Writing about teaching and learning

In the fall of 2016, I was asked by professor Klas-Göran Karlsson to be part of an edited volume project on teaching history at university level. He had an idea that I could write something about thematic and chronological aspects of teaching history. These were issues I had to some extent wrestled with when writing my thesis. It sounded like an exciting and difficult challenge and it didn’t take me long to accept. 

All in all, we were around a dozen people in my department who met for over a year to discuss ideas, experiences and chapter drafts. There was a wide range of people in the group. There were newly graduated PhDs with limited teaching experience and professors with decades of teaching under their belt. Some approached the pedagogical theme from perspectives based on theory and the philosophy of history. Others started off in concrete teaching situations and practical choices. 

Myself, I had a hard time starting to write. I didn’t feel that my own thoughts and experiences were sufficient. So, I set aside time to read and follow leads. In some way, I needed to find something worth building upon. A few years later, I can no longer accurately recreate this reading process. But I definitely recall when I found my way. The key text was Lendol Calder’s “Uncoverage: Toward a New Signature Pedagogy for the History Survey” (2006). I found it deeply inspiring. It was concrete without being boring. Theoretically sophisticated without being abstract and fussy. In addition, it was written in a sharp and smart fashion. 

For me, this text served as a portal. I read everything from Calder I could get my hands on. Through the footnotes, I followed the leads backward. Via Google Scholar, I checked out the ones who had cited him. During a few weeks, I made intellectual discoveries one after the other. If I were to choose the one thing in my profession I like the most, this is it. When new worlds open up and my reading, so to speak, cascades. 

In relation to this, I was asked by Henrik Rosengren, at that time editor of Scandia, whether I wanted to write a “Scandia introduces” piece. Some six months earlier, I had proposed a different subject, but the scholarship of teaching and learning track now seemed more attractive. As a result, I pitched the idea of writing about Lendol Calder’s pedagogical ideas. The result was the text “Avtäckningsmodellen: En undervisningsform med framtiden för sig?” (2017). It was later expanded into the longer book chapter “Kan vi göra på något annat sätt? Utblickar och tankar kring färdighetsorienterad historieundervisning” included in the edited volume Att undervisa i historia på universitetet (2018). 

An important consequence of this work was that Andrés Brink Pinto was inspired by my literature findings. We had each started to test some new approaches in our own teaching. These, we thought, turned out to be successful. Hence, in a low-intensity and organic fashion, a deeper collaboration emerged. In recent years, there have been conference presentations, a couple of joint texts and even a small research project together with Emma Severinsson on how students learn. 

A couple of weeks ago, we had the privilege to visit Örebro where Henric Bagerius and the other historians at the department have revised the undergraduate program on the basis of the same pedagogical ideas we were attracted to. Being able to take part in this work and discuss teaching issues with a cohesive team of teachers with real power over how teaching is to be designed was extremely stimulating. It will be very exciting to follow how their initiatives turn out! 

I could hardly have imagined that all this would follow from Klas-Göran’s invitation in the fall of 2016. But this is often the case with edited volume projects. They have side effects. Not least by facilitating new areas of cooperation. Controlling exactly what will happen, however, is quite difficult. For example, Klas-Göran himself had to address the questions of thematic and chronological teaching of history. This is often the case for research directors. To a large extent, their role is to give other academics opportunities, resources and challenges. What happens next is up to others. As economic historian Kerstin Enflo put it during a seminar this spring, managing academics is “like herding cats.” Myself, I have some history of knowledge experiences of trying to “herd.” In this context, however, I was one of the cats.

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