History Content and Teaching: A Historic Struggle
The past two posts have made the point that content and pedagogy are joined at the hip. Yet in science and math, too often, policymakers and reformers have focused on content rather than the art and craft of teaching that content in the mistaken belief that one is far more important than the other. Like the left foot or right foot–yeah, the body metaphor works for me–which one you step off with first is the question that curriculum developers and teachers need to answer not whether one is more important than the other.
So now I turn to the subject of U.S. and world history where the issues that arose in science and math reform (e.g., periodic battles between “traditionalists” and “reformers,” struggles over which purposes should drive the study of the content, and the wide variation among teachers in responding to each swing of the reform pendulum) appeared repeatedly in the century-long saga of doing something about the subject of history in schools.
In the early 20th century, history professors and teachers worked together