study regarded sources critically theyparadoxicaIly regarded informatior+abstracted mm the texts that carryit-uncritically: They actedasthough how1edgeof the pastexistedi n d ~pendentlyof evidence.Thus n developing their projects on the historyofeveryday life, studentshad no interest in es tabl ishg hevalidity of heirinformation: f theycameacross information somewhe-ywhm+theyincluded it, and they rarely considered the possibiIity of looking at moret hanonemum. tudentsworkingon"Colonialmuseum" orotherprojectsoften included infomationthat came from no sourceat aU,butwhich theyjust " h d a knew." Most revealingIy, students in A m y ' s class based theirconclusionsabout the battle of LexingtonGreenon none of the evidence?heyhad beenconsidering, nd they&ought h i s t o h did the same.Thesefindingsare similarto those in a recentstudy by Levstik(19%), who foundthatwhen third graderswho had completed extensive historical researchwere asked to put their findings nto a narrative form, lhey quickly aban-doned the nformation they had acquired and "r e sor td to wholesale fic-tion" (p. 2).For educators, the mcial question is why?-why do students havesuchdifficultyemploying evidencewhen they reachconclusionsaboutthehistory they study in class? Because the present study was primarily $escriptive, answers to this questionmust remain speculative;nonetheless,the experiences of thesestudentssuggest that three factorsmay have beencrucial. The first is the most obvious:Studentshad liMe orno priorexperi-enceinusing historicalevidence to reach conclusionsin classroomsettingsand thuswerenotvery skilled atsuchUsks.These studentshad notprevi-ously studied history systematidly at school, and the history they hadencountered then?did not focusonquestionsof evidence. It is not surpris-ing, then, hat their initial attempts at historical analysis did not alwaysaccordvery precisely with thework of professional historians. Rather thanking seen as a failure to thinkhistoricalIy,students' performanreshould


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Students' IdeasAbout Historical Evidencebe seen as an early point on a continuum ofhistorical thhkhg,a startingpoint along a path which will involve expanding exposure to historicalsourcesand nstruction in their evaluation and use. Some mightobject thatfourthand fifth graders are simply not capable of such anaIysis,'but thatview isnot supported by this research.Studentsin&isstudyenjoyedwork-ing with primary sources, could evaluate them criticallywhen asked to,and sometimes consulted them in creahg hei r own historical accounts;those achievementsseem reasonable for beginners, and there is no reasonta think that with increasedexposurestudents couId not further refine theiruse of historical evidence.

A second =ason for students' difficultyin using evidencemay Iie inthe narrative form in which they had previously learned about history.When studentshad encounteredhistory a t school before fourth grade, itwas in thecontextofreadingor Iisteningto stories of famouspeople. Out-side school, they had heard relatives tell stories about the past, watchedtelevision shows or movies set in historic time periods, or read historicalfiction or biographies ontheirown(Barton, 995).Ineachofthese instances,the formof presentationwas a narrative one:Students learned about char-acters who participated incausallyconnected chainsof venls.Any narra-tive involves the intentional selectionandarrangement ofelements,as wellas an inkrpwtation ofh e connections among those e l e m m e b u t rarelydo narraf ives (particularly for children) invite specula ion into the basisfor such interpretation. More commonly,a narrative presents its audiencewith a single version of events, arranged so h t t appears to be the onlyone possible; the audience typicallyjudges thevalidityof the story" inter-pretation not by comparison to empirical evidence(irrelevantanyway nthe case of fiction)but by its ~wisimilitude-its congruencewith their un-derstandingofthenormsofh m otivationandbehavior (Brmer, 1986).Children realize that fictional narratives are imaginative creationsand donot need to bevalidatedby factualevidence--but what are they to dowithnonfiction narratives suchas history? Lacking previous instruction in thetopic, thestudentsin this study assimilated their understanding of histori-cal narratives to that of fictional ones: Since they thought anything thathad an "author" was inherently meIiab1e onemurical grounds, they sup-plied theirowndetailson thebasisofwhat they thought "must" havehap-pened. Rather than attemptingto reconcileor chwse fromamongconflict-ingaccounts,studentsregardedallsuch accountsas equally unreliableandreached their judgments on the basis of a moE general understanding ofhuman no tivatbnan$behavior.Finally, explaining students' readiness to assert historical howledgethat has no evidentiary basismay require placing their historical thinkinginto a broader context than the school setting. Like adults, children aremost likely toacquirethe skills consided significantin the society ofwhichthey are a part (whether or not those match the instructionthey receiveatschool).Studentsin Amy's classroomm y ot have perceived anycultural


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Keith C.Bartonimportance in basing conclusions about the past on widence; they m ynot have recognized that as a valued skill, or one that they are likely everto need. After all, what differencewould it make which accountof Lexing-ton Greenwas best supported by the souxces? Ifhis is not to say that s h -dents did not care about the exercise, or about history more generally; infact, they enjoyed the subject mmensely, and ItheLexingtonGreen activitywas a particular favorite. The one aspect of the lessontb mattered little tothem, hough,was the connection between conclusionsand evidence,andtheir indifference to this aspect of historical reasoningmay well wflecl asimilar apathy in the broader society of which they are a part.Indeed, one could argue that students' performance closely mirrorsthe general lack of concern inAmericanculturewith questionsof evidence.Inmany areas of li fepolit ics, economics, religion, and popular culture,for examplethe rrncritical acceptance of conclusions appears to bemomhighly valued than heir analysis in Iightof thegrounds hat support them.The popularity of psychic telephone lines,weekly tabloids,urban egends,and UFO ighthgs suggests that people do indeed accept many pmposi-tions without regard to their supporting evidence. 7 h i s kndency to basefirmly held beliefs ongmundsother than empiricalevidence isalso appar-ent in popular perceptions of history, as demonstrated, for example, byresistance to altemative interpretations of the bombing of Hiroshima(Nobile, 1995) or by nostalgic remembrance of times that never were(Coontz, 1992). Given &is general discomfortwith examining the evidencefor beliefs, students' indifference to the issueseems unremarkable: Theyappear to have internalized h i r ociety's lack of interest in this aspect ofhistory.Yet this simpIified picture m y lsoobscure important facets of his-torical reasoning, for there is not oneAmericancultuw,nox anyone popu-lar historical understanding--there a* m y great deal of research inhistory, sociology, and anthropologyhasdemonstrated howcollvnmitiesetain,pass on,and commemorate p emq tions of the past that may standin contrast to official stories mcountered in school or other institutions(Bodnar, 1992; Cohen, 1994; Gillis, 1994; Kamrnen, 1995; Schwartz,Zembavel, and Barnett, 1986). Recent studies with children confirm thepervasiveness of these alternative historicd percep ions, Epsteh (1994b,19971, for example, found that African American high school students of-ten used th e historical information they acquired in their neighborhoodsand from their families to constructan understanding that stood in activemistance to what they Iearned at school. Similarly, Barton and Levstik(1997)found that middle gradersdrewon he historical memoriesofpeoplethey h e w to provide alternatives to more progressive and benign vet-sions of American history. Because families and cornunities can rebinmemories that stand in contrast to official interpretations, the comectionbetween historical evidence and conclusions has the potential to assumegreat cultural importance; issues that conhue to matter in society, but


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Studmts' Ideas About Hisforical Evidencewhosehtexpretatimhavenot yet been irmlyestablished,may spark moreinterest in historicaI evidence than do less controversial issues. The factthat some students in this study were a l ~ a d yamiliar with debates overthe assassinationof JohnF.K e ~ e d yuggests that issues of evidencemayindeed be salientforchildrenwhen hey relate to questions that retain theirimportance in thewider culture. Ratherthanconcludingthat students' lackof interest in evidence-based conclusions reflects a general deficiency inAmerican culture, it may bemore accurate to conclude that it reflects oursociety's lack of interest in documentingcolonial military encounters. n-stead ofseeking to explainwhy students are not mole inclined to usehis-torical evidencewhen heydraw conclusions, perhapswe would be betterserved by seekingb establishwhich topics are most likely to stimulatethem to do so.

These findings carry several significant instructional implications.First, stud- need systematic exposure to the collection and evaluationofhistoricalevidence. Most students nitially suggested hat historical in-formationwas handed down by w o d ofmouth,or perhaps by itswrittenequivalent--bookswritten a long time ago. These students did not knowthat people in the present use a variety of sources in order to reconstructaccountsof the past. Without a more complete mlderstandhgof the basisof historical lanowledge,studmtsare ill equipped toparticipate in the kindsof "sound historicalreasoning"' required for meaningfullearning.Amy andTma,however, atgaged their classesinassignmentsin whichstudents sem-selveswere responsibleforco1Iectinghistorical information, and &us heycame tosee the variety of sourcespeople today use to learn about the past.Projectswhich q u i r e d students to engage in historical inquiry-creatingpersonaland familyhistories,making displaysand presentations, etreat-ing historicalevents-led them to a more complete understandingof thesoumes of historical information.Elementary studentsneed the opportu-nitytoexaminehistoricalevidence fmthand+o t the tertiaryand evidence-free accounts in textbooks, but ducuments, photographs, objects,oral ac-counts, and a wide variety of secondary sources.Second,elementary students have important skills in historical rea-soning hat canbe built onand expanded.Studentsalready were awam ofnumerous ways in which sources could be biased,and they easily appliedtheir understanding to historical dmuments; theiranalysisof the Lexing-ton Green soulre far outpaces the older students described in previousresearch.These students' greater facility with the task perhaps resultedfrom its completion in a classroom setting: Students were able to discussthe task beforehand, compare it to what they already hew, nd workcollaborativelywith teachersand peers. Evaluating evidence in that kindof familiar context resulted in more sophisticated responses than in h e


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more clinical settings used in previous studies. Given students' interestand ability in evaluating evidence, instruction should incorporate manymow such exercises,in the elementary grades and later. Through such ex-ercises, students could move beyond their generalized understanding ofbias to consider the specifically historical circumstances which producedthe sources they examine. They might, for example, learn about political oreconomic events that influence the subtexts of documents, or they mightinvestigate how historicalattitudes toward gender, race, religion, or otheraspectsof society influence the ways historical documents are worded. Stu-dents' prior understanding of conflict and bias in present day accountsprovides a solid basis for such an undertaking.

But students also need muchmore experience connectinghistoricalevidenceand conclusions.Despite their critical strengths, students did notspontaneouslybring these tobear on their historicalstudies.Although theylearned during the year what kinds of sources historians use and had notrouble evaluating sources criticaIly when asked to do so, students failedto recognizethat conclusions about what happened in history mustbe basedon critical examination of sources. Students recognized that any source ispotentiallyb i a d , but as a mu lt they either treated all sources equally orthrew sources out altogether and based their conclusions on what they'"da knew." But historical knowledge requires a more complicated re-s p u n ~ o n s i d e r i n g hich sourcesare more crediblea d valuatingwhichclaims are better supported by evidence.En order to engage in this kind ofreasoning, studentsneed more practice in the "active, persistent,and care-ful consideration," in Dewey's terms, of theevidence for historical claims.Suchconsideration cannot be a simple add-on to a fact-based curriculum,nor even a central component of the d y ccasional inquiry project; evi-dence-based reasoning must be a continual and explicit focus of instruc-tion. Most importantly, studentsneed systematicand ongoingpractice withusingevidence to form conclusions,and teachers must help studentsclarifythe connection between their conclusionsand the evidencewhich supportthem. These efforts must become such a common feature of instructionthat students demonstrate carefulreasoningas a consistent habit of think-ing (cf. Meier, 1995; Sizer, 1992).

But helping students develop these skills also q u i r e s consideringthe factors which m y inder their application in historical contexts.First,educators need to be extremely cautious in their use of historical narra-tives. The power of narrative to stimulate students' interestis well-tab-Iished,and for several years it was fashionable in some circles to ~ f e rohistory as "a story well told." As a device for teaching students historyhowever, the uncritical presentation of stories about the past has seriousdrawbacks.Because stories usually omi anymentionof theevidence uponwhich they are based, teachers shouId make sure that they are accompa-nied byprojectswhich requiretheexamination of evidence.Studentsmight,for example, use sets of historical sources to decide which elements of a


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Studmrs' Ideas About H is orical Evidencegiven story are most likely to be true, and which may have been inventedor exaggerated.Whenever possible, studentsneed toreadworksof historywhose authorsdescribe their sourcesof information,andwho indicatecon-flicts among those sources; an essential criterion for the evaluation ofchildren's nonfiction, in fact, is the extent to which an author makes suchissues clear (Levstik and Barton, 1997).Studenb could also use primarysources to create their own stories,and teachers could help them wflect onthe comections between the evidence and their interpretations. In addi-tion, when students encounter the larger narratives which comprise thesubstance ofmost textbooks and curriculum guides, they should have thechancebuse historical evidence& create alternative interpretations-todescribe the story of westward expansion from the perspectiveof NativeAmericans,or women,or African Americans, forexample. Unless students'exposure to historical narratives is accompanied by familiarity with theway those narratives are created, they are unlikely to develop a meaning-ful understanding of the di femce between evidence-based historical,ac-counts and "fanciful elaborations" (Vansledright andBmphy, 1992).Finally, students' encounter with history should focus on ssues thatretab their significance in contemporary society, for those are the issuesmost likely to inspire students to support their conclusions with reliableevidence. Instead of w e l l ~ a f t e dacademic" exerciseson safe topics suchas Lexington Gem, students should examine the evidence surroundingmore meaningful historical events-World War II, the Vietnam War, theCiviI Rights movement, and so on. Even topics mow typically found inprimary cIassroom have the potential to inspiw strong reactions today.Storiesabout Columbus, the Pilgrims, GeorgeWashington, and AbrahamLincoln still master because they are central to theAmericanmy hology of"our'%righs as a nation,and evidence which challenges popular percep-tions will be treated skeptically; many people, for example, are highly re-sistant to h e h g ha t Columbus was directly responsible for the mutila-tion and murder of sountEess Native Americans. Students who examinethe evidencesurroundingdeeply-heldAmericanmythsmay be mow Iikdyto developan appreciation for the necessity of linking conclusions to evi-dence--particularly if they share their findings with thoseoutside the class-room. If studentshave to overcome skepticism toward their claims, theymay see m o ~learly the necessity of basing those claims on reliable evi-dence.

The students in this study initially had little knowledge of theevidentiary basis of historical accounts, but after participating in severalhistorical investigations they developed an understandingof the range ofsourceswhich canyield historical information.Studentsdso had valid ideasabout how to evaluate source: When placed in the historical context they


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knew best-talking to relatives-most understood that some source aremare reliable thanothers and that conflicting sources could be reconciledby waluating their reliabilityor by referring toother sources. Furthermore,students were able to apply these common sense ideas in evaluating pri-mary source on the battle at Lexington Green. Yet students never fullyunderstood the connectionbetweencriticallyexaminingsourcesand form-ing conclusions. Although they could examine sources critically whenasked, they rarely did so spontaneously, and thus when developing ac-counts of what happened in history they either ignored explicit consider-ation of the reliability of sources or treated all sources qually.Several factorsm y ave contributed o students' difficultyinbasingtheir historical accounts on evidence-heir lack of previous experiencewith such skills, their exposure to history primarily in the form of narra-tives, or heir perception that theuseof historical evidencehas little impor-tance in the wider culture. Each of these factors could be addressed sys-tematically in the elementary classroom: Teachers could provide studentswith more practice in using historical evidence, could make sure that his-torical narratives are accompanied by critical analysis of the evidence onwhich they rest, and could focuson issues significant enough to make th equestion of evidence an mportant one. Thus wkrile this study shows thatelementary students possess important skills needed for historical r e a m -ing, t also indicates that instruction should focusmore systematicallyandexplicitlyon helping students make use of these skills;studentsneed prac-ticeweighinghistorical evidence,examiningbiases, synthesizing informa-tion,and reachingconclusions. In perhaps no other area of the schoolcur-riculum is content so thoroughly divorced fromattention to the methodsof investigation and creation of knowledge; especially at the elementarylevel, studenbrarely have the chance to collect historical information, x-amine primary sources, or consider conflicting interpretations. More at-tention to such activities is n d e d in order to help students develop amore complete understanding of the sources of historical k no~ledge.~

NotesW1t.h their permission, I have used the teachershal names. Stu-dents' names have been replaced with pseudonyms to protect their pri-vacy and that of their families.W l e educational researchers oftentake the role of nonparticipantobservers who attempt to position themselves unobtrusively and not tointerfere in instruction, I explicitly took a much more active role. h ddi-tion to working with the teachers to plan lessons and locate resources, IfrequentIy taught or cotaught Iessons,andeven more frequently interjectedc o r n s, questions,and observations duringclass--apracticewhich theteachers actively encouraged and which fit well with the discussion-ori-ented nature of their instruction and with the generally open feeling of


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Students' Ideas About Historical Evidmcetheir classes. When studentswere engaged in individual or group work Ioften took on the same mle as their teachers-probing students' under-standing, asking them questions about the way they carried out the as-signment,and providing them with the he1p they needed.The author wishes to thank Linda S. Levstik, Bruce Vansledright,and Michael Whelm for their valuable comments on earlier versions ofthis paper,

ReferencesBarton,K .C. 1993,November).History ismore than story:Expanding theboundariesofelementary learning.Paperpresented to theCollege andUniversityFacuItyAssemblyof theNationalCowncil fortheSocial Stud-ies, Nashville*Barton, K. C.(1994).Historicalunderstandingamongelementary children.Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universityof Kentucky,Lexington.Barton,K.C. (1995, April). "My mom taught me": The situate$ nature ofhistorical understandhg.Paper presented at the annual meetingof theAmerican Educational Research Association,San Francisco.'Barton,K. C., & Levstik, L. S,(1997, March), Middle graders' expIanationsof historical significance.Paper presented at the Annual Meetingof theAmericanEducationalResearchAssociation, Chicago.Bemett.P.S. (1967).What happened on Lexington Green: n inquiy in to thenature and methods of history (teacherand students manuals). Washing-ton, DC:Office of Education, Bureau of Research. (Eric Document Re-productionSewice No. ED 032 333).Beyer, B. K. 1971). Inquiy n the social studiesclassroom:A stra tegyfor teach-ing. Columbus:Merril.Bode,B.H. (1940). How we enrn, Boston:Heath.Bodnar, J.1992). Remaking Amerh: Publicmemmy, cornmemorn wn, and pa-triotism in the twentieth century. Princeton:Princeton University Press.Bradley Commissionon History in Schools. (1989).Building a history cur-riculum:Guidelinesfor teaching. In l? Gagnon &The Bradley Commis-sionon History in Schools (Eds.),Historical literacy: The casefor history inAmwican ducatim (pp, 16-47).New York: Macrnillm.Brophy, J , Vdledright, B.A., & Bredin, N. (1992). Fifth-gxaders' ideasabout history expressed before and after their introduction to the sub-ject. Theoy and Research in Social Education,20,440489.

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Annual Meetingofthe American Educat id Reseamh Association, NewOrleans.Epstein,T.L. (1997). ocioculturalapproaches toyoung people's historicalunderstanding.S o c d Education, 61,28-31.Gabella, M. S. (1993,April). TextuaI truths, photographic facts: Epistemo-logical stumblingblwks in the study of history.Paper p m e n e at theAnnual Meeting of the American Educational Research Associa tion,Atlanta.Gillis, J. R. (1994).Memory and identity:The history of a lat ti on ship. In J.R.Gillis (Ed.), Commmat ions : Thepolitics ofnational identity (pp. 3-29).Princeton: Princeton University Press.Good, T.L., & Brophy, J. (1994).Looking in classrooms. New York: HarperCoIlins.Hunt, M. P.,&Metcalfe,L. E. 1957). Teaching high s c h I social studies: Ptlob-lems in rq?ective fhinking and social understanding. New York:Harper.Kammen,M. 1995).ReviewofIwonaI-Zarecka, Frames ofremembrance:The dynamics of collectin?memory.His o y and T h y , 34,245-261.Elpatrick,W.H 1925).Fouttdaf ms of method: InfonmI talkson teachingmNewYork: Macmillm.Eave, J.,& Wenger, B. (1991).Situafed learning: Legitimate p&pherd partid-pafion. New York:Cambridge University Press.Levstik, L. . (1996,April). 'The colormust come in thewords": The chal-lenges of historical interpretation with children. Paper presented to theAnnual Meeting of the College and University Faculty Assembly, Na-tional Council forthe Smial Studies,Washington, DC.Levstik, L. S. 1989).Historical narrativeand he young wader. T h y ntoPractice, 28, 114419.

Levstik, L. S.,& Barton, K.C. (1997). Lbing histoy: nmtigating with chil-dren in elernenfay and middle schools. Mahwah, NJ: ErIbaum.MassiaIas, B. G., Cox, C. B. (1966). Inquiry in asocial studies. New York:McGraw-Hll.Meier, D. (1995).How our schools could be. Phi Delta +ate, 76,369373.National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Expectations o e;rceEIence:Cum'cu um tandardsfor social sfd i e s (BulletinNo,89).Washington,DC:Author.National History Standards Project. (1994). National statedart& for UteifedStates hisfmy:Exploring the American experience. ta s AngeIes: NationalCenter for History in the Schools.


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moth . BartonYeager, B. A., & Davis, 0.., Jr, (1995).Between campus and classroom:Secondary teachers' thinking about historical texts. Journal of Researchand Deoeioprnent in Education, 29,l-8.

AuthorKEITH C.BARTON is Associate Professor in the M o o 1 of Education atNorthern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, 41099. Email:

Barton. Elementary Students' Ideas About Historical Evidence

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