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Document Based Questioning Using Primary Sources

Site: Colorado Education Learning Management System
Course: High Impact Instructional Strategies for Health Education
Book: Document Based Questioning Using Primary Sources
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Date: Sunday, 28 April 2024, 2:26 PM

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Table of contents

1. Overview of Using Primary Sources

Educators have long recognized the value of actively engaging students in the role of historian. Document-based education can provide students with the chance to get ”inside” of history, and evaluate the diverse perspectives of primary and secondary sources. It’s an opportunity to engage and motivate students and teachers in a collaborative setting. 

“Teaching with Documents” is designed to help teachers and students make sense of the vast amount of source material available over the Internet, and effectively bring these resources to their work as historians. It provides easy access to analytic tools, instructional strategies, and links to source material and sample assessments. Resources may also be created by students for analysis through student led approaches. In health education exploring primary sources can support the health skills of accessing information, analyzing Influences, and advocating. 

http://www.edteck.com/dbq/


2. Resources for Analyzing Documents

The National Archives and Records Administration has created resource to analyzing historical documents. These are general tools that can be modified to align with primary sources related to health education:

Document Analysis | National Archives

Worksheets for Novice or Younger Students, or Those Learning English

See these Worksheets in Spanish language



Worksheets for Novice or Younger Students, or Those Learning English

Other questions to consider:

Knowledge, behavior, skill:

  1. What assumptions do you have about this problem?

  2. Can you explain why this is a problem?

  3. Do you see a pattern?

  4. What else would you like to know?

  5. What is the relationship between ____ and ____?

  6. What evidence of this problem have you seen recently? 

  7. How does this relate to ____?

  8. How can we use the information that we have analyzed?

  9. How can we, as health students, advocate for change within marketing to youth?


3. Exploring Historical Documents Tobacco/vaping

Students will use historical documents related to tobacco use over the last century in order to analyze marketing and health trends from the past to the present. Trends regarding vaping will also be explored. 

Step 1: Finding historical documents regarding tobacco and marketing.




Step 3: Connect it to what is currently happening with vaping

Comparing Vaping Advertising to tobacco

In this document you will find examples comparing historical advertments and advertising tactics used by the tobacco industry compared to current tactics used by JUUL. These advertisements and be used in an activity to compare historical documents with current tactics. Cut out the pictures and the captions. Students are asked to sort through and  identify the tobacco advertisement and the JUUL advertisement that use similar advertising tactics. 

Advertising documents  

4. Exploring Nutrition


Examining school meals 1910 - 2010 

Candy Advertisement

Food Recommendations 1916-2011:

History of Supermarkets

Exploring school meals from around the world

World Health Organization Food Dietary Guidelines/Sustainability 



5. Exploring Stress and Anxiety

Stress, Anxiety and Human Migration: How can Biology, Art and History Inform?

This website provides examples of historical documents that can be analyzed to explore the relationship between human migration, stress and anxiety. This cross content project is an example of how a high school biology class at Whittle School & Studios, Washington DC, explored the biology of stress within the context of global human migration. The focus was to experience the individual story of a migrant as well as the global scale of migration through research data, diverse media in an art exhibition, in-person speeches by refugees, and documentaries about immigrant students, and then, to let students choose an example they connect with and proceed to research relying on primary literature and material evidence from biology, humanities, and the arts.

https://www.gettingsmart.com/2020/08/stress-anxiety-and-human-migration-how-can-biology-art-and-history-inform/

6. Exploring Mental Health

This chapter provides a variety of ways to explore mental health through primary sources. The wide range of topics and approaches to mental health lends itself to a variety of entry points into exploring primary sources and document based questioning. For this reason we have created subsections to explore a variety of primary sources and options. 

  1. Exploring Mental Health through the Arts
  2. Exploring Mental Health Stigma though Representation in Media 
  3. Exploring Mental Health Stigma though Historical Documents (Coming Soon)


https://www.apadivisions.org/division-1/publications/newsletters/general/2019/06/classroom-ideas




6.1. Exploring Mental Health through the Arts

Exploring mental health through the arts can be done in a variety of ways. The examples below explore how artists represent mental health through works of art. It is important to follow these discussion up with health skills regarding accessing trusted adults and resources for mental health, communication, and advocacy skills. 


6.2. Exploring Mental Health Stigma though Representation in Media

Below you will find a list of resources to support examination of mental health stigma. These resources provide background information for teachers. You will find a short description of each of these resources. 

https://med.stanford.edu/psychiatry/special-initiatives/mediamh.html

https://www.icanotes.com/2018/04/11/ways-mental-illness-is-commonly-misrepresented-in-the-media/

https://www.goodformedia.org/

https://www.verywellmind.com/mental-health-stigmas-in-mass-media-4153888

https://www.camh.ca/-/media/files/guides-and-publications/tami-teachers-guide.pdf  Curriculum


7. Exploring Identify Through Music

Exploring Identity with Citizen DJ, a New Project from LC Labs

 by 

This post was written by Carolyn Bennett, the 2018-2019 Library of Congress Teacher in Residence.

Each student lives at an intersection of identities: gender, race, age, hobbies, and more. Art arises from these intersections, inspired by the stories that occur there. Learning to “relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural, and historical context,” as the National Core Arts Standards say, is a key aspect of becoming someone who can deeply analyze, appreciate, and enjoy the arts. Moreover, once students understand the relationship of identity to artistic creation, they are empowered to celebrate their own identities through art.

Citizen DJ, a new project of LC Labs, enables explorers to discover and analyze hundreds of samples within several digital collections: Edison clips from the earliest days of recorded entertainment; acoustic performances by 21st-century women; diverse American English dialects. Each sample represents a unique intersection of culture, context, instruments, and intent. Each sound invites the explorer to examine its context and history.

For example, students may discover a big band’s ornamented seventh chord. They will discover it was sampled from Noble Sissle’s rendition of “Crazy Blues,” which Mamie Smith very successfully recorded in 1920. Hers was the first commercial hit by a Black vocalist, and her success propelled labels to seek out more African-American voices (and ears), preserving a watershed moment in American music.

One enticingly jazzy chord leads students to question the role of the consumer, commercialism, and equity in American musical traditions.

   

Original Crazy Blues Recording

Musicians’ identities become evident through the art they create. Often, one is drawn to music when one’s identity resonates with the perspectives of the artist. The perspective of the artist may feel comfortingly familiar, or enticingly novel. A deep analysis of art requires the audience to understand and connect to the perspective of the artist.

Citizen DJ draws students to move beyond analysis to create meaningful new connections to each primary source through mixing. Remixing may occur through the embedded tool, which allows users to manipulate parameters, add drumbeats, and create loops. Alternatively, samples may be freely downloaded to use in any digital audio platform. Students can weave an intertextual tapestry as they are inspired to highlight connections with primary source recordings in their own unique statement. Here’s an example of a remix: Citizen DJ link to a Remixed Crazy Blues.

In my classroom, I asked students to articulate some of their identities: They are daughters and sons, students, athletes, employees, leaders, and volunteers. Their experiences are shaped by their race, orientation, religion, socioeconomic status, and political beliefs. We discussed: How are these identities experienced? How might these identities be represented through sound?

Then, my students explored Citizen DJ. As they researched and analyzed, they discovered connections and considered how these historic samples can help them express their own story. Then, they created an original loop. Students shared their musical creations, describing how their identity resonated with the historic samples. Citizen DJ allowed my students to learn about the rich story of American music, but also more about their classmates. Edison’s samples became a new vocabulary to tell their own story.



8. Primary Sources: A Measles Debate One Hundred Years Ago

Science, Civics, and Primary Sources: A Measles Debate One Hundred Years Ago

 by 

This post is by Michael Apfeldorf of the Library of Congress.

Analyzing historic newspaper articles can provide students with unique insights into the relationship between scientific literacy and civic behavior. Consider this 1913 article from The Bridgeport Evening Farmer, in which the U.S. Public Health Service  attempts to discourage the popular practice of “measles parties.” In such gatherings, parents would intentionally expose their children to measles so they could “get over it…as a sort of ‘immunization’.”

The Bridgeport evening farmer., November 22, 1913, Page 2

Invite students to analyze passages from the article, identifying connections between scientific literacy and civic behavior. Focus questions might include:

  • Whose interests are being discussed at various points in the article – the individual or the community?
  • What civic responsibilities, if any, are implied once individuals become scientifically literate?
  • What role does the governmental agency authoring the piece play? What rhetorical strategies are used to influence behavior?

The article opens with a melodramatic account of a measles party and its unfortunate aftermath. In the story, “Little Mary’s mother…considered measles as inevitable as teething. She thought it would be a good time to … get all over it before the ‘bridge season’ began, so she took Mary over to play with Johnnie just as soon as she heard that he had the measles.” But while Johnnie recovered, Mary had “such a hard time breathing that she had to be propped up in the bed, and every time she coughed she cried out with the pain that racked her poor little chest.” Soon, “Little Mary’s blue eyes were no longer bright, and one morning all the pain and suffering went away – only Mary never awoke.” In this passage, students might identify a highly emotional appeal targeted at parents’ fears and self-interest to protect their children.

Meanwhile, a more clinical, reasoned tone is used to discuss measles mortality statistics and scientific research. The reader learns that 1 out of 10 U.S. children contracting measles had died – over 11,000 deaths in 1900. The article notes that while scientists did not yet know what causes measles, they “do know that the infection…is found in the secretions from the nose and throat during the first stages of the disease.” Therefore, “when it is known that measles exists in a community, no child having a bad cough should be allowed to come in contact with other children…It is little less than criminal to permit children known to have measles to come in contact with well children during the first three days of the cough [emphasis added]. ”

Once again, encourage students to reflect on whose interests are appealed to – the individual or community?  What persuasive strategies are used – emotional or logical? Further, students might reflect: to what extent does scientific awareness bind citizens in an implied social contract? What role do federal agencies such as the U.S. Public Health Department play in facilitating appropriate civic behavior?  Students might also make similar connections between scientific literacy and civic responsibility today.

Let us know in the comments what connections your students make!


9. Using Manuscripts to Study the Influenza Pandemic of 1918

“This malignancy, it was right at our very doors.” Using Manuscripts to Study the Influenza Pandemic of 1918

 by 

This post is written by Ryan Reft of the Library’s Manuscript Division.

“Even if there was war,” Susanna Turner of Philadelphia remembered of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, “the war was removed from us you know … on the other side … This malignancy, it was right at our very doors.”

Yet, as the virus spread across the United States in 1918 and 1919, mobilization for World War I dominated federal concerns. Organizing a response to an invisible, viral enemy took a backseat to martial prerogatives. The press self-censored, avoiding discussions of the disease’s spread in favor of positive stories about the war.  As deaths mounted, fear filled in the informational gaps.

For authorities, it did not help that the first of the pandemic’s three waves, which begin in February and March of 1918, though hardly minor, recorded high morbidity but low mortality, making it difficult to distinguish from the more garden-variety flu. The second, which began in the United States in late August/early September, was far deadlier; the third, beginning in January 1919, was less deadly than the second, but far more lethal than the first.

Influenza Pandemic from the Library of Congress Exhibit “Echoes of the Great War”

Military camps served as the site of the second wave’s first invasion in the U.S. It festered in cantonments before spreading to civilian populations, a pattern that is consistent historically. For example, the explosion of cases that struck Camp Devens in September 1918 spread thirty-five miles to the southeast to Boston, where officials had already recorded citizens ill with the disease. U.S. Army Surgeon General William Crawford Gorgas had been tracking the pandemic since mid-June. Though he sounded alarms within the government about the pandemic’s spread, his warnings went largely unheeded.

William C. Gorgas, Surgeon General of the United States. Harris and Ewing, 1914

Rupert Blue, Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. Harris and Ewing, 1914

At the time, no real public health infrastructure existed in the United States. Fellow public health experts viewed United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and civilian surgeon general, Rupert Blue, dimly.  Blue did help to secure a $1 million appropriation toward fighting the pandemic, but he never prepared the agency for crisis and reacted only after the sickness had spread nationally. The agency did produce and distribute broadsides that gave general, guidelines such as “AVOID CROWDS” and “Do not spit on floor or sidewalk.”

Treasury department. United States Public health service. Influenza spread by droplets sprayed from nose and throat. 1918


10. Exploring Photovoice as a Strategy

Photovoice is a unique type of participatory action research that uses photography to capture the conditions in a community. It provides a diverse set of data that stem from each person’s point of view and photography techniques.

Photovoice is a methodology mostly used in the field of education which combines photography with grassroots social action. Subjects are asked to represent their community or point of view by taking photographs. It is often used among marginalizes people, and is intended to give insight into how they conceptualize their circumstances. As a form of community consultation, photo voice attempts to bring the perspectives of those "who lead lives that are different from those traditionally in control of the means for imaging the world" into the policy-making process. It is also a response to issues raised over the authorship of representation of communities.

It was developed by Caroline C. Wang of the University of Michigan, and Mary Ann Burris, research associate of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. In 1992, Wang and Burris created what is now known as "Photo voice" as a way to enable rural women of Yunnan Province, China, to influence the policies and programs that affected them. It has since been used among homeless adults in Ann Arbor, Michigan and among community health workers and teachers in rural South Africa by Dr. Claudia Mitchell et al.

The concept owes a debt to the critical consciousness pedagogy of Paulo Freire, and feminist theory.

Although the origin of photovoice is grounded in participatory action research the premise of photo voice can support a student centered learning experience, where students engage in taking pictures in the community and analyzing those images. This approach can be used to engage students in authentic advocacy efforts to support standards as well as community health. In this short video you will see an example of how photo voice was used to provide student input and perspective on health in an Native Americans.



Health in my Hometown Photo Voice Project:


Some examples of what students might explore:

1. Stores that sell food in your community and compare to other communities.  (Fast food, restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, convenience stores)

2. Opportunities for physical activity in your community.

3. Safety in the school or community.

4. Healthy food in the school.

5. Diversity in the school.

Resources:

Photo Voice World Wide, Examples and resources

A Practical Guide to Photo

Photo Voice - LUK Prevention

Community Assessment using photo voice 

Home | YPAR Hub (berkeley.edu)

https://www.academia.edu/38165007/Engaging_students_in_praxis_using_Photovoice_research