Exploratory Essay

The purpose of learning history is not simply to comprehend selected narratives well enough to reproduce them on one’s own, but instead to understand the very nature of historical knowledge (Barton, p125). For students to be able to comprehend historical events, they need to know what’s involved in creating historical accounts. For this to happen, students need to be engaged in the historical event to get a better understanding of how claims about the past were made and justified. Students cannot simply understand historical events by reading about them in their textbooks. Students need to examine the historical records by raising questions, and gather solid evidence that supports their claim about the historical event. In other words, students

In this form of instruction, students are given the ability to pose a central question about historical events and find evidence that answers this question. By investigating these historical questions, students are able to see that history is a collection of arguments and opinions rather than a complete collection of facts. Historians write primarily historical accounts and historical arguments, which can be difficult to distinguish (Shanahan, p.

Contradictory evidence gets students to ask questions and reconsider their initial views, by learning that the past can change based on the historical evidence available (Shanahan, p. 8). Historical accounts can change depending on the historian’s interpretation or time frame evidence was taken, so it’s important to get students engaged in the historical event by figuring out the most accurate claims based on evidence. They need to consider who the author was (source), where it was written (context), what was happening (context), the purpose, and for whom it was written (Shanahan, p.9).

Therefore, an activity such as compare and contrast give the students two or more different interpretations of the same historical event to evaluate (Shanahan, p. 8). Students could also use a historical event chart in which the students can take notes on the different events or different accounts, and then determine the relationship between the two (Shanahan, p. 10). Activities like the ones mentioned above will provide students the ability to investigate the historical account on their own terms. They can gather evidence and form questions to form their own account of how and why the historical event