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The New World History
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by Deborah Smith Johnston
World History Center, Northeastern University
Boston, Massachusetts
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Buy This Teaching Unit ($8.00)
Students, in order to be encouraged to think about overarching global patterns and themes, need to be guided on an initial walk through processes of global study and interpretation. As students learn to move beyond basing their understanding of history on isolated civilizations and regions, they need to become comfortable with new temporal and spatial perspectives. This unit presents principles and methods that encourage linkage in the study of world history for all times and places: it addresses all time periods in the AP World History course, and all regions of the world. The unit encourages dialogue among teachers, students, the textbook, the Web, and other visual and written sources.
The seven lessons in this unit address multiple perspectives, connections of local and global history, definitions of world history, periodization, visual literacy, Habits of Mind in world history, and a synthesis of these skills. The unit can be used in the first week or so for any secondary (or college) classroom.
Student activities include drawing "mental maps" (maps of the world from memory), group discussion of a text on geographic perspectives, brainstorming on meanings of world history, conducting a critique of a textbook, visiting Web sites to develop visual literacy writing narratives on periodization, and discussing why history matters. Through these activities, students will be encouraged to question the assumptions underlying what they read and know, while applying the AP Themes and Habits of Mind.
This unit works best as the introductory unit to the AP World History course. In some schools where AP World History is a two-year course, teachers could present the unit in either or both years. Other teachers may wish to just do a few lessons from the unit initially and use the others for enrichment during the year.
Main Points of the Unit
Big Questions
Best Practices
Lesson Summary
Assessment Overview
AP World History Course Description Connections
Objectives
Big Questions
- How does perspective shape the way we view the world?
- How does one look at local history and do world history?
- What is world history?
- What is periodization and what are its advantages and disadvantages?
- How do the AP themes address major issues in world history?
- How can the AP Habits of Mind help in understanding history?
- What is meant by the concept of civilization?
Best Practices
Best Practices are teaching strategies that are interactive and involve high-level thinking skills. The appropriate Best Practices vary widely with teacher strengths, school environment, student population, and experience. But all student populations will benefit from experience with strategies showing that world history is much more than lectures, and more than a survey of facts and dates. This unit, within its individual lessons, includes the following examples of Best Practice teaching strategies:
- Read and analyze text documents
- Analyze visual documents
- Graphic organizer
- Mental mapping
- Analyze periodization
- Inner-outer circle seminar
Lesson Summary
Lesson 1. Perspective
Students will explore the idea of perspective. Beginning with assessing their own spatial view of the world by drawing maps and then looking at other map projections, they will have a sense of the power of perspective visually. In addition, they will read a short passage on worldviews for homework.
Lesson 2. Thinking Differently About the World
After a brief discussion on worldviews, students work with excerpts from the book, The Myth of Continents. Through small group questions, they utilize many of the Habits of Mind to understand some of the book's main arguments. They read a passage from The World and a Very Small Place in Africa for homework in order to introduce the connections between local and global history.
Lesson 3. What Is World History? Beginning with an event of their choosing, students will make connections between local and global history. They will then analyze quotes to discuss what world history is and is not. They will complete a Textbook Scavenger Hunt for homework.
Lesson 4. Textbook Orientation and Periodization
Through a series of questions, students will become better acquainted with their textbook as a true world historical tool. The class begins with students writing a short letter to the author based on what they found. Then, through small group discussions, the idea of periodization will be introduced. Students will complete a reading, "The Idea of Civilization in World Historical Perspective."
Lesson 5. The AP World History Themes and Visual Literacy
After brainstorming topics that might address the Themes, students will look at several Web sites and determine which of the Themes can be best seen through each image. They will fill out a chart to help organize the information and help them gain familiarity with the Themes. (Suggestions are made for classrooms where computer access is not possible.) Homework involves writing a one-page narrative on civilization based on the previous night's reading as well as the images.
Lesson 6. Civilization and the Habits of Mind Through peer review of the narratives, students will discuss the idea of civilization. They will need to identify the Themes and then will be asked to critique or challenge statements in the narratives by using the Habits of Mind. The class will then have a discussion on civilization.
Lesson 7. Synthesis
In a brief concluding lesson, students are given a quiz in which they apply the themes and the Habits of Mind. Students may be asked to choose a theme to follow through the year.
Assessment Overview
- Assessment is built in throughout this unit, culminating in the brief quiz.
- The introductory mental mapping exercise is not assessed until the end of the year formally, but it does allow the teacher to see early on were individual students are at in terms of geographic knowledge.
- The small group written work on The Myth of Continents and the chart on themes and visual literacy could be collected.
- The independent work on local and global history could be assessed, along with the Textbook Scavenger Hunt.
- The civilization narrative provides a good example of individual student writing practices.
- Peer review and discussion questions on the civilization narratives could be evaluated.
- An important element of world history classes should be class participation. Therefore, a teacher may wish to set up guidelines for students to encourage participation in class. The discussions on worldview, periodization, and Habits of Mind could then be scored.
AP World History Course Description Connections
This unit addresses all of the AP themes and all of the AP Habits of Mind, in addition to a few of the major developments.
Themes
- Impact of interaction among major societies (trade, systems of international exchange, war, and diplomacy).
- The relationship of change and continuity across the world history periods covered in this course.
- Impact of technology and demography on people and the environment (population growth and decline, disease, manufacturing, migrations, agriculture, and weaponry).
- Systems of social structure and gender structure (comparing major features within and among societies and assessing change).
- Cultural and intellectual developments and interactions among and within societies.
- Changes in functions and structures of states and in attitudes toward states and political identities (political culture), including the emergence of the nation-state (types of political organization).
Habits of Mind or Skills
- Constructing and evaluating arguments: using evidence to make plausible arguments.
- Using documents and other primary data: developing the skills necessary to analyze point of view, context, and bias, and to understand and interpret information.
- Developing the ability to assess issues of change and continuity over time.
- Enhancing the capacity to handle diversity of interpretations through analysis of context, bias, and frame of reference.
- Seeing global patterns over time and space while also acquiring the ability to connect local developments to global ones and to move through levels of generalizations from the global to the particular.
- Developing the ability to compare within and among societies, including comparing societies' reactions to global processes.
- Developing the ability to assess claims of universal standards yet remaining aware of human commonalities and differences; putting culturally diverse ideas and values in historical context, not suspending judgment but developing understanding.
Major Developments
- Applications to each course section
Objectives
Content objectives:
By the end of the unit students will have an understanding of:
- the fluidity of spatial constructs and theories (why ideas like "Europe" and the Asiatic Mode of Production are of limited use in world history);
- what world history is and how it might differ from European or American history;
- periodization and its role in world history narratives;
- an African case showing how to see world history through local experience;
- what civilization means (or can be construed to mean); and
- why history matters.
Skill objectives:
By the end of the unit students will be able to:
- identify map projections and worldviews;
- know how they see the world (through mental mapping);
- use their textbook effectively;
- participate in class and small group discussions critiquing arguments and applying new information;
- apply the AP Themes;
- utilize the AP Habits of Mind.
Materials
- Textbook for each student (any one will do)
- Blank paper, 11" x 17"
- Colored pencils or pens (two colors for each student)
- Access to the Web for students or a good quality printer to print out images
- Handouts
General Editors: Patrick Manning and Deborah Smith Johnston; World History Center, Northeastern University
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