Spartan Daily, March 4, 1982

Volume 78, Issue 20https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6862/thumbnail.jp

Separating "Fact" from Fiction: Strategies to Improve Rigour in Historical Research

Since the 1980s, many fields of qualitative research have adopted LINCOLN and GUBA's (1985) four criteria for determining rigour (credibility, confirmability, dependability and transferability) to evaluate the quality of research outputs. Historical research is one field of qualitative inquiry where this is not the case. While most historical researchers recognise the need to be rigorous in their methods in order to improve the trustworthiness of their results, ambiguity exists about how rigour is demonstrated in historical research. As a result, strategies to establish rigour remain focused on piecemeal activities (e.g., source criticism) rather than adopting a whole-of-study approach. Using a piecemeal approach makes it difficult for others to understand the researcher's rationale for the methods used and decisions made during the research process. Fragmenting approaches to rigour may contribute to questioning of the legitimacy of historical methods. In this article, we provide a critique of the challenges to achieving rigour that currently exist in historical research. We then offer practical strategies that can be incorporated into historical methods to address these challenges with the aim of producing a more transparent historical narrative

A source modelling system and its use for uncertainty management

Human agents have to deal with a considerable amount of information from their environment and are also continuously faced with the need to take actions. As that information is largely of an uncertain nature, human agents have to decide whether, or how much, to believe individual pieces of information. To enable a reasoning system to deal in general with the demands of a real environment, and with information from human sources in particular, requires tools for uncertainty management and belief formation. This thesis presents a model for the management of uncertain information from human sources. Dealing, more specifically, with information which has been pre-processed by a natural language processor and transformed into an event-based representation, the model assesses information, forms beliefs and resolves conflicts between them in order to maintain a consistent world model. The approach is built on the fundamental principle that the uncertainty of information from people can, in the majority of situations, successfully be assessed through source models which record factors concerning the source's abilities and trustworthiness. These models are adjusted to reflect changes in the behaviour of the source. A mechanism is presented together with the underlying principles to reproduce such a behaviour. A high-level design is also given to make the proposed model reconstructible, and the successful operation of the model is demonstrated on two detailed examples

DOING THE WORK: USING QUESTIONS, TASKS, AND SOURCES TO NAVIGATE TEACHING CONTENTIOUS SOCIAL STUDIES IN SECONDARY CLASSROOMS

This explanatory case study examines how two secondary social studies teachers use inquiry-based learning to mitigate the risks of teaching contentious social studies in a charged classroom. Research questions included: 1. How do two in-service secondary teachers use inquiry-based instruction to navigate teaching contentious social studies during charged times? 2. What curricular and pedagogical choices were made by the in-service teachers to navigate risk when designing inquiry-based instruction that features contentious social studies during charged times? 3. What curricular and pedagogical choices were made by the in-service teachers to navigate risk when delivering inquiry-based instruction that features contentious social studies during charged times? Through interviews, observations, and artifacts, this study examined the teachers\u27 instructional choices as they taught units featuring American Reconstruction and Europe’s interwar years and the rise of Hitler. Data was analyzed using Swan et al.’s (2018) Questions, Tasks, and Sources [QTS] Observation Protocol and Pace’s (2021) Framework for Teaching Controversial Issues. The author identified three broad themes: curriculum control, ideological distancing, and community utilization. The teachers exerted significant control over their instruction, privileging safety over openness in how they designed and delivered their lessons. Additionally, when instructing on topics in which they held different views than the school’s community, they distanced themselves from the contentious issues they taught. Finally, the teachers’ engagement with the community and strong positive regard for their students facilitated greater and more effective risk-taking in their teaching practice. This work speaks to the impact of official curricula on teachers’ praxis when teachers and communities hold different views of topics as open or closed to deliberation

Anglo-American Relations Between the 1953 Coup and the 1956 Suez Crisis

The Cold War and global politics brought upheaval to the Middle East in the 1950s. The conflict between the United States and Soviet Union shaped the history of the region at the same time it brought war to Korea. Britain\u27s relationship with the U.S., especially in the Middle Eastern theater, was shaped by the Cold War. British intelligence, political, and press members and agents used the tensions to bring the United States in to help them in the various crises that swept the Middle East in the 1950s. This strategy served to bring the two countries closer together in the Middle East in the short term, yet drove long term wedges in the Anglo-American relationship which would erupt in the second half of the 1950s. The 1953 coup of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and the 1956 Suez Crisis are used in this thesis as the lenses examine the changing Anglo-American relationship in the Middle East. These two events serve exceptionally well considering both are crises stemming from nationalization of a resource and both featured very similar actors in key roles such as Anthony Eden, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the Dulles brothers. Ultimately, it is shown that the post-1956 fracturing of the Anglo-American relationship stemmed from the actions of both countries in 1953. The questions raised by American politicians, diplomats, and intelligence agents resonated throughout the decade and the pursuit by British actors of similar goals and the use of similar stratagems proved disastrous for Britain\u27s long-term position in the Middle East

Anglo-American Relations Between the 1953 Coup and the 1956 Suez Crisis

The Cold War and global politics brought upheaval to the Middle East in the 1950s. The conflict between the United States and Soviet Union shaped the history of the region at the same time it brought war to Korea. Britain\u27s relationship with the U.S., especially in the Middle Eastern theater, was shaped by the Cold War. British intelligence, political, and press members and agents used the tensions to bring the United States in to help them in the various crises that swept the Middle East in the 1950s. This strategy served to bring the two countries closer together in the Middle East in the short term, yet drove long term wedges in the Anglo-American relationship which would erupt in the second half of the 1950s. The 1953 coup of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and the 1956 Suez Crisis are used in this thesis as the lenses examine the changing Anglo-American relationship in the Middle East. These two events serve exceptionally well considering both are crises stemming from nationalization of a resource and both featured very similar actors in key roles such as Anthony Eden, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the Dulles brothers. Ultimately, it is shown that the post-1956 fracturing of the Anglo-American relationship stemmed from the actions of both countries in 1953. The questions raised by American politicians, diplomats, and intelligence agents resonated throughout the decade and the pursuit by British actors of similar goals and the use of similar stratagems proved disastrous for Britain\u27s long-term position in the Middle East