This article presents a qualitative case study of U.S. social studies pre-service teachers (PSTs) interning in England. We explore how these experiences influence their teaching and their orientation towards culture and cultural difference, and how the structure of education abroad programs are designed to support growth in cultural competence and…

This article discusses two education abroad programs that afford pre-service teachers with purposeful opportunities to enhance their intercultural competence through immersion in teaching internships in British schools. The programs, in London and Nottingham, provide pre-service teachers with direct experiences that engage them with diverse…

This article presents an approach that teachers can use to strengthen students' ability to make sense of the past at museums. Specifically, we propose a photography exercise to help students to learn from museums and to view museums critically, weighing both the objective realities and subjective interpretations offered by museums. To get the most…

In the United States, the right to a fair trial is protected by the Constitution. The ideal of justice is a critical underpinning of the democracy. However, while the United States is a model of an honorable and just court system most of the time, our constitutional rights are occasionally stretched or broken. The rationale is often national…

Museums have great potential to help secondary students develop a deep understanding of the past; however, we know little about what history teachers actually do or want to accomplish when they utilize museums. In this study, the authors draw on questionnaire and interview data from 94 secondary history teachers in Connecticut in an effort to…

Monuments are valuable resources for social studies teachers. They provide opportunities for student learning and engagement that are not easily duplicated in the classroom. Their physical appearance, history of creation, narratives, and other features promote opportunities for students to deepen understanding of specific content and to develop…

In a world where students and the general public are likely to access historical information from a television program, film, or even video game, it is important to equip students with the ability to view historical representation critically. In this essay we present arguments for using film to engage students in rigorous and authentic social…

How can teachers effectively use documentary film to teach history, and toward what goals? This article addresses these important questions by: (1) exploring what we know about secondary teachers' practices with documentary film and secondary students' beliefs about documentary film as a source of knowledge about the past, (2) proposing a…

Museums, historic sites, and memorials offer opportunities to enhance and build on the history taught in secondary history classrooms. The artifacts they display, narratives they tell, and re-creations of the past they exhibit potentially engage students with content in ways unavailable in a classroom setting or by reading a textbook. The author…

This article explores the importance of developing strong adult education programs within a broader collaborative effort between museum staff and K-12 teachers. Focusing on history museums, the first section discusses the importance of museum visits for K-12 history learning and how we need to reconsider some of the primary purposes for these…

Reported in this article are the results of research that explored which feature films teachers are using to teach high school United States history and how and why they are using these films. The terms "feature film" and "Hollywood film" are used throughout to refer to movies commercially created for a mass audience, often for…

What and how do students learn about history from motion pictures? How does this knowledge interact with the history they learn in school? This is a complex problem space that has seen little empirical research. To lay the groundwork for addressing these questions, we describe two exploratory studies. The first study takes a broad view, using…