Painting societal portraits

One approach to teaching critical reading and writing

Abstract

The advent of active learning strategies and process-oriented writing in college courses in the last two decades offers historians tremendous opportunities for employing a contextual field to teach analytical reading and writing skills to all levels of college students. For myself, using "societal portraits" drawn from intercultural and international relations has provided both content and format to engage students in course materials and to help them become more effective in critical reading, thinking, and writing.