Teaching Themed History

To view or take the Mini-Course "Teaching Themed History" follow the link below.

Themes in History: An Organizational Approach

Course Description

This course is designed to offer a new organizational approach to teaching social studies. Teachers, course designers, curriculum developers, and academic administrators would take interest in this approach as a way to scaffold students' learning to higher levels of thinking.

The idea is to integrate, where appropriate, the use of themes in history. A theme in history is any element that connects one event to another. It can be any number of commonalties like similar situations, decisions that were made, changes in systems. Many state curriculums identify parts of the curriculum as having ties to certain themes of history. The themes noted in these curriculums include geography, trade, conflict, government, economics, etc.. The themed approach takes these existing subdivisions within history programs and extends their purpose from identifying parts of a curriculum to organizing the instructional schedule of teachers.

The approach to teaching history and the social studies is an alternative approach that can yield higher cognitive thinking processes when the topic or topics have an applicable theme. This course explains the approach, describes its use, and instills the wisdom needed to implement it properly.

Learner Profile

This mini-course is designed for teachers, course designers, curriculum developers, and academic administrators of social studies courses at the secondary and/or higher learning levels. After taking this course, learners will be able to identify various themes in social studies curriculums, use these themes to generate goals for their students, and implement the approach where appropriate in their instructional schedules.

Objectives

Students will be able to...