Kelly in Kansas

I am an historian that is also in the world of evaluation in order to ensure that historical learning and not just "general" or "technology" learning was evaluated in some of our programs. One of the best things about Google is that if I run across a new term, I can simply google it. The only downside is terms with more than one meaning ( just like in history) and figuring out which one applies to the article and/or book you are reading. It also make it clear that students have no excuse not to consult the dictionary - especially now that some of them can even access it from their phone.

As the evaluation expectations are ramped up for Teaching American History grants, I have been researching even more of the history evaluation research available. It's wonderful that so many TAH projects have put their evaluation reports online - not only is it great public accountability, it's wonderful dissemination. I'm currently reading an article referenced in at least one of those reports that I discovered was also written by someone I have run across at professional conferences. The author was graciously willing to share his work and it looks like we will use it in our current grant applications. It is not only similar to what we have been doing all along, it brings us some comparison groups as well as incorporating all the work into a larger body of professional literature. Yuanlong Liu, Jianping Shen, Wilson J. Warren, and Lynne E. Cowart have authored an article in the journal, Teacher Development, entitled "Assessing the factorial structure of high school history teachers' perceptions on teaching American history." It's well worth a read for anyone interested in a topic.

I'm also finishing up my prep for a 3-day education presentation as part of a Gilder Lehrman Institute seminar in Wichita.