Oral History (1)_ Some things you need to consider before using oral history with your students

[0:01] Hello everyone, and welcome to the first recording of our webinar series on the history side of the classroom. This is the recording of the first of three sessions that we are hosting online about oral history, and today here with us, or for the whole three sessions actually here with us, is Bridget Martin. Bridget is a history teacher, a member of the Historiana Teaching and Learning team. She's been working with EuroCLIO a lot, and among the other projects that she worked on with us is a project where she developed a teacher's guide on oral history, and so she's here to talk with us a little bit about that. So Bridget, the floor is yours. Thank you, Alicia.

[0:43] Right, I'm just gonna start by sharing my screen so you can see my presentation. Here we go. Okay, so we are going to have three sessions talking about oral history in education. There we go. So my interest in oral history began probably about four or five years ago. when I was undertaking my master's in history at the University of Groningen. And so I did some research there with Tim Haukens and Barbara Henkes. And I've also more recently, as Alicia mentioned, created this resource, which was in collaboration with Judith Pereira in Sri Lanka. And so I'd like to acknowledge all three of them with whom I've worked very closely, because a lot of the ideas that I'll be sharing with you over the next three sessions come from the work that we have done.

[1:36] together. So as mentioned, we've decided to make this webinar a three-part series to hopefully make it a little bit more digestible for you. So the first part, this video here, is where I'd like to really focus on. the big picture. What are all of the things that you might need to consider before you use oral history with your students? Then in the second video, in part two, I want to really zoom in on how can we prepare students for oral history interviews to actually conduct those interviews themselves. So there'll be lots of practical ideas in there. And then in the last part, we will look at analysing oral history interviews once they have been conducted and we want to use them to improve or develop our historical understanding.

[2:26] So that's where we're headed across the series. But for this particular session, I want to look at things to consider before using oral history with your students. And I think we have to start with you as the teacher familiarizing yourself with the study of oral history. And this inevitably begins with the key question, well, what is oral history? And it might seem like a basic question, but as I said, I only became really interested in oral history in the last four or five years. And before that, I'd been teaching for five or so years already and using, in fact, oral history videos in my classroom.

[3:08] without really appreciating what the study of oral history was. And I thought at that time that actually any oral source was a form of oral history, which is not actually the case. So when we are talking about oral history, There's many ways we could define it, but I've just chosen this one from Donald Ritchie, who's defined oral history in this way. Simply put, oral history collects memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews. So I think the first thing to zero in on here is that it must be a recorded interview.

[3:45] between the oral historian or perhaps in our case the student acting as the oral historian and an interviewee or the narrator as we might sometimes call them. And it's focused on their memories and their commentaries that have some sort of historical significance or meaning for our understanding of history. So you can see that it is quite specific as a field of study. There are a few other things that make oral history special. And I've made a list of them here, although there are many more that I haven't included on this list. But just to get a bit of an appreciation of why oral history is actually...

[4:23] quite different to the mainstream discipline of history and it really is its own specific field of study and oral historians have worked quite hard to define that field of study and all of the ways of thinking and the practices that go along with it. So a few of the things that make oral history special are the ability to see and hear and if you're the interviewer actually interact. with the person or creates the source. And this is another thing that's particularly special is that this is really the only field of history where you as the historian are involved in co-creating the source. So typically in history we deal with sources that are traces left behind.

[5:05] from things that have happened in the past. But in this case, the historian is actually the one initiating the creation of the source by going out and setting up an interview and recording it. And they're actually involved in the creation of that source because they're guiding that discussion with the questions that they choose to ask, how they ask them and so on. So it's quite unique and different to other historical sources in that way. Oral history is also special because it's very subjective in nature. And we could say that about a lot of historical sources and evidence and so on.

[5:38] It's particularly true when we're dealing with individual people and their perspectives and memories and so on. And of course, key to that as well is how... memory plays a role in oral history because typically these interviews are talking about events that happened quite a long time ago and so we really need to consider some of the complexities involved in memory the way that we remember forgetting and so on. It's also very interdisciplinary. area of study. So oral historians use elements of literary studies and journalism and psychology and memory studies and pull all of these elements from different disciplines together to try and make sense as best we can of what we can understand about the past and about the way that that past is experienced and remembered by different people at different times. And there's also a democratizing aspect to it because it does allow us to potentially hear the voices

[6:38] of people that we might not otherwise draw attention to in the study of history. This kind of a person type of interviewee, or indeed the fact that students themselves can act as oral historians and conduct these kinds of studies themselves, is also a democratizing aspect. So that's just a few ways in which oral history is special, and therefore we need to make sure we really understand it as a field of study before we try and share all of its fruits with our students. So if you wanted to, and I really would encourage you to spend at least an hour familiarizing yourself a little bit with oral history as a field of study. I know as teachers, we're all time poor. But I do think it's important that we dedicate at least some time to getting our heads around the essentials. And you can see I've suggested two resources here that might be useful. The first is the Oral History Society. That's a UK-based organization. And then the Oral History Association, which is based in the US.

[7:39] Both of them have really useful websites that outline oral history. They've got lots of practical resources specifically focused on school education. I will also, at the end of the third video, show you another list with other resources that might be useful for further reading if you do have a little bit more time. But if it's just a really essential starting point, these are really great places to begin familiarizing yourself. Okay, so once you've got your head around some of the key aspects of oral history, the next thing would be to think about how do you plan to use this with your students? And I have a few possible ways you might use this with your students. So you might, if you have the luxury of having the time within your curriculum, or perhaps you have a history club, this could be a really great type of project to do with a history club, is run a complete project, which is entirely focused on oral history.

[8:35] is what was described in the guide that was created by Judith and I that guides you step by step through a complete oral history project, where students might interview someone in their community or a family member about a particular topic and go through all the steps in that process, and then produce perhaps an exhibition or a documentary or some sort of presentation that's really focused on these oral histories and what we can understand about history through them. If you have perhaps not quite so much time to dedicate to a full project, it might be that you're able to include oral history as one research method.

[9:16] within broader research projects, and this is something that I often do particularly with older students. who are conducting research projects, if they do know someone relevant, and sometimes they do have someone in their family who has some relevance to the topic they're studying, they might conduct an oral history interview as well as desk research and draw them together in a typical essay or something along those lines. So it might just be one element of a broader project. If you're also not in a position or you don't have the time perhaps for students to go out and conduct their own interviews, you might find that actually just analysing pre-recorded oral histories, and there are huge amounts of online archives available.

[10:01] that have wonderful resources that you can use and use those either with the whole class or suggest that students use those interviews as part of their individual research and then just analyze those and consider how they could be used. in developing our historical understanding. So think about the different ways you might use it in your particular context and therefore which elements you would need to include or adapt and so on. Okay, so once you've decided how you're going to use oral history, here are the key steps that you would need to plan ahead, and this is particularly in the case of a full oral history project, if you're able to do that. Okay, so these 10 key elements or 10 key steps actually come directly from the guide that's available on the EuroCLIO website under resources that Judith and I developed. You'd need to start with teacher preparation, and that's the kind of background reading and so on mentioned earlier but it's also

[11:02] perhaps taking the time to go through some online archives, for example, and select videos that would be relevant to your topic and to your students that you could use, particularly in that early phase of getting the students themselves familiar with oral history. Then we would suggest, or I would suggest, spending some time with the whole class or the whole group, if it's a history club for example, preparing them, getting them familiar with the ideas and the concepts of oral history as a field of study, and also interview skills and so on.

[11:35] The students would then need to select an interviewee or potentially multiple interviewees depending on the scale of the project and the time and so on. And really importantly, they need to gain consent and I would add here informed consent from that person regarding the interview. So it needs to be made really clear to the person that they're interviewing. how the recording will be stored, for example, how it might be used because, of course, the person being interviewed might speak differently if they know that the interview will only be seen by the teacher of the student.

[12:11] versus if it might be seen by the whole school or if it might be put in a documentary that's shared worldwide. This will inform how comfortable or not they feel participating and so on. So it needs to be made really clear how it will be used and what the purpose of it is, of course. And it needs to be made clear also to the interviewee what their rights are as an interviewee. So if they feel uncomfortable at any time, they can stop the interview. They will have a chance to review the interview once it's been completed, so on and so forth.

[12:41] So we just need to make sure students are very wary of protecting and understanding the rights of the people that they're interviewing. So once they've done that, the students really need to do some in-depth research before they conduct their interview. And that research should be about... the general historical period or issue or event that they're studying, and it should also be about the person that they're interviewing specifically. so they might have an informal meeting for example, with that person to get some of the essential information, where they were living at which time, for example They might also, if they're lucky, ask that person to provide them some other source material, so photographs for example, or letters or objects that might be relevant to the interview.

[13:28] So they're getting a great deal of background information already about the person they're going to be speaking with. And once they have that research, they can then begin writing the questions that they want to ask during the interview. And we'll talk about that in a bit of depth in the next video. They then need to conduct their interview, and this is again where, as the teacher, you need to plan ahead a little bit for this stage, because it does need to be recorded. So you need to think about making sure that the students have some device that will have sufficient battery and memory capacity and so on to record an interview of however long you've decided, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour. It depends a little bit on the project.

[14:13] Ideally, if you have the availability and the narrator or the interviewee is happy for you to, a video recording would be excellent. If that's not possible though, a voice recording. can be sufficient. So have a think about, just in terms of the logistical aspects, how those interviews can be recorded by your students, and also then where those recordings will be stored to make sure that they are safe and protected. Step number seven is transcription. Now, this is a very slow process in which students ideally are using that recording to write out verbatim, so word for word, the entire interview in a full transcript.

[14:57] It's a very time consuming step. If you're doing a full project, I really would suggest it needs to be a part of it, because it's a part of the full oral history experience. I will confess that when I use oral history, particularly if it's just one form of research, in a larger project, sometimes I do let the students skip this step, but I do make sure they're using that recording to ensure that any quotations they use, for example, are accurate.

[15:29] because we have to, of course, make sure we're not misrepresenting anything that was said during the interview and so on. So ideally including it, but there might be some workarounds if needed. just be warned it is a very time-consuming process. And then once that's all been done, it's great to give the interviewee a chance to have a look. at that recording and or at the transcript, just to make sure that they feel that it is an accurate representation, that they didn't say anything they really shouldn't have, or they didn't miss anything, and they'd like to maybe add something to what they had said and so on and so forth. So just making sure that they are included in that process.

[16:09] and that we can have meaningful discussions with them about that interview. Then the students need to analyse those interviews before they decide how they're going to either present them or use them within their research and so on. And that's the subject of the third video in the series. And lastly, it's about presentation. How will the students present that work? Will it go into the a written essay? Will it be a digital exhibit or a real life exhibit? or a documentary, any or all sorts of possibilities are available.

[16:43] And it's really up to you and your creativity how you might like to do that. So all of those steps are detailed in that teaching strategy. Although I will point out it is still an introductory guide. and you can go into a lot more depth about each of them. In the second video, I'm really going to focus on these two elements, which are key to preparing students to conduct their own interview. And then in the third video, we'll look particularly at analysis and how we can guide students to meaningfully analyze those as sources. So that's the end.

[17:18] of the first part. I hope it was helpful to you. And then we'll move on to part two. next time. Thank you, Bridget, very, very much for this first introduction and yeah see you soon for the next video.