In this paper, the author argues that sustained, discipline-specific professional development provides the key to transferring research knowledge base to the classroom, where it can lead to significant improvements in the quality of history instruction. To be successful, such professional development must--like good classroom instruction--begin with effective modeling of activities and, more importantly, with the thinking embedded in these activities. This article falls into two main parts. First, the author offers a suggestive survey of recent scholarship on teaching and learning in history that emphasizes three key conclusions: (1) the constructed and discipline-based nature of history knowledge; (2) the importance of substantive and procedural concepts in a discipline-based approach to teaching history; and (3) the need for cognitive supports to enable students to understand a disciplinary approach to learning. He then reflects on the implications of this scholarship for teachers and for professional development providers. The second part of the paper offers one example of a professional development effort to model an inquiry-based approach to a lesson about the antebellum women's rights movement. This lesson takes seriously the time constraints of standards-based instruction and offers a modified inquiry approach that adjusts key elements of disciplinary learning to a typical classroom. (Contains 3 figures and 36 notes.)