What Do Entering Fifth Graders Know About U. S. History?

Abstract

In most elementary schools in the United States, students get their first systematic introduction to history as a discipline and to chronological treatment of U .S. history as subject matter in fifth-grade U.S. history courses. To develop information about the knowledge and misconceptions concerning U.S. history that fifth-grade teachers can expect to see in their incoming students, we interviewed students who were nearing completion of the fourth grade about U.S. history topics that they would be taught in the fifth grade. The students' responses revealed that they possessedgenerally accurate knowledge about conditions of everyday life inthe “old days,” but only spotty knowledge about historyand the work of historians and about the founding and developmentof the United States as a nation. They had picked up bits andpieces of information in holiday or state history units in earlier grades or through reading, television, or other out-of-school experiences, but these were not yet subsumed within a systematic network of knowledge. Furthermore, accurate information items often were connected in the students' minds with various types of inaccurate beliefs (naive misconceptions, associative errors, conflations, and imaginative elaborations). The students' answers to 23 questions are described and illustrated through excerpts fromtheir interview responses, and these findings are then discussed with emphasis on the need to establish a context for learning U.S. history and to develop certain key ideas so as to promote understanding and clear up misconceptions.