Adolescent Understanding of Communicative Intention in History Texts, a Developmental Analysis

grantor: University of TorontoMany studies have shown that while high school students are generally competent in grasping the surface content of historical text, they fail to recognize historical accounts as reconstructions, based on an author's belief, a belief based on either factual evidence or on opinion. This exploratory study assessed developmental changes in (a) adolescents' ability to distinguish between factual and inferential claims made by the author, (b) the relationship between recognition of the stance/attitude/intention of the author and the ability to evaluate the quality of statements presented as evidence and (c) adolescents' ability to denote, by means of cognitive, metarepresentational terms, the author's attitude towards statements used as evidence. These abilities allow students to detect the author's communicative intention in historical text and acknowledge both what the author meant by the text and what message the author wanted the reader to take from the text. Ninety-two (92) subjects, drawn from grade 9 (25), grade 13 (42), and first year college (25), answered written questions about an important Canadian historical event recounted from either a French Canadian or an English Canadian perspective. The data indicated that students appeared to reason differently in dealing with the two accounts. In this Toronto based sample, most students were more inclined to disregard the potential for bias in the account written from the English Canadian perspective. Secondly, students' detection of bias, as shown by their ability to evaluate the quality of the evidence statements, correlated with their recognition of the stance or attitude of the author towards the text. Thirdly, students' ability to denote the attitude of the author towards particular statements, by using appropriate cognitive terms related to their evaluation of evidence. The findings indicated that students' ability to identity the rhetorical properties of text may be an important cognitive component of historical understanding. Recognition of the author "behind the text" seemed to facilitate a more objective evaluation of the acceptability of evidence in both accounts and allowed some students to evaluate evidence presented with less interference from prior belief bias.Ph.D