Document Based Inquiry (DBI) and Historical Process Constructs (HPC) Definitions
I have attempted to build the concepts of "care and engagement" in each of the constructs.
I have attempted to build the concepts of "care and engagement" in each of the constructs.
“Without imagination as a study-device, the learning of history becomes well-nigh impossible, for the information furnished to us is rendered unintelligible. We are unable to relate to it in any meaningful manner. We assess it in a mechanical way, devoid of image, sound and feel. Our attempt to understand it leads to a dead-end for we cannot leap forward from the stale fact before us and relate it to other facts beyond it. Without imagination we cannot compare, distinguish and separate; we cannot know the difference between the particular and the general. In order to study history, we need to avoid the mechanical, on the one hand, and the fantastic, on the other. In other words, we ought to eschew both lack of imagination and fantasy-directed imagination; the first does not allow us to proceed forward while the latter leads us to the realm of the unreal…History is the province both of art and science, of the contemplative and the concrete. To know it, to understand it, to relate to it, we need imagination; an imagination that does not create a new world, but rather re-creates an old one.” (3)
Significance
This critical thinking process evaluates what was significant about selected past events, people, and developments that had impacted or changed the present and possibly the future. The determination of significance has to take into account the personal, the group, the community, and/or society at large.(1)
Evidence
Accounts of the past are based on historical evidence. Historical evidence can take a variety of forms. Among the most important types of historical evidence are primary sources. Primary sources consist of original documents, artifacts, or other pieces of information created at the time under study. That being said, secondary sources, those post hoc interpretations, are not to be left out. Side by side, both sources complement historical inquiry. (1)
continuity & discontinuity
“Discontinuity and continuity reflect the flow of history and the fact that some "things are no longer perceived, described, expressed, characterized, classified, and known in the same way" from one era to the next.” (2)
Cause & Consequence
Sorting out causes and consequences is one of the most common sources of difficulty—and perhaps errors—in constructing histories. Causal relationships can be hard to establish properly, especially when they are rooted in an unfamiliar and complex past. Every historical event has a flow-on effect upon things that occur after it. Such consequences can include impacts upon people, societies, beliefs or any other facet of history. The historical fallacy of using hindsight must be avoided. (1)
Perspective
Taking historical perspective means understanding the social, cultural, intellectual, and emotional settings that shaped people's lives and actions in the past. We must be careful to avoid the fallacy of presentism, interpreting the past in terms of our present day attitudes and ethical frameworks. (1)
Ethical Dimensions
What responsibilities do historical events impose upon us today? Historians tend to avoid making ethical judgments of people in the past. If the past, however, has meaning or constructed meaning, then there is an ethical judgment involved. We should expect to learn something from the past that helps us to face the ethical issues of today. In a more active sense, HPCs seek to use what we learn of the past to understand the present and to pursue positive change. This is an instrumentalist view of historical inquiry. It is one way to have us care about what happened, Paul Ricoeur's memory of care (or working memory). (1)
Reality-Directed Imagination
This HPC seeks to put the student into direct engagement with the past in part by trying to imagine what it would be like to live in the past under scrutiny.
References:
- Historical Thinking Project. historicalthinking.ca
- Foucault, M. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Vintage; Reissue edition (1994)
- Tenembaum. Yoav. “Why Historians Need Imagination” History News Network.