The Social Studies (2010) 101, 54–59Copyright C© Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0037-7996 printDOI: 10.1080/00377990903283924

“So What?” Students’ Articulation of Civic Themes inMiddle-School Historical Account Projects

THOMAS HAMMOND

College of Education, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA

Two middle-school teachers incorporated student creation of historical accounts into their history instruction. During these projects,the teachers instructed their students to (1) summarize information presented during classroom instruction on a topic (e.g., the GreatMigration) and (2) explain the significance of that topic to the present day. This second component of the task addressed a curricularstandard regarding historical thinking, but students’ responses referenced themes from citizenship education (e.g., cultural pluralism,social criticism, and national identification). More than eighty student projects were analyzed and coded for themes. This studypresents a portrait of ambitious history teaching and suggests a tactic for a civics-infused history education course.

Keywords: history education, civics education, digital education

Although history educators and social studies educatorsfind much to disagree about regarding the K-12 curricu-lum (Bradley Commission on History in the Schools 1988;Vinson 2001; Watras 2004; Whelan 2001), both sides viewcitizenship preparation as a central goal of their prac-tice (Thornton 2004). In this purported common ground,however, the exact scope, location, and even terrain areunclear. Civics education is a contested territory (Bladesand Richardson 2006; Tupper 2006); the term itself en-compasses a broad array of curricula, from those that em-phasize personal responsibility and character education tothose that emphasize civic participation or explore socialjustice (Westheimer and Kahne 2004). Radical critics chal-lenge civic education’s universalist emphasis and inatten-tion to the different experiences and aspirations of sub-groups (Blades and Richardson 2006), while conservativecritics have long lamented declines in civics knowledge,patriotism, student responsibilities, and appreciation forAmerican icons (Brown 1977; Cheney 2001; Paige 2003).Research on social studies teachers indicates a broad—andsometimes conflicting—spectrum of views on citizenship(Anderson et al. 1997).

Within the context of these challenges and uncertain-ties, the history classroom has the potential to make valu-able contributions to citizenship preparation—but only if

Address correspondence to Thomas Hammond, College of Ed-ucation, Lehigh University, Iacocca Hall, A119, 111 ResearchDrive, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA. E-mail: hammond@lehigh.edu

done consciously. History educators Sarah Drake Brownand Frederick Brown assert that “civics must be centralto history courses” (2006, 13), and indeed, history educa-tion shares many overlapping goals with civics education,such as understanding the structure of the American gov-ernment or knowing key figures, documents, and events(Center for Civic Education 1994; National Council forthe Social Studies 1994). Civics themes typically appear inhistory courses (National Council for the Social Studies1994, 30), and analyses of American history textbooks re-veal attention to key concepts from civics education, suchas the Constitution, federalism, separation of powers, andthe three branches of government (Hahn 1999). This fo-cus on the information required for citizenship is helpful(Galston 2001), but it does not address the knottier themesof civics, such as the challenges of civic life or the roleof the citizen in a democracy (Center for Civic Education1994). If civics-infused history education is to add value, itmust address current shortcomings in civics education. Forexample, traditional civics courses may present the con-cept of citizenship in a vacuum, in which rights are equaland symmetrical (Blades and Richardson 2006, 1). Thisview ignores the fact that “democracy and diversity withinthe United States have existed in tension and contradic-tion since the nation’s founding” (Banks 2003, xi). In ahistory classroom that includes a focus on civic education,students will be made aware of the debates and strugglesover the shifting franchise, interpretations of civil libertiesand equal rights, and the evolving concept of America.Attentive, civics-infused history education provides an op-portunity to support citizenship preparation as students

Students’ Articulation of Civic Themes 55

study the “ongoing invention of democracy” (Parker 2005,68) and connect it to their own growing understandings asdemocratic citizens.

But how are history teachers to include ambitious civicscontent in their classes? The history classroom is alreadya crowded stage. History teachers are harried by the de-mands of an expansive curriculum (Barton and Levstik2004; Grant 2003; Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1997). Inmany states, those curricular imperatives are enforced by ahigh-stakes testing regimen, adding to the pressures on his-tory instructors (van Hover 2006). Any additional attentionto civics content must therefore make limited demands oninstructional time and build on the practices and materialsalready in use in the history classroom.

A strategy for civics-infused history education presenteditself during a history education study in a public mid-dle school. Over the course of a year, the author observedtwo history teachers’ instruction, focusing on their use ofend-of-unit projects in which students constructed histori-cal accounts in the form of digital documentaries. In theseprojects, students wrote a script, composed an image se-quence drawn from archival photographs, and recorded avoice-over narration. The assignment included a stipula-tion that students explain the significance of their topic:“Why should this topic be remembered or studied in thepresent day?” When reviewing responses to this prompt, re-ferred to as the “So what?” prompt, the researcher observedthat some students incorporated themes associated withcivics education into their discussion of historical signifi-cance. For example, one project describing the internmentof Japanese Americans during World War II concluded thatthe experience “affected us because it taught us not to im-prison our own citizens. It also affected us by realizing thatwhat were we fighting for but freedom” (student productID #262). This statement demonstrates an understandingof the relationship between citizens and governments, as-serts a knowledge of the national ideal or purpose of “free-dom,” and exhibits national identification. These conceptseasily fit within the mainstream civics curriculum, partic-ularly the knowledge-values-skills approach (Butts 1980).In contrast, other students’ responses indicated a criticalstance that challenges the status quo, as advocated byWestheimer and Kahne (2004). For example, one groupwriting about cultural conflicts on the Great Plains pointedout the historical and ongoing injustices of the reservationsystem imposed on Native Americans: “[W]e pushed theIndians from their land. . . . If we give the Indians theirlands back, we can make peace with them. However, wewon’t give them their land back. They are stuck on theirreservations” (student product ID #5028).

The history teachers’ practice of requiring studentsto construct their own determination of the signifi-cance of historical information provides an opening forcivics-infused history education. To explore the possi-bilities of this technique, the following questions wereaddressed:

1. What beliefs about history education and its connectionwith civics do these teachers hold?

2. What observed classroom practices by these teachersrevealed or obscured these beliefs?

3. What themes from civics education are present in stu-dents’ final responses to the “So what?” prompt?

Participants and Context

The research was conducted in a middle school in a mid-sized urban community in central Virginia. The partici-pating teachers are members of the same team of historyinstructors. Both are second-career teachers, enrolling inteacher education programs after working in the serviceindustry. The team leader is white, female, and had morethan fifteen years of experience teaching elementary andmiddle-level students. The other teacher is white, male, andin his second year as an instructor. Each teacher workedwith six classes of students per day, with a total of approx-imately eighty-five students per teacher. The classes weretracked into low-, middle-, and high-achievement groupsbased on reading level. Approximately half of the studentswere African American and the other half white, with asmall minority identified as Hispanic, Asian, or other. Sev-eral classes included ESL students—approximately 5 per-cent of the total—who often were recent immigrants. Theschool serves predominantly middle- and lower-income stu-dents, and more than half the student body is eligible forfree or reduced-price lunch.

The curriculum covered U.S. history from 1877 to thepresent (Virginia Department of Education 2001). The dig-ital documentary projects were completed over the courseof four different units of instruction: post-ReconstructionAmerica, the early twentieth century, World War II, andthe civil rights era. Each unit employed the digital docu-mentary assignment as a culminating project to review aspecific topic within the unit. As an example, the projecttopics for the World War II unit included the Holo-caust, the Manhattan Project, Japanese American intern-ment, D-day, the Tuskegee Airmen, life on the homefront, and so forth. For each topic, the teacher com-piled a set of images and documents from online archives.Students working on the topic of Japanese Americaninternment, for example, had access to selections fromAnsel Adams’s famous series of photographs (availablein the Library of Congress’s American Memory exhibitat www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/109 anse.html) taken at theManzanar relocation camp in 1942. Each image was ac-companied by contextual information (titles, dates, cap-tions, etc.). Working in small groups of two or three (or, insome cases, individually), students used these images andtheir class notes to compose a brief digital documentaryrunning between one and three minutes in length. Eachdocumentary went through two or more drafts as studentsrevised their script and image sequence. Between drafts,

56 Hammond

the teachers reviewed students’ work and commented ontheir progress. Each round of projects took approximatelyfive forty-five-minute class periods to complete. No groupof students made a digital documentary more than onceduring the four units; because of the design of the his-tory education research, only three class sections workedon a digital documentary at any one time while the othersections completed PowerPoint presentations as their cul-minating project.

Data Collection and Analysis

To answer the research questions, the researcher reviewedfield notes from observations of more than one hundredclass sessions, as well as the documents and assessmentsused in the classes, transcriptions of four hours of inter-views with the teachers, and the eighty-four historical ac-counts produced by the students over the course of theyear. Because these historical accounts were produced us-ing an online digital documentary tool, PrimaryAccess (seeFerster, Hammond, and Bull 2006), the researcher was ableto review multiple drafts of the students’ work as well asformative feedback from the teachers. The first step was toseparate out nonresponses; twenty-two of the eighty-fourprojects (approximately 25 percent) did not address the “Sowhat?” prompt and were therefore excluded from the anal-ysis. The PowerPoint-based projects were also excluded; theassignment had included the “So what?” prompt, but al-most all of the presentations either ignored the question orelse restated it—“What did we learn? Why is it important?”[student product ID ppt6.7]—without providing an answer.

No single existing framework for citizenship educationor history education provided a suitable theory to guidethe analysis, so the researcher followed grounded theoryas the appropriate vehicle to “build rather than test the-ory” (Strauss and Corbin 1998, 13) regarding civics in thehistory classroom. The researcher conducted a line-by-linecoding of the field notes, documents, interview transcripts,and student-generated historical accounts following theconstant-comparative method. Although the coding pro-cess was informed primarily by the research context (i.e.,the curriculum framework, classroom observations, andteacher interviews), the researcher also drew on the litera-ture base for citizenship education (Anderson et al. 1997;Butts 1980; Center for Civic Education 1994; Parker 2005;Westheimer and Kahne 2004) as well as research on historyeducation (Barton and Levstik 2004; Lee 2005; Seixas 1994;Sterns, Seixas, and Wineburg 2000; Wineburg 2001). Fol-lowing the initial analysis, the researcher grouped relatedcodes to produce categories and, when necessary, subcat-egories. For example, many students’ accounts mentionedequality, but some used the term in the context of equalityamong groups (e.g., racial or gender equality) whereas oth-ers addressed individual equality before the law. The mostprominent categories—whether the most frequent or the

most unique—provided the basis for the findings. Thesefindings were then interrogated for disconfirming evidenceand alternative explanations.

Findings

The analysis of the data provided four findings. The firstfinding addresses the first two research questions, observ-ing a divergence between teachers’ beliefs and practices.The last three findings address the third research question,exploring themes presented in students’ final digital docu-mentaries.

Finding regarding teachers’ beliefs and practices: Theteachers viewed citizenship preparation as a goal of theirhistory instruction, but this goal was not explicitly practicedduring classroom instruction

During the interviews, the teachers expressed a desire tohelp students connect the present with historical eventsand become “morally conscious” citizens, “not only just inthe United States but in the world” (interview, January 25,2007). However, during the observed classroom instructionand in the teacher-prepared materials used during class-room instruction, these goals were not visible. Instead, theemphasis was on knowledge of historical content: “Whathappened on December 7, 1941?” (classroom observation,March 29, 2006). This emphasis on historical informationand fact-recall was attributed to the curriculum frameworkand testing regimen (Virginia Department of Education2001 and 2002). Indeed, the curriculum framework has re-ceived high marks from the Fordham Foundation for itsfocus on factual knowledge (Stern 2003, 81), and the end-of-year high-stakes test is predominantly a fact-recall as-sessment (van Hover 2006). The curriculum framework forthe course contains the word citizen exactly once, in thecontext of the civil rights movement (Virginia Departmentof Education 2001, 185). The testing blueprint for the end-of-year assessment identifies five “civics and economics”standards; of the five, four focus on economics (VirginiaDepartment of Education 2002, 4). It is unsurprising, there-fore, that the teachers’ classroom instructional patterns didnot actively address citizenship preparation but, instead,focused on building students’ content knowledge.

The teachers’ inclusion of the “So what?” prompt dur-ing the end-of-unit project invited—but did not require—acivic perspective from their students. The prompt also brokeaway from the focus on factual knowledge and introducedcritical thinking, specifically students’ “ability to make con-nections between past and present” (Virginia Departmentof Education 2001, 154). In examining the teacher feed-back provided to the students during the project, however,the same focus on historical content emerged: the vast ma-jority of teacher comments addressed students’ historicalinformation rather than their responses to the “So what?”

Students’ Articulation of Civic Themes 57

prompt and emphasized historical understanding ratherthan civic awareness. For example, in a project about lifeon the home front during World War II, the students choseto focus on how the war broke down racial and genderbarriers. The teacher’s formative feedback sought to re-fine their script’s historical accuracy, for example: “AfricanAmericans were always ABLE to be hired . . . the problemwas they weren’t always hired . . . typically white workerswere given first choice” (student product ID #316). A morecivics-oriented response would, perhaps, have directed thestudents to consider the impact of economic changes on thecivic community. The teachers’ desire to address civic com-petence accords with the broad aims of social studies educa-tors (National Council for the Social Studies 1994; Parker2005) and some history educators (Barton and Levstik2004), but their enacted classroom curriculum reflected thecontent knowledge emphasis of the local history curricu-lum (Virginia Department of Education 2001).

Student finding 1: Despite the curricular focus on history,students’ assertions of significance went beyond strictlyhistorical explanations

Even though the textbook, curriculum framework, andclassroom instruction emphasized a narrative view of his-tory, not all students framed their responses to the “Sowhat?” prompt within this paradigm. Some students didstay within the conventions of history as narrative—thestatement “Pearl Harbor changed America by leading itinto World War 2” (student product ID #362) places theevent’s significance squarely within the larger structure ofthe military-political narrative. In contrast, other students’statements went beyond the nation-story: “We all should re-member this gruesome battle [D-day] so that no one has tolive through such a disturbing event. To prevent somethinglike this from ever happening again, the United Nationswas formed, and it is critical that it is fully-functional toprevent battles on such a scale” (student product ID #363).These students are asserting significance based on an em-pathetic response (Seixas 1994; Barton and Levstik 2004),introducing the formation of an international cooperativeassociation (the United Nations), and describing its pur-pose and function. A minority of students who answeredthe “So what?” prompt limited themselves to strictly histor-ical explanations; the vast majority (more than 90 percent)referenced concepts appropriate for civics education.

Student finding 2: In students’ explanations of significance,themes from citizenship education were present, althoughnot as prominent as themes from history education

Themes from both citizenship education and history edu-cation were visible in students’ responses to the “So what?”prompt. However, references to citizenship themes, such asattention to cultural pluralism or social justice, were lessprominent. Of the eighty-four projects, sixteen made state-

ments of values or beliefs (e.g., “You should know howbrave your country is,” Student product ID #270); fifteenmentioned racial or gender equality and thirteen discussedproblem-solving strategies (such as the formation of theUnited Nations). One note of interest is that not all civilrights projects touched on citizenship themes! For exam-ple, one group’s project on Rosa Parks concluded, “If RosaParks had not refused to get off the bus then Martin LutherKing Jr. wouldn’t have existed to us. He would have beenany other old minister trying to fight discrimination” (stu-dent product ID #1012). In this instance, the students placeParks’s significance in terms of what she did in raising theprofile of King, elevating the young preacher above the sta-tus of “any other old minister.” What was a mass strugglefor racial equality has been transmuted into a narrative offamous individuals.

Research on historical understandings has identifiedcommon patterns, such as the conception of history asprogress (Barton and Levstik 2004; Loewen 1995), thepersonalization of historical events (Barton 1997), and adeficit model of the past (Lee 2005). All eighty-four finalproducts produced codes that connected to history edu-cation research, with the most prominent being nationalprogress (appearing in twenty projects). Other themes in-cluded national identification (twelve projects), “learninglessons from history” (ten projects), and the personaliza-tion of historical events (nine projects). Some statementsappeared to be a very natural outgrowth of specific top-ics. For example, in a middle school student’s discussion ofRosa Parks, a statement that “Rosa Parks changed the waypeople were treated and have equal rights because she di-den’t [SIC] give up her seat for a white man” (student prod-uct ID #937) is not unexpected. The assertion exemplifiesBarton’s finding that students look “solely to individual ac-tions and intentions to explain what happened in the past”(1997, 311), but this personalization is a natural responsewhen prompted to explain, “Why should this topic [RosaParks] be remembered or studied in the present day?”

Student finding 3: Within students’ references to citizenshipthemes, some understandings were more prominent thanothers

When students’ citizenship themes were unpacked andscrutinized, differences emerged. For example, fifteenprojects referenced equality, but the concept was placed inthe context of groups (i.e., equal rights) far more frequentlythan individuals’ rights (equality before the law). Further-more, the concept of equality between groups was appliedto race far more frequently than to gender, and never toclass or sexual orientation. These differences correspond tothe emphases in instruction: across the four units studied, avariety of topics addressed African Americans’ struggle forequality (e.g., Jim Crow laws, Booker T. Washington and W.E. B. DuBois, the Tuskegee airmen, the civil rights move-ment) whereas women’s rights were addressed only twice,

58 Hammond

once directly (in projects on the Equal Rights Amendmentand the National Organization for Women) and once indi-rectly (life on the home front during World War II).

Discussion and Limitations

The teachers’ use of the digital documentary project andthe “So what?” prompt changed the instructional land-scape of the history classroom for both the teachers andthe students. For the teachers, despite their context of ahistory-as-facts (Wineburg 2001) curriculum and assess-ment paradigm (Virginia Department of Education 2001,2002, and 2006), the prompt allowed them to introduce aform of historical thinking into their practice, connectingboth past and present. For students, the prompt acted asan invitation to move beyond the curricular objectives ofhistorical content knowledge and to apply a civic lens tothe discussion of the past.

Students’ answers to the prompt provided a unique win-dow into their ideas and values, and peering through thiswindow provided a very different impression of their un-derstandings. The students’ formulation of historical eventsand their significance could be startling, as in the stu-dent who placed Rosa Parks’s significance in the context ofthe rise of Martin Luther King Jr. The statement reducesthe civil rights movement to key events and figures andfails to articulate any of the larger ideas addressed duringclassroom instruction, such as collective action and civildisobedience. In contrast, a student writing about AdolfHitler drew parallels with Saddam Hussein, bringing incurrent events. These understandings rarely surface in classdiscussion—or at least not in such a nuanced form—andare certainly not visible in students’ responses on the end-of-unit multiple choice test.

The prompt also allowed students to enter into a muchmore personal relationship with the content. When writingabout the civil rights movement, one student observed that

If everything was still segregated like it was in the 1950s and60s then I probably wouldnt have even been born becausei have a white mom and a black dad. Even if I had beenborn my life would be completely different. I would go toa school with all black students and have to walk to schoolor take a city bus which would still be segregated. . . . Mostof the people in my generation lives would be changed.(student product ID 954)

This answer not only connects the past with the present—as called for by the curriculum framework—but connectsthe past with the student’s personal life. Other students en-tered into others’ lives, expressing sympathy with internedJapanese Americans or vividly describing the challengesfacing women during World War II: “Not knowing if yourhusband or son is still alive and then having to work twice ashard because all the men have gone to war. What would youdo if this was your life?” (student product ID 365). These

examples of personal connections are not readily affordedby master narratives of political and military events, butthey emerged as a result of the “So what?” prompt duringthe digital documentary project.

Based on the findings described above, teachers andteacher educators should consider integrating the “Sowhat?” prompt (and similar exercises) into classroom dis-cussion and student writing. In this study, the use of theprompt did not detract from the pursuit of the history cur-riculum and required minimal time and attention from theteacher. However, the instructional payoffs—in students’articulation of civic themes, connections between past andpresent, personal engagement with the past, considerationof others’ perspectives, and so forth—were significant forboth the purposes of history education and citizenshippreparation. With more sustained attention (e.g., repeateduse of the prompt throughout the school year) and thetargeting of specific themes (democratic practices, equal-ity among groups, equality before the law), students canexperience a more fully formed combination of civics andhistory instruction (Brown and Brown 2006).

The tactic of the “So what?” prompt is not without itslimitations in its ability to integrate citizenship themes intohistory education. First, some topics within the curricu-lum may more readily lend themselves to the tactic thanothers—students can more clearly discern a “So what?”about the Holocaust than about the Spanish AmericanWar, for example. Second, some students responded to theprompt more enthusiastically than others, as displayed bythe contrast between students who imaginatively enteredthe past (e.g., the quotation considering women’s lives dur-ing World War II, above) and those who remained within anarrative of events and individuals. Finally, different teach-ers will have varying levels of success with the prompt aswell. Of the twenty-two nonresponses to the “So what?”prompt, eighteen were from one teacher’s students andonly four from the other teacher’s. Given that the studentsin both teachers’ classrooms were roughly equivalent (i.e.,similar demographic distribution, class sizes, and track lev-els), the disparity in the response rate may stem from theteacher, and not the students or the topics.

Conclusion

History teachers and social studies teacher educatorsshould consider the opportunities presented by the “Sowhat?” prompt, whether in the context of a digital docu-mentary project or in another format, such as a dramaticreenactment or poster activity. The prompt can encouragehistory teachers to engage students in the big ideas of his-tory and civics, and the responses can provide teachers witha more complete understanding of their students’ percep-tions and associations. Finally, given forethought, teacherscan engage students in a rich discussion of civic ideals and

Students’ Articulation of Civic Themes 59

the forging of a democratic identity within the context ofhistory instruction.

This study presents only a limited exploration of theconcept of the civics-infused history education. The stu-dents experienced, at most, an incidental contact with con-scious, intentional civics education within the history class-room. The teachers did not employ the “So what?” promptthroughout the year, but only during project work. Stu-dents’ responses to the prompts were not used as the basisfor further instruction or as starting points for class discus-sion. Further study, observing a more sustained, intentionaluse of the technique, is necessary to more fully explore itsvalue for a civics-infused history course.

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