Artifacts: Feudalism Faces Student Work & Analytic Data Table
Click here for Extended analysis of artifact
Assignment: Draw a thought bubble that explains what each person—a noble, a knight, and a peasant—thinks about the Bubonic Plague. Then write a first-person narrative about the plague from one of the three perspectives.
Student Work:
Data table:
KEY: None: 0; Some: 1; All: 2
Analysis
Students’ work on the Feudalism Faces exercise demonstrates some basic strengths and weaknesses in my approach to teaching about “perspective” in history. I see evidence that most students were able and willing to use the first person to refer to a perspective other than their own, and most students were able to borrow facts and ideas from our previous classes to construct creative renderings of the perspective they chose. To support to my generalizations about students’ work, I created a basic coding scheme for this artifact that allows me to see the consistency of a set of criteria among the examples.
I coded both parts of the activity: the face sketches and thought bubbles, as well as the first-person narratives. My methodology for creating the coding scheme was first to read through all of the examples for first impressions; second was to re-read each example while making a list of details that stuck out to me, such as “Did this person maintain the first person throughout the entire assignment?”; “Did this person include facts we studied in class?”; “Did this person grant themselves some creative agency in weaving their narrative?” and “Did this person fulfill the assignment?” (listed above in “Context” section.) Next, I created a table of criteria that I thought I wanted to collect, and made a first pass through the samples. After one coding attempt, I revised my evaluative measure from a simple “0” and “1” for “incomplete” and “complete,” to a more specific “0,” “1,” and “2” for “none,” “some,” and “all.” In my final collection of data, shown below, many patterns stand out that I would not have noticed if I had only analyzed the examples individually. I must note that my attention in this analysis extends beyond the assessment criteria that I outlined in the assignment for students—my coding reflects both an interest in whether students understood and completed the assignment and a curiosity about what I can learn about students’ ability to reason in a first-person other than themselves. The latter is a focus that emerged from the data.
The data shows me that students were able and willing to put themselves in the first person to explore historical perspectives on the decline of feudalism, but that the depth of their understanding of the topic was limited to the individual’s perspective, and did not explore systemic causes. In the data on the “Faces and Thought Bubbles,” almost all students work demonstrated a 2 for the criteria, but the data on the “Narratives” shows a decrease in application (if not understanding) as the criteria get more detailed. All students used the first person, all but one identified the perspective from which they were writing, and all but one constructed a first-person narrative that was true to the perspective they had identified. All students used facts from class that described the physical impact of the bubonic plague on individuals (“purplish black spots” shows up numerous times), and some students included additional details about medieval towns. However, only half the samples show evidence of an understanding of hierarchy in medieval society, although that had been a signficiant part of the previous week’s lessons. My inclusion of this criteria could be unfair, because I did not include the word “hierarchy” in the assignment for the written narrative, but its periodic absence struck me during my analysis. The most striking data is all but two students’ failure to “Make a prediction about how the decline of feudalism will affect that person’s role in medeival society,” which was an explicit part of the instructions for the assignment. Should I have exchanged “the decline of feudalism” for “the Bubonic Plague,” in this prompt? Did students have enough information from class to answer this question? All students focused on the physical impact of the plague, and the fear that it caused socially. But did they really understand why the plague contributed to the decline in Feudalism? Did their use of the first person limit their ability to think about systemic change?
My analysis raises more questions than it answers. Most significantly, this: How does examining history through the first person limit or not limit students’ ability to make sense of systemic forces?
I coded both parts of the activity: the face sketches and thought bubbles, as well as the first-person narratives. My methodology for creating the coding scheme was first to read through all of the examples for first impressions; second was to re-read each example while making a list of details that stuck out to me, such as “Did this person maintain the first person throughout the entire assignment?”; “Did this person include facts we studied in class?”; “Did this person grant themselves some creative agency in weaving their narrative?” and “Did this person fulfill the assignment?” (listed above in “Context” section.) Next, I created a table of criteria that I thought I wanted to collect, and made a first pass through the samples. After one coding attempt, I revised my evaluative measure from a simple “0” and “1” for “incomplete” and “complete,” to a more specific “0,” “1,” and “2” for “none,” “some,” and “all.” In my final collection of data, shown below, many patterns stand out that I would not have noticed if I had only analyzed the examples individually. I must note that my attention in this analysis extends beyond the assessment criteria that I outlined in the assignment for students—my coding reflects both an interest in whether students understood and completed the assignment and a curiosity about what I can learn about students’ ability to reason in a first-person other than themselves. The latter is a focus that emerged from the data.
The data shows me that students were able and willing to put themselves in the first person to explore historical perspectives on the decline of feudalism, but that the depth of their understanding of the topic was limited to the individual’s perspective, and did not explore systemic causes. In the data on the “Faces and Thought Bubbles,” almost all students work demonstrated a 2 for the criteria, but the data on the “Narratives” shows a decrease in application (if not understanding) as the criteria get more detailed. All students used the first person, all but one identified the perspective from which they were writing, and all but one constructed a first-person narrative that was true to the perspective they had identified. All students used facts from class that described the physical impact of the bubonic plague on individuals (“purplish black spots” shows up numerous times), and some students included additional details about medieval towns. However, only half the samples show evidence of an understanding of hierarchy in medieval society, although that had been a signficiant part of the previous week’s lessons. My inclusion of this criteria could be unfair, because I did not include the word “hierarchy” in the assignment for the written narrative, but its periodic absence struck me during my analysis. The most striking data is all but two students’ failure to “Make a prediction about how the decline of feudalism will affect that person’s role in medeival society,” which was an explicit part of the instructions for the assignment. Should I have exchanged “the decline of feudalism” for “the Bubonic Plague,” in this prompt? Did students have enough information from class to answer this question? All students focused on the physical impact of the plague, and the fear that it caused socially. But did they really understand why the plague contributed to the decline in Feudalism? Did their use of the first person limit their ability to think about systemic change?
My analysis raises more questions than it answers. Most significantly, this: How does examining history through the first person limit or not limit students’ ability to make sense of systemic forces?