Written by Professor Peter Baganz
Before teaching at MLC, I taught history for 19 years at one of our area Lutheran high schools. Every student in every one of my history classes wrote a major research paper each year in addition to writing shorter papers and doing other projects. Why did I subject myself to all that correcting? Because research writing is such a vital component of “doing” history.
Writing Research Papers Builds Higher-Level Thinking Skills
Students who dislike history usually state that this is because all they do is learn boring names, dates, and facts. However, the true study of history goes far beyond these minuscule details into the real causes of events. Prominent philosophers of history have described the process in different ways. R. G. Collingwood stated that the historian must recreate the historical event in his or her mind to find the root causes of the event. The historian then writes a document that can be examined and studied even further to get the most accurate recreation of the event.[i]
John Lewis Gaddis, the preeminent Cold War historian, compared the historian to an artist painting a picture, but then went on to describe how it is up to the historian to decide which aspects are part of the background and which parts of the picture need to be examined in detail.[ii] Edward Carr described an “unending dialogue between the past and the present” practiced by historians.[iii] They examine the works of others before writing their own point of view, and then others respond to their work as they try to get closer and closer to how something actually happened.
Note that none of these descriptions of history point to a commonly accepted group of “facts” that one must learn.[iv] Rather, they all involve examining evidence and then writing one’s version of history. If writing is so vital to the work of the historian, students studying history in our classrooms should also be using this same tool. At times, this is through essay questions that ask them to analyze, evaluate, or otherwise go beyond simply regurgitating names and dates. Sometimes it is through posing a question to them and having them write out their thoughts before discussing the question or hearing the teacher’s point of view. But the most critical piece of writing for our history students is to have them research, read, and create their own work.
Crafting a research paper forces students to practice all the higher-level thinking skills that are vital to learning. Students have to evaluate different sources for reliability and effectiveness in answering the question they have posed. They have to analyze the evidence that they collect and organize it into an effective argument. They must synthesize this information into a thesis that summarizes the point they are trying to make. They create a paper that pulls together these various elements into a unified whole.
Students Must Write Research Papers at All Grade Levels
Yet, despite the critical importance of research writing, not all students have the opportunity to practice this vital skill. At MLC, every student is required to write a research paper for United States History Since 1945. As part of the writing process, I have a conference with every student to discuss the first draft of the paper. After several years of hearing students explain that they had never written a paper like this before college, I decided to begin tracking this information. I was rather shocked at the correlation between previous writing experiences and success at the collegiate level.
During this past year, I had 109 students in this course. About 50% reported having experience at writing a history research paper before entering college, although levels of research varied. Others had written a research paper for another class, usually English, and a few had never written a full-blown research paper. I then compared the final grades on their college papers to their previous experiences. I was not surprised that students with previous writing experience did better, but I was shocked at how pronounced the difference was. Students who wrote any kind of research paper, such as one for English class, scored 5% higher than those who had not written any papers. That is the equivalent of 2/3 of a grade, or the jump from a C to a B-. However, writing a paper for a history class raised the student’s grade by an additional 4%, the equivalent of jumping the grade from a C to a B+. The correlation here is obvious. Writing research papers at the elementary and high school levels prepares students for success at writing college papers.
Students studying history at all grade levels need to write. It is the key process in history. Students at upper levels, especially high school, need to do research writing. It builds higher-order thinking skills. It is a vital factor in their preparation for college. It helps them learn to research, to read, to organize their thoughts, and to build a logical argument. It is a vital part of understanding that history is not just “facts,” it is interpreting and understanding why things happened as they did. If you are teaching history at any level, consider how you can provide opportunities for your students to practice their research and writing skills.
Peter Baganz (DMLC ’87) serves as professor of history and social sciences at Martin Luther College.
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[i] [i] R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), 282-284
[ii] John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 28.
[iii] Edward Hallett Carr, What is History? New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1967, 35.
[iv] Note that I put the word facts in quotation marks for a reason. I could have gone on a long rant about just who tries to determine something to be a vital “fact” in history, but in the interest of space, I restrained myself.
I feel there is a disconnect between today and history. Far to many teachers do not express the need for research or the need to study history because it requires them to be knowledgeable on the subject. Additionally I would be certain that we study back furthur to show the problems with greed and socialism. The rise of Natzi Germany was a direct cause of the influence of socialism.
Well written, Pete! When I was a teaching principal, I had my 7-8th grade history students write reports all the time. In addition I had smaller responses I would have them write to try to capture the ideas, emotions, and / or feelings that the people we were studying in history might have felt. That internalizing by students really helps them to go beyond the mere facts and objective items, and instead begin to experience history and truly better understand it. I have also carried on your writing here at HVL and the working together with the English department, which we have expanded this year beyond the two units you had mentioned in your original post.
Thanks again for your thoughts and your encouragements. Hello from Westland!
Thanks for the read! It’s great to hear that MLC students are taught to emphasize writing and critical thinking skills when they teach history. History and ELA are a perfect match for each other.
They are a perfect match. Throughout my years teaching at Huron Valley Lutheran High School, the English teacher and I paired up assignments for English and History. Sophomores did a research paper for both classes, and Juniors did the same with a family history project. Students benefited by receiving help and feedback from both teachers, and it also helped them realize that writing is not just something done for an English class.
I agree that writing is a great way to incorporate higher level thinking skills into learning, and I definitely remember more about a topic when I have had to research and write about it. So why might a teacher opt not to include much writing in his or her lessons? I think one reason is one you mentioned early on in your paper: meeting with students and correcting papers takes time. However, I also think teachers may refrain from assigning writing because they feel inadequate as writers or don’t know where to begin or how to go about teaching it. Correcting papers in a consistent way that is not completely subjective may be a challenge, too, for some. The task of teaching writing can seem daunting. I liked your ideas of how to incorporate writing into the curriculum in small ways as well as large ones.
Another important aspect of writing is learning how to document sources using footnotes and bibliographies. It is important that the student be introduced to different styles of documentation. I did not know there was more than one way to document until I had been out of college for a few years and began taking classes that required more writing. Each class seemed to require a different style: Chicago, APA, MLA. I did not realize that different disciplines have their own preferred style.
Finally, people who have to write in a professional capacity need to know how to write well. “Professional” includes pastors, teachers, and anyone who has to send out information publicly for his or her job. When I receive a written notification from a “professional” and it is not well written, it makes me think the “professional” is not very educated. Today’s world is full of aids, such as Grammarly, that help even the best writers improve their writing. We just have to know where to find these helps and use them.
Amen.
As you pointed out in your last paragraph, the ability to write is critical in so many different areas, and a sign of an educated professional is the ability to write formally, not write in “tweets.” You noted that some teachers might not require writing because they feel they cannot write well themselves. Yet their students need to learn writing skills and they need to be able to write themselves for letters home to parents, announcements of schools events, etc. How can they imprrove their own writing? There are apps like grammarly that can help improve the mechanics of their writing. But the best way to improve writing involves practice in doing so, and they can get that practice by continuing their education. I have three college degrees plus credits from two other programs. In every one of those I continued to learn new things about writing because I was forced to write for those classes asnd continued to receive feedback from others.
All of your points are valid. I wish you had also written that we learn to write because the Gospel message was written for us.
A question for future consideration that I’d like to know is how does work done at an LES correlate. We are slowly getting more writing in as part of our curriculum and it would be nice to point to effects like this.
Our college students are further removed from elementary school and come from so many different schools that it would be very difficult to prove a correlation. The evidence would show up more in their writing at the high school level. I didn’t do any formal research on this when I taught high school but I could see the evidence of students’ writing background when they wrote their high school papers.
I can at least offer the anecdotal evidence that a number of college students noted in conferences that they had to do research writing already in elementary school and because of this writing papers was relatively “easy” for them. Please continue efforts to add writing to the curriculum at your LES. Your students may not thank you at this time, but they will benefit from it in the future.