Text-based Learning and Reasoning

<p>History is both an academic discipline and a school subject. As a discipline it fosters a systematic way of discovering and evaluating the events of the past. As a school subject American history is a staple of middle grades and high school curricula in the United States. In higher education it is part of the liberal arts education tradition. Its role in school learning provides a context for our approach to history as a topic of learning. In reading history students engage in cognitive processes of learning text processing and reasoning. This volume touches on each of these cognitive problems -- centered on an in-depth study of college students' text learning and extended to broader issues of text understanding the cognitive structures that enable learning of history and reasoning about historical problems. <br><br> Slated to occupy a distinctive place in the literature on human cognition this volume combines at least three key features in a unique examination of the course of learning and reasoning in one academic domain -- history. The authors draw theory and analysis of text understanding from cognitive science; and focus on multiple natural texts of extended length rather than laboratory texts as well as multiple and extended realistic learning situations.<br><br> The research demonstrates that history stories can be described by causal-temporal event models and that these models capture the learning achieved by students. This text establishes that history learning includes learning a story but does not assume that story learning is all there is in history. It shows a growth in students' reasoning about the story and a linkage -- developed over time and with study -- between learning and reasoning. It then illustrates that students can be exceedingly malleable in their opinions about controversial questions -- and generally quite influenced by the texts they read. And it presents patterns of learning and reasoning within and between individuals as well as within the group of students as a whole.<br><br> By examining students' ability to use historical documents this volume goes beyond story learning into the problem of document-based reasoning. The authors show not just that history is a story from the learner's point of view but also that students can develop a certain expertise in the use of documents in reasoning.</p>