I. Introduction To Local Studies

Local Studies: Topic or continual focus?

You may be planning a unit on the community for your particular grade level and are looking for helpful suggestions on topics and sources. Or you may see the value of localizing the curriculum to provide personal experience and relevant examples for broader topics. Both approaches are important by themselves but especially effective if there is a combination of the two over time. This booklet seeks to assist the teacher with information and resources for a variety of local studies needs.

A list of possible topics for a community study is included. Many variations are possible on these themes. Localizing the curriculum depends upon your using local examples to make larger events or issues more immediate and meaningful. For this approach, your knowledge of curriculum topics and skills to stress, as well as resources available, will determine how you infuse local studies into your curriculum.

Why study local history and place?

American history textbooks can be full of facts which seem remote from a student's own daily life. Using local history and environment can bring social studies to earth where students can relate to it through their own families and neighborhoods. When students discover changes close at hand, events come to life and seem relevant. By understanding the development of their own town or city, they can better make connections and comprehend the broader sweep of history.

Local study experiences in classroom and field can help provide students with a sense of continuity with their past, as well as a sense of place in the present. These studies can also provide tools to more accurately interpret the world around them today.

Students can learn to evaluate and interpret a variety of sources on local history and geography. Primary sources include original documents, images such as maps and photographs, material culture, landscape, and oral history. Depending on age level, learning outcomes include research, writing and listening skills, critical thinking, computer literacy, and values clarification. Students can develop abilities to distinguish fact from opinion, weigh evidence and detect contradictions, determine the reliability of sources, and draw inferences, conclusions, and generalizations.

Aside from knowledge gained when local history is connected to central themes in American history, there are benefits from understanding the changing makeup of the community, how people worked together or were isolated, and how the community developed its character and values. Students can be challenged to clarify their own values with regard to community participation and citizenship.

How is this on-line sourcebook organized?

Background information and activities on the primary sources and skills outlined above are provided in this teacher's sourcebook. There is a listing of resource organizations that will help students find selected primary source collections and resource people. Many local sources will still have to be located through organizations or individuals in your community.

The section on Local Studies Models (V) will provide a variety of examples of learning approaches and show how different primary sources can be used in classroom and field activities. It is not comprehensive, and other models that come to our attention will be added on in the future. A bibliography (VII) and list of curriculum materials (VIII) will help the teacher extend these examples into a unit or as a continual focus of study. Feedback from teachers will help us expand the usefulness of this service.