A Primer for Teaching African History: Ten Design Principles

Design Principles for Teaching History

by Trevor R. Getz

A Primer for Teaching African History is a guide for college and high school teachers who are teaching African history for the first time, for experienced teachers who want to reinvigorate their courses, for those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi, and for teachers who want to incorporate African history into their world history courses. Trevor R. Getz offers design principles aimed at facilitating a classroom experience that will help students navigate new knowledge, historical skills, ethical development, and worldviews. He foregrounds the importance of acknowledging and addressing student preconceptions about Africa, challenging chronological approaches to history, exploring identity and geography as ways to access historical African perspectives, and investigating the potential to engage in questions of ethics that studying African history provides. In his discussions of setting goals, pedagogy, assessment, and syllabus design, Getz draws readers into the process of thinking consciously and strategically about designing courses on African history that will challenge students to think critically about Africa and the discipline of history.

184 pages, Paperback

Published March 22, 2018

Reviews

[Hannah of the Sky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would recommend to anyone looking to teach or create an African history course. It is designed for an instructor at a college level, so a good deal of it, especially towards the end was not applicable to my situation - creating an African history and literature booklist for an elementary or middle school level. However I still found it incredibly helpful, especially in several ways: 1) It provides a helpful theoretical foundation for why and how and how not to teach African history. 2) It challenged me to develop goals and objectives, thinking about the big picture framework of the course, rather than just pulling together random resources. 3) It has good suggestions for helping students to think critically about African history. 4) It pointed me to some helpful resources I would not have otherwise known about.