Article Review

My article was Matthew Bradshaw’s article “Creating Controversy in the Classroom: Making Progress with Historical Significance.” It discusses effective ways to teach historical significance. He says that teachers should not be telling students what historical events and characters are significant, but rather allow them to discover historical significance for themselves so they can make their own judgments on history. To promote the absorption of knowledge, which he sees as essential for making historical judgements, he suggests the use of mnemonics and scaffolding. Bradshaw theorizes that the benefits of discovering historical significance for oneself are that you would be able see for yourself if the event/person was truly significant and the person is more likely to consider something truly significant if they make up their own mind about it.
This article is relevant because as teachers, we will frequently be assessing and describing the historical significance of events and people to convey their relevance and importance to our class. Bradshaw does not use any evidence to prove that his way is in fact better or has had a larger impact on a sample of students.
To implement Bradshaw’s strategy for finding historical significance, you would have to do a series of demonstrations before the students would be able to use Bradshaw’s mnemonics and find historical significance themselves. Once they are able to find significance, it would help their retention of the event for tests and long term memory because the event or person would have meaning and significance to themselves.