Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Annotated Bibliography
Booth, Alan. Teaching History at the University: enhancing Learning and Understanding.
London: Routledge. 2003.
In Teaching History at the University, Booth challenges historians to reframe the way
history is taught at an undergraduate level. Specifically, Booth explains that teaching should be
rewarded, treated as a scholarly skill, and more engaged in pedagogical techniques. The book
deliberately places the professor and student within context of learning history at a higher critical
level as opposed to traditional models of teaching. Booth thoughtfully, and most intriguingly,
expands on how a student themselves perceive history and learn it. In doing so, on of the books
primary goals is to switch the perspective of a professor to learn not only how to effectively
Burton, Antoinette. A Primer for Teaching World History: Ten Design Principles. Durham:
In the process of teaching world history, one is met with dilemmas about course content
and breadth. Burton takes the challenge to design ten principles to aid in the negotiation of such
dilemmas for educators teaching their world history surveys. Most interesting, Burton contends
this, one can take an approach that focuses less on civilization and more on broader themes of
history. I also particularly liked the section of Syllabi. This section put into perspective that the
Eng, Norman. Teaching College: The Ultimate Guide to Lecturing, Presenting, and Engaging
Students.
Teaching College provides a complicated challenge in engaging actual teachers at the
university level. While Eng seeks deconstruct the ways undergraduate education is taught, he
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places an overwhelming emphasis on how K-12 techniques could be utilized at the college level.
In some disciplines this approach could work, but in history the challenge is different. It is also
not fully discussed in the book, but we can utilize this book at face value to increase the breadth
Kelsky, Karen. The Professor is In: The Essential Guide to Turning your Ph.D. into a Job. New
York: Three Rivers Press. 2015.
In a world of bleak academic job prospects, Kelsky entices one to critically think about
earning the coveted prize of a tenure track job. The Professor is In gives valuable advice about
school. One of the best piece of advice in the book was to “stop talking like a grad student.” In
other words, Kelsky argues that in networking situations potential colleagues are not interested in
a well refined and robotic scholar. Rather, they want to know who you are and what your
dissertation does instead of what you have researched. Part of being in the academy is also being
personable and outgoing since potential departments want someone who they could work with
for several years. Kelsy also provides invaluable insights into the process of interviewing and job
talks.
Levesque, Sthepane. Thinking Historically: Educating for the Twenty-First Century. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press. 2009.
In Thinking Historically, Levesque synthesizes strategies to reorganize the methods we
choose to teach history. Levesque developed five procedural concepts each with a defined
concepts are: Historical Significance, Continuity and Change, Progress and Decline, Evidence,
and finally Historical Empathy. Each of the chapters is a focus on a concept and expands our
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notions of teaching history by involving the teacher themselves to engage in understanding the
Lindaman, Dana & Ward, Kyle. History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World
Portray U.S. History. New York: The New Press. 2006.
History Lessons is a collection of perspectives about how other countries see American
history. By framing the book this way, we see how the global world diversified the lens in which
American historical events are looked at. The authors cover a large span of history from
Columbus to WWII and the recent past. It is interesting how countries who are simply
synthesizing historical events that they themselves are not apart of, view this history and how
Loewen, James. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got
Wrong. New York: Touchstone. 2007.
Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me attempts to dismantle common assumptions and
myths about typical historical narratives. He essentially is deconstructing the notion of “hero” or
a considerable amount of time on Columbus who proves to be one of the main culprits that has
been misconstrued for generations. The book also goes over the issues of textbooks and the ways
that they lead to problems. In his examination of some of these textbooks, he finds that attention
is not equally paid to many events and that there is too much content in many high school
textbooks.
McTighe, Jay & Wiggins, Grant. Understanding by Design. Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development. 2007.
Understanding by Design takes an innovative approach in constructing pedagogical
materials. The basic premise is that when developing assignments, syllabi, and other resources, a
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teacher should understand what the goals for that material is. In that sense, any resource
produced should have certain skills and content that is transferable in knowledge. The book also
gives a lot of advice and guidance on designing that is in itself able to transfer through multiple
disciplines.