“I found my grandfather!”: Students researching their family history.

Combing the stacks of the 
New Brunswick
Provincial Archives

by Cynthia Wallace-Casey,
PhD Candidate
University of New Brunswick
(Fredericton)

Last December, the THEN/HiER blog was abuzz with interesting discussions about family history in the classroom. As my colleagues have pointed out, family history can “maximize student engagement and learning” (Maddie Knickerbocker, December 3, 2013); it can “build an enduring and evolving connection to the past” (Heather McGregor, December 5, 2013); it can “serve as entry points into the bigger picture of history” (Kate Ireland, December 12, 2013); and can “open the door of possibility for building research skills” (Jesika Arseneau, December 20, 2013). All of these arguments are valid and worthy. They speak of history as a construct of the beholder—assembled from traces and accounts—that, with a little bit of guidance, might enable students to re-construct the narratives that frame their lives. With each of these arguments, however, the writers have concluded their entry with a challenging question.  This is what I would like to address.

This month, I have been given the rare opportunity to work with a group of 11 middle school students, helping them to research their family history. This practicum has evolved out of my dissertation, which relates to ways in which middle school students remember their past.  Hence, as part of a school-wide enrichment program, one morning a week, over the next four weeks, I will be attempting to integrate family histories into students’ social studies. I’d like to share with you my experience of leading this group of students through the archival maze of family identities.  In so doing, I hope to add to the discussion around benefits and challenges associated with this approach to history education.

Because family history research can be equated to looking for a needle in a haystack, I have organized my lesson plans around four broad themes:  What I already know; What I want to know; What I can find out; and What I have learned. As a result, the students are being requested to undertake a bit of family sleuthing each week; expand upon these clues by consulting primary sources in the archives or online; and draw meaning from the subsequent evidence they discover. The final project will involve creating a memory book that documents what they have found, what it means to the individual, and how it connects to larger events in Canadian history. Such an approach is not without its challenges however.

First of all, it is important to remember that for these students, “history” is anything that has happened before their birth, and “the past” includes memories of their own childhood.  So, in this sense, family history means working backwards from their birth, in approximately the year 2000. Likewise, when they speak of their grandparents, they are referencing a birth-range between c. 1940 to 1960. This poses a challenge, because, although many of the students have wonderful stories to tell about their family’s distant past (stories that have been handed down through the generations), it is extremely difficult to engage in archival research unless they have a specific name and a specific date with which to work.  To make matters worse, in many provinces, records of birth for this time period are not available (unless one wishes to pay a fee and wait several months for a written response).  So, in such cases, vague references to grandparents are all that we have to begin with. Telephone directories (available on ancestry.ca) are proving to be extremely valuable for this purpose, because they enable students to make that first connection with a past that stretches beyond their immediate memory (although even this source is not universally beneficial to all students). Ultimately then, my first challenge is to help each student to find someone in their family who was born before 1922, because with this information they can tap into the most recently available census returns of 1921.

Secondly, although I am only working with 11 students (and assisted by a parent volunteer), undertaking this type of activity with an entire class would be extremely difficult. Not impossible however, and not unfeasible either; because, with the appropriate scaffolding tool anything is possible. What I am finding, is that scaffolding tools are required that can be quickly adjusted to meet the specific learning needs of each individual student—as their unique research problem arises; and although there are endless streams of generic teaching resources to be found on the Internet, with exception to the tools developed by Library and Archives Canada (which provide a good start), very few Internet resources actually enable students to engage in serious research that is both genealogical and historical in nature.

So, in order to sift through the haystack of records available online, while also accommodating diversity in prior knowledge along with learning differentiations, I have found it necessary to design tools that enable every individual student to unlock a ‘clue’ about their unique past, from a large variety of archival sources. This is no small feat, since the online archival sources for each province within Canada are woefully inconsistent, and knowledge of digital records in other jurisdictions (outside of Canada) require an expertise that I do not possess. Hence, my second challenge is to ensure that no student be excluded from the inquiry process; and that every student experience success (in some way) of finding something relating to their family.

Undoubtedly—and very unlike the popular television advertisements, in which one click of a mouse opens the doors to your past—these students are discovering that there are no easy answers. Instead, they are learning that family history research requires precise examination, perseverance, patience, and meticulous record-keeping.  Along the way, they are also experiencing (first-hand) how historians ‘piece together’ the past from seemingly minuet scraps of evidence.  Yet, at the same time, they are reaping great satisfaction; because within those eureka moments—when someone pipes out: “I found my grandfather!”—they are beginning to feel exactly what it’s like to be a researcher. These are the real-life moments that, in the words of Ted Christou (2010), confirm history to be “sometimes messy, often tentative, secretively delightful, and wonderfully exciting”.

I look forward to sharing our journey with you…

References:
Ancestry.ca (February 1, 2014). Ancestry.ca. Retrieved from http://home.ancestry.ca/?o_iid=41014&o_lid=41014&o_sch=Web+Property 

Arseneau, J. (December 20, 2013). Family history as a gateway to learning about archives [Web blog post]. Retrieved from http://thenhier.ca/en/content/family-history-gateway-learning-about-archives 

Christou, T. (2010). “Get thee to the archive: The teaching of history and the doing of history”. Education letter: A publication of the faculty of education and the education alumni committee. Fall/Winter, 15-17.

Ireland, K. (December 12, 2013).Considering family histories in the elementary classroom [Web blog post]. Retrieved from http://thenhier.ca/en/content/considering-family-histories-elementary-classroom

Knickerbocker, M. (December 3, 2013). Family histories in the colonial classroom [Web blog post]. Retrieved from http://thenhier.ca/en/content/family-histories-colonial-classroom

Library and Archives Canada (February 1, 2014). Genealogy and family history: Youth corner. Retrieved from http://thenhier.ca/en/content/family-histories-colonial-classroom

McGregor, H. (December 5, 2013).Using identity, family history and family artifacts to connect with the past [Web blog post]. Retrieved from http://thenhier.ca/en/content/using-identity-family-history-and-family-artifacts-connect-past

“Because, although I don't know much about it now, I really want to know more about my family.”

by Cynthia Wallace-Casey,
PhD Candidate
University of New Brunswick (Fredericton)

After 15 adventuresome weeks of classroom fieldwork, I am nearing the end of the data collection phase of my research. It’s been an invigorating experience, working with a group of 5 community history museum volunteers, as well as 24 grade seven students, and their teacher, to explore how a heritage community can assist middle school students in deepening their historical consciousness. By “deepening”, of course, I am referring to Jörn Rüsen’s (1993, 2004) typology of historical consciousness—in particular, what Rüsen has labeled as a “genetic” sense of how we know what we [think we] know, and how this relates to our temporal relationship with the past.

Through my research, I am particularly interested in exploring how 12 - 13 year-olds perceive the concept of “truth” in history; and in turn, how they may be empowered to reach their own understandings about the past, using museum collections as tools for historical thinking. As a result, I have adopted a phenomenological single case study design (Yin, 2009) that is bounded by time, as well as by the formal arrangement of a seventh-grade classroom, and a specific community history museum fieldwork experience.

In this blog entry, it is not my intention to discuss the details of the fieldwork experience. Instead, I’d like to reveal to you a little bit about the importance my students place upon the past.

At the outset of developing my research design, I pondered whether this particular case study could be considered “typical” or “exceptional” of other Canadians. As Bent Flyvberg (2001) has asserted, both breadth and depth are necessary elements of research (p. 87). Hence, Flyvberg has argued, both are equally valuable, because both work hand in hand “for a sound development of social science” (p. 87). Since I have found this argument to be very compelling, when developing my research design, I turned to the well-known national survey Canadians and Their Pasts to establish breadth against which I could compare my case study of seventh-graders.

Launched in 2006 (with data collection completed in 2011), Canadians and Their Pasts, represents an elaborate alliance of 7 academic researchers, 19 collaborators, 6 universities, and 15 community partners, for the purpose of “exploring the role that history plays in the lives of Canadian citizens” (Canadians and Their Pasts, 2012). In the subsequent survey, participants were asked questions designed to: 1) measure levels of general interest in the past; 2) identify activities participants engage in that relate to the past; 3) probe how these activities aid in their understanding of the past; 4) measure the perceived trustworthiness of specific sources of information; 5) probe the relative importance of various pasts; and 6) identify participants’ individual sense(s) of the past (Conrad et al., 2007; Muise, 2008). The resulting data provides a rich profile about what adult Canadians (18 years and older) think about the past, and the role of specific sources of information in shaping their thinking.

Adopting the exact same set of survey questions as Canadians and Their Pasts, I began my phenomenological case study in January, by administering these questions to all of the case study participants. For the purposes of this blog entry, I will limit my discussion to items 1 and 5 of the original survey. Let me tell you a little bit about my seventh-graders…

With regard to interest in history, the largest majority (63%) of the 12 - 13 year-olds reported that they are somewhat interested in history. This figure is slightly above Canada’s national adult average of 50% (Conrad et al, 2010), which might suggest that more than most of the students occupy the ambiguous position of having a budding interest in history (that perhaps could just as easily be nurtured or squashed at this point in their education). It is also interesting to note that by contrast, only 18% are very interested in history. This figure places my students well below the national adult average of 34%.

With regard to the relative importance of various pasts, an overwhelming majority (69%) of the 12-13 year-olds reported that the past of their family is most important to them. This is distantly followed by the past of their country Canada (10%), and their ethnic or cultural group (7%). Students’ explanations for placing such an importance upon family past ranged from such reasoning as “Because I love my family”; to “Because I want to follow them…”; and “Because, although I don't know much about it now, I really want to know more…”. These survey figures, while slightly higher than the national adult Canadian average, are not significantly different, since 54.5 % of Canadians also place the past of their family as most important to them; while the past of their country Canada (6.5%), as well as that of their ethnic or cultural group (6.5%), remain equally lower than the student average. Interestingly, what sets my students apart from other Canadians, however, is that none of these individuals (0%, versus a national average of 3.5%) considered the past of their province as important. They also did not seem to possess any concept of a regional identity.

As to how these findings relate to historical consciousness is another discussion for another day. Also of note is how my students perceive “truth” and complexity within history. In the interest of providing you with a little carrot… preliminary findings certainly suggest that, like many Canadians, these students believe that museums will present them with the truth about what happened in the past… But such discussions must wait for another day. Currently, I am looking forward to conducting a post-survey with the students, to see how their perceptions of history and the past may (or may not) have changed as a result of the experience of doing historical thinking with a museum collection.

4 Step Reading Process for Middle Level Students and Primary Documents - Ohio Resource Center

A recent post to teachinghistory offers a four step process for teachers to use with middle school students in their analysis of primary documents. It offers an approach that highlights the more complex historical thinking skills found at the middle school level.

In the illustration provided, students analyze the texts of four speeches given by President Jackson around the time of the Indian Removal Act. Each text, along with its accompanying key questions, is included.

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There are also free posters for downloading - available here...

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