Historical Inquiry: A Cognitivist Approach to Teaching History

Required Skills: Cognitivist Pedagogy; Curriculum Design for Inquiry-Based Learning; Multimodal Instructional Design; Student-Centered Pedagogy; Assessment Design

A five-week unit plan modeled after the Inquiry Design Method (IDM) framework that is designed to engage high school students in a cognitive journey through historical and economic events.

Cognitivist Design FINAL.pdf

Historical Inquiry - Economic Depression and Recovery in the U.S.In Part 1 of this Inquiry, students will examine the long-term impacts of the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States and will investigate which communities were most deeply impacted by these financial crises. In Part 2, students will start to develop

Inquiry Website

The need:

An 11th-grade U.S. History unit on the Great Depression that encourages deep analysis of primary sources while still being engaging and relevant to students. This need was determined by both state standards and student feedback on their experiences in Social Studies class.

The solution:

A five-week Historical Inquiry through historical and contemporary economic events built onto a webpage where students interact with the unit curriculum. By encouraging students to actively engage with content, analyze various primary and secondary sources, and participate in group discussions, the curriculum design reflects cognitivism through inquiry-based learning that promotes the development of critical thinking skills and the construction of knowledge through active, reflective processes.

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