Using artifacts to teach social studies: What’s the story?

Credit: Melynda Jarratt, New Brunswick
Sports Hall of Fame, 2015

By Cynthia Wallace-Casey

PhD candidate

University of New Brunswick

(Fredericton)

In the interest of expanding upon my previous blog contributions, I’d like to introduce you to a project I’m currently working on, which involves object-based learning. Collaborating with a provincial history museum (The New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame), we are currently developing a unit of study that focuses specifically upon artifacts, sport, and war. Through a series of six lesson plans, teachers will be able to access a variety of primary and second sources, to compare and extend upon the artifact source, and thus reconstruct a “story” around each individual owner. This involves adopting a particular disciplinary approach to the past, which is commonly referred to as “material history” or “material culture.”

Material history, as often practiced in object-centered history museums, represents a unique approach to historical inquiry. As Hood (2009) has pointed out, “most historians are not equipped to do object-centered research” (p.177). For this reason, the challenge of “reading” an object that does not contain words, can be daunting for most anyone, if they have not learned the craft of material history inquiry.

With my own dissertation research involving seventh grade students, I found that participants particular enjoyed the sense of unbridled wonder that came from approaching their museum as a collection source. Object-based inquiry, although challenging for all, was also doable by all. Students quickly picked up on the technique, and in the process broke away from the official museum story, to create their own sense of meaning – a meaning that was grounded in evidence.

Hope Restored: New Brunswick's Flag Turns 50

By Cynthia Wallace-Casey
PhD candidate,
University of New Brunswick
(Fredericton)

February 24 marks the 50^th anniversary of New Brunswick’s flag.  This historic semicentennial follows less than two weeks behind the adoption of Canada’s national flag.  Unlike in Ottawa’s House of Commons, however, where the flag debate spiraled down in some instances to accusations of political partisanship and linguistic slurs, the development of New Brunswick’s flag took on far less controversial tones.

This is because New Brunswick had already been assigned armorial bearings by Queen Victoria in 1868; a design that was to "…be borne for the said respective Provinces on seals, shields, banners, flags or otherwise, according to the laws of arms."[1]