Primary Objective: This study examines student reaction to a unit of instruction teaching war through a more critical lens focusing on anti-war movements and how student sense of civic agency was impacted. Research Design: A design study that centered student voice on activism and experiences of a unit of instruction of the USA at war. Design…

This article describes two Socratic Seminar discussions, one focused on questioning just war and the other offering a perspective on how to end war. These discussions are the focus of this article because they show the complex and nuanced thinking and questioning students engaged in about what might constitute a just war (if anything) and how war…

This article explores student meaning making in a Grade 11 US history unit on the Second World War. The 10-lesson unit was designed as an experiment that aimed to apply an instructional model of historical consciousness to a classroom context. Although the notion of historical consciousness has gained significant interest in the field of history…

Memorials and monuments represent a society's view of its own history and the conclusions we collectively wish to draw about its meaning. In America in recent years, public clashes over the presence of contested public memorials--including and especially monuments dedicated to the Confederate cause in the United States Civil War--have led to…

As secondary social studies education in the United States moves toward inquiry and constructivist models of teaching, much of the history that is taught is stuck in a fairly rigid narrative. This narrative has been written and refined by historians and high school textbook writers until the canon is homogenous across the United States (Brinkley…

This article is a guided inquiry into past and present uses of war powers. From the Constitutional framers' intent through Thomas Jefferson's adaptation to modern presidents' implementation, students extract meaning from the best available evidence. Evocative primary sources--some of which are contemporaneous to modern readers--and engaging…

Sam Pullan explains how a chance encounter has helped him to improve his introduction to the modern themes and founding documents of US politics. Working with a professional historian whom he met, by chance, over dinner, he was able to produce lessons at the cutting edge of subject knowledge to grab the attention of his Year 11 pupils. This…

Background: Despite its numerous benefits, dialogic discussion seldom occurs in secondary history classrooms. To examine ways to promote it, this study compared two ninth-grade classes' productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) in a whole-class discussion on the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Methods: The two class sections were comparable academically…

A textbook author reflects on the ethical and ideological choices she made in her quest to create a history book that would be relevant to demographically diverse high school students.

Historians of American foreign relations are continuing to expand the ways in which they approach the Cold War. The range of perspectives has evolved thanks to the influence of emerging fields and new emphases in history. The end of the Cold War revealed the many ways in which the conflict was a protracted global war. But it also brought a renewed…

Steven Spielberg's latest movie "Lincoln" updates Americans' national understanding of their sixteenth president and provides a partial, artful lesson on the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, this movie will become a defining work on President Abraham Lincoln's character and leadership…

Using the of Humans of New York photoblog concept, the exemplar lesson plan described in this article incorporated technology and the replacement, amplification, and transformation framework to modify a traditional social studies lesson on the American Civil War into an engaging and inquiry-based lesson. Students researched individuals who lived…

In high school American history classrooms all over the country, the Civil War is a staple in the curriculum. Of course, that is to be expected given the pivotal place that the Civil War occupies in the nation's history. Indeed, it is not unusual for high school teachers to devote weeks of instruction to exploring the causes leading up to the war,…

Oral histories are a powerful pedagogical tool in developing historical understanding and important learning skills simultaneously. Teachers use firsthand accounts of historical time periods and/or events to help develop students' sense of history. In addition to gaining historical understanding, students are able to bring history alive by…

How have U.S. high school textbook depictions of World War II and Vietnam changed since the 1970s? We examined 102 textbooks published from 1970 to 2009 to see how they treated U.S. involvement in World War II and Vietnam. Our content analysis of high school history textbooks finds that U.S. textbooks increasingly focus on the personal experiences…