Does new vocabulary help students to express existing ideas for which they do not yet have words or does it actually give them new ideas which they did not previously hold? James Woodcock asks whether offering students new vocabulary can give them new ideas, and whether this can enhance their historical analyses of causation problems. This is an…

Much has been said and written about different learning styles in recent years. Some people have responded with evangelical enthusiasm, others exercise a more cautious approach, whilst a few disregard it completely. Certainly, there are problems in allowing learning style "audits" to shape our teaching strategies entirely. But one…

What's the hardest part of history? Heads of Year 9 at options time seem depressingly clear--"Don't do history, there's too much writing." David Hellier and Helen Richards show that at The Green School it is reading that used to be the problem. At every level students found it difficult to assimilate, transform and use information by…

Twenty years ago no professional training of university grade existed in this country to prepare teachers of mathematics for secondary schools. At that time the young teacher's sole preparation for his work was the taking of as many academic courses in mathematics as possible, plus, in some instances, a course on the history of education or some…

As a result of curriculum changes at Key Stages 3 and 4 the place and status of history and geography in the English secondary school curriculum are being progressively undermined. Using evidence derived from small-group interviews with Year 8 pupils during the summer term 2002, this article reports pupils' perceptions of their learning…

The 2008 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, a joint conference with the Michigan World Language Association, focused on learning about the diverse backgrounds and needs of today's students and discovering new ways to help them succeed in reaching the goal of language proficiency. A wide variety of workshops and…

In a study investigating the effects of student engagement in inquiry learning through the development of Web sites, nearly every student reported having enjoyed the project, and the majority scored an A or B for their project grade. However, neither enjoyment nor high achievement on this performance task necessarily translated into high scores on…

History is the study of the past; some of the past is more recent than a glance over many schemes of work might lead us to think. Chris Culpin makes the case for ignoring the 20 year rule and tackling head on--and, crucially, "historically"--the big issues of the very recent past. He shows that critical historical study is precisely what…

Steve Garnett, a senior teacher in charge of Teaching and Learning at Garibaldi College of Maths and Computing in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, shares some of the techniques that he uses to involve different kinds of learners in his post-16 lessons, and explains how he arrived at these approaches after reflecting on problems in his own early…

Andrew Wrenn describes his work with Barry Williams and the teachers of the history department at Ailwyn School (11-14 comprehensive), Ramsey in Cambridgeshire. Devoting equal attention to the "what" and the "how" of history assessment, he shows how this group of teachers developed a fresh approach to assessment out of the…

This case study analyzes the pedagogy of one US history teacher as he prepared students for active and effective citizenship through multicultural democratic education in an underresourced alternative public high school. In particular, the paper examines his practice and focuses on his incorporation of educational technology (the Internet,…

It's unsettling to hear of credentialed school teachers who--ignorant of our principles and of so much more--are seduced by, and pass on, ludicrous and even subversive accounts of our history. Sandra Stotsky tells of curricula that equate white Americans with Nazis and of officials who discredit the Constitution as a license for slavery. She…

The present study tried to find out whether Saudi history textbooks for grades 4-12 contain global themes, in which grade levels global themes are introduced, the percentage of global themes, local history themes and Islamic history themes, and which global history themes are taught. A checklist of global history themes was developed. Those are:…

As a part of the teacher licensure program at the graduate level at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), the M.Ed. Licensure candidate is required to complete an action research project during a 3-semester-hour course that coincides with the 9-semester-hour student teaching experience. This course, Education 590 Culminating…

The instructional schedule does affect student grades on the four AP Examinations in this study after they have been adjusted for group differences in student ability. The results from this study generally suggest that students, on average, obtain higher AP grades when instruction is given over an entire year rather than in a semesterized block…