Offers an introduction to children's history. The remaining articles are devoted to children's history. Provides general guidelines for teaching children about children's history and shows, in four photographs, American children from the 1800s with their tricycles, toy baby carriages, and dolls. (JDH)

A major purpose of the study of history is to give students a context beyond themselves and the times in which they live. This article describes how to use children's history to achieve this purpose, provides titles of numerous resources for teaching about children's history, and recommends a process of supplementing historical fiction to…

The New Social Studies and the reform efforts of the 1970s are linked to the classrooms of the 1980s. History teachers may use a greater variety of teaching styles, methods, and materials than teachers two decades ago. The textbook-centered classroom is one of the major challenges facing history educators today. (AM)

Explains how the pictures in history textbooks are potentially useful as teaching aids in social studies courses. Illustrations (reproductions of paintings, historical photographs, woodcuts, lithographs, and engravings, etc.) are important because they may be the only primary source materials to which students will be exposed. (Author/DB)

The author suggests using historical memoirs and autobiographies to involve today's students in the lives of the children of pioneer America. He describes some particular memoirs he has presented to elementary classes. (Editor/SJL)

A study examined the relationship between writing activities and historical learning by elementary school students. Subjects in schools in the San Francisco Bay area were drawn from third-grade classrooms from a predominantly working class neighborhood, a mixed fourth-grade class of mostly limited-English-proficient children of immigrants from…

Books and articles about the history of childhood are presented in this brief bibliography. Areas covered are: 1) general histories of childhood and youth; 2) childhood in medieval and early modern Europe; 3) childhood in 17th and 18th century Europe and America; and 4) childhood and adolescence in the United States during the 19th century. (JDH)

An experimental program involving historians in the training of history teachers implemented three models for preservice teacher training at the undergraduate level and one and the graduate level. (Author/KM)

Recommends that history textbooks used in schools should be more carefully reviewed before publication and adoption. Criteria which should be applied to textbooks under review include whether the book is well-informed, concerned with historical analysis as well as historical description, and organized and written so that it helps rather than…

Presents a review of research literature that was undertaken to determine the extent to which research about teaching and learning history supports the current reform movement. Examines history's status in the schools, surveys recent trends in the history curriculum, explores how teachers use textbooks, and questions the appropriateness of history…

A multi-year study examined whether elementary school students can engage in historical thinking in a meaningful way, and what kind of writing activities best serve this purpose. Subjects were 17 students of varying language proficiency levels selected as the focus of research from the entire class of 31 primarily Hispanic and African-American…

This description of a project to help secondary school social studies classroom teachers incorporate local history into the curriculum focuses on objectives, project development and activities, and outcome data. The specific intent of this project was to help classroom teachers in Colorado overcome some of the obstacles to the use of local history…

Trends, tips, and resources for teaching local and family history are identified in this state-of-the-art paper. Using the local community as a historical resource can make American history more relevant and meaningful to students and aids in the development of a wide range of skills, including library use skills, writing skills, and skills used…