Strategies for the Continuity & Change Over Time Question

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by Peter StearnsGeorge Mason University

Fairfax, Virginia

Exploring strategies for dealing with the Continuity& Change over time essay on the AP World HistoryExam involves a bit more than the normal interest inpreparing students for each exam segment in the bestpossible way and, hopefully, accelerating their learn-ing curve in the bargain. In the first place, there is afair sense that change over time is the most challeng-ing of the three essay segments (though performanceon any given exam depends on the specific questionasked, and we dont have massive evidence yet). Inthe second place, dealing with change over time, andits associated challenges including attendant continu-ity, is the central analytical task of historians: itsreally what we contribute, most fundamentally, to anunderstanding of how societies function.

Helping students improve their capacities here, ideallyin ways they can ultimately take beyond theclassroom to activities in work and citizenship, is acrucial assignment, even beyond the cherished abilityto deal with documents. Theres more than an exam atstake, in other words, and as teachers have mobilizedto offer suggestions on essay-writing strategies, theyalso, if only implicitly, identify habits of mind that weneed to be able to highlight. Indeed, providing someactive models of dealing with change over time is avalid assignment in itself, and if the exam encouragesmore of this than we once considered in theclassroom, thats all to the good.

The Need to Model Processes of Change

Its also fair, I think, to note that many historypresentations, though tacitly focused on change, dontbring out the best in the discipline. History textbooks-- including world history textbooks -- are full ofdevelopments in the past, and in this sense theyclearly catalog change. But they rarely step back toanalyze change, creating a sense that history involvesone thing after another in fairly pell-mell fashion.Even scholarly monographs, dealing with change,sometimes become so engrossed in narrative storylines that the actual evaluations of change do notstand out. Then there is the teaser approach (common,I think, particularly in treatments of the early modern

period): heres a past pattern, richly detailed, but inconclusion a by the way, this situation would changegreatly later on -- yet no explicit treatment of theactual process of change. Here again is a series ofinvitations to use the classroom to model the assess-ment of change, applying materials from thehistorians treatments but adding some definitehighlights.

Dealing with change over time in world history ofteninvites students to make active use of more generalperiodization, to contribute a framework for morespecific changes in, say, trade patterns or culturalcontacts. Reminding students to test the general fact-ors involved in periodization to the question at hand isalready a step forward, providing global context forkey developments over time. This same relationshipwill help students deal with chronological order -- notprecise dates, usually, but a sense of what camebefore what -- without which the context for changeover time cannot be established.

Analyzing Change Over Time

Capturing an actual change over time questioninvolves two steps, and many teachers have beenworking very constructively on more preciseiterations of these steps as guides to constructing theessay. The first step is essentially comparative, thoughin this case over time rather than across space. Ifa question asks what changed between 1000 and 1750concerning a particular phenomenon, then the answermust directly convey what the relevant status quo wasat the first date and how it had changed or notchanged 750 years later. Too often, responses onchange over time (and this applies to real historians,not just students) fail to establish a clear baseline:they persuasively argue that change occurred, but theynever quite establish change from what. Or,launching at the initial date, they get enmeshed in onedevelopment after another and never actually reachthe terminal date -- hence, again, failing to answer thefirst-phase question.

Comparison between beginning and terminus also

Strategies for the Continuity & Change Over Time Question 2

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directly allows for continuity -- the what didntchange part, which is so often, quite properly, part ofthe change over time interrogation. It also contributesto an assessment of significance: was this a big-dealchange, or was it relatively modest compared to otherdevelopments? This is an aspect of assessing changewe too often forget, but it is vital in a contemporaryculture that tends to tout revolutionary change atevery turn, from lingerie designs to security threats.

The second phase of analysis, beyond before andafter, asks students to get involved with the process ofchange, the intervening developments that add realflesh to what otherwise will seem too cut and dried.Process involves, among other things, identifying themajor relevant developments that occur betweenbaseline and endpoint. Change relatively rarelyproceeds smoothly; there are interruptions, even backeddies. Globalization, for example, acceleratedrapidly by many relevant definitions between the1860s and 1914, only to roll back (thanks to decisionsby the Soviets, the United States, and ultimately Maoas well as Hitler) for 30 years thereafter, followingwhich the pattern of globalization changes emergedagain.

Change usually receives additional stimuli over longstretches of time. Since many change questions alsoinvolve causation, this is an opportunity to talk aboutsignificant intervening factors that may accelerate thechange, push it in slightly different directions, delay itfor a while, or do all the above.

Periodization and the AP World HistoryExamination

The real point of this second phase of analysisinvolves internal periodization: take a given topic(international trade patterns 1000-1750), identifybaseline and end point, and then talk about the majorinternal subdivisions (based on new factors),additional directions, and even interruptions.

Many teachers are urging their students to identifysome midpoint in order to avoid simply dealing withbeginning and end; the advice is well intended andsurely will help a bit. Unfortunately, formulas havelimits here: each question requires relevant know-ledge about when the internal breaks occur and on

what basis they can be identified. An early AP WorldHistory question thus asked about changes ininternational trade relations, 1750 to present, inseveral regions (pick two). For Latin America, breakswould surely be identified around independence-cum-new-British-imports, and again in the 1930s and1940s, when countries like Brazil, thanks to importsubstitution and some new export diversity, begangaining slightly greater voices in the terms of trade.For Africa, on the other hand, the end of slave tradeand then the intensification of Western exploitationfrom the late nineteenth century onward would makemore sense. The same analytical issue is present inboth cases, but obviously leads to rather differentresponses. Practice will help, along with appropriateknowledge, but overrigid answer formulas couldmislead.

And indeed, practice and classroom modeling providethe obvious lessons here, applicable to contemporarycases where major change is claimed as well as to thepast. We need experience and experiments in gettingstudents to outline their approach to questions aboutchange over time (including, as appropriate,causation, significance, and/or continuity), while alsoundertaking full essays a bit more selectively. Evenpausing in a coverage session to ask what was reallychanging here, and why, and what was persisting, willhelp students meet the challenge of turningdescriptive facts into building blocks that permitanalysis of change.

It will be interesting to see if AP teachers can not onlyimprove essay results (already showing some positivesigns of good coaching), but also accelerate both thelearning curve and the capacity to retain a crucialhistorical habit of mind beyond the classroom.

Peter Stearns is the chair of the AP World HistoryDevelopment Committee as well as a coauthor ofseveral world history textbooks and the editor of theEncyclopedia of World History. He is also theprovost of George Mason University. This article isan expanded version of remarks he delivered to asession on AP World History at the 2004 annualconference of the National Council for the SocialStudies.