In this article, Sohyun An presents a lesson that she was invited to teach at an elementary school in Georgia for the celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. As a social studies teacher educator and mother of Asian American children attending the school, she has worked with some of the teachers to advance critical…

In this article, the authors discuss a month-long research study where sixth grade students researched three women for the half-century after the U.S. Civil War War that worked to change their respective communities to address public issues: Jane Addams, Clara Lemlich, and Ida B. Wells. The sixth graders read a picture book for each of the three…

Teaching with primary sources provides educators with opportunities to expose students to authentic analysis, critical thinking, and perspective taking. When students are exposed to primary sources in the classroom, they can examine the point of view of the source, what information they can gain from the source, what information is missing, and…

This qualitative case study sought to analyze and describe both the quantity and quality of African American history curriculum integration into Virginia's U.S. History curriculum standards at three points in time (2008 standards, 2015 standards, and revised 2020 standards) in the three U.S. history courses (USI, 5th; USII, 6th; VUS; 11th).…

Promoting Adolescents' Comprehension of Text (PACT) is a text- and discourse-based set of instructional practices that engage students with disciplinary texts as a means of building content knowledge and improving reading comprehension. PACT)s "efficacy" has been the subject of extensive previous trials. The purpose of this study was to…

We discuss an original study and two replications conducted over 18 years examining the impact of Teacher Study Group (TSG) in Vocabulary, a professional development (PD) approach for improving pedagogy and student learning. Study 1 focused on the design and development of the PD and included a small-scale randomized controlled trial to assess the…

Background: Mission US is a series of interactive first-person role-playing history games and curricular materials that address a critical problem: students lack fundamental knowledge of our nation's history. According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2018), only 13% of Grade 8 students were proficient on the…

This study examined the learning trajectory of five US humanities teachers when navigating learning to teach the difficult history of school desegregation within a context of a six-month inquiry-based professional development. The research questions were: What do teachers frame as problems when teaching difficult histories? How do they…

Shifting to an inquiry-based practice can be challenging. How should teachers get started? How many times should teachers plan for inquiry? What do teachers do when students struggle with inquiry? How long does it take for students to buy in to the inquiry process? These kinds of questions, and the concerns that underlie them, can create an…

It is important to prepare middle level teacher candidates with the dispositions, content knowledge, and pedagogy needed to implement justice-oriented practices in middle level curriculum. This article explores using "Hateful Things," a traveling exhibit curated by the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, to integrate issues of…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card, is the most comprehensive measure of student learning, and is widely considered the gold standard for empirically measuring trends in student achievement outcomes in the United States. The NAEP data for 2018, which were released on April 23, 2020, offer…

In this article, we describe a collaboratively developed information literacy curriculum that was embedded into three core 8th grade subjects: Algebra, American History, and English Language Arts. The curriculum was rooted in the concept of generalist literacy and supported students as they developed their curiosity, skepticism, commitment to…

Currently, the perceived use of critical theoretical frameworks to shape instruction in public K-12 education is undergoing intense scrutiny in popular and political debate. Chief among such frameworks has been Critical Race Theory (CRT), which, at the time of this writing, has been legally banned or restricted in eighteen states -- with similar…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is an integral measure of academic progress across the nation and over time. It is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as civics, mathematics, reading, and U.S. history. The program also provides…

This manuscript describes the implementation of a co-created (teacher and researcher) unit of instruction focused on the teaching of war. This unit examines war through a critical lens and emphasizes anti-war movements. A design study this research investigated how the teaching of war as difficult knowledge can impact student sense of critical…