Preservice teachers' attitudes toward the inclusion of www.sosyalbilgiler.org Journal of Social Studies Education Research Sosyal Bilgiler Eğitimi Araştırmaları Dergisi 2011: 2(2),1-21 © 2011 Journal of Social Studies Education Research, ISSN: 1309-9108 Preservice Teachers’ Attitudes Toward the Inclusion of “Heritage Education” in Elementary Social Studies Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA1 & Keith C. BARTON2 Abstract: This study explores pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward heritage education, an approach to teaching history grounded in first-hand experiences with material culture. The research was conducted at a large Midwestern university in the United States, in a methods course that included 28 pre-service teachers. Data were derived from both quantitative and qualitative instruments, including attitude surveys completed before and after classroom activities and a field trip to a local history museum; these activities aimed to introduce teachers to the meaning and purpose of using material history in elementary classrooms. We found that pre-service teachers already had highly positive attitudes toward inclusion of heritage education; that they considered heritage resources educationally valuable; and that they wanted to use such resources in their teaching. Participants’ attitudes, however, showed little or no change after participating in classroom activities, presumably because their initial perceptions of heritage materials were so uniformly positive. Keywords: Heritage education, Historic places, Social studies Introduction Heritage education is a term that is rarely used in the United States, and the word “heritage” is likely to call forth a host of problematic social, cultural, political, and ideological perspectives. Defending one’s “heritage” can be a way of justifying particularistic and exclusionary perspectives, as when White Southerners defend symbols of the Confederacy by referring to it as their “heritage.” In his book Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, Lowenthal (1996) uses the word to point to all the ways in which the past can be twisted, exploited, and mythologized for political, religious, nationalistic, and even commercial purposes. From this perspective, “heritage” suggests highly selective readings of the past that are meant to impose specific beliefs about society by cloaking them in the guide of timelessness. Some authors place history and heritage in direct opposition— 1 Arş. Gör., Gazi University, yesilbursa@gazi.edu.tr 2 Prof. Dr., Indiana University, kcbarton@indiana.edu mailto:yesilbursa@gazi.edu.tr� mailto:kcbarton@indiana.edu� Journal of Social Studies Education Research 2011: 2(2), 1-21 2 the former a rational, inquiry-based process, the latter a biased, unreflective, and usually nationalistic undertaking (VanSledright, 2008). In the United States, the word “heritage” is indeed most often used by those with conservative cultural and political agendas—precisely the people who are most likely to oppose hands-on encounters with primary source evidence. It may come as a shock to U.S. educators, then, that in much of the rest of the world, “heritage” (and its equivalent in languages other than English, such as patrimonio in Spanish) does not inevitably carry this kind of political baggage. UNESCO’s World Heritage program, for example, simply defines heritage as “our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations.” The concept of World Heritage, it maintains, is characterized by its “universal application,” and World Heritage sites “belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located” (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 1992-2011). In addition, “heritage education”—a term generally used in the United States only by archeologists or the National Park Service—is in common use among teachers and other educators throughout Europe. Its use calls forth associations almost directly opposed to the negative connotations found in the United States. As defined by the Council of Europe, heritage education is an approach to teaching history that makes use of material and tangible aspects of the past; is grounded in primary sources and first-hand experiences; and is directed toward understanding cultural similarities and differences in hopes of overcoming intolerance and ethnic nationalism (Copeland, 2007). Although some European educators have a more explicitly multicultural agenda in developing heritage education materials, most agree on certain basic concepts. “Heritage education” almost always refers to an approach to teaching and learning about history and culture that uses information from material culture and the human and built environments as primary instructional resources. It involves the study, appreciation, and conservation of all aspects of a community, including historic architecture, museums and historic sites, landscapes and streetscapes, cemeteries, folkways, photographs, newspapers, documents, court records, family papers and memorabilia, and objects and artifacts (Huhta & Hankis, 1988). The heritage education approach is intended to strengthen students' understanding of concepts and principles related to history and culture and to enrich their appreciation for the artistic achievements, technological abilities, and social and economic contributions of men and women from diverse groups (Hunter, 1988). These are the senses in which “heritage” and “heritage education” will be used in this paper. Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA & Keith C. BARTON 3 As yet, however, recommendations for using heritage resources in teaching about the past have not been matched by an equivalent research program into the effects of such approaches, nor into teachers’ attitudes toward including heritage education in the curriculum. This study attempts to stimulate such research by investigating preservice teachers’ receptiveness toward using heritage resources, as well as the impact of a small-scale intervention in one preservice methods course. Although the results are necessarily limited by the study’s small sample size, the research nonetheless holds some implications for how teacher educators might go about introducing teachers to the use of material resources and the built environment in teaching about the past. Why Heritage Education? For over one hundred years, scholars have debated the content of history education and methods for teaching the subject. Scholars and educators have suggested using materials such as primary sources, museums, art and architecture, objects, documents, stories, photographs, pictures, and films (Krug, 1970; Levstik & Barton, 1997; Nash & Symcox, 1991; Percoco, 1998; Barton, 2001; Veccia, 2004; D’sa, 2005). At the same time, critics of history teaching have noted the frequent emphasis on chronology, the narrow interpretation of historical phenomena, the overuse of frequently boring and even factually incorrect textbooks, and classrooms that are overly teacher- and textbook-centered (Yarema, 2002). Textbooks, in particular, have been criticized for encouraging students to believe that history is comprised of facts to be learned and memorized, and for failing to engage students (Barton, 2008). Vanderstel (2002) indicates that students have preconceptions that “history is boring; history is about a bunch of dead people and generally meaningless for the present; and historians teach and write books and articles about the past” (p. 5). Similarly, VanSledright (2002) notes that history teaching often consists of consuming and reproducing events and details found mostly in books. Likewise, Vella (2005) states that traditional history teaching rests on the assumption that history is a ready-made product; therefore history teaching involves only transmitting knowledge and facts. Krug (1970), on the other hand, argues that teaching history is an inquiry into the past, and this presupposes the extensive use of historical sources in the classroom. Yet in teaching history, one of the most important difficulties teachers face is enlivening events from distant times for students. They must look for the ways to capture student’s interest (Boland, 2002), including the visual aspect of history (Levstik and Barton, 1997). Journal of Social Studies Education Research 2011: 2(2), 1-21 4 Heritage education provides important resources for enlivening history for children and developing their imagination. The content of heritage education easily fits into established strands of the social studies curriculum, including both history and geography. Consider the five themes of geography education (location; place; human-environment interactions; movement of people, ideas, goods; and formation and change of regions): Teaching and learning about each of these themes is greatly enriched through use of the built environment. The same point can be made about areas of historic literacy such as time and chronology, continuity and change, historical empathy, and cause-effect relationships. These ideas can be included in the curriculum more realistically, and in more interesting ways, through the use of historic places and artifacts (Hunter, 1988). Percoco (1998) states that the contemporary history teacher faces the task of trying to make sense of the past for students, as well as the task of helping them develop their own critical thinking skills. Using heritage sites provides gains for both teachers and students, by capturing students’ interest, helping them develop knowledge of the past, and developing their understanding of the value of these historic sources (Boland, 1994). Historic sites provide both an emotional connection, which creates interest and excitement, and an intellectual gateway into investigating and understanding people and events in history. And we can find them all around us, in the towns and cities where we live (Boland, 2002). Analyzing Material Culture Traces of historical events are found in objects as well as in words and images. Taken together, objects are known as “material culture,” but they are in fact only the creations and products of culture. The inspiration for making them comes from the bundle of knowledge, beliefs, norms, and values that compose a culture, and they therefore present events and ideas in the lives of people. Expressed another way, material culture is the part of the physical environment that has been transformed from the natural state by human action for human purposes. To understand human action and human purposes in a community, it makes sense to look carefully and in many different ways at artifacts from its past (Kyvig & Marty, 2000). Artifacts are part of recorded history. They are invented and designed, and thus they represent part of humanity’s desires and achievements, and they embody a culture’s ideals and symbols. They present examples of how emotions and ideas can be expressed apart from words; as concrete rather than abstract entities, they are likely to be remembered longer by students, since physical stimulations, experiences, and emotions stick in the mind longer than purely verbal facts and ideas (Durbin, Morris, &Wilkinson, 1990). Knowledge provided from Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA & Keith C. BARTON 5 objects not only supplements the knowledge gained from two-dimensional historical sources but also enlivens that knowledge by illustrating how events and changes in a particular period affected daily life and the built environment of individuals and families (Johnson, 1983). Analyzing objects and artifacts made by people in history helps students understand past and present. There are five basic properties of an artifact: its history, material, construction, design, and function. History includes where and when it was made, by whom and for whom, why it was made, and successive changes in ownership, condition, and function. Material involves the components of construction such as wood, glass, fiber, ceramic, and metal. Construction involves the production techniques and workmanship. Design includes the structure, style, form, ornamentation, and iconography of the object. Function embraces both the uses (intended functions) and the roles (unintended functions) of the objects in its culture, including utility, delight, and communication (Fleming, 1974). These features help the students to read an object, which is a form of research that begins with looking, touching, and exploring. Using objects and artifacts to teach the curriculum in classrooms, museums, or historic places thus provides an opportunity for students and teachers to read and learn from these materials made and used by people. As a result, objects and artifacts can lead to gains in knowledge, skills, and concepts (See Figure 1). The Importance of the Built Environment Cultural landscapes—the environments that surround us and consist of buildings, roads, bridges, monuments, etc., are an important part of our heritage. They present a cumulative record of human activity and land use in the environment, and as such can offer insights into the values, ideals, and philosophies of the communities forming them, as well as their relationship to the place. Cultural landscapes, then, can be read as historical documents, and their study can suggest the feelings of a community towards its environment and indicate the social networks developed by the community. Cultural landscapes have a strong role in providing the distinguishing character of a locale, a character that might have varying degrees of aesthetic quality, but, regardless, is considered to be important in establishing the community’s sense of place (Pearson and Sullivan, 1995). Traces of the past are embedded in the shape of the buildings and their original functions, name of streets, monuments, bridges, ways in which the area has developed, and the location of private and public housing (Stradling, 2001). Journal of Social Studies Education Research 2011: 2(2), 1-21 6 Figure1. Knowledge, Skills and Concepts, (Durbin, Morris, &Wilkinson, 1990). Knowledge Skills Concepts • To learn different materials and what for they are used for • To learn words and techniques of decoration and construction • To learn economic, social, and historical context from the features of objects • To learn physical effects of time • To learn the meaning of symbolic figures • To learn about the nature and reasons for existence of particular museums, galleries, and collections • To know the importance of cultural values • Placement, realization, identification and planning • Tactual preservation and storing • Observation and examining • Discussion, hypothesis, analysis, and evaluation • Experiment, deduction and comparison • Classifying and cataloguing • Writing, drawing, labeling, calculating • Responding, reporting, explaining, demonstrating, presenting, summarizing, and criticizing • Chronology • Change • Continuity and progression • Design and function • Aesthetic quality • Relic • Bias • Unique • Fashion • Style • Pleasure • Original, fake and imitation • Heritage • Conservation • Collection Sustentation Many scholars consider the built environment a document that predecessors left for future generations, much like a book (Crimmins, 1992). Ruskin, for example, noted that “buildings are documents embedded in time” (Vallis, 2005, p. 5). Buildings especially, being intimately and intensively used by people, are among the most authentic and interesting of Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA & Keith C. BARTON 7 heritage documents. While people are usually not aware of the historical importance of buildings, they are an inescapable part of the built environment for most of us. They shape our cities and towns, our suburbs and our streets, and affect the whole of our environment (Pearson & Sullivan, 1995). Buildings are not only the most prominent objects on the cultural landscape but also are the center of human activity. People walk around them, go into them, move up and down and about in them, look at them from the outside and out of them from the inside, work, eat, play, sleep, relax, entertain, make love, worry, and squabble in them. Buildings interact with the economic, social, aesthetic, and physical life of those who use them. There is an organic link between people and buildings (Kyvig & Marty, 2000). Hunter and Shull (1992) also note that buildings, and the relics in them, generally are the best record and only document of many people’s lifestyle, activities, successes, house architecture, agriculture, industrial labor, and more many activities. Brand (1994) suggests that buildings tell stories if given the opportunity and if their past is exhibited rather than hidden. According to Beaumont (1993), historic places and buildings come alive with their stories and become teachers that explain the attitudes of people who lived in the past. Students, meanwhile, can become advocates of a district, site, structure, or object by documenting what might be forgotten or willfully demolished (Tomlan, 1994). By examining the real places where history happened, students can become excited about the past and begin to appreciate the value of cultural resources in their own communities and beyond (Olio, 2000). White and White (2000) argue for the importance of “an empathetic understanding of place as a stage on which the lives of real people and events played out, which creates powerful bonds between students and history” (p.28), and they suggest that students should engage in historical inquiry by using historic places. Similarly, Patrick (1993), in emphasizing that “historic places are tangible forms of our legacy from preceding generations, and, like written primary sources, they embody and reflect the traditions, experiences, ideas, and controversies of our past” (p. 8), adds that historic places can be used by teachers and students as objects of inquiry, in the same way that written primary sources are used in the classroom. Historic places also can serve as a supplement to reading about topics and events in textbooks (Boland 1994; Hunter & Shull, 1992), by providing primary or secondary written and visual materials, and also by teaching such skills as observation, working with maps, interpreting visual evidence, evaluating bias, analysis, comparison and contrast, and problem- solving (Harper, 1997). Teachers and students can use historic places for gathering information and generating concepts through observation, exploration, and interpretation. Journal of Social Studies Education Research 2011: 2(2), 1-21 8 Historic places enrich instruction by integrating written material and other kinds of sources (Hunter and Shull, 1992). Connecting Past to Present Heritage education goes beyond simply gathering knowledge about historic places and objects. The most important goal of heritage education is to encourage students, in intelligent and creative ways, to take ownership of historic monuments, artifacts, and traditions. It is not enough only to observe and analyze these things; students should be aware that they can play an active role in the continuity of history and can take responsibility for the preservation of the past, rather than serving only as an audience (Hereduc, 2005). According to Kammen (1989), heritage education has the merit of emphasizing the importance of the community’s shared values, institutions, and experiences. One of the advantages of this dimension of heritage is the way in which it brings together people in a community. Patrick (1989) states that without a solid sense of their past, a sense of identity rooted in time and space, people are poorly equipped to face the future. Heritage education, if designed properly, can help members of our successor generations think about where they came from and where they should be going. As Hunter (1988) notes, heritage education nourishes a sense of continuity and connectedness with our historical and cultural experience; encourages citizens to consider their historical and cultural experiences in planning for the future; and fosters stewardship towards the legacies of our local, regional, and national heritage. Of course, this is also potentially the most politically-loaded use of heritage education, because it raises issues of power and authority: Which experiences are included in the study of heritage, and which are left out? Whose identities are promoted, and whose are suppressed? This is why heritage education must be an inquiry-oriented endeavor, in which questions such as these are opened for investigation, instead of a process of authoritarian transmission of limited, and limiting, historical and cultural meanings. Heritage education also encourages students to see their environment as a lifelong source of knowledge, social understanding, and individual success (Hatch, 1988). It helps them understand places and traditions, and it also helps them understand why is important to preserve such historical traces (Copeland, 2004). Because the concept of heritage is so closely related to the past—including its emphasis on historic places, cultural landscapes, buildings, artifacts, written and pictorial documents, and so on, it can be central to the learning and teaching of history (Hatch, 1988; Hunter, 1988; Patrick, 1989; Kammen, 1989). Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA & Keith C. BARTON 9 Research on Educators’ Attitudes Toward Heritage Education Despite the existence of numerous clearly-articulated rationales for heritage education, little is known about teachers’ ideas about this approach to history, despite the key role that teachers have to play in heritage education. If teachers do not have positive attitudes toward heritage sites, after all, they probably will not teach using such sites. Noel and Colapy (2006) suggest that learning on a field trip depends on the extent to which children have been cognitively prepared for the trip, and this shows the importance of teachers’ attitudes toward heritage education. As we mentioned above, there has been scholarship on the importance and educational value of the practices of heritage education, particularly field trips and museum visits. However, very little research has been done with teachers. In one such study, Baron (2010) suggested that historic sites could be considered by teachers as tools to be used as a mode of presentation rather than as a document; Baron suggested that teachers should think about how they can use such places in their courses, and how they can integrate them into the curriculum. Stern and Stern (2010) explored a historic city using the format of a classroom without walls. They worked with American university students enrolled in a semester abroad program in Florence, Italy using an approach called PERSIA, which consisted of the political, economic, religious, social, intellectual, and aesthetic aspects of a geographical location as a framework for building a deep understanding of its people and its culture. The authors believed that this approach helped participants master interdisciplinary relationships and the complexity of the city as history, and that is was transferrable to other study abroad settings or for any place based education course. However, to the authors’ knowledge, there has not been any research carried out related to pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward heritage education. For this reason, we developed a research project to investigate pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward the topic. We hoped to model the integration of heritage education into the social studies curriculum, by including sample lesson in an undergraduate methods course. These lessons included analysis of historic sites, the use of artifacts in the classroom, and a field trip to a local history museum. Journal of Social Studies Education Research 2011: 2(2), 1-21 10 Research Procedures Participants Participants included elementary pre-service teachers at a large Midwestern university near the end of their teacher education program. There were 28 students who took the pretest, and at posttest, 23 of the original pretest group were available. Written reflections were also collected from 23 students, and five students were interviewed. Materials, Task and Process Students’ exposure to heritage education consisted of two main activities. The first took place in the university classroom and involved analysis of historic artifacts, photographs, and images of buildings. Pre-service teachers were asked to analyze and interpret the artifacts and photographs. The second activity took place in a local history museum. The museum included three main sections—a recreated classroom from about 100 years ago, a recreated log cabin from about 200 years ago, and a set of exhibits on technological and economic developments in the local community. Teachers divided into groups and were given worksheets to help them explore and identify the museum materials. At the end of the visit, the instructor and one of the researchers conducted a meeting, during which students shared their findings and opinions. Both the in-class activities and the field trip are the kinds of experiences that are frequently included in preservice methods courses in the United States. Method The research relied on both quantitative and qualitative data, which were collected in two steps. In the first step, the Heritage Education Attitude Survey (Appendix), consisting of 26 Likert questions, and created by the first author, was applied as both a pretest and a posttest. The scale included 14 positive and 12 negative items. Positive items were scored so that “Strongly Disagree” received a score of 1, “Disagree” received a score of 2, “ No Opinion” received a score of 3, “Agree” received a score of 4, and “Strongly Agree” a score of 5. Negative items were scored with the reverse values. As a result, the average score can vary from 1 to 5, with higher numbers indicating more positive attitudes toward heritage education. Because this was a newly-created scale, we analyzed its reliability by calculating Cronbach’s α (on the pretest) as a measure of internal consistency. The resulting value was .89, which indicates that the Heritage Education Attitude Survey is a highly reliable instrument. In the second step, at the end of the course, students were asked to answer questions about historic places on a written survey; in addition, the first author conducted an interview with 5 pre-service teachers to supplement findings from the survey and to probe their ideas Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA & Keith C. BARTON 11 about heritage education. These participants were purposefully selected, with the assistance of the course instructor, to represent more highly engaged and articulate students from the course. Data Analysis Statistical processes were used in analyzing quantitative data. Pretests and posttests were analyzed in terms of means. The first set of qualitative data (open-ended survey questions) was analyzed using categories generated at the beginning of the research. Interviews, the second set of qualitative data, were transcribed, and a set of coding categories were developed inductively from participants’ responses. Results There was little difference from pretest to posttest in the attitudes of preservice teachers after learning about heritage education in the classroom and in the museum. Average scores are presented in Table 1. Although the difference from pretest to posttest was positive, it was not statistically significant. This can be explained by noting that pre-service teachers already had highly positive initial attitudes toward heritage education, leaving less room for a positive impact as a result of instruction. Table 1. Mean Attitude towards Heritage Education Pretest Posttest Heritage Education Mean 4.10 4.16 Instruction N 28 23 One item with a statistically significant difference from pre- to posttest was the third item, “I would like to use old homes, where important people lived, as a teaching method.” (Table 2) This item may have shown a greater change because an example of using an old home in teaching was explicitly included in course instruction. Table 2. Pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward old homes as a teaching tool. Pretest Posttest Sig. (2-tailed) I would like use old homes, Mean 3.60 4.04 .000* where important people lived, as a teaching tool. N 28 23 *(p<0.05) Journal of Social Studies Education Research 2011: 2(2), 1-21 12 Another item demonstrating a statistically significant change from pre- to posttest was the fifth item, “Old factories that are important in a community’s history should be preserved.” (Table 3) Notably, on the pretest 2 students indicated that they “Strongly Disagree” with this item, 2 indicated “Disagree,” and 10 marked “No Opinion”; on the posttest, however, no students disagreed or strongly disagreed, and only 5 students had no opinion. (The negative form of the item showed a similar result, although the numerical difference was not statistically significant.) The reason for this improvement might be due to the museum visit, because there was a technological development section that included artifacts, information, and photographs about old factories in the local community. Table 3. Pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward old factories. Pretest Posttest Sig. (2-tailed) Old factories that are important Mean 3.28 3.86 .013* in a community’s history should be preserved. N 28 23 *(p<0.05) Note also that, while preservice teachers have positive attitudes toward the preservation of old factories, their attitudes are relatively less positive than toward other aspects of heritage. Other items with relatively low scores are presented in Table 4. Table 4. The other items that Pre-service teachers’ attitudes relatively low. Pretest Posttest Historic landscapes should be Mean 3.64 3.86 turned into places for entertainment N 28 23 (Item 8) Old battlefields should be used for Mean 3.89 3.69 farming or recreation N 28 23 (Item 10) When I visit a historic building or place, Mean 3.67 3.60 Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA & Keith C. BARTON 13 I feel as if I were alive back then N 28 23 (Item 13) I do not think it is necessary to visit Mean 3.92 3.95 a place when we study a historical topic N 28 23 in school (Item 22) In interviews conducted at the end of the museum visit, we found that all the pre- service teachers (27 in attendance) agreed that they were interested in historic artifacts, photographs, and so on, as teaching tools, and they all agreed that they would use these as teachers, either in the classroom or on field trips. However, some thought that visiting historic places would not be necessary because they could use materials such as photographs, pictures, artifacts, or heritage-related internet sites, within the classroom. In responses to open-ended, written surveys at the end of class, these preservice teachers’ indicated a sense of the nature and range of heritage sites, and of their purpose in teaching, that was in keeping with current scholarship on heritage education. They identified a range of different kinds of historic sites, for example, they identified a variety of reasons why historic places are preserved, and they gave numerous reasons why such preservation is important. Their answers to each question are summarized below. Question 1: Other than homes, what are other historic places? Preservice teachers indicated 37 different kinds of historic sites. The most common responses are presented in Figure 1. It is interesting that the most common answer was “battlefields,” even though respondents’ attitudes toward battlefields were relatively low. Journal of Social Studies Education Research 2011: 2(2), 1-21 14 Figure 1. Kinds of Historic Sites Question 2: Why do people preserve historic places? Preservice teachers emphasized the following reasons: - to learn and understand the past - to appreciate the past - the places are important and valuable - these places give students an opportunity for comparison with the present - these places indicate change in time periods - so that new generations can see or experience these places firsthand Question 3: Do you think it is important to preserve historic sites? Why or Why not? All the preservice teachers indicated that preserving historic sites is important. The most common reasons they gave were the following, which can be roughly summarized as relating to tools for teaching and learning, sources of identity, and means for appreciating the past: - these sites are a great teaching and learning tool - these sites are much more effective than textbooks or lectures - the sites show students what life was like in the past, or what the past was like - these places provide firsthand experiences - the need to appreciate what we have - knowing where we came from - honoring our culture Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA & Keith C. BARTON 15 - remembering good things and avoiding the bad - it is important to see how time have changed Question 4. What is the value of using historic sites? Preservice teachers described the value of historic sites in the following ways: - These places are concrete examples - Students can engage in their lesson more actively - These places make history real - Students can compare time periods between present and past - These places spark students interest and attention - These places provide firsthand / real life experiences - They would be valuable ways of learning rather than texts and lectures Conclusion In this research we aimed to measure pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward heritage education, which includes historic places, buildings, museums, and artifacts. We were interested in two issues: The first related to students’ attitudes toward heritage places, and the second related to their intention to use such places as a teaching tool. Pre-service teachers already had highly positive attitudes toward heritage education. Therefore it was difficult to increase attitudes much beyond their initial point. This finding shows that pre-service teachers are likely to think heritage places are important and valuable to preserve, even before learning about them in teacher education programs. This is an important finding, because if they did not believe that these places were valuable or important they would probably not use such resources as teaching tools when they become teachers. They also would probably not attempt to develop these values in their students. The qualitative findings also supported these findings. The results of the museum interview and document analysis showed that all the preservice teachers in this study found heritage education valuable, and they stated that they were going to use heritage places or materials as teaching tools. From the results of the document analysis, it was observed that they thought these places and materials were a way of enlivening history for students. They explained that seeing heritage sites was important, because such places are concrete and make history real, spark students’ interest, and provide students first-hand experiences. They thought that heritage education was a better way to teach the past than textbooks or lectures. Most of these findings endorse the perspectives on heritage education mentioned above Journal of Social Studies Education Research 2011: 2(2), 1-21 16 (Hatch, 1988, Hunter, 1988, Kammen, 1989, Hunter and Shull, 1992, Patrick, 1993, Boland, 1994, Hunter, 1998, Percoco, 1998, Boland, 2002). This finding further suggests that teacher education programs might begin at a higher “starting point” than simply introducing preservice teachers to the nature and purpose of heritage education resources. Although some differences in survey results—such as students’ improved attitudes toward historic homes and old factories—indicate that including specific elements of heritage education can have a beneficial effect, students could already identify many different kinds of historic sites and a number of valid reasons for their preservation. Given this level of prior understanding, it might be more beneficial to engage preservice teachers in a deeper analysis of how such sources can be used to extend and refine their students’ understanding of history—by analyzing the cultural values found in such sources, the relationship of these sources to societal institutions, and other aspects of historical thinking that form the rationale for heritage education. For most preservice teachers, it is probably not necessary simply to convince them that material culture and the built environment are useful in teaching history. Instead, they will be better served by a richer understanding of how such sources can lead to sophisticated forms of historical understanding. Further research might investigate how teacher educators can develop this kind of professional knowledge among preservice teachers. References Baron, C. (2010, November). Of pelicans and pearl divers: Understanding teachers’ and historians’ different approaches to using historic sites. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies, Denver. Barton, K. C. (2001). A Picture’s worth: Analyzing historical photographs in the elementary grades. Social Education, 65(5), 278-283. Barton, K. C. (2008). Research on students’ ideas about history. In L. S. Levstik & C.A. Tyson (Eds.), Handbook of research in social studies education (pp. 239-258). New York: Routledge. Beaumont, C. E. (1993). Property rights and responsibilities. Historic Preservation Forum, 7 (4), 30-35. Boland, B. M. (1994). Our past / ourselves: Teaching with historic places. CRM Online, 17 (2), 33–39, Retrieved April 5, 2010, from http://crm.cr.nps.gov. http://crm.cr.nps.gov/issue.cfm?volume=23&number=08� Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA & Keith C. BARTON 17 Boland, B. M. (2002). Historic places: Common ground for teachers and historians. OAH Magazine of History, 16 (2), 19-21. Brand, S. (1994). How buildings learn: What happens after they’re built. New York: Viking, Penguin Group. Copeland, T. (2004). Heritage and education: A European Perspective. Proceedings of the Europa Nostra Forum 2004, 19-22. The Hague, Netherlands: Pan European Federation for Heritage. Retrieved November 4, 2011, from http://www.europanostra.org/UPLOADS/FILS/forum_heritage_education_proceeding s.pdf. Copeland, T. (2007). Heritage education and citizenship in the Council of Europe. In L. Branchesi (ed.), Heritage education for Europe: Outcome and perspective (pp. 65-84). Rome: Armando. Crimmins, T. J. (1992). The city as document: Heritage education’s unique text. Historic Preservation Forum, 6 (1), 37-40. D’sa, B. (2005). Social studies in the dark: Using docudramas to teach history. Social Studies, 96 (1), 9-13. Durbin, G., Morris S., & Wilkinson, S. (1990). A teacher’s guide to learning from objects. English Heritage. Egan, K. (1982). Teaching history to young children. Phi Delta Kappan, 63 (7), 439-441. Fleming, E. M. (1974). Artifact study: A proposed model. Winterthur Portfolio, 9, 153-173. Harper, M. (1997). Including historic places in the social studies curriculum. Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED 415178. Hereduc. (2005). Heritage in the classroom: A practical manual for teachers, Retrieved September 25, 2010, from http://www.hereduc.net/hereduc. Huhta, J. K, & Hankins, J.S. (1988). Approaching heritage education from every angle. The Journal of Museum Education, 13 (2), 13-15. Hunter, K. (1988). Heritage education in the social studies. Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED 300306. Hunter, K., & Shull, C. D. (1992). Teaching with Historic Places. Social Education, 56 (5), 312. Johnson, M. (1983). What’s in a butterchurn or a saridon? Some thoughts on using artifacts in social history. The Public Historian, 5 (1), 60-81. Kammen, M. (1989). History is our heritage: The past in contemporary American culture. In P. Gagnon and The Bradley Commission on History in Schools (Eds.), Historical http://www.hereduc.net/hereduc� Journal of Social Studies Education Research 2011: 2(2), 1-21 18 literacy: The case for history in American education (pp. 138-156). New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Krug, M. M. (1970). Primary sources in teaching history. The History Teacher, 3 (3), 41-49. Kyvig, D. E., & Marty, M. A. (2000). Nearby history: Exploring the past around you. (Second Edition). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Levstik, L.S., & Barton, K.C. (1997). Doing history: Investigating with children in elementary and middle schools. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Noel, A. M. & Colopy, M. A. (2006). Making history field trips meaningful: Teachers and site educators’ perspectives on teaching materials. Theory and Research in Social Education, 34, 553-568. Olio, B.K. (2000). Creating place-based classroom recourses: Teaching with historic places lesson plans. CRM Online, 23 (8), 20-11, Retrieved April 8, 2010, from http://crm.cr.nps.gov. Patrick, J. J. (1989, November). Heritage education in the school curriculum. Paper prepared for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Waterford Foundation, Waterford, VA. Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED 315333. Patrick, J.J. (1993). Prominent places for historic places in the k-12 social studies curriculum. CRM Online, 16 (2), 8-9, Retrieved April 5, 2010, from http://crm.cr.nps.gov. Pearson, M., & Sullivan, S. (1995). Looking after heritage places: The basic of heritage planning for managers, landowners and administrators. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Percoco, J.A. (1998). A passion for the past: Creative teaching of U.S. history. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Lowenthal, D. (1996). Possessed by the past: The heritage crusade and the spoils of history. New York: Free Press. Stern, B. S. and Stern, M. (2010, October). The city as classroom: Teaching in and with historic places. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Teaching and Curriculum at their Annual Meeting, St. Louis. Stradling, R. (2001). Teaching 20th century European history. Germany: Council of Europe Publishing. Tomlan, M. A. (1994). Learning to identify and evaluate: The National Register and Higher Education. CRM Online, 17 (2), 35–36, Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://crm.cr.nps.gov. http://crm.cr.nps.gov/issue.cfm?volume=23&number=08� http://crm.cr.nps.gov/issue.cfm?volume=23&number=08� http://crm.cr.nps.gov/issue.cfm?volume=23&number=08� Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA & Keith C. BARTON 19 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. (1992-2011). World heritage. Retrieved November 4, 2011, from http://whc.unesco.org/en/about/. Vallis, A. (2005) Looking back to project future. The Point (University of Technology, Sydney), 29, 5. Retrieved June 13, 2011, from http://www.uts.edu.au/fac/hss/student_community/student_publications/print_publicat ions/the_point_29_p01_17.pdf. Vanderstel, D. G. (2002). And I thought historians only taught: Doing history beyond the classroom. OAH Magazine of History, 16 (2), 5-7. VanSledright, B. (2002). Confronting history's interpretive paradox while teaching fifth graders to investigate the past. American Educational Research Journal, 39 (4), 1089- 1115. VanSledright, B. (2008). Narratives of nation-state, historical knowledge, and school history education. Review of Research in Education, 32, 109-146. Veccia, S. (2004). Uncovering our history: Teaching with primary sources. Chicago: American Library Association. Vella, Y. (2005). Creating on-site history activities for school children: An action research project. Journal of Maltase Education Research, 3 (2), 23-32, Retrieved April 20, 2010, from http://www.um.edu.mt/educ/about/publications/mrer. White, C. S., & White, D. J. D. (2000). Preparing teachers to teach with historic places. CRM Online, 23 (8), 28-30, Retrieved April 7, 2010, from http://crm.cr.nps.gov. Yarema, A. E. (2002). A decade of debate: Improving content and interest in history education. The History Teacher, 35 (3), 389–399. http://crm.cr.nps.gov/issue.cfm?volume=23&number=08� Journal of Social Studies Education Research 2011: 2(2), 1-21 20 Appendix Heritage Education Attitude Survey For each statement below, please indicate Strongly Disagree, Disagree, No Opinion, Agree, or Strongly Agree St ro ng ly D is ag re e D is ag re e N o O pi ni on A gr ee St ro ng ly A gr ee 1. I think that historical battlefields should be preserved. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 2. I do not think that museum visits will be useful in teaching social studies. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 3. I would like to use old homes, where important people lived, as a teaching tool. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 4. Historic buildings should be torn down so new ones can be built. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 5. Old factories that are important in a community’s history should be preserved. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 6. Railways do not tell us much about the history of a community. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 7. I like to go to places where people lived long ago. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 8. Historic landscapes should be turned into places for entertainment. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 9. I like to visit history museums. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 10. Old battlefields should be used for farming or recreation. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 11. Historic landscapes should be protected. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 12. It is not important to save homes where important people lived in the past. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) Cemil C. YEŞİLBURSA & Keith C. BARTON 21 13. When I visit a historic building or place, I feel as if I were alive back then. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 14. It is boring to visit places where people lived long ago. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 15. Railways can tell us something important about a community’s history. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 16. Old factories that are important in our community’s history should be torn down so modern ones can be built. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 17. When we study history in school, I would like to take my class to visit places connected with that topic. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 18. It is not practical to use historic places in the classroom. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 19. Using historic places in social studies would make me more interested in the topic. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 20. I feel nothing when I visit a historic building or a place. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 21. It is practical to use historic places in the classroom. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 22. I do not think it is necessary to visit a place when we study a historical topic in school. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 23. I would like to use museum visits as a teaching method. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 24. I do not believe that using artifacts is a useful way to teach history. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 25. I would like to use historic places in the classroom as teaching method. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 26. I think using artifacts to teach history would be useful. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )