Full Description
Big History is a new field on a grand scale: it tells the story of the universe over time through a diverse range of disciplines that spans cosmology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and archaeology, thereby reconciling traditional human history with environmental geography and natural history. Weaving the myriad threads of evidence-based human knowledge into a master narrative that stretches from the beginning of the universe to the present, the Big History framework helps students make sense of their studies in all disciplines by illuminating the structures that underlie the universe and the connections among them. Teaching Big History is a powerful analytic and pedagogical resource, and serves as a comprehensive guide for teaching Big History, as well for sharing ideas about the subject and planning a curriculum around it. Readers are also given helpful advice about the administrative and organizational challenges of instituting a general education program constructed around Big History. The book includes teaching materials, examples, and detailed sample exercises.
This book is also an engaging first-hand account of how a group of professors built an entire Big History general education curriculum for first-year students, demonstrating how this thoughtful integration of disciplines exemplifies liberal education at its best and illustrating how teaching and learning this incredible story can be transformative for professors and students alike.
Contents
List of Illustrations List of Tables Acknowledgments Introduction PART ONE: THE CASE FOR BIG HISTORY 1. What Is Big History?--Richard B. Simon 2. Big History and the Goals of Liberal Education--Mojgan Behmand 3. Summer Institutes: Collective Learning as Meta-Education--Thomas Burke 4. Assessing Big History Outcomes: Or, How to Make Assessment Inspiring--Mojgan Behmand 5. Big History at Other Institutions--Mojgan Behmand, Esther Quaedackers, and Seohyung Kim PART TWO: A PRACTICAL PEDAGOGY FOR TEACHING BIG HISTORY 6. Teaching Complexity in a Big History Context--Richard B. Simon 7. Teaching Threshold 1: The Big Bang--Richard B. Simon 8. Teaching Threshold 2: The Formation of Stars and Galaxies--Kiowa Bower 9. Teaching Threshold 3: Heavier Chemical Elements and the Life Cycle of Stars--Richard B. Simon 10. Teaching Threshold 4: The Formation of Our Solar System and Earth--Neal Wolfe 11. Teaching Threshold 5: The Evolution of Life on Earth--James Cunningham 12. Teaching Threshold 6: The Rise of Homo sapiens--Cynthia Taylor 13. Teaching Threshold 7: The Agrarian Revolution--Martin Anderson 14. Teaching Threshold 8: Modernity and Industrialization--Richard B. Simon 15. Threshold 9? Teaching Possible Futures--Martin Anderson, J. Daniel May, Richard B. Simon, Neal Wolfe, Kiowa Bower, Philip Novak, and Debbie Daunt 16. Reflective Writing in the Big History Course--Jaime Castner 17. Activities for Multiple Thresholds 18. Igniting Critical Curiosity: Fostering Information Literacy through Big History--Ethan Annis, Amy Gilbert, Anne Reid, Suzanne Roybal, and Alan Schut 19. A Little Big History of Big History--Cynthia Stokes Brown PART THREE: BIG HISTORY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 20. Big History at Dominican: An Origin Story--Philip Novak 21. Teaching Big History or Teaching about Big History? Big History and Religion--Harlan Stelmach 22. The Case for Awe--Neal Wolfe Conclusion Annotated Bibliography of Big History Texts and Resources List of Contributors Index
