Experimental Archaeology as a Vehicle for Interdisciplinary High School Pedagogy

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological content in high schools appears in the social studies curriculum as historical narrative rather than as part of the process of active information production. Surveys of students indicated that they do not see value in archaeological content beyond the classroom and that they perceive their role in a social studies class to be reiteration of known information. They reported very little interest in archaeology in higher education. Cooperating with teachers in other subjects enabled me to reorient class content around archaeology labs designed to teach students to interpret data, generate information, and synthesize it with their peers’ findings. Subsequent surveys tracking changes in student perception of archaeology showed increased interest in elective archaeology courses. Responses indicated that their understanding of archaeology expanded to include science content. Building content around knowledge production also personalized student learning outcomes and facilitated development of evaluative skills. The teamwork component of this skill instruction models upper level academic environments and exhibits the interdisciplinary strength of archaeology. Building content around knowledge production, presentation, and discourse also personalized student learning outcomes which improved engagement and facilitated development of more advanced evaluative skills than could otherwise be accessed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41625.0