This exploratory study combined the process of modified analytic induction with a mixed methods approach to analyze various factors that affected or might have affected participating teachers' decisions to use or not use various primary source based teaching strategies to teach historical thinking skills. Four participating eighth and ninth grade…

In seeking a disciplinary literacy model that would enable students to express well-developed perspectives and argue contrasting views with the sound use of evidence, the authors developed a student-driven model that emphasized historical investigation, offered substance, and scaffolded reading and writing. To support their project, they created…

The United States government has invested nearly one billion dollars in funding to professional historians and history educators across the country since 2000 to strengthen the teaching of American history in elementary and secondary schools, yet we know little about how these programs impact student learning. Using data from one such Teaching…

The teacher who is the focus of this interpretive case study, uses primary sources regularly with her students in ambitious ways but does so less from the current reform efforts, recent history education scholarship, or the climate of accountability and more from her individual goals for history education, most significantly, to prepare her…

"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." Change can be scary. Quite often people find themselves venturing down an unknown path, unsure of what twists and turns will come their way. This uncertainty brings about questions, anxiety, and for some, a sense of panic. Similar emotions…

This article describes a study in which eighth grade students in one school learned to create multimedia mini-documentaries in a six-week history unit on early 19th-century U.S. history. The authors examined content knowledge tests, group projects, and attitude and opinion surveys to determine relative benefits for students who participated in a…