Attitudes and Affect

Question 1: How does HI 132 affect attitudes and affect?

To provide data on these questions, I devised a pre-course survey instrument that I administered on day one of the course. Then, on the final day of the course, I collected information using my college’s standard instrument for student course evaluations (the “Student Rating of Instruction” report, or SRI). To supplement the SRI, I designed my own post-course survey.

What I Found

Attitudes toward history and the survey course

The pre-course survey showed that most students had generally favorable attitudes about history, though when I followed up on this matter in class most were careful to distinguish between “liking history” and “liking history classes.”  Three out of five were taking the course only because it satisfied a general education requirement. At the beginning of the course, the general attitude of the students toward history could be described as guarded, but open-minded. How would their attitudes change over the next ten weeks?

This question can be addressed with data pulled from the end-of-course “Student Rating of Instruction” report:

As summarized here, the rating questions all used a 5-point scale where higher response values correspond to more favorable responses; i.e., means closer to 5 are more favorable.

Spring 2000

In this course…

1

2

3

4

5

Mean

S.D.

I learned (very little…a great deal)

3%

6%

16%

37%

38%

4.01

1.03

I found myself appreciating this subject (very little…a great deal)

7%

8%

21%

32%

32%

3.75

1.19

When I went to this class, I generally (dreaded it…looked forward)

8%

10%

29%

31%

21%

3.47

1.17

My interest in this subject grew as the course proceeded

7%

11%

25%

30%

27%

3.59

1.19

The assignments were good learning experiences

3%

0%

3%

37%

57%

4.43

.86

The work required was (way below average…way above average)

0%

0%

20%

53%

27%

4.07

.69

Fall 2000

In this course…

1

2

3

4

5

Mean

S.D.

I learned (very little…a great deal)

0%

4%

4%

36%

57%

4.46

.74

I found myself appreciating this subject (very little…a great deal)

0%

4%

4%

32%

61%

4.5

.75

When I went to this class, I generally (dreaded it…looked forward)

0%

0%

11%

50%

39%

4.29

.66

My interest in this subject grew as the course proceeded

0%

4%

4%

54%

39%

4.29

.71

The assignments were good learning experiences

4%

0%

0%

36%

61%

4.50

.84

The work required was (way below average…way above average)

0%

0%

22%

56%

22%

4.00

.68

Conclusions

The surveys show that students responded very favorably to my “uncoverage” survey course. From the pre-course survey, I learned that four out five students liked history courses before taking my course; yet 85% reported that their interest in history increased even more as the course progressed (i.e., indicated scores of 4 or 5).

Another significant finding is that while most students rated the course as requiring more work than other courses, their highest level of agreement came on the survey item asking whether the assignments were good learning experiences: 95% agreed that they were, indicating scores of 4 or 5. In other words, students responded very favorably to the pedagogy of recurring tasks, such as the main point quizzes and the weekly Workshop papers.

Students in traditional surveys often appear to be refugees from learning, especially when many of them are enrolled because of general education requirements. But my studies suggest that most survey students are willing to work hard when they see a pay-off in terms of meaningful learning. The act of uncovering historical thinking comes across to many with the force of a revelation, elevating students’ regard for the study of the past. As one junior student taking the course for a general education requirement wrote on his final course evaluation: “The workload was extremely high and challenging. But at the same time, I’ve learned more in this class and had my interest in the subject stimulated more than any other class I’ve had.”  Or this, from a sophomore also taking the class for a general education credit: “This class really pushed me to think deeper and I appreciate that. I learned so much more than history in this class. This is what I wanted my college experience to be.”

About Textbooks

On the end-of-course SRI evaluation, I invited students to comment on the texts chosen for the course. Of the sixty students surveyed, not a single one complained about not having a textbook. All the comments about the readings were positive:

“The books he chose for us to read were great. History for the first time was interesting to me.”

“The reading materials chosen by the instructor helped significantly in students putting together their own ideas and forming their beliefs from a number of other ideas.”

It is anecdotal and second-hand, but I understand from the campus bookstore that many, if not most, students hang on to their copies of the Zinn and Johnson texts. My favorite stories to tell about the course are about alumni who return or write to say that they are re-reading Zinn or Johnson now that they have time in their lives for leisure reading. In the days when I used textbooks, I don’t recall anyone ever saying that.

Understandings of history

Most students come to the survey with rather naïve understandings about the nature of history. To examine whether HI 132 reshaped these understandings, I compared answers to a question on the pre-course survey instrument with statements students made about history in their final papers.

The question on the pre-course survey instrument directed students to “write a brief paragraph explaining in your own words what history means to you. Start your paragraph this way: ‘To me, history is…’”

Roughly a third of the students indicated that to them, history was a subject; i.e., the past. To them, learning history meant memorizing facts and dates. Another third wrote responses demonstrating that they regarded history to be someone else’s story about the past, which when learned and internalized, would somehow make the future better. Another third suggested that they viewed history as an interpretive activity, though only a handful took a stab at defining the nature of such analysis. A typical response in this latter category was: “To me history is the study of events and persons in the past. However I think it is more than just learning and memorizing facts and dates. To me, it goes a lot deeper.”

In their final papers, students made a case for concluding which of the two historians we read—Howard Zinn or Paul Johnson—is the better historian.  It is not a perfect means of comparison, but I examined these papers in light of the statements made about history by students at the beginning of the course. What I found was that, by the end of the course, virtually every student thought of history in terms of a multiplicity of stories and as a disciplined way of thinking defined by identifiable mental habits. On this matter, the pedagogical strategy of reading divergent histories instead of a textbook seemed to work to perfection. Some might say that the final paper assignment rather forces this kind of thinking. But that is exactly the point. Assignments teach as surely as teachers teach. As Red Auerbach reminds us, “It’s not what you say; it’s what they hear.”  And what students hear from the assignments in my uncoverage survey is that history is an interesting argument conducted by people who are trained in certain skills of discernment. Still, it is quite possible that students’ final statements in my course reflect merely a ritualistic understanding where they are simply repeating what they heard their teacher say a hundred times or more.

So it is encouraging to note that when I asked students on the final day of the course to identify in their own words the single most important lesson they had learned all term, just over one in four answered with some variation on the theme of discovering what history “really is,” a conversation which welcomes everyone but especially those who know the basic “moves” of historical discernment.