Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Toward a Postformal Model of History Education 927
While Mace’s methods text is overwhelmingly positivistic, it is not without useful information
for the student teacher. For instance, he offers a simple method of determining which “facts”
should be included in a test. Using, among others, the example of the arrival of the Pilgrims to
Plymouth Rock aboard the Mayflower in December 1620, he asks if it would have made any
difference had the ship been called the Speedwell. Would the destiny of America have been
different had there been one hundred or one hundred and two souls aboard instead of one hundred
two? The answer in each case is no, and so Mace concludes that these are pieces of information
students of history need not retain. Instead, they should learn about the political, religious, and
social ideas animating the Pilgrims, because these ideas had consequence for the development of
the nation.
The student teacher who reads an old methods textbook such as Mace’s, while perhaps recognizing
a few pedagogical gems within, cannot help but remark upon the archaic sentence structure
and presentation and, more important, the vastly different approach to the study of history recommended
in 1897. By examining such documents historiographically, the student can trace the
changes that occur in texts over a long period. This examination influences the way the student
approaches the contemporary methods textbooks because it provides a context and reveals the
situatedness of any prescribed methodology.
In contrast to Mace’s hundred-year-old text, Jack Zevin’s Social Studies for the Twenty-First
Century: Methods and Materials for Teaching in Middle and Secondary Schools (1992) opens
with a “Personal Prologue,” which addresses the reader directly. Throughout the text, Zevin
continues this approach, saying on p. 67 for instance, “You may find yourself in a situation
in which the text defines both the curriculum and your teaching plan.” Not only is the writing
style considerably different from the older text, but also in an echo of the comparison between
history textbooks new and old, the dimensions of Zevin’s book are greater, and the text is broken
up with photographs, charts, and special activities. Most interestingly, where history textbooks
tend to omit bibliographical material, Zevin’s text contains full references. Where the old and
new methods texts resemble each other is in their organization. Zevin’s text is divided into five
parts, each of which has its counterpart in Mace’s text: a definition of the field; a contextual
description; strategies for instruction; curriculum information; and a final, wrap-up section. In
addition, although Zevin’s text tries to represent the range of opinions surrounding the field
of social studies, he still reduces the field into three interrelated dimensions—the didactic, the
reflective, and the affective.
How would a postformal teacher-educator make use of these texts? An historiographical
approach in which many of the same questions asked of history textbooks is appropriately
applied to a range of methods texts. Students may examine the context of the historical era in
which each text was produced, and delineate the language used in the chapter headings as well
as in the body of the text. By comparing methods textbooks from different eras, student teachers
begin to acknowledge that pedagogy is not static, but instead is a product of its time and is ever
changing. As they recognize changing approaches to teacher education, they begin to question
the assumptions implicit in each text. Among the questions they may ask about each text,
� What approach to pedagogy does this author take?
� How does this author’s approach compare to others’?
� How does this author’s approach compare to my own?
� What about this discipline does this author value the most?
� What does this author not value?
� What claims does this author make?
� Do I believe this author’s claims?