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The Documentary Form in Historical Context

Sections of this Case Study

  1. Introduction
  2. Pedagogy
  3. Details
  4. Evaluation
  5. Course Materials

Evaluation

Taking ahead students’ engagement with film as a historical source

Before moving to a close focus on students’ reactions to this online environment, it seemed appropriate to highlight the challenges in reading films and documents as historical sources that the environment was seeking to address.

The online environment formed part of a third year 60 credit module, Propaganda in Britain and Germany, 1939-1945. Final-year special subject modules in this context aim to allow joint development of the understanding of a specific topic and aspects of historical practice, with analysis and interpretation of original source material forming their core. Propaganda in Britain and Germany incorporates textual, artistic and, as an important component, film primary sources. “For the historian, film acts as a significant primary source, as a source for the analysis of propaganda, as historical evidence in its own right, and as a means of observing and understanding processes and mentalities associated with the "immediate past"” (Fox, 2007, p.4).

A number of research studies have set out to delineate the complex set of practices that constitute historical source work and to uncover the challenges that students face in entering into these practices. A prominent contributor to this area of research, Sam Wineburg, has revealed differences in the "epistemological" stance to reading primary source documents taken by novices as opposed to professional historians' (Wineburg, 1991b), with novices reading these texts as “sources of information” and viewing their purpose as gathering information. This position contrasted with professional historians' much more complex representation of the nature of sources where texts were viewed as “social exchanges” and central attention was given to “how texts were defined by their authors” (Wineburg, 1991b, p.510). Professional historians could be seen to read for “subtexts”, treating the text as a rhetorical artefact and as a human artefact. In using the term human artefact, Wineburg is referring to “how texts frame reality and disclose information about their authors’ assumptions, world views and beliefs” (Wineburg, 1991b, p.499). Expanding on Wineburg’s account, it needs to be noted that in interpreting films as historical sources close attention needs not only to be given to authorial subtexts but also to the reception of films by their original audiences. Reception cannot be viewed in straightforward unitary terms, as it is important to consider how different audiences reacted to and invested meaning in a film and the ways in which its reception may have changed significantly over time. In addition, the interplay between a films' intent and its reception requires to be kept in mind.

Wineburg’s studies also portrayed professional historians’ engagement with sources as one based on a dialectical process of movement between the questions posed concerning a specific source and the textual materials themselves (Wineburg, 1998, p.337). Wineburg has shown how in this dialectical encounter, historians are guided by the general strategies of: corroboration, sourcing and contextualisation (Wineburg, 1991a).

Contextualisation, a concern with situating events in a temporal, physical, cultural context, emerged from Wineburg’s research as a central matter in source analysis: and his 1998 study demonstrated that this was not simply a matter of placing events in an appropriate setting, but of historians themselves actively creating a context for their work of source analysis as they proceeded through the task.

On the module Propaganda in Britain and Germany, there was a concern that students would not simply achieve an appropriate contextualisation of a film or documentary source within its immediate historical and political milieu but that they also would “think quite hard...about the meaning of the context as well [JF]”. (This and the following [JF] quotations are from the interview between one of the educational researchers and Jo Fox.) In addition it was hoped that students would become alert to the dangers of “over-contextualising” a source as well as those of insufficiently locating it in a context.

Another matter which was seen as of key importance was that of assisting students to attend to tensions within an individual textual or filmic source and to tensions between documents - tensions that might not be amenable to any ready resolution. We will return shortly to this question of heightening students’ awareness of tensions within and between sources, and show how it was central to the selection and ordering of sources within the online environment.

As the preceding paragraphs have established, historical source work requires not only a very close ‘internal’ reading of a text, but also an ‘external’ reading in which the document or film is interpreted against a wider frame of reference. This dual focus of attention was evident in Leinhardt and Young’s study of expert historians engaging with texts which fore-grounded the “critical role of intertextuality in historians’ reading” and their self-aware, minute “attention to text qua text” (1996, p.477). Given the intertextual nature of historical source analysis it is not surprising to find that there is strong agreement within the literature on the beneficial effects of exposing students to a variety of sources within a given task, as a means of developing their reasoning about, and with primary texts. (See Anderson et al., 2006b, p.248.) A few publications on supporting students’ source work (Holt, 1990; Anderson et al., 2006b) have also pointed up the teaching craft that is involved in the exact choice of sources and their positioning within a course. Holt’s (1990) account of how he supports the development of students’ conceptions of historical work and their skills in narrative construction, demonstrates the care taken over the choice of individual documents and their positioning at appropriate places throughout a course to take ahead students’ historical practice and understanding of substantive issues.

A central goal for student source work on Propaganda in Britain and Germany was that students would be able to create a focused critique of the different factors - textual, contextual and historiographical - that could come into play in interpreting an individual filmic or documentary source. There was also a wish to see students using particular sources “to craft an individual response to a broader issue” [JF]. In addition, it was hoped that towards the end of the course, students would come to construct a coherent picture of the interrelationships between sources and their connections to substantive issues: “to see a broad sweep, to see how all of these sources are beginning to fit together” [JF].

To assist students to take ahead these objectives, there was a need in designing the online environment to give close attention to the careful selection and positioning of individual sources, along with ensuring that particular film extracts would be read against primary documentary sources, secondary sources and historiographical debates. Preceding paragraphs have portrayed the analysis of historical sources as a dialectical encounter between historians' questions and the primary materials themselves. Accordingly a key action in constructing the online environment was to seed questions that would lead to a productive interrogation of the sources that it contains. The role of the questions posed to students within the online environment also cut somewhat deeper than simply encouraging an interactive, focused encounter with the sources. The specific questions included within the environment were designed to bring out tensions between sources and interpretations of these sources. Indeed “asking the right questions of the materials” [JF], (i.e. questions that were deliberately created to highlight contradictory messages and complexities within this set of sources), was seen as an important means of helping students to come to develop a more nuanced understanding of the enterprise of interpreting films as historical sources.

The online environment also gave students the direct challenge of being presented with contradictory sources, e.g. on the pioneer filmmaker Grierson’s view of documentary. In addition, the environment confronted them with the task of thinking through how historians have produced contrasting interpretations from one set of filmic and documentary texts and with the need to come up with their own reasoned stance concerning the historiographical debates around these texts.

Constructing the online environment: technical matters

While it proved a relatively straightforward matter to construct the online environment using the tools outlined in a preceding section, the size of the film clip files did pose problems. The VLE was unable to support the large file sizes, and some browsers offered greater functionality (Internet Explorer was more efficient than Mozilla). The central aim was to enable students to view film clips online. Clips could be viewed either one at a time or simultaneously. At first, the system could not cope with this demand. Nevertheless, by using software that compacted the file without losing the quality, a number of film clips could be loaded onto the system with ease, although the size of the image had to be reduced.

Investigation of the online environment

The preceding section has set out the historical disciplinary practices that underpinned the design of the online environment and the approach to teaching which aimed to support students’ efforts, to provide them with challenges and to encourage them to take ahead their own personal interpretations. This account has drawn heavily on a long interview between Jo Fox and one of the educational researchers where she unpacked her design activities and set them in the wider context of the enterprise of interpreting film as a historical source. We turn now to look at students’ reactions to the online environment. Their perceptions of the online environment were obtained through three small group interviews conducted by one of the educational researchers with 10 of the 18 individuals enrolled on the module in 2006-7. These semi-structured student interviews were interactive in style and topics covered included:

  • inviting general reactions to the online environment
  • exploration of any technical problems in access and use
  • how and to what extent the online environment was used
  • how they had found the questions posed in the environment
  • perceptions of the degree of linkage between the environment and seminars.

To provide a context for their reactions to the online environment, the students were also asked for their general perceptions of the course as a whole, including perceived challenges and satisfactions. In addition, these small group interviews included questions related to the wider study we are taking forward that focuses on the specific practices that are involved in interpreting films as primary sources and how students are viewing and engaging with these practices. To take this wider objective ahead, students were asked to talk through topics, including what they saw as the main challenges and satisfactions of interpreting a film and what they viewed as key matters in interpreting film as a historical source. (This wider study of students’ engagement with the interpretation of films as historical sources has also involved the analysis of the students’ on-line discussions of the documentary and a sample of student essays.) Future publications will report on the general topic of students’ engagement with film as a historical source. For the purposes of this case study, however, attention is focused on their encounter with the online environment.

In considering students’ reactions to the online environment it should be noted that the use of ICT features quite strongly in Propaganda in Britain and Germany, with ongoing online discussions running in parallel with face-to-face seminars where considerable use is made of an interactive whiteboard for annotating documents and tracking the development of class debates. Their perceptions of the online environment also need to be read against their unanimously positive evaluations of the course as a whole, which they viewed as demanding but distinctly enjoyable.

Student reactions to the online environment

Technical aspects

With the exception of one student who reported problems in accessing the online environment from a Macintosh, accessing and using the online environment was found to be very straightforward. The only technical feature of the online environment which received adverse comment from a few students was the fact that the films were displayed in a fairly small-sized window and it would be desirable to view them if possible on full-screen or at least in a larger window. A larger viewing area was described as allowing closer inspection of the film: “to be able to see like the detail” and one student talked of how when an on-line film clip was later viewed in the seminar room:

“there were so many things I saw on watching it on that big screen which I hadn’t actually realised had happened when I’d watched it before.”

This is, however, particularly difficult to achieve in a technical sense, since the larger the image, the larger the file size, and the greater the probability that there will be problems with viewing the film without interruption or distortion as a result of delayed or slow download. On the other hand the control students had over the watching of the film was appreciated:

“[the fact that] you could stop the film, take notes and start again was quite useful because sometimes you don’t get everything if you just write notes.”

Given that some interview participants noted how one could not annotate a film in the same way as a copy of a document and that taking notes from films could be a bit of a challenge, this is not a trivial point.

General reactions

A following sub-section will present the reservations that a minority of the students expressed concerning the fact that the on-line environment presented them with a structured selection of sources. The majority of interview participants, however, did not raise any general points of criticism and reacted to the online environment in positive or very positive terms. The following comment encapsulates this general reaction well:

“Thought it was really, really useful. Especially when I thought that the films were quite clever for a start the way they were embedded in the page, in that. And eh the questions at the bottom of each section I thought were really good like focusing your mind and encouraging you to like make more detailed notes than you would do if you just like read a book or something like that.”

Other student comments, including the following quotation, brought out the way in which the online environment was facilitating the interactive reading of film in relation to textual sources that the course wished to foster. (This particular quotation also draws attention to the effort that would have been required to achieve this interactive reading if the sources had not been brought together into “one like succinct thing you could just access”.)

“A good way of like interacting with the films but also having, because they weren’t in isolation you also had the, the text with it and the extracts and then the other primary source as well. It was a good way to like compare things without I suppose, from a lazy person's point of view, without having to go to those different places, it was nice to have it all in one like succinct thing you could just access.”

In a similar vein, a participant in talking through the general challenges of interpreting film observed that:

Student 1: That’s one of the problems of looking at film, at film in isolation as well. You don’t necessarily, like when we sit and watch a film clip, we don’t necessarily know why it was made because we haven’t looked at the sources, you know, from the, the film production. Its kind of maybe almost more effective if you’re looking at film along with other sources as well which is what’s so good about the

Student 2: Yeah, that’s -
Student 1: - the online thing.

Students also remarked on how the particular arrangement of sources within the online environment had alerted them to relationships between sources that they otherwise might have missed:

Student A: And also I mean there might be some things that I wouldn’t have picked up on, like connections I wouldn’t have automatically made. I wouldn’t have thought to go to, you know, source x in comparison to that film but there it was like suggested to you.

Student B: Yeah, I thought it was good, I liked, you know, the sort of, things like the Humphrey Jennings letter helped you to understand the film, where he was coming from: and that, those sort of links which you wouldn’t necessarily make yourself from reading.

Reservations concerning the structuring of this encounter with sources

Not all students, however, were appreciative of this pre-arrangement of sources. A small minority regarded with some suspicion a selection and structuring of the sources that was not of their own devising. The following student recognised that the module leader would have a clear rationale for the selection and organisation of sources in the online environment: “but I’m not entirely sure that it would necessarily be the way I would have divided it up; and at that point you’re just like you were being led somewhere.” A similar feeling was expressed in the following observation:

“When you’ve got stuff like that where its so focused and you’ve been, as a historian you were taught to just look at everything in the whole and not, and wonder why someone has chosen that particular thing to guide you into it. So when you’ve got a whole thing set up like that, you are like, ‘Oh, why, why, is that?’”

One possible reaction to comments such as these is to welcome them as indications that these students had internalised the expectation that they would take ahead the interpretation of sources in a very agentic, self-directed fashion. They can also be seen as displaying an appropriately questioning attitude towards the purposes of the creator or orchestrator of a set of texts. (As an aside, these observations on this particular environment prompt reflection on the matter of ‘online literacy’. In particular, the need to encourage students not simply to be efficient users of online resources but also to reflect on the form and structuring of these resources and the purposes that may have actuated the creator(s) of the resource.)

Positive response to the questions in the online environment

These sceptical notes concerning the structuring of students’ encounter with the sources did not extend, however, to the questions which featured in the online environment. A student who has been quoted in the preceding sub-section, for example, noted that “I like the questions”. Indeed there was distinct agreement among the interview participants concerning the value of the questions, with only one participant commenting that she hadn’t looked at them. In line with the intentions of the module leader, the questions were viewed as “kind of fram[ing] like all the reading before you look at things”. Their role in supporting interest and concentration also came through in some responses: “It [i.e. the questions] just engages you when, after you read it.”

Links with the seminars

In addition, the questions were seen as connecting well with the themes that were being taken ahead in face-to-face seminars on documentaries, as the following quotation illustrates:

“[The questions] They’re quite helpful because they made you think about what you’d have to think about in seminars so I think they were helpful to highlight, you know, the main themes. ”

More generally, the online environment was viewed as connecting up with related seminars:

“Most directly relevant to the seminar we had a couple of weeks ago [on the documentary]: but I mean you could pull out, I’d imagine in any. I mean we’ve just literally done a series, haven’t we, in fact were doing about four on film and you could probably sort of dip into it, just like through across that whole section.”

Analysis of the related online discussions revealed that the questions seeded within the online environment and pursued within the seminars were also vigorously debated within this forum. In these online discussions one can observe students grappling with the complex debates that surround the documentary form and setting out their own stance on particular issues.

Links to other online resources

Some of the interview participants expressed their appreciation for the links out to other online film and textual sources that were a feature of the environment. These links were described as ‘a source packet online’ and as a means of going ‘direct to research’. Some students had also gone back from the film extracts featured in the environment to watch the full FSOL film source:

“...I was very aware that they were a very short bit, as with all the things. So I went on to Film and Sound and I watched the whole Grierson thing and this and that, just because I wanted to, I think when you’ve got something so like that. I mean I’m sad.”

Encouragement to extend this initiative

One of the interview groups was keen to see the online environment on the documentary extended to cover the other genres of films that they had encountered on the module and the art works that they had studied:

Student 1: It’d be good to have one on feature films.

Another student: Yeah.

Student 2: Could have one on every topic, that would, that would be nice.

Student 3: You know because you could do it as well with art. You could have art works and extracts together...'cause we’ve done art in previous seminars, so for the visual sources I think it is a good way of getting people to link different media together.

(These students of course were not aware of the advantages offered by access through FSOL and that the copyright difficulties associated with displaying other films and visual images on-line could make this vision very hard to achieve.)

Support, challenge and embedding tensions

This case study has pointed up how the deployment of the FSOL materials within an online environment enabled students to take ahead the interactive reading of films in relation to primary textual sources and to the historiographical debates within secondary sources. It has documented how the online environment was designed both to support students’ encounters with film as a historical source and to present them with sufficient challenges to spur their own interpretative efforts. To engage students and to assist them to appreciate the complexity of the debates relating to the documentary form the questions included within the environment were designed to bring out tensions between sources and interpretations of these sources. Students were also asked to meet the challenge of being presented with contradictory sources. Constructing this online environment thus required a selection of resources and crafting of their arrangement that would draw students towards a more differentiated understanding of the reading of film as a historical source.

References

Abrams, N. and Marston, P. (2006) Audio-Visual Gobbets for Exam Purposes, available at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/hca/resources/detail/audio_visual_gobbets

Anderson, C. and Day, K. (2005) Purposive environments: Engaging students in the values and practices of history. Higher Education 49(3): 319-43.

Anderson, C. and Day, K. (2006a) ETL Project Subject Overview Report: History, available at: http://www.ed.ac.uk/etl/docs/HistorySR.pdf

Anderson, C. and Day, K. with Michie, R. and Rollason, D. (2006b) Engaging with Historical Source Work: Practices, Pedagogy, Dialogue. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 5(3): 243-263.

Fox, J. (2000) Filming Women in the Third Reich. Berg: Oxford.

Fox, J. (2007) Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany: World War II Cinema. Berg: Oxford.

Holt, T. (1990) Thinking Historically: Narrative, Imagination and Understanding. Chicago, Il.: College Entrance Examination Board.

Jaffee, D. (2003) 'Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye': E-Supplements and the Teaching of U.S. History. Journal of American History, 89(4) March 2003, available at http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/35

Leinhardt, G. and Young, K.M. (1990) Two texts, three readers: Distance and expertise in reading history. Cognition and Instruction, 14(4), 441-86.

Rosenstone, R. A. (2006) History on Film/Film on History. Pearson/Longman: Harlow.