4. Testing the Template

After developing the template, my seminar students each completed three in-class "source reading" exercises over the course of the Fall 2003 semester:

Exercise 1: In the second week of class, we discussed the US before 1960. Students read and evaluated 3 text-based sources on Emmett Till's murder: a New York Times editorial on the indictment of Till's killers, an NAACP newspaper ad highlighting the Till case, and William Bradford Huie's Look article/interview with the men who murdered Till.

Exercise 2: In the fifth week, we read about the civil rights movement in Birmingham. Students evaluated three sources from the May 1963 Birmingham demonstrations: a collection of four newspaper photos, 4-minutes of archival video excerpted from the documentary Eyes on the Prize, and the text of Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Exercise 3: In the 12th week, students read and evaluated four sources from the late 60s related to protest movements: a poster from a student strike (Harvard 1969), a news photo from a pro-war protest (May 1970), an art photo of Black Panther Bobby Seale (1970), and the text of a Ronald Reagan campaign speech about student unrest (1966).

In each exercise, I instructed every student to write about "What significant things do you know, and don't you know, about each source?" and "Which is the most trustworthy as a historical source? Rank order the sources (1 for most trustworthy and 3 or 4 for least trustworthy), and briefly explain why you ranked them the way you did." (Based on Wineburg's research)

5. Student evidence from the exercises

These exercises revealed a great deal about how my students read and made sense of different kinds of historical sources. I was most surprised by what students wrote about historical photographs.

When I began to read student writing from the second exercise, I noticed something troubling. Colin (all student names are pseudonyms) , one of the most capable students in the class, did a fairly sophisticated reading of the photo collection from Birmingham:

"Who took these pictures? What is context of the last photo? Some happy, some sad -- prayer? Seems like protesters are saying something to the police. Taunting? Singing? Questioning? Police have come prepared for action, carrying nightsticks at the ready."

Colin noted significant details of the photos (facial expressions, nightsticks) and he speculated about the meaning of and creator of these images. He had moved well beyond a novice reading of these sources. However, Colin's ranking of the sources seemed to fall back on cultural assumptions about photos rather than to continue his deep analysis: "These pictures record a moment that clearly happened. Pictures shot candidly tend to not have inherent prejudices, though it is easy to interpret them as you will. Pictures are basically neutral." Although Colin speculated on the editorial forces behind the creation and use of journalistic textual sources in other class exercises, he did not consider such factors when looking at a newspaper photo. Other students echoed this view and, like Colin, ignored the editorial process when analyzing published news photographs. Melanie noted that "The Photo Collection is the most trustworthy source -- images often speak louder than words." Jane referred to the photos as "snapshots of what actually happened." Marvin summarized the typical student analysis when he wrote: "Photos -- the almost most objective evidence there is."

3. Evidence Template

To clarify what I thought about how students might read a source, I constructed a template reflecting my draft ideas about the characteristics of a novice, intermediate, and advanced reading of a historical source. These categories attempted to reflect the level of frequency and sophistication with which a reader applied Sam Wineburg's "source heuristic" to encounters with new historical texts (Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, p. 76).  

Here is my initial template: Evidence Template