Academic Languaging and Historical Thinking
Cultivating Students' Language Skills for Argument Writing
Unpacking the important disciplinary literacy skills students need to develop to make evidence-based arguments about the past
Description
Academic Languaging and Historical Thinking prepares teachers to assess where students are in their written and critical thinking skills and to develop the art of teaching historical argumentative writing to students. The use of effective language to communicate historical, social, and civic arguments is a key competence future citizens need, and teaching writing through history is especially effective because of the grounded nature of historical documentation and the balance between clear facts and blurrier areas of interpretation.
Starting with a pedagogical approach, the book takes readers through research on the relationship between language and writing, the ways that historians make claims and the kinds of evidence they use, and how to successfully find and evaluate sources. It then offers instructional activities and strategies that center around key disciplinary practices in historical argumentation: making claims, sourcing and integrating evidence, presenting reasoning, and addressing counterarguments. These activities can be easily modified for different teaching and learning contexts, including supporting multilingual learners of English. Whether readers are practicing teachers, pre-service teachers, or instructional coaches, this book will help them learn how to integrate academic language skills with argument writing instruction in history to teach students to be confident academic writers and competent language users.
Undarmaa Maamuujav teaches first-year seminar and pre-service teacher education courses in the College of Education at Butler University, Indianapolis, and is a former research scientist in the School of Education at University of California, Irvine.
Jacob Steiss is a Translational Research Fellow at the University of Missouri–Saint Louis and teaches pre-service teacher education courses.
Reviews
“At last, a practical and evidence-based book for social studies and teachers of history on how to ensure their students can write powerful and convincing arguments. The book is an incredible source, chock full of useful and tested instructional methods.”
- Steve Graham, Arizona State University
“In Academic Languaging and Historical Thinking Undarmaa Maamuujav and Jacob Steiss lay out a compelling argument as to why history is a discipline well suited to teaching content, thinking, and language together. Then they offer illustrative cases and examples to show what such instruction can look like. This book is a game changer for disciplinary literacy instruction.”
- Tanya Baker, National Writing Project
This book offers teachers comprehensive and explicit descriptions of the various rhetorical moves in constructing strong argumentation in history, the reasoning for them, and academic language involved. It includes many excellent reading and writing activities for students as well as guidance for teachers in how to select various components of the argument construction that best fit the abilities and needs of their student population.
- Jan M. Frodesen, University of California, Santa Barbara
Academic Languaging and Historical Thinking offers teachers substantial theoretical, conceptual, and pedagogical advantages by extending teachers' understanding of the relationship between historical thinking and writing, providing examples and non-examples of the different facets of writing and thinking, and including a wealth of instructional activities.
- Bob Bain, University of Michigan