HGSE Researchers Publish Facing History Study

An evaluation study of the nonprofit Facing History and Ourselves, conducted by Harvard Graduate School of Education researchers, shows its positive effects on teacher and student learning. The full study, “A Randomized Controlled Trial of Professional Development for Interdisciplinary Civic Education,” will be available and free to all on the Teacher’s College Record website for one week only beginning today, April 15. After April 21, it will be accessible to website subscribers and appear in print in the TCRecord in May 2015.

Professor Robert Selman; Adjunct Lecturer Dennis Barr, Ed.M.’87, Ed.D.’93; master’s student M. Brielle Leonard; and Melinda Fine, Ed.M.'88, Ed.D.'91, along with researchers from Abt Associates, Inc., and other institutions of higher learning, worked with Facing History’s evaluation staff -- including Terry Tollefson, Ed.D.'89 -- to carry out the study using rigorous methods. The study used a school-level, randomized, experimental design involving 113 teachers and 1,371 ninth- and 10th-grade students in 60 high schools from eight metropolitan regions in the United States. Findings show that teachers who participated in a Facing History seminar and received coaching and support showed significantly greater self-efficacy for creating engaging classrooms and promoting academic skills and civic learning than control group teachers. These teachers also felt a greater sense of professional satisfaction and growth. At the same time, the students of the Facing History teachers demonstrated significantly greater historical thinking skills, civic efficacy, and tolerance for others with different views than control students. They also reported that their classrooms were more inclusive, respectful, and tolerant of different points of view.

“Harvard Graduate School of Education can legitimately be proud of the role it has played, not so much as parent, but as partner, in the impact Facing History has had on educational practice internationally,” Selman said. “This is well-documented in the decade-long role HGSE has played in this rigorous experimental evaluation study led by Dennis Barr and implemented by many HGSE alums on the research team. But it needs also to be emphasized that over the past almost 40 years, Facing History’s leadership — from Margot Strom [C.A.S.’77], it’s truly remarkable founding director, through the top ranks of the organization, to the future educational leaders that come to serve as Facing History interns — has drawn on knowledge created at HGSE. Across the decades, the two organizations have learned from and taught one another.”

The study provides empirical evidence that educators need proven approaches for teaching complex social, civic, and political issues in order to help students of diverse mindsets and backgrounds meet academic goals and standards and engage constructively with one another. Moreover, it positions Facing History’s unique combination of content and methodology as a benchmark for promoting inclusive classrooms and improving academic performance.

"This experimental study provides strong evidence that Facing History's approach to professional development has meaningful effects on teachers and their students,” said Beth Boulay, Ed.M.’98, Ed.D.’03, principal associate with Abt Associates.

The study was made possible by a gift from the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation.