Relevance criteria used by teachers in selecting oral history materials

Abstract

From a user‐centered and task‐specific perspective on relevance, we studied the relevance criteria used by teachers ‐ an understudied but important group ‐ who were searching for materials to use in the classroom to support learning on a particular theme. We observed teachers planning lessons and searching an archive of videotaped Holocaust survivor testimonies; the archive was created by the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation who interviewed 52,000 survivors and systematically cataloged the resulting testimonies. The teachers used a collaborative process to design lesson plans and search for appropriate testimony passages; they employed an array of relevance criteria that pertain specifically to teaching. The objectives implied in their criteria correspond to the teaching objectives described in lesson plans and teacher interviews, including connecting with students, representing diversity, and teaching tolerance. Our findings suggest user‐oriented design approaches that support retrieval of instructional materials and collaboration in line with the needs and knowledge of teachers.