This article explores how short form/comedic improvisational theater impacts the development of writing fluency. Students in all disciplines need to be able to purposefully write, however by the time students reach high school many have already given up trying to express even their own thoughts in free writing. Two quasi-experimental action…

This article describes the findings of a study involving a professional development program that prepared middle school teachers to integrate content on the earliest eras of world history and world geography. In particular, this study focused on participants' (n = 37) use of geographic resources to integrate geography and history and to encourage…

The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) was created to support teachers in implementing college and career readiness standards in order to teach literacy skills throughout the content areas. Teachers work collaboratively with coaches to further develop their expertise and design standards-driven, literacy-rich writing assignments within their…

A key concern driving debates about curriculum reform in England is anxiety that young people's knowledge of the past is too episodic--that they lack a coherent "narrative" or "map" of the past. While recent debate focused on what could be achieved by 14-year-olds (and whether a purely chronological approach would help), Marina…

The main aim of this study is to offer a comparative analysis of historical narratives, with reference to the nexus between ideology, the state, and nation-building--as depicted in current history school textbooks in the Russian Federation (RF). This analysis of the core Russian history textbooks prescribed by the Ministry of Education and Science…

This research project examined the contribution internally assessed course work makes to motivating young people to think historically; that is to develop reasoned, evidence-based understandings of the past that equip them to participate in society as critical citizens who can think independently and adjudicate between competing claims of…

This article seeks to analyze the historical origins of the connection between social studies and coaching, which is grounded in the masculine discourse of history, social studies, and athletics. Further, this article explains how history, social studies, and athletics at the secondary school level were constructed as masculine through the…

Although history teachers frequently work with academic historical writing, direct face-to-face encounters with academic historians are rare in secondary history classrooms. This article reports a collaboration between an academic historian and a history teacher that aimed to engage 13-14 year-old pupils with developments in contemporary…

The emergence of digital technology provides new opportunities for teaching and learning in the history classroom. However, these new opportunities often require new skills to be learned by teachers and students alike. This article focuses on one such digitally oriented strategy, desktop documentary making, which empowers students to easily make…

Controversial issues have been established within the larger framework of civic education as an effective pedagogical approach to developing critical thinking in the classroom, preparing students with intellectual habits necessary for participation in scholarship, civic life and democracy. In this study, we found that a pedagogical intervention,…

Concerns regarding political knowledge and participation among young people continue to spur research into effective civic instruction. Through a quasi-experiment involving 361 students in four high schools as well as the parents of 152 of these students, we measured the effects of incorporating news magazines and discussion into social studies…

This manuscript, written with the educator in mind, describes the Youth Historians in Harlem (YHH) program, a twenty-week after-school history program that engaged urban students in history by immersing them in aspects of the historical process. Throughout the program, a group of Black male high school students were apprenticed as historical…

This qualitative research study examined how two novice secondary teachers drew on preservice preparation to teach language demands of their content area to bilingual learners in urban high schools in a city in the northeastern United States. Data sources included videotaped class observations, lesson plans and teaching materials, and…

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) is the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in subjects such as civics, geography, mathematics, reading, U.S. history, and writing. The results of NAEP are released as The Nation's Report Card. NAEP is a congressionally…

Diana Laffin writes about historical language and explores how understanding different historians' use of language can help sixth form students refine and deepen both their understanding of the discipline of history and their abilities to practise the discipline in their own writing. What does close study of the textual habits and practices of…