The 2016 History Discipline Core is now available on the AHA website. It represents the AHA Tuning project’s effort to describe the skills, knowledge, and habits of mind that students develop in history courses and degree programs. Because it is a living, breathing document, members of the Tuning project revised it again to reflect how historians have used it and changed it over the past three years. Because we believe that any discussion of teaching and learning history must be faculty-driven, we have used the expertise of history faculty from 100 different institutions to draft, debate, and revise our ideas. Grounded in the excellent work already done by the Association and scholars of teaching and learning, we offer this document as a reference point to stimulate conversations within history departments and other relevant units of colleges and universities.

We assume this document will be revised, taken apart, added to, or winnowed down to reflect the distinct character of each institution and its students. We hope to catalyze a process in which history faculties lay out their own distinctive goals and outcomes for courses, majors, and degrees, and then “tune” such descriptions by asking their own students, alumni, local employers, and civic leaders to join in a conversation about what history degrees provide. Our aim is to establish an ongoing collaboration with a wide set of stakeholders about the essential nature of history in higher education and the breadth of skills and knowledge that history students bring to the table.

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