About This Project

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

YHH seeks to improve students' academic outcomes by both increasing students' motivation to study history and motivating them to read and write.

Specifically:
1) How can urban students' local history (i.e., history of neighborhood) be used to increase students' engagement in history at large?

2) What does a community history-based curriculum that leverages these local resources actually "look" like?

3) How can history be a pathway towards improving multi-modal literacies for "low-achieving" students?

From a theoretical foundation, YHH explores the intersections of public/community history, Historical Thinking literature, and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR).

What is the significance of this project?

A Harvard History Professor recently proclaimed that in British schools, "History has never been more popular outside schools today, yet, history has never been so unpopular inside schools." Could the same be said about U.S. classrooms? Not only are history test scores the lowest of the four major subjects across all students, but students are increasingly finding history boring and most of all, unrelated to their lives. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in urban schools in which history as a discipline is rarely seen as a so-called "solution" to the problem of low academic achievement in education discourse.

The Youth Historians in Harlem (YHH) project seeks to change this paradigm and re-think history pedagogy in urban classrooms. For urban students who are disengaged with school in general, studying community/public history can be a way to initially re-engage them in the learning process, and if utilized correctly, substantially increase their critical thinking and literacy skills. To close the achievement gap, educational researchers must be increasingly innovative; for example, immersing urban students in the rich history of their community to improve their learning experience inside (and outside) the classroom.

What are the goals of the project?

Since YHH operates as an after-school program, funds will primarily be used for a number of logistical items needed to make this study happen. Unlike a chemist who already has a laboratory to conduct his or her research, educational researchers do not have pre-equipped labs -- real-life schools (and generally under-funded schools serving low-income students) are our laboratories! Specifically, these funds will provide basic supplies that will give students the tangible "tools" (i.e., notebooks, flash drives to save work, travel funds, etc.) needed to read, write, and research during each after-school session (and me the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of a particular lesson or technique).

Fortunately, funds will not only allow the study to commence for the sake of scholarship, but because of the nature of such "hands-on" research, these funds will directly benefit student participants, too.

Once the program commences, if you are a "Backer," Lab Note updates will occur each week!