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Disciplinary Literacy in History:

An Exploration of the Historical
Nature of Adolescents' Writing
a
Chauncey Monte-Sano
a
Department of Curriculum and Instruction ,
University of Maryland
Published online: 29 Oct 2010.
To cite this article: Chauncey Monte-Sano (2010) Disciplinary Literacy in History: An

Exploration of the Historical Nature of Adolescents' Writing, Journal of the Learning
Sciences, 19:4, 539-568, DOI: 10.1080/10508406.2010.481014
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THE JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES, 19: 539–568, 2010
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1050-8406 print / 1532-7809 online
DOI: 10.1080/10508406.2010.481014
Disciplinary Literacy in History:

An Exploration of the Historical Nature

of Adolescents’ Writing
Chauncey Monte-Sano
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
University of Maryland
As the call for adolescent literacy grows louder, attention must be paid to the particu-
lar demands of each discipline if educators are to help students develop advanced lit-
eracy skills. The hallmarks of advanced literacy are specific to different fields of
study. This article proposes a descriptive framework for adolescents’ historical writ-
ing. Qualitative analyses of 56 written responses to a document-based essay question
by high school juniors are used to identify and illustrate trends in adolescents’ use of
evidence in their historical writing. These trends—referred to as characteristics of
students’ historical writing—include factual and interpretive accuracy, persuasiveness
of evidence, sources of evidence, corroboration of evidence, and contextualization of
evidence. This article identifies benchmarks and shares a range of student work sam-
ples for each characteristic. Defining the nature of historical writing provides a frame-
work for integrating literacy and content and for exploring and developing advanced
literacy skills through the particularities of subject-specific composition.
Adolescents struggle with writing at great cost. Reports from the National Assess-
ment of Educational Progress note that only 31% of 8th graders and 24% of 12th
graders in the United States write at or above the proficient level (Persky, Daane,
& Jin, 2003). This means that 69% of students in Grade 8 and 76% in Grade
12 write below the expectations of their grade level or are “low-achieving writ-
ers” (Graham & Perin, 2007). The consequences of this literacy crisis are enor-
mous. Not only is writing proficiency a key pathway to learning subject matter
Correspondence should be addressed to Chauncey Monte-Sano, University of Maryland, 2311

Benjamin Building, College Park, MD 20742. E-mail: chauncey@umd.edu
540 MONTE-SANO
(Shanahan, 2004; Sperling & Freedman, 2001), it is crucial to success in today’s

workplace (National Commission on Writing, 2004, 2005) and in college (ACT,
2005).
One way to confront the needs of adolescents is to focus on disciplinary liter-
acy, which foregrounds subject-specific ways of reading and writing that are the
hallmarks of advanced literacy (Moje, 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Such
hallmarks are particular to different fields of study; hence the term disciplinary lit-
eracy. By adolescence, students will confront subject-specific texts and tasks that
require specialized forms of knowledge. Ways of thinking and reasoning associ-
ated with a particular discipline are embedded in subject-specific texts and tasks
and must be attended to if we as educators are to help adolescents become profi-
cient readers and writers.
But what does disciplinary literacy mean in history and in historical writing in
particular? Wineburg’s (1991) research with historians along with Shanahan and
Shanahan’s (2008) recent work identify historical ways of thinking evident in ex-
perts’ reading. Although the Benchmarks of Historical Thinking project in Canada
(Peck & Seixas, 2008; Seixas, 2006) has identified six key historical thinking con-
cepts based on research in history education, there has been no corollary work in
writing. Despite the fact that 58% of young people state that they “write reports” in
social studies classes a minimum of one to two times per month (National Center
for Education Statistics, 2002), little research has looked at the specific demands
of historical writing (see Leinhardt, 2000, for an exception). Most research has
treated historical writing as a generic form of composition and has used terms like
thesis, evidence, and analysis. Likewise, the practice of assessing historical writ-
ing is generalized and misses the disciplinary practices in students’ writing. If we
are to help adolescents develop their literacy skills across school subjects, we must
understand what reading and writing involve in each discipline as well as deter-
mine just what the development of expertise in disciplinary literacy looks like.
This study uses as a starting point for defining historical writing the work of his-
torians and philosophers of history as well as the research of history educators.
Using these perspectives, I analyzed adolescents’ history essays for insight into the
nature of their historical writing. This article is a first attempt to uncover trends in
how adolescents represent history when writing from documents. This study iden-
tifies trends in adolescents’ use of evidence in history essays and extends the con-
cept of disciplinary literacy to historical writing.
BACKGROUND
Historians on Historical Writing

Greene (1994) asked historians to think aloud as they considered writing prompts
often encountered by college students: a written report and a problem-based essay.
DISCIPLINARY LITERACY IN HISTORY 541
The historians saw both as relying on sources and as opportunities to construct ar-
guments and situate topics in a historical context by making connections among
related issues. Although Greene’s (1994) study provides insight into how histori-
ans think about the purposes and goals of writing history, no one has asked histori-
ans to think aloud during other aspects of the writing process (e.g., planning, com-
posing, revising). Therefore, I look to the conceptual work of historians and
philosophers of history for further clues about historical writing.
Making the case for a particular interpretation in writing is the keystone of his-
tory qua discipline (Mink, 1987). Toulmin’s (1958) argumentation framework
lays out such key aspects of writing as claim, data, warrant, and counterargument,
components that can apply to most disciplines, including history. Historical writ-
ing shares an argumentation stance with other forms of writing, but the nature of
the data and warrants (the evidence and connection between evidence and claim)
seem to be discipline specific (Bruner, 1960; Hexter, 1971; Schwab, 1978). In con-
structing historical arguments, writing is often inextricable from a disciplinary
way of thinking and working with evidence. According to history experts, the use
and framing of evidence in historical writing indicate key aspects of disciplinary
reasoning, including recognizing biases in sources, comparing evidence, situating
evidence in its context, and taking into account different perspectives and multiple
causes (Carr, 1961; Collingwood, 1943; Hexter, 1971; Mink, 1987).
Historical interpretations rely on the public display of evidence to substantiate
claims: that is, a claim cannot stand without evidence to support it (Collingwood,
1943; Evans, 1997; Hexter, 1971). The inclusion of examples, details, footnotes,
and quotations exemplifies this aspect of reasoning. Stating where evidence comes
from (i.e., sources of quotations and information) allows others to understand and
evaluate the basis for one’s claim. Furthermore, historical interpretations must ac-
count for the available evidence (Hexter, 1971). This may involve altering inter-
pretations to accommodate contradictory evidence. Comparing different and con-
trasting documents is a visible form of this type of reasoning.
Because the goal of historical interpretation is to understand the past, historical
reasoning involves reading evidence from the perspective of those who created it
and placing it into context. Such contextualization is central to history, in that histo-
rians may only interrogate artifacts from the past. The events under study cannot be
repeated: Historians have usually not witnessed the events about which they write,
and the authors of documents used to analyze the past are inaccessible (cf. Hexter,
1971). In order to understand why something happened in the past, or what com-
pelled someone to write a particular text, historians must situate authors and events
in the context of contemporary events, peers, and ideas; such writing highlights the
relationships between contiguous events (cf. Mink, 1987). Historians do not look
for generalizable rules that can be applied to future situations but rather for special-
ized understanding of the particular circumstances surrounding an event or person
that no longer exists. Absent context, historical understanding is at risk.
542 MONTE-SANO
Research on the Historical Thinking of Experts and Novices
Key aspects of historical writing cited by philosophers of history and historians are
consistent with research identifying the nature of disciplinary thinking in history.
The historians in Wineburg’s (1991) study interrogated historical documents by
looking at authors and their biases (“sourcing”), situating documents in the time
and place of their creation (“contextualization”), and comparing documents (“cor-
roboration”) to find points of agreement and contradiction. For these historians,

primary documents were regarded as excerpts of social interactions that had to be
reconstructed in order to be rendered comprehensible. In order to derive meaning
from a text, the climate of opinion, language use, social mores, and events of the
time had to be considered. Such contextualization is crucial to analyzing the docu-
mentary record and constructing an interpretation of past events.
In order to develop interpretations of the past, historians are expected to alter
their claims to account for available evidence; rather than ignoring counter-evi-
dence, challenging evidence should lead to a revision of claims. This is often diffi-
cult territory for students, who tend to view differing accounts of the past as either
“right” or “wrong” and who may not see them as multiple interpretations created
by people with particular biases at a given point in time (cf. Lee, 2005). Shemilt
(1983) argued that novices tend to see history as what happened, as a given.
Wineburg’s (1991) work supported this finding. The high school students in his
study saw history as fixed, selecting one interpretation of the past as “true” and
others as false. In these novice conceptions of history, evidence plays no role be-
cause history is not seen as interpretive.
In contrast to novices, advanced students grasp a historical period and see evi-
dence situated in context. Given proper guidance, students are capable of learning
to reason historically; however, the development of related skills and conceptions
do not develop “in parallel” or in a smooth trajectory (Lee & Ashby, 2000, p. 213).
The work of a group of British researchers has been particularly helpful in identi-
fying the changes from novice to expert thinking among adolescents (Lee, 2005;
Lee & Ashby, 2000; Lee & Shemilt, 2003; Shemilt, 1983). These aspects of histor-
ical thinking have been referred to as “second-order” or “disciplinary” knowledge
(Lee, 2005, p. 32) or “strategic” knowledge (VanSledright & Limón, 2005). This
type of knowledge enables one to “do” history and is considered a characteristic of
expert thinking, standing in contrast to “substantive” knowledge (Lee, 2005) of a
particular topic or concept (e.g., revolution, the French Revolution).
Research on Expert and Novice Writing

Because historians typically represent their thinking in writing, they tend to have
some level of expertise in writing. Furthermore, writing is a visible representation
of historians’ and students’ historical thinking, providing insight into how experts
and novices use evidence in history.
Research shows that expert and novice writers differ in task representation,
strategic or procedural knowledge, and writing processes. Differences also exist
between novice and expert historical writers along these lines. Task representation
comprises how students understand just what a writing task entails. Flower and
Hayes (1981) highlighted its role when they argued that writers guide themselves
with not only their goals, but their understanding of the purposes of an assignment.
Novices seem to lack an understanding of the task or purpose for their writing and
have unclear goals to guide them as they write (Ferretti, MacArthur, & Dowdy,
2000). Indeed, students and historians do not necessarily share the same concep-
tion of historical writing. In Greene’s (1994) research, college students were less
likely than historians to recognize that writing involved constructing an argument
and situating a topic in historical context by connecting related issues. In another
study, few college students were able to construct an original written argument by
analyzing information (the approach historians would take); the majority simply
recited facts and reproduced others’ arguments (Greene, 2001).
The knowledge involved in historical writing is likely both general and dis-
cipline specific. Because novice historians lack the strategic knowledge to en-
able them to think historically (e.g., weigh evidence), they find it difficult to
craft an evidence-based interpretation. Hillocks (1995) referred to declarative
and procedural knowledge as critical for writers. Without procedural knowl-
edge, writers would have great difficulty doing something such as constructing
an argument.
Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) believe that non-expert writers transfer knowl-
edge to written texts in a model called “knowledge-telling.” Such writers engage in
a unidirectional process of first establishing a thesis and then finding facts to sup-
port it. According to McCutchen (2006), novices may resort to knowledge-telling
as a way to manage the complex demands of writing. The cognitive processes of
reflection and planning, text production, revising, and text interpretation (Cheno-
weth & Hayes, 2001; Flower & Hayes, 1981; Hayes, 1996) “compete for limited
resources within working memory” (McCutchen, 2006, p. 122) and may explain
why novices are more likely to generate content than develop a conceptual plan, if
they plan at all.
In contrast, experts engage in a dialectical process in which they move back and
forth between their knowledge and their writing. This expert process offers a path
to deeper understanding and knowledge development through “the transforma-
tion of knowledge already in the mind” (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987, p. 179, em-
phasis in original). Young and Leinhardt (1998) noted that Advanced Placement
U.S. history students had difficulty moving from simply reporting information to
crafting interpretations based on multiple documents. Thus, supporting a historical
essay’s argument with evidence appears to be difficult for students, not only be-
544 MONTE-SANO
cause they do not think about history in terms of interpretation and evidence but
because of the complexity of the writing process itself.
Against such a background, this article addresses two questions: (a) What does
adolescents’ historical writing entail? and (b) What kind of disciplinary thinking is
captured in adolescents’ historical writing? The student essays in this article were
taken from a larger study on teaching and learning evidence-based writing (see
Monte-Sano, 2008, in press) and are used to identify and illustrate five disciplinary
characteristics of adolescents’ historical writing.
METHOD
Participants
I examined responses to a document-based question (DBQ) written by high school
juniors in three U.S. history courses, each from a different school. Their teachers
had been selected for participation in a larger study of teaching and learning evi-
dence-based historical writing because of a strong background in history (bache-
lor’s degree or higher), interest in teaching historical thinking and writing, and
weekly writing assignments. Backgrounds and teaching interests were confirmed
through initial observation and interviews. Further study highlighted nuances in
their practice. Mr. Lyle focused on historical thinking and used interpretive writ-
ing as a tool for learning (Monte-Sano, in press). Ms. Bobeck emphasized both his-
torical thinking and argumentation, whereas Mr. Rossi framed writing as a sum-
mary of information (Monte-Sano, 2008). Mr. Rossi did not assign any primary
documents or DBQs to his students until the one administered for this article.
Thus, his students got regular essay assignments but no specific instruction in
writing.
In order to increase the number of participating students, I selected for study the
largest U.S. history class of each teacher. The 67 students in the three classes were
invited to participate. A total of 56 students agreed to participate in this larger
study and completed the DBQ analyzed in this article. The sample included 14 of
17 students from Mr. Lyle’s class, 16 of 20 students from Ms. Bobeck’s class, and
26 of 30 students from Mr. Rossi’s class. I administered a pretest DBQ at the be-
ginning of the school year, collected students’ writing throughout the observed
courses, and administered the posttest DBQ (the one that is analyzed here) at the
end of the third quarter for Mr. Rossi’s and Ms. Bobeck’s students and following
the first semester for Mr. Lyle’s students (because of the alternative structure of
Mr. Lyle’s school, in which he taught a one-semester class).
Because of between-class differences, 30 of the students analyzed received
training in historical thinking and evidence-based essays 4 to 7 months before data
collection began, whereas the other 26 did not. As a result, participants represent a
range of beginning and intermediate historical writers (see Monte-Sano, 2008,

in press). No measures of prior knowledge and general reading and writing
skills were administered because of constraints in teachers’ time and curricular
demands.
Mr. Lyle and Ms. Bobeck taught 11th-grade U.S. history courses required by
their schools. Mr. Rossi taught an Advanced Placement U.S. history course for
which he recruited lower performing students to help them see themselves as col-
lege-bound. Bobeck’s and Rossi’s schools were diverse in terms of racial and eth-
nic balance as well as socioeconomic status; Rossi taught at a large comprehensive
public high school, whereas Bobeck’s school was a small public charter school.
Lyle’s school was a small independent school whose student population was
mostly White and upper- or upper middle-class. All three schools were located in
large urban areas in northern California. The majority of the students spoke Eng-
lish as a first language and had no identified learning disabilities.
Materials
Because the difficulty level of existing exams (the document-based writing assess-
ments found in Advanced Placement, British A-level, or International Baccalaure-
ate tests) was not appropriate for 11th graders with a range of skills, I created my
own tests. My instrument asked “Why did the United States drop an atomic bomb
on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945?” and included documents that had bearing
on this question (see the Appendix). Teachers introduced the task by stating, “The
purpose of this assignment is to understand how students think about history and
writing,” and then read aloud the question and instructions: “Using the documents
provided, write an essay in response to the question above. Give yourself a maxi-
mum of 45 minutes.” Directions were minimal in order to gain insight into the stu-
dents’ schema for historical writing and the norms for writing in their history
classes. Document A used excerpts from primary documents written by govern-
ment officials in the 2 months preceding the bombing of Hiroshima, whereas Doc-
uments B, C, and D were secondary documents that could be used to corroborate
the arguments highlighted by Document A.
In Document B, political scientist Gar Alperovitz argued that the United States
bombed Hiroshima in order to intimidate the Soviets, a point made by President
Harry Truman in his diary and shown in Document A. In Document C, historian
Herbert Feis wrote that the purpose of the bombing was to end the war quickly and
save American lives, as advanced in meeting notes and memoranda between Tru-
man, his Secretary of War, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Historian Barton
Bernstein made the point in Document D that any country that possessed the tech-
nology would have used the bomb, but only the United States had such technology
at the time (a fact Truman acknowledged in his diary).
546 MONTE-SANO
The instrument was designed to prompt students to make evidence-based argu-

ments for why this particular action (the bombing of Hiroshima) was taken by the
U.S. government. The DBQ instrument measured how students composed their ar-
guments, whether they recognized historical perspectives from a 1945 context
based on multiple documents, and whether they could discuss an event with which
they might have disagreed (such as bombing another country) from a historical
perspective (i.e., that of the government and its representatives in 1945). Faced
with evidence that rationalized the decision to bomb Hiroshima, would students
consider the historical context and perspectives that led to the decision, or would
they judge the event based on present-day beliefs?
Furthermore, how would students navigate the different causes stated for
bombing Hiroshima? Would they be able to corroborate sources and identify the
causes represented in those sources? Finally, could students make an argument
about the causes of the bombing, or would they simply summarize information
presented in the documents? In making their arguments, would students cite the
documents and refer to the evidence contained within them?
Researchers who have studied historical reasoning and writing in history have used
similar tasks to assess students’ historical reasoning and writing (cf. Lee & Dickinson,
1984; Rouet, Britt, Mason, & Perfetti, 1996; Seixas, 2006; Young & Leinhardt, 1998).
The DBQ instrument is consistent with notions regarding analysis of evidence, use of
evidence to construct interpretations of the past, and communication of arguments in
writing. Although such practices echo the work of historians (cf. Collingwood, 1943;
Mink, 1987; Wineburg, 2001), they differ in the sense that historians typically come
up with their own questions and discover evidence through archival research. Obvi-
ously, the nature of a timed, in-class test does not allow for such practices.
Individual interviews with three history doctoral students increased confidence
in the instrument’s content validity. As the PhD students read the prompt and cor-
responding documents, they thought aloud (cf. Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995) to ex-
plain how the documents worked together in response to the essay question—how
they presented evidence for multiple interpretations, whether they were histori-
cally credible, and where they showed corroboration and conflict. The graduate
students concluded that the test posed credible historical questions and presented
historical documents that would be useful in constructing a response.
To ensure that the instrument was age appropriate, I abbreviated documents, al-
tered vocabulary, and removed potentially distracting elements (ellipses, brackets,
etc.). For an example, Barton Bernstein’s (1995) 17-page article was shortened to
one paragraph. Words like “endorsed” were replaced with the simpler “sup-
ported”; “Joseph Stalin” became “Soviet leaders.” Thus, Bernstein’s original sen-
tence “British leaders as well as Joseph Stalin endorsed the act” read “British lead-
ers as well as Soviet leaders supported the act.” Such changes were made to reduce
the demands on student vocabulary and background knowledge in favor of histori-
cal thinking and writing.
Analysis
An analytic framework of historical thinking (cf. Collingwood, 1943; Hexter,
1971; Mink, 1987; Shemilt, 1983; Wineburg, 2001) and argument structure (cf.
Chambliss & Murphy, 2002; Lunsford & Ruszkiewicz, 2001; Toulmin, 1958)
guided the analysis of student responses to the DBQ. I used Miles and Huberman’s
(1994) general approach to qualitative data analysis, including data reduction, data
display, and conclusion drawing and verification. I initially reviewed student es-
says by noting and identifying ways in which the students used evidence in their
essays. Multiple data passes of the essays were documented in writing. Notes and
memos included pattern identification, developing ideas, and excerpts from stu-
dent work that might suggest patterns. Based on such inductive analytic work (cf.
Strauss, 1987), I developed a coding system to rate the students’ historical writing
and compare it to the literature on historical thinking and writing. Excerpts of
student writing that signified a particular code were arranged to facilitate the com-
parison of evidence for each code, which allowed me to see where the students’
writing clustered around certain qualities or where codes overlapped. After I
synthesized and refined the codes, I applied these to the data. Faced with challeng-
ing or contradictory evidence, I revised the codes.
This process of refining and revising codes identified major characteristics in
the students’ historical writing. The final codes that defined students’ historical
writing were both consistent with historical thinking and argumentation literature,
especially Lee and Ashby (2000), Levstik and Barton (2008), Seixas (1994),
Shemilt (1983), VanSledright (2002), and Wineburg (1991), and a way to distin-
guish between stronger and weaker essays.
FINDINGS
Five trends in students’ historical writing emerged. Each represented different as-
pects of working with evidence in historical writing. Table 1 frames these charac-
teristics as discipline-specific writing benchmarks. The subsequent sections share
examples of student work that demonstrate a range of proficiency for each bench-
mark.
These characteristics assume an argumentative stance, which 49 of the 56 stu-
dents adopted (based on the presence of a thesis, organization around a central po-
sition, or interpretive statements, rather than a summary). An argumentation ap-
proach involves using evidence to support a claim. I did not evaluate students’
success in abiding by specific rules of argumentation, such as rebuttal. Instead, I
looked at the way evidence was selected and used in these essays from a historical
point of view.
548 MONTE-SANO
TABLE 1
Benchmarks for Evidence Use in Historical Writing
Characteristic Benchmark
Factual and interpretive The essay interprets the documentary evidence accurately—appropriate
accuracy interpretation. Fair representation of people, issues, events as opposed
to misinterpretation or misunderstanding. Factual details and
chronology are also accurate.
Persuasiveness of The essay substantiates the claim with evidence that is compelling,
evidence relevant, significant, and specific. The weight of the evidence is
sufficient—even compelling. The evidence provided is relevant to the
claim—clearly connects to the main point. The selected evidence is
historically significant rather than marginally related. Evidence is
specific and cites sources where possible. Evidence is convincing to
the reader.
Sourcing of evidence The essay notes authors of documents or other sources of evidence used
to make the argument. The use of evidence recognizes biases inherent
in sources cited. Evidence is balanced and credible.
Corroboration of The claim responds to and accounts for the available evidence. The
evidence essay synthesizes multiple pieces of evidence that work together to
support the claim. The essay explains how different pieces of
evidence work together to support the claim. The essay recognizes
and addresses conflicting/counterevidence.
Contextualization of Contextual knowledge is used to situate and evaluate the evidence
evidence available. In contextualizing evidence and topic, the essay recognizes
historical perspectives and demonstrates an understanding of
causation. The essay uses sources in a manner that is consistent with
the contemporary meaning of the sources for the original audience at
the time and place of their creation.
Accuracy
The degree to which students’ essays were accurate could be seen in factual and in-
terpretive statements. Factual accuracy was straightforward. Students either got
the facts right—details that are commonly known and agreed upon—or got them
wrong. For example, Student 13 (S13) accurately reported, “In August of 1945, the
United States dropped two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima, Japan and the other
one on Nagasaki, Japan.” In contrast, S10 stated that the United States dropped the
atomic bomb in the spring of 1945. Several essays displayed confusion about the
U.S. position with regard to the Soviet Union during World War II. S27 wrote,
“With the decision made on August 6, 1945, the Atomic Bomb was dropped and
the Soviet Union was destroyed, which made WWII over and done.” This student
stated that the United States had used the atomic bomb against the Soviet Union,
its ally during World War II. S7 showed similar confusion when he stated, “After
the bomb was dropped Russia got scared and decided to join forces with the U.S. in
order to avoid the U.S. from dropping another bomb.” This too implies that the
United States and the Soviet Union were on opposing sides during World War II.
Presumably, these students picked up on the anti-Soviet sentiments expressed in
Documents A and B and developed their statements based on those documents
without further background knowledge. Because the United States and the Soviet
Union later became foes during the Cold War, their earlier alliance may have been
a point of confusion.
S2’s statement was more accurate. She wrote the following:
American leaders of that age were extremely opposed to communism, and thus op-
posed the U.S.S.R. Even though we fought alongside them against the Nazis in Rus-
sia, we still didn’t like them very much. We didn’t want them to get any credit or
glory for helping defeat Japan, nor did we want them to obtain any “spoils of the
war.” For that very reason many historians say the American government wanted to
end the war as quickly as possible as to minimize the Soviet Union’s involvement.
Though one might quibble with aspects of her statement, the underlying assump-
tion that the United States and the Soviet Union were allies during World War II is
correct. The difference in factual statements about the two powers may have come
down to what prior knowledge students brought to the task. Although the DBQ
task gave the time and place of the first atomic bombing, it did not explore
U.S.–Soviet relations of the time.
Lack of background knowledge may have accounted for factual errors, but un-
sophisticated reading and interpretive skills posed other problems. Consider the
following passage from President Truman’s diary, written on July 25, 1945:
We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. This weapon
is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. Even if the Japs are sav-
ages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common
welfare cannot drop that bomb on the old capital or the new … It seems to be the most
terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful. (Truman, 1945)
This excerpt appeared in Document A of the DBQ task. Here Truman recognizes
the power of the atomic bomb and America’s intention to use it on Japan. At the
same time that he makes a derogatory, racist statement about the enemy, he states
that it would be wrong to drop this destructive weapon on either the old or new
capital of Japan (Kyoto and Tokyo, neither of which were targeted). This seeming
contradiction presented problems for the students, as revealed in their inaccurate
interpretations:
S38: July 25, 1945, President Truman admits that an atomic bomb was a horrific idea
and that it shouldn’t be used on anything or anyone. (Doc A).
550 MONTE-SANO
S14: Let’s start with “Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic …”
as Document A says. The Japanese did not care about anyone but themselves, and by
them bombing Pearl Harbor their merciless personality shows.
S38 was correct that Truman thought the atomic bomb was awful. However, the
diary entry does not say it should not be used. Instead, it reveals that the bomb will
be used that summer, while Truman ponders target cities. S14 took Truman’s rac-
ist statement literally and gave an example (Pearl Harbor) to prove that the Japa-
nese did not care about anyone. This essay missed the point of the excerpt. Tru-
man’s statement was not an indictment of the Japanese but was made in the context
of deciding on targets for the bomb. Both examples show how students can use,
paraphrase, or refer to documents in their writing without accurately interpreting
them.
Persuasiveness of Evidence
When students included evidence, the strength of the evidence selected varied. S4
gave a reason for why the United States dropped the atomic bomb: “They expected
many more will continue to die if the U.S. continues the war.” Although the reason
is historically significant and relevant to the claim, it is still quite vague, especially
compared with the documentary evidence. S2 was more specific:
The United States had only been in the war for four years and had experienced the
loss of many soldiers. War strategists knew that if they were to continue attacking Ja-
pan the way they were, and/or chose to invade, the number of American casualties
would be tremendous.
Here S2 provided background, including specific reasons in her reference to war

strategists and the consequences of invading Japan.
The final two examples are more specific—and, I would argue, more convinc-
ing—than the preceding excerpts. In the following, S30 cited specific casualties
cited in the diary:
The main use of the atomic bomb was to bring an instant end to the war to save the
lives of Americans and Allied forces if the war had been continued. For an invasion
of Japan, 766,700 troops would be needed, of which 35% would be wounded or
killed (Doc A).
S30 gave both a reason (to save lives) and details from a document to support the
student’s reasoning. Another convincing approach integrated a direct quotation, as
was the case with S45:
The White House wanted to avoid the deaths of more American lives in whichever
way possible and the atomic bomb was a way to ensure that. For it was estimated that
“the total assault troops needed for a land invasion of Japan would be 766,700. Ad-
miral Leafy estimated that 35% of those troops would be wounded or killed during
combat.” (Document A)
Despite misspelling Admiral Leahy’s name, this student used a relevant quotation
from the document to support a significant reason for using the bomb.
Although the writing may not be flawless, these examples present evidence rel-
evant to the claim—certainly more relevant than S40’s essay, which digressed into
the creation of the United Nations and efforts to keep peace in a postwar world.
Sourcing of Evidence
When completing any kind of document-based writing, historians are expected to
note the source of their evidence (Carr, 1961; Collingwood, 1943) and consider its
credibility. As they develop interpretations based on documents, historians learn
about the author or creator of the document and any biases based on the author’s
position, worldview, and interests (Wineburg, 1991). When integrating documents
into written work, historians must acknowledge who is speaking—when, to
whom, and why—or at least take those conditions into account. The following ex-
cerpts demonstrate the beginning stages of students recognizing sources in their
writing:
S13: Too many American troops and allied troops were being killed. General Mar-
shall concluded that for a land invasion of Japan, we would need 766,700 American
troops and Admiral Leahy concluded that 35% if the troops would be wounded or
killed.
S19: According to Document C, Herbert Feis theorized that “the agony of war might
be ended most quickly and lives be saved,” if the bombs were used …
S13 noted that General Marshall and Admiral Leahy were authors of the statistics
she quoted, whereas S19 pointed out that Herbert Feis “theorized” about the end of
the war. Along with citing the author by name, S19 indicated by his word choice
that he understood that Document C was a secondary rather than a primary source.
Students did not necessarily source evidence or ideas in their essays. S4 wrote,
“Russia was showing its arrogance by asking for more land and the rebuild of the
wars cause damage.” Although Documents A and B referred to this reason for
dropping the bomb (managing the Soviet Union), S4 neither quoted nor referred to
either document. Another student, S18, demonstrated a tendency of the students in
referring to evidence:
552 MONTE-SANO
One of the reasons the United States dropped the bomb is because they had it. If it
was in the hands of Hitler or Stalin they surely would have used it on the allied cities
(Doc A2). Anyone who had the A-bomb would have made use of it, even the British
and French leaders (Doc D).
S18 identified the document in parentheses after paraphrasing the reasons found in
that source. However, no person or group was cited as the origin of those ideas, nor
were the authors considered in terms of their credibility.
There are competing explanations for this apparent lack of sourcing: Students
facing a timed essay may attempt to speed up the writing process. Or perhaps they
believe their audience (teachers and researchers) will understand their references
given access to the same documents; students’ practices may even reflect the norms
in their classrooms. The one thing this approach clearly demonstrates is that the stu-
dents did not think authorship or biases were significant issues to include in an essay.
Attributing quotations when using documents also confused S42:
“It was feared that the American casualties alone might mount to hundreds of thou-
sands.” (Doc C.). Truman truly cared about the American people, so the motivational
drive stated in Document C is valid as to one of the reasons the bomb was deployed.
S42 quoted historian Herbert Feis in order to explain how Truman “truly” felt. The
student may have understood Feis’s work to be an interpretation or explanation of
Truman’s actions but did not present the quotation as such; instead, the paragraph
seemed to ascribe Feis’s words to Truman. This student’s writing may point to an
underlying misunderstanding of the nature of secondary and primary sources.
Whatever the reason, the essay showed a lack of attention to authorship and
sources of evidence.
Corroboration of Evidence
In making the case for a particular argument, the stronger essays recognized how
different documents worked together to support a claim. The following examples
present the ways of corroborating documents found in the students’ essays:
S30: The main use of the atomic bomb was to bring an instant end to the war to save
the lives of Americans and Allied forces if the war had been continued. For an inva-
sion of Japan, 766,700 troops would be needed, of which 35% would be wounded or
killed (Doc A). By any means, the [war] had to be ended to save American lives (Doc
A) for those to continue the bombardment, blockade and invasion might mount to
hundreds of thousands of American lives. (Doc C)
S10: Many documents support the fact that the a-bomb was drop to save as many sol-
diers as possible. “Admiral Leahy estimated that 35% of those troops would be
wounded or killed during combat” (Document A). Here, it illustrates that 35% of our
troops would be injured or killed was to high of a risk to take. More importantly, we
wanted to end the war. “By using the bomb the agony of war might be ended most
quickly and lives be saved.” (Document C)
In the first example, S30 cited Documents A and C, though only through para-
phrasing, to show that the United States wanted to end the war to save lives,
whereas in the second example, S10 used quotations from the two documents to
support the point about saving lives. He named the author of the first quotation but
not the second. Both students corroborated documents to substantiate their points,
but S10 did so in a more specific and compelling manner. Students also demon-
strated lower levels of corroboration by quoting a document but not citing, refer-
ring to, or paraphrasing additional documents that supported their point. S42 dem-
onstrated this in the following:
He, being the president of the U.S. at the time, had to manage a multitude of foreign
relationships. “There is no doubt that President Truman was interested in and con-
cerned about Soviet political influence and he wished to end the war as quickly as
possible in order to limit that influence” (Doc B). From this, we can conclude that
Truman used the bomb as a device to control Soviet’s influence, and that he believed
the bomb really would end the war.
Document B supported the student’s point that concerns about the Soviet Union
were a motivating factor in dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. S42 quoted the
document but did not acknowledge its author, nor did he use Truman’s words in
Document A to corroborate the documents and support his point.
Ideally, interpretations will take available evidence into account and acknowl-
edge evidence that may challenge an argument or recognize the ways in which
documents conflict. S11 referred to a document that challenged his thesis: “It is
true that if any other country had had the bomb they would have used it, but as the
‘leader’ of the world should be able to distinguish war from an atomic slaughter.”
Despite the fact that other countries would have used the bomb, S11 argued that
the United States should have recognized its position in the world and set a positive
example. This student was able to note the difference between his position and that
of the documents. Without including specific quotations or referring to authors,
the student used Truman’s diary excerpt and Bernstein’s interpretation of the
bombing to make his case.
Contextualization of Evidence
In their use of evidence, these student essays represent various levels of historical
thinking based in part on how students placed their evidence into historical con-
554 MONTE-SANO
text. Context can include many elements: the occasion upon which someone
speaks or writes, a document’s audience and its perceptions about the author, the
time and place of the document’s creation, what happened before and after it was
created, the author’s intentions, the “climate of opinion” when it was written, and
rhetorical and linguistic customs of the day (Wineburg, 1994). This is similar to
Lee and Shemilt’s (2003) concept of “evidence in context.” Consider the follow-
ing examples:
S29: A hasty end to war would also mean reduced influence of Russian communism
in Europe. (Doc B) By dropping the A-bomb, maybe America hopes to preserve cap-
italism and nationalism and possibly the might of a capitalist nation.
S43: For Japanese citizens it was a matter of cultural and national pride that they not
be shamed by surrender. Faced with such determination, the United States had no
choice but to take extreme action … Though from a modern perspective the bomb is
certainly a terrible thing, from a European pre-nuclear era perspective, before we
knew the tragedy and the cost of nuclear warfare on civilians and the environment, it
was thought not the only rational course of action, a understandable and fairly sym-
pathetic one.
Both essays (a) offer background information that help the reader understand the
historical perspectives and (b) demonstrate understanding of causation—that is,
the climate of opinion and what happened before and after the event. S29 noted
that the Soviet Union was communist, whereas the United States was interested in
preserving capitalism, important background about why the United States wanted
to intimidate the Soviet Union by demonstrating its nuclear capabilities. S43 gave
the Japanese perspective in the summer of 1945, along with a pre- and post-nuclear
perspective on dropping an atomic bomb, to support why dropping the bomb made
sense for the United States at the time. In recognizing the bigger picture, these
writers conveyed the meaning and importance of historical details in their essays.
Others, in attempting to contextualize their explanations, incorporated inaccu-
rate information. According to S40, “The United States in their use of the atomic
bomb had created new battle strategies. Japan in desperate attempt to counterat-
tack had created the kamikaze, plan suicides, that caused greater casualty for the
United States than before.” This essay displayed the student’s confusion over what
came before and after the atomic bomb. Although Japan did use kamikaze pilots, it
was not in response to the United States’ acquisition of the atomic bomb. A faulty
context can reveal flawed understanding of cause-and-effect relationships, indi-
cating that for this student, the significance of factual details was unclear. Alterna-
tively, the student may have had difficulty organizing ideas or logically represent-
ing them in writing.
To construct interpretations, some students pieced together documents in a

manner inconsistent with their original meaning:
S22: On June 18, 1945, President Truman and Joint Chiefs of Staff was discussing
that about “35% of troops would be wounded or killed during combat,” if they ini-
tially invade Japan. Therefore, in July 25, 1945 he discovered the “most terrible
bomb in the history of the world, but it can be made the most useful.” (Doc. A) This
was taken from President Truman Diary, this is why he needed to drop an atomic
bomb. Also, because “if the bomb had not been used, many more would have bitterly
asked the question of the Truman administration.” (Doc D)
S36: Many were angered at the Truman administration for deciding to use the atomic
bomb even when the Japanese would have accepted defeat. After all the Japanese
were known as being “savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic” Doc A. However oth-
ers argued that “In that time, any nation that had the atomic bomb would probably
have used it against enemy peoples. British leaders as well as Soviet leaders sup-
ported the act. America was not morally unique just technologically exceptional”
Doc D. Perhaps the U.S. was just lucky that the atomic bomb was being made during
the time that they were actively participating in a war.
Although they used excerpts from different documents, the essays weaved them
into statements that do not make sense. S22 stringed together quotations in a way
neither clear nor true to their original meaning and formed misleading and faulty
causal connections. She asserted the statistics about lives lost and the subsequent
effort to build the bomb when in fact the atomic program was in development well
before concerns about ending the Pacific war ever surfaced. S36 attempted to as-
cribe a historian’s interpretation to the time, albeit through erroneous statements
(e.g., most Americans supported the bombing by August 1945), and cited the ruth-
lessness of the Japanese to convey a point quite different from what the docu-
ment’s author intended.
While selecting and integrating excerpts from the task documents, the students
distorted the original meaning of the documents. There could be multiple causes
for such practices: the students might not have understood the notion of context or
how to contextualize evidence; they may have lacked background knowledge on
this topic, making it difficult to organize and make sense of the information; they
may have had weak reading skills. Whatever the cause, the result was an ineffec-
tive use of evidence in their writing.
Indicators of Historical Writing in Adolescents’ Essays

The students in the sample demonstrated five characteristics of disciplinary use of
evidence in a variety of ways. Table 2 summarizes examples of what students did
that signified historical writing. If teachers are to help adolescents develop their
556 MONTE-SANO
TABLE 2
Indicators of Historical Writing in Students’ Essays
Characteristic Indicators
Factual and interpretive • Got the facts straight (e.g., chronology of events, which countries
accuracy were allies or enemies)
• Comprehended the information in the documents they used
• Interpreted documents historically, noting subtext and context
Persuasiveness of • Incorporated evidence to support the claim

evidence • Selected specific evidence that included precise historical details or
quotations from documents
• Selected relevant evidence that related to the argument
• Selected evidence that was historically significant, given the topic
• Integrated multiple pieces of evidence in support of the claim
Sourcing of evidence • Made reference to documents or cited documents that were relevant
to the argument
• Recognized or referred to the authors of documents cited
• Attributed authorship to the correct person—recognized that a person
who was discussed in a document was not always the author
• Recognized biases of authors or commented on credibility of
evidence
Corroboration of • Recognized where documents might support their claim
evidence • Used more than one document to support their claim
• Recognized and responded to counter-evidence
Contextualization of • Established the historical context and perspectives relevant to the
evidence topic
• Established clear, correct cause-and-effect relationships
• Established the correct chronology
• Connected excerpts of documents to their historical context—or,
grounded and situated documents in their original context
• Used documents in a manner that was consistent with their original,
historical meaning
disciplinary writing abilities, they must understand the components of such writ-
ing and the ways it can reflect disciplinary thinking. In recognizing sources of evi-
dence, for example, a student could note the letter of the document, note the au-
thor’s name, correctly attribute authorship, and/or cite an author’s biases or
perspective.
Research suggests that, rather than taking place in a lock-step order, historical
reasoning develops in a nonlinear fashion. Learning to use evidence is often messy
and decoupled from other aspects of historical thinking, such as contextualization
(cf. Lee & Ashby, 2000; Lee & Shemilt, 2003; Shemilt, 1983). My own research
was consistent in terms of the students’ essays. One student might have shown
strong disciplinary writing in one paragraph and weaknesses in the next. S10
started out by stating, “To begin with, the United States were fighting against Rus-
sia in the war.” He misinterpreted a quotation citing U.S. concerns about the Soviet
Union. Without comparing the written representation to his thinking, this student
may have lacked substantive knowledge about the events and the players involved.
Or he may have required additional syntactic procedural knowledge on how to
contextualize documents. Along with reading comprehension, these forms of
knowledge construct the basis for cogent written interpretation. In the next para-
graph, the student correctly cited several documents to explain how dropping the
bomb saved American lives. Though uneven, indicators of historical writing were
present throughout the essay. Thus, no single paragraph could fully represent this
student’s grasp of historical writing.
Argumentation Is Necessary but Not Sufficient

Students may include evidence in their essays without using it historically. Recall
that S18 wrote the following:
One of the reasons the United States dropped the bomb is because they had it. If it
was in the hands of Hitler or Stalin they surely would have used it on the allied cities
(Doc A2). Anyone who had the A-bomb would have made use of it … (Doc D).
This student made a claim and referred to evidence from two documents to support
it, but then detached the evidence from its source and the context in which it was
written. Document D was the historian’s interpretation published 50 years after Hi-
roshima, whereas Document A2 was written by Truman 12 days before the bomb-
ing. The social context in which each document was created differs widely, as does
the perspective of events each author discussed. Including this claim while eschew-
ing authorial and temporal context calls the evidence into question, because one can-
not assess the authors’ relationships to the events described, the information incor-
porated in their points of view, or their purposes in making their points. Judged by
the norms of historical writing, S18’s lack of source and contextual information for
his evidence weakened his argument. Yet based on argumentation conventions
alone, the student had in fact included evidence to support his claim.
In contrast, S13’s evidence met both criteria. She cited statistics and the sources
of those statistics: “General Marshall concluded that for a land invasion of Japan,
we would need 766,700 American troops and Admiral Leahy concluded that 35%
if the troops would be wounded or killed.” As the Army and Navy Chiefs of Staff,
Marshall and Leahy were key advisors to the President when Truman made the de-
cision to bomb Hiroshima. But as representatives of the U.S. military, they were
focused on saving the lives of American troops.
Attaching the sources of information presents a more complete set of evidence:
reporting who created facts and quotations (and when) can be as important as the
data themselves, because a host of conditions may have shaped them. Such infor-
558 MONTE-SANO
mation allows readers to judge the trustworthiness of evidence. To be sure, S13

could have included more information about the Joint Chiefs and the contextual in-
fluences upon them, along with the fact that these notes were taken at an official
meeting. Still, including sources of information is a strong starting point for as-
sessing the credibility of evidence.
Much has been written about the discipline-specific nature of warrants (Bruner,
1960; Hexter, 1971; Schwab, 1978), which form connections between a paper’s
central premise and supporting reasons or facts. Such explanations are “the glue
that holds [the evidence and premise] together” (Lunsford & Ruszkiewicz, 2001,
p. 95). Thus, students’ use of evidentiary warrants demonstrates the importance of
historical thinking in their argumentative writing. An excerpt from S29’s history
essay supports why stronger warrants represent disciplinary thinking: “A hasty
end to war would also mean reduced influence of Russian communism in Europe.
(Doc B) By dropping the A-bomb, maybe America hopes to preserve capitalism
and nationalism and possibly the might of a capitalist nation.” His argument—that
the United States used the bomb in order to reduce Soviet influence—relied on the
context of a situation (U.S. concern that capitalism might succumb to commu-
nism). In the process, he clarified the causal relationship between U.S.–Soviet dis-
trust and the use of the atomic bomb. This essay spelled out what was important
about the evidence from a historical point of view.
By the same token, lack of historical evidence leads to weak warrants, uncon-
vincing arguments, and confused writing:
S26: “Few in 1945 asked why the United States used the atomic bomb on Japan. But
if the bomb had not been used, many more would have bitterly asked that question of
the Truman administration.” (Document D). It was not only for the sake of ending he
[sic] war, but also for the sake of avenging the lives lost in Pearl Harbor.
S26 missed what was historically significant about the quotation—that after years
of destructive warfare, any country in 1945 would have used such a weapon to end
the war quickly. Instead, the student tried to explain the quotation’s importance by
connecting it to Pearl Harbor. Certainly in terms of argumentation a warrant was
present, but by the stated standards of historical writing, the explanation lacked
contextualization of evidence and interpretive accuracy. As a result, the connec-
tion between the essay’s premise and its stated evidence was tenuous.
Even though it included a thesis, evidence, and warrants, the longer excerpt
from S14’s essay (see Figure 1) demonstrates flaws in historical writing. Earlier, I
pointed out S14’s inaccurate interpretation of Truman’s diary. This longer excerpt
includes that same interpretive error as well as a list of reasons for the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima. Despite its argumentation framework this essay takes the
form of knowledge-telling rather than knowledge transformation (Bereiter &
Scardamalia, 1987). Rather than constructing an original argument that accounts
FIGURE 1 Knowledge-telling in the first two paragraphs of Student 14’s essay.
for the evidence, the claim summarizes ideas from the documents, listing evidence
without discrimination and giving only minimal reasons connecting evidence with
argument. The essay is more a report of the information in the documents than an
interpretation. S14 may have resorted to knowledge-telling because the task
placed an overwhelming cognitive demand on her (McCutchen, 2006). Even so,
her essay is only minimally convincing, conveying not a historical argument but
basic comprehension of the documents.
DISCUSSION
As we as experts search for reasons why adolescents score poorly on measures of

advanced literacy, we can conclude that they are rarely taught to read and write in
discipline-specific ways (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Researchers have argued
560 MONTE-SANO
that the hallmarks of advanced literacy are particular to different fields of study
(cf. Bruner, 1960; Schwab, 1978). Thus, if students are to develop advanced skills,
we must pay attention to the specialized demands of each discipline. In so doing,
we need tools that will help researchers and teachers explicitly characterize the lit-
eracy demands of each discipline and communicate those expectations to students.
Absent empirical research on writing by historians, this article used student es-
says to explore the nature of historical writing. The proposed framework can offer
a way of applying to adolescents’ writing what is already known about the pro-
cesses and practices of expert historians. The categories found in the essays dis-
cussed in this article can, when taken together, help characterize a definition of his-
torical writing.
Although generic argumentation is a necessary component of historical writ-
ing, it alone is not sufficient. Toulmin (1958) outlined the key components of argu-
mentation, such as conclusions, claims, data, warrants, and rebuttal. Certainly
these elements play a role in writing history, as they do in various fields of argu-
mentation in the humanities and social sciences. In constructing arguments, both
historians and students are expected to convey an overarching conclusion, or the-
sis, and support it with reasons, evidence, and explanation (or, to use Toulmin’s
terms, claims, data, and warrants). But by themselves, such elements can miss the
qualities that make history a discipline in its own right. Students’ use and explana-
tions of evidence highlight why argumentation alone is not a comprehensive mea-
sure of written historical essays.
A student’s writing may exhibit features of argumentation while revealing fun-
damental flaws in historical thinking. It is in the quality of evidence and explana-
tion, not the quantity or mere existence of such features, that disciplinary writing
comes into play. And this is largely determined by the level of a student’s disci-
plinary approach to the selection, use, and explanation of evidence. Although com-
petent argumentation is necessary, it is not sufficient to produce a good historical
essay.
Approaching writing from a disciplinary stance encourages students to trans-
form the knowledge in their essays. They can gain a better overall understanding
of documents; learn how to appropriately interpret documents and select excerpts
for use as evidence; note author credibility in selecting evidence; and, finally, situ-
ate evidence in a historical context that clarifies its significance. Further practice in
disciplinary thinking can help students focus on the demands of historical writing
without as much cognitive overload.
Writing convincing historical argument involves conceptual understanding:
procedural knowledge of historical analysis, an underlying grasp of the topic and
discipline, and background content knowledge. These prerequisites go well be-
yond such skill acquisition as placing a quotation in an essay or writing a topic sen-
tence. Conceptual understanding can make it possible for students to construct a
plausible argument, select relevant evidence, and explain its significance. By gain-
ing the skills of knowledge production, and learning what counts as knowledge
within the discipline, student writers will become more prepared to build a con-
vincing historical argument.
The characteristics of historical writing that represent conceptual understand-
ing are likely related. Persuasive evidence is specific, relevant, and significant. In
offering evidence that is specific, students might include details about its author or
context. In this way, specificity refers to the details of what happened, and when or
who reported an event. When sourcing, students might make contextual references
to explain an author’s perspective. If a writer identifies Truman as President of the
United States in 1945 and goes on to clarify that Truman opposed communist ex-
pansion, he or she is supplying background information about the era. By selecting
significant and relevant evidence, students demonstrate their understanding of
context through details that are connected to one another (e.g., that form a causal
relationship) and establish the setting. In order for evidence to be convincing, it
must be accurate and be backed by further evidence. Thus, if an essay demon-
strates a student’s understanding of context, its evidence will most likely be accu-
rate. At higher levels of performance, the characteristics of students’ historical
writing may overlap. This is less likely at novice levels, where students struggle to
demonstrate their proficiency in any single characteristic.
When students are not proficient, how can they develop a grasp of historical
writing? Thirty of the 56 students in this study had teachers who emphasized evi-
dence-based writing and historical thinking (i.e., Ms. Bobeck and Mr. Lyle). Ear-
lier reports from this research indicated that students in these classrooms were
more successful learning to write historically (Monte-Sano, 2008, in press), not
surprising when one compares the results of research on composition and histori-
cal thinking. According to Hillocks (1984), an environmental mode of instruction
is effective in improving student writing. This type of instruction focuses on in-
quiry, presents students with sets of data and activities that foster writing, and
highlights peer interaction in completing tasks. The daily structure of Lyle’s and
Bobeck’s classes echoed this approach. Hillock’s research also reveals that the
most common but least effective approach to students’ writing is the presenta-
tional mode. Mr. Rossi’s daily lectures on U.S. history exemplified such an in-
structional approach, and his sample of students showed the least growth in histor-
ical writing.
Historical thinking research has produced similar, albeit subject-specific, find-
ings. Research suggests that an explicit focus on procedural knowledge of history
may improve historical writing as much, if not more, than a focus on generic writ-
ing or argumentation conventions (Greene, 2001; Monte-Sano, in press). The stu-
dents likely to develop as historical writers come from inquiry-oriented class-
rooms. They are taught to think and write historically, regularly analyze multiple
historical texts with opportunities to construct historical interpretations, and inter-
act with one another through discussion or group work (De La Paz, 2005;
562 MONTE-SANO
Monte-Sano, 2008, in press; Wiley & Voss, 1999; Young & Leinhardt, 1998).
These were the qualities of instruction present in Ms. Bobeck’s and Mr. Lyle’s
teaching. The same practices—engaging in historical inquiry, reading and analyz-
ing multiple documents, asking historical questions of texts, and working to con-
struct interpretations—are the ones that will foster historical thinking (Ashby, Lee,
& Shemilt, 2005; Bain, 2005; VanSledright, 2002).
LIMITATIONS
Three aspects of argumentation are apparent in historical writing: positing a claim,

supporting it with evidence, and explaining the connections between claim and ev-
idence. Although argumentation and historical writing may overlap, these com-
mon features form only basic elements of historical writing. They cannot capture
what constructing a claim, selecting and explaining evidence, and working with
evidence looks like in history. A sophisticated level of historical writing goes well
beyond generic argument without necessarily implying that argumentation is a
prerequisite for historical writing. According to this study, it is not clear whether
argumentative writing and historical writing are separate constructs that develop
in parallel or constructs that share a hierarchical relationship, such that one must
precede the other. Further study is needed to separate these constructs and clarify
their relationship.
At the same time, historical writing relies on proficiencies such as reading, ana-
lyzing, and interpreting documents; organizing ideas and conveying them in writ-
ing; and integrating relevant background knowledge. Testing students on their
knowledge of an assigned topic could establish the extent to which background
knowledge contributes to historical writing and how its use interacts with histori-
cal writing. Reading and writing skills have implications for historical writing in
the schools. This study measured neither writing nor reading ability in the generic
sense, nor did it assess language proficiency (students may not use examples if
they do not understand what they have read or cannot translate their ideas into writ-
ing). Because there was no measure of prior knowledge or general writing and
reading skills, I could not know the extent to which adolescents’ background
knowledge or literacy-related skills had influenced their written products. This
study also provides no access to students’ thinking about the assignment and their
responses; instead, I discuss only written representations of their thinking. These
issues will require attention in future attempts to understand students’ historical
writing.
Because most of the students in this study received regular writing opportuni-
ties and/or instruction in evidence-based writing and historical thinking, when it
came to historical writing they were not complete novices, a fact that allows room
for exploring the abilities of students with no experience in historical writing or
ways of thinking. Potential also exists for exploring the historical writing skills of
younger students (all participants in this study were in 11th grade). Exploring
these areas would define a developmental trajectory for historical writing and
identify necessary way-stations on the path to expertise.
Finally, interviewing students throughout the writing process might indicate
ways in which their historical thinking and writing intersect (i.e., how well does
historical writing capture students’ disciplinary thinking, and to what extent does it
influence their writing?).
CONCLUSION
In order to support adolescents’ literacy development, educators and researchers

need to understand particular ways of reading and writing in each discipline. The
work presented here represents one step toward defining the essential qualities of
adolescents’ historical writing. Historical writing reflects what it means to learn in
history, what counts as knowledge, and how knowledge is constructed in history.
By learning to write historically, students gain access to the conventions of a disci-
pline (where knowledge comes from). Learning within subject areas involves un-
derstanding procedural (“syntactic”) and substantive types of knowledge (Lee,
2005; Schwab, 1978) that lead to knowledge production. These processes neces-
sarily involve literacy in history, a subject rooted in the analysis of texts and con-
struction of interpretations, especially in its written form. As such, historical think-
ing and writing are inextricably linked. Historical writing mimics the process of
knowledge production and communication in the study of history. Teaching his-
torical thinking opens the doors to working with evidence and crafting arguments,
processes required for historical writing. Approaching literacy from a disci-
pline-specific perspective integrates subject area and literacy goals. As Moje
(2008) pointed out,
Without careful attention to what it means to learn in the subject areas and what
counts as knowledge in the disciplines that undergird those subjects, educators will
continue to struggle to integrate literacy instruction and those areas. That is, in the
past, secondary literacy has been approached from the standpoint of literacy theory,
rather than from the standpoint of the disciplinary learning theory. What we have not
done is to examine what it means to learn in the subject areas or disciplines … We
have not thoroughly conceptualized language and literacy practice as an integral as-
pect of subject area learning. (p. 99)
Historical writing is not just about literacy. Rather, it is essential for learning the
substantive and procedural forms of knowledge central to the study of history. It is
564 MONTE-SANO
time to redouble our efforts to understand how literacy and the disciplines are
connected.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A Research Training Grant from The Spencer Foundation generously supported

this work; however, I alone am responsible for the content of this article. I extend
my thanks to Jon Christensen, Abosede Ajibike George, and Natalia Mehlman for
their input on the document-based essay question. I am very grateful for the sup-
port, advice, and feedback of several people over the course of this project. I espe-
cially wish to thank Marilyn Chambliss, Larry Cuban, Ann Ryu Edwards, Susan
De La Paz, Pam Grossman, David Hammer, Cindy Hmelo-Silver, Maria Hyler,
David Labaree, Daisy Martin, Alex Monte-Sano, Joe Polman, Ann Porteus,
Beatriz Quintos, Avishag Reisman, Mary Ryan, Emily Shahan, Rebecca Silver-
man, and Sam Wineburg for their encouragement, thoughtful feedback, and con-
structive criticism. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for helping me con-
tinue to improve this manuscript. Most of all, I give sincere thanks to Ms. Bobeck,
Mr. Lyle, Mr. Rossi, and their students for welcoming me into their classrooms
and helping me think about historical writing.
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APPENDIX
Atomic Bomb Document-Based Question
Soon after World War II ended, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that
“certainly prior to December 31, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the
atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and
even if no invasion had been planned.” Given this background,
Why did the United States drop an atomic bomb

on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945?
Using the documents provided, write an essay in response to the question above.
Give yourself a maximum of 45 minutes.
Document A: Diaries, Notes and Memoranda From the Summer of 1945

The U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, after success-
fully testing an atomic bomb on July 16, 1945.
General Marshall said the total assault troops needed for a land invasion of Japan
would be 766,700. Admiral Leahy estimated that 35% of those troops would be
wounded or killed during combat.
~Notes from a meeting between President Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
June 18, 1945
We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. This
weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. Even if the Japs
are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the
common welfare cannot drop that bomb on the old capital or the new. It is certainly
a good thing for the world that Hitler’s crowd or Stalin’s did not discover this
atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be
made the most useful.
~President Truman’s Diary, July 25, 1945
568 MONTE-SANO
In settling the European front of the war, the Soviet Union wants more land from
Poland and Germany. We are at an impasse on the borders of the territory the So-
viet Union will take. The Soviet Union is also expecting compensation for dam-
ages endured as a result of the war. I’ve made it plain that the U.S. does not intend
to pay.
~President Truman’s Diary, July 25–30, 1945
No matter what else might happen, we now have the means to insure the war’s
speedy conclusion and save thousands of American lives.
~Memo for the Secretary of War by Major General Groves, July 18, 1945
Document B: Modern Interpretation #1

Top officials early on saw the atomic bomb as central to their relationship with the
Soviet Union. Many scholars now recognize that the atomic bomb was connected
to managing Europe. There is no doubt that President Truman was interested in
and concerned about Soviet political influence—and that he wished to end the war
as quickly as possible in order to limit that influence.
~Gar Alperovitz (1995), The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb
Document C: Modern Interpretation #2

By using the bomb the agony of war might be ended most quickly and lives be
saved. It was feared that many thousands, probably tens of thousands, of lives of
Allied combatants would have to be spent in the continuation of our air and sea
bombardment and blockade. If it proved necessary to invade, it was feared that the
American casualties alone might mount to hundreds of thousands.
~Herbert Feis (1966), The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II
Document D: Modern Interpretation #3

Few in 1945 asked why the United States used the atomic bomb on Japan. But if
the bomb had not been used, many more would have bitterly asked that question of
the Truman administration. In that time, any nation that had the A-bomb would
probably have used it against enemy peoples. British leaders as well as Soviet
leaders supported the act. Germany’s and Japan’s leaders surely would have used
it against cities. America was not morally unique—just technologically excep-
tional. Only it had the bomb, and so only it used it.
~Barton Bernstein (1995), “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered,” Foreign
Affairs

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This article was downloaded by: [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile]

On: 29 April 2015, At: 07:30

Journal of the Learning

Disciplinary Literacy in History:

To cite this article: Chauncey Monte-Sano (2010) Disciplinary Literacy in History: An

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2010.481014

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Disciplinary Literacy in History:

An Exploration of the Historical Nature

Correspondence should be addressed to Chauncey Monte-Sano, University of Maryland, 2311

(Shanahan, 2004; Sperling & Freedman, 2001), it is crucial to success in today’s

Historians on Historical Writing

Research on the Historical Thinking of Experts and Novices

roboration”) to find points of agreement and contradiction. For these historians,

Research on Expert and Novice Writing

characteristics of adolescents’ historical writing.

range of beginning and intermediate historical writers (see Monte-Sano, 2008,

The instrument was designed to prompt students to make evidence-based argu-

S2’s statement was more accurate. She wrote the following:

Here S2 provided background, including specific reasons in her reference to war

To construct interpretations, some students pieced together documents in a

Indicators of Historical Writing in Adolescents’ Essays

Persuasiveness of • Incorporated evidence to support the claim

Argumentation Is Necessary but Not Sufficient

mation allows readers to judge the trustworthiness of evidence. To be sure, S13

FIGURE 1 Knowledge-telling in the first two paragraphs of Student 14’s essay.

As we as experts search for reasons why adolescents score poorly on measures of

Three aspects of argumentation are apparent in historical writing: positing a claim,

influence their writing?).

In order to support adolescents’ literacy development, educators and researchers

A Research Training Grant from The Spencer Foundation generously supported

Monte-Sano, C. (2008). Qualities of effective writing instruction in history classrooms: A cross-case

Why did the United States drop an atomic bomb

Document A: Diaries, Notes and Memoranda From the Summer of 1945

Document B: Modern Interpretation #1

Document C: Modern Interpretation #2

Document D: Modern Interpretation #3

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