"Pedagogical Approaches: Micro to Macro History-A Nova Scotian Case Study" by James Morrison, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, NS, Canada. July 17, 2014.
In my first year Global History course, there are a series of challenges to making global history a living reality to my class. I teach at a Nova Scotia university with an enrollment of over 6,000 students, but with low enrollment in any Humanities courses. The students are mostly white, recent high school graduates with a few Afro-Canadian, Aboriginal Canadian, and French-speaking Acadians. Nevertheless, Nova Scotia generally, and Halifax specifically, have played an important role in global historical themes like First Contact, French settlement, British French Imperial wars, slavery, and abolition thereof. My students seem to take an “other-worldly" approach to the global history subject matter - it is as if they were observers from outer space and not involved in any way either as an individual nor was their
province or to some extent their country involved as they viewed the the past machinations of a global world that leaves them out. My paper surveys the knowledge base of these students and provides recommendations as to how best to address the gulf between what they know locally, what this area represents historical and how to link the micro history of the area to the macro approaches of global history.
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