What Leads to the Fall of a Great Empire? Using Central Questions to Design Issues-based History Units

driven by an overriding emphasis on information coverage. This trend has resulted in a fragmented approach to teaching that privileges the acquisition of facts over in-depth study (Evans 1989; Evans, Avery, and Pederson 1999; Goodlad 1984; Newmann 1988; Onosko 1992, 1996; Onosko and Swenson 1996; Wiggins 1989). Incoherent and fact-driven teaching is exacerbated by the writing and organization of history textbooks. Textbooks present information with little regard for history’s controversial issues or debatable questions and offer students scant opportunities to study worthwhile content in any real depth (Loewen 1996; Ravitch 2004; Shaver 1996). Of course, these are not the only reasons why coverage continues to be so popular in history classrooms. Even very dynamic history teachers tend to teach in ways that are familiar and comfortable to them, whereas others often subscribe to the notion that students must acquire extensive content knowledge before exploring historical issues (Shaver 1996). In addition, the growing influence of the standards and testing movement propels some teachers to use coverage-oriented approaches, glossing over important historical questions in an attempt to “get everything in” (some state standards documents demand that students learn an overwhelming amount of information). These are the reasons why expository and superficial coverage continues to characterize the teaching of history. What are we to do about these trends? With the fields of U.S. history and, particularly, world history so expansive, how do we counteract the incoherent and coverage-oriented curriculum that continues to afflict the social studies while still being responsive to the practical demands of the middle and high school experience? Using “central questions” in the design of issues-centered history units offers us an auspicious possibility. Issues-centered instruction—an approach seeking to frame difficult questions or problems as the center of the teaching and learning experience—is not a new idea to the social studies, but there are relatively few published articles designed to help teachers implement the idea in their classrooms. Notable exceptions include the writing of Joseph Onosko, an associate professor at the University of New Hampshire. More than a decade ago, he wrote a short piece in this journal that presented a practical model for the design of issuesbased units. He followed that with similar pieces, one in Social Education and another that he coauthored in the National Council for the Social Studies’ Handbook on Teaching Social Issues (1996), the most authoritative manual to date on how to implement issues-based curricula. Onosko’s work could not be more relevant to history teachers today. In this article, I draw on Onosko’s model—specifically, his use of the term “central question”—in offering practical strategies for designing and implementing issues-based U.S. and world history units. Although the successful design of issues-based units depends upon the nexus of unit aims, daily activities (lesson plans), and an end-of-unit performance (or culminating) assessment, I focus chiefly on the creation of central questions as a critical feature in the design of history units. I also provide a rationale for and explanation of central questions and a series of criteria to be applied in creating central questions. I present a comparative analysis of two Renaissance units and, in appendices A and B, I offer a series of central quesWhat Leads to the Fall of a Great Empire? Using Central Questions to Design Issues-based History Units