The Reacting to the Past pedagogy presents an alternative model for the introductory history survey class. Students in the Reacting classroom immerse themselves in a particular historical moment, forcing them to grapple with an issue from the perspective of an assigned character and viewing historical sources with new eyes as they leverage them to build their arguments. Reacting students demonstrate enhanced verbal, rhetorical, and writing skills in addition to other outcomes, including higher self-esteem, an increase in empathy, and more external locus of control (Stroessner et al.). Cognitive psychology argues that knowledge develops in the context of questions and problems, where students are asked to confront a question and discern the answer for themselves. Reacting confronts students with these questions, facilitating the development of their knowledge of the past and historical thinking skills. Reacting further aligns with the outcomes that have been developed by the AHA’s History Tuning Project, such as recognizing the provisional nature of knowledge, the disciplinary preference for complexity, and applying skills to understand the incomplete, complex, and contradictory historical record.

The Reacting pedagogy has the potential to radically shift the way that we think about the history survey, encouraging us to place the student at the center of our practice, seeing them as repositories of potential rather than deficient and in need of remediation. This panel will present perspectives from the trenches of college professors at different types of institutions on the way that Reacting has allowed them to rethink the traditional survey course, challenge the coverage model, and develop a better introductory experience for their students.