Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Toward a Postformal Model of History Education 929
they look at how they know history. The following questions prove useful in undertaking this
investigation:
� What history books have you read? (school textbooks or popular histories)
� What public monuments are familiar to you?
� What media representations of history have you seen or heard? (films like Alexander, Troy, or Saving
Private Ryan, programs on television networks such as The History Channel or Biography, television
mini-series, etc.)
� How have historical events affected you or your family or your friends? (immigration, migration, refugee
experience, military service, etc.)
The postformal teacher uses the answers to these questions to shape the study of history. It is
not enough to set a course of study before classes begin and plow through a series of lesson plans
leading up to the test. The critical teacher, aware of both the cognitive and affective aspects of
history education, is sensitive to the fact that different students experience the study of history in
unique ways. For example, in a thematic study of immigration and migration, the teacher must
be cognizant of the fact that the theme will have a different meaning to the child who is an
immigrant himself than for the child whose family has lived in the same location for generations.
It is foolhardy and a waste of precious intellectual resource for the teacher not to acknowledge
the personal experience of the student, to fail to welcome the sharing of that experience in the
classroom. This is not to say that the child should become essentialized, that the immigrant child
should become the center of every conversation about immigration, or that the student with a long
history in the school district should have no contribution to make other than that relating to her
family’s longevity. Student knowledge, however, can effectively inform a study of immigration
patterns and experience, and bring the study of history into sharp relief with a study of the present
and the lived lives of the student population.
The postformal study of history has a particular role in acknowledging the affective as part
of the classroom experience. As students examine historical documents and learn about the
events and forces that have impacted on the lives of people in the past, it is highly likely that
they will experience an emotional reaction. Rather than brushing aside the emotion, the critical
teacher acknowledges it, interrogates it and accepts it as an integral part of historiography.
In addition, student intuition is similarly recognized, acknowledged, and encouraged. The professional
historian, who as one who wonders about history, does not make use of intuition, is
a historian who misses much in her study of the past. Students should be no less vigilant in
recognizing the affective as an accepted component of the serious historiographer’s tools of the
trade.
Another important postformal tool is the concept of metaphorical cognition (Kincheloe, 1999).
Students should be encouraged to represent their understanding of history in the form of a
metaphor. Depending upon their age and cognitive level, the metaphor may be sophisticated or
not. The activity is not a discrete one, however. Rather, it serves as an ongoing process in which
students revisit previous thoughts and reformulate their metaphors in light of recent learning.
As they do so, they interrogate the reasons for the changes in their thinking. This activity can
be incorporated into a journaling process in order to trace the development of their historical
understanding. Thus they recognize in a very personal way the constructed, fluid, and changing
nature of knowledge, and experience the possibilities for deep thinking inherent in the discovery
of patterns and connections.
Positivist education places a heavy emphasis on the activity of problem solving, both for
students and teachers. It is true that the problem solving process can be useful, and can help