Two Accounts of a Village Well
In a Class 8 social science class of 36 students, the teacher presents two short sources about a well built in a village in the 1890s. Source A is an excerpt from a colonial district officer's report: it states that the officer 'caused a well to be sunk for the improvement of sanitation.' Source B is a transcribed oral history from a local family: it says a merchant's widow funded the well after a famine, and that the officer's name was added later. Students vote on which account is true: 24 choose Source A because 'it is an official written report', 8 choose Source B because 'local people know their own history', and 4 are undecided. In discussion, students do not ask who wrote each source, when, for whom, or what each writer might gain. They treat 'written' as automatically reliable and 'oral' as automatically biased. The teacher has two periods before a unit test on sources and wants students to justify claims with evidence rather than vote.
1. Analyze the students' reasoning and identify the historical thinking concept they are missing.
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Students are treating the form of a source as a truth guarantee. The 24 who choose Source A reason from 'official' and 'written' to 'reliable' without asking about the officer's purpose, the report's audience, or the absence of local voices. The 8 who choose Source B use a different essentialist claim: 'local people know their own history.' Both groups skip sourcing and corroboration. The undecided 4 are not a problem; they are the opening. The key concept is that sources are evidence to be interrogated, not votes to be counted. A written report can be accurate about sanitation and still omit who paid for the well; an oral history can preserve memory and still be shaped by family pride. The teacher should not settle the question with a 'correct' answer. Instead, ask: Who made each source? When? For whom? What would each writer want readers to believe? What would each source be in a position to know? This turns the debate into historical reasoning.
2. Design a two-period lesson that teaches sourcing and corroboration using these two accounts.
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Period 1: model sourcing with Source A. Give a simple source card: author, date, audience, purpose, one thing the author could know, one thing the author might miss. Students fill it in pairs. Then read Source B and repeat. Introduce the idea of 'positioned evidence': a source can be useful without being neutral. Period 2: corroboration. Put both sources on a compare-contrast chart: what both agree on (a well existed, location), what only one says (who funded it, why), and what evidence would help decide (land records, inscription, donor plaque, tax records, later reports). Groups write one claim and one sentence of evidence: 'We can be confident that __ because both sources say __; we are less sure about __ because only __ says __.' Close with a three-minute write: 'Which source would you use to answer who paid, and why?' This directly addresses the voting habit.
3. What assessment task would show whether students can source and corroborate, rather than merely recall that 'written sources can be biased'?
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Use a source-based task, not a recall quiz. Give two new short sources about a local school building: a government inspection report and a newspaper interview with a former student. Ask three questions: (1) For each source, identify author, date, audience, and one purpose. (2) What is one claim both sources support? (3) What is one claim only one source supports, and what additional evidence would you seek? Score with a rubric: identifies source information; distinguishes agreement from single-source claims; proposes relevant corroborating evidence; avoids 'written means true' or 'oral means biased.' A strong answer might say both sources support that the school existed and had a roof, but only the interview says the community donated labour; land records or a donor list would help. A weak answer chooses one source as 'more true' without criteria. The teacher can then reteach the specific move - sourcing or corroboration - that the class missed.