This article examines the presentation of caste systems of stratification in U.S. introductory sociology textbooks. First, the "caste versus class" debate from the 1930s and 1940s is summarized and its competing perspectives are evaluated. Second, after an in-depth analysis of introductory sociology textbooks presenting material on the…

In this article, Curammeng addresses how Ethnic Studies can inform portraiture and its capacity for qualitative research studies. Using Filipino American teachers' narratives, Curammeng describes portraiture as collages demonstrating how such an approach offers new modes of engagement for portraitists' collaborators and readers. The implications…

Peter Conolly-Smith, a history professor at Queens College, uses the textbook "The American Promise," since 1998, and now in its seventh edition. He has been using this book for twenty years, and it has accompanied him from one school to another, providing the backbone of his post-1865 survey course. The relationship he has developed…

Textbook costs can have a significant impact on the purchasing behaviors and academic success of higher education students. Open textbooks promise significant cost savings, yet perceptions about quality and efficacy still linger. This study explored the impact of an open textbook adoption in an American history course on student academic outcomes…

Language textbooks present cultural content in a typically homogeneous fashion, thereby ignoring inherent diversity both within and between cultures and reinforcing monodimensional views. Consequently, instructors must find ways to facilitate students' critical engagement with and reflection on cultural representations in order to provide them…

Situated in an increasingly hostile political climate toward traditionally marginalized individuals, including those with Latinx identity, our study uses systemic functional linguistics to examine language choices authors make in regards to conflict and contention between Latinxs and the United States across three different 11th-grade U.S. history…

In nineteenth-century America, students buried their mathematics books. This practice consistently celebrated the milestone of passing through collegiate mathematics, yet it changed due to national events. This article considers the case of Bowdoin College, where students buried their books differently before and after the Civil War. Antebellum,…

The purpose of this study was to disrupt whiteness through the use of critical race counternarratives during a critical literacy workshop with middle-school preservice teachers. Over two years, 57 preservice teachers participated in and reflected on their experiences reading master narratives and viewing counternarrative texts in a critical…

In 1971, the state of Texas enacted a legislative requirement that students at public institutions complete two courses in American history. With that mandate in mind, the Texas Association of Scholars and the National Association of Scholars' Center for the Study of the Curriculum proposed to determine how students today meet the requirement, and…

Like many history teachers, Brent Ruswick struggles for ways to lessen his dependence on textbooks while also teaching students to read their textbook with the critical eye of a historian. It is a struggle he has come to appreciate more keenly as, in addition to teaching the standard college-level introductory history courses, he also teaches the…

University instructors preparing prospective sixth- to twelfth-grade history teachers often realize it can be difficult to condense the extensive information these individuals need for their future profession into one or two courses. Teacher preparation programs are forced to juggle requirements for program accreditation with their ethical…

Current educational reforms have given rise to various types of "educational Taylorism," which encourage the creation of efficiency models in pursuit of a unified way to teach. In history education curricula, this has been introduced through scripted textbook-based programs such as Teacher Curriculum Institute's "History…

While previous scholarship suggests that "American government textbooks are more alike than they are different," an examination of the market's most frequently adopted texts suggests that this consistency does not extend much further than the subjects of major chapters. We explore the degree to which four major introductory American…

Tony Waters, a sociologist at California State University, Chico, has raised an interesting issue about the intellectual conflict some of his students experienced when they arrived on campus and enrolled in American history classes. He reported students were perplexed to find there were two kinds of American history--the version they learned in…

During the aftermath of the First Red Scare in the 1930s and during the early stages of the Cold War in the 1940s, the United States engaged in a great national effort to preserve and protect its capitalist system from international rival--the communist Soviet Union. In the American South, states such as Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama faced a…