| Archives have long been peripheral resources for the elementary and secondary school classroom. Digital technologies carry the promise of strengthening the teaching role of archives. With the rise of the World Wide Web, many archives--along with libraries, museums, and other memory institutions--have digitized portions of their holdings, and some have done so in support of pre-collegiate classrooms. With an exploration of the use of primary sources in the teaching of history as its foundation, this dissertation provides a concept analysis of 24 online history teaching sites maintained by state archives and collaborative statewide digitization programs in the United States. It describes the range and extent of teaching activities used by these sites to build various aspects of one form of domain-specific cognition, "history thinking." These aspects include "epistemology and evidence," "progress and decline," "agency," "continuity and change," "significance," "empathy and moral judgment," and "narrative building." This research also analyzes the primary sources directly associated with these lessons to determine the subject eras and original formats that they represent, as well as their representation of ethnic minorities, women, and children. The research leads to a proposal for the creation of a collaboratively constructed framework for the teaching of history thinking skills through the use of primary-source-rich, inquiry-based activities. |
