Pre-service history teachers are exposed from schooling to a familiar canon: a story of American exceptionalism, linear social progression, and cultural homogeneity--referred to as a "freedom-quest narrative." Myopic and Eurocentric, this story follows students into their teaching careers; perpetuating a lack of critical understanding…

Eleven teachers and 254 urban middle-school students comprised the sample of this study examining the social and moral development outcomes of the integration of social cognitive domain theory within regular classroom instruction. Participating teachers were trained to construct and implement history lessons that stimulated students' moral…

At the request of the Office of Curriculum and Instructional Programs, the Office of Shared Accountability examined the impact of offering Advanced Grade 8 U.S. History on enrollment and performance in Advanced Placement (AP) social studies courses in Grade 9. The study compared Grade 9 enrollment and performance in AP U.S. History or AP U.S.…

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…

Five years ago, in "Teaching History 132", Harris and Haydn drew attention to the fact that while the vast majority of Key Stage 3 students claimed to enjoy history and even to regard it as a useful subject, relatively few of them were able to explain why they thought it was so important. Geoff Baker set out to address this issue, in…

Finding ways to characterise the nature of change and continuity is an important part of the historian's task, yet students find it particularly challenging to do. Building on her previous work on change, Rachel Foster sought to experiment with new approaches for helping her students to find analytical ways of describing change and continuity…

Mike Murray shares a lesson sequence in which his students examined changing interpretations of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Building on earlier work on teaching interpretations across an extended chronological period and the work of Wheeley et al on Rorke's Drift in particular, Murray develops new emphases, fresh ways in to the puzzle and…

This survey of 370 recent high school graduates reveals that history and citizenship courses in Quebec focus on cultural and religious viewpoints, favour a transmission approach to learning, and fail to connect the political process to students' concerns and interests. Without a clear conception of citizenship as a reference point, this curriculum…

In "Teaching History 157, Assessment Edition," a number of different teachers shared the ways in which their departments were approaching the assessment and reporting of students' progress in a "post-levels" world. This article adds to those examples, first by illustrating how teachers from different schools in the Bristol area…

Historians use a range of genres in presenting their subjects, yet educators have increasingly privileged argumentation to help novices to reason with historical content. However, the influence genre and content knowledge are relatively unmeasured in this discipline. To learn more, the authors asked 101 eleventh-grade students to compose an…

Supporting the reading comprehension and content knowledge acquisition of English language learners (ELs) requires instructional practices that continue beyond developing the foundational skills of reading. In particular, the challenges ELs face highlight the importance of teaching reading comprehension practices in the middle grades through…

Supporting the reading comprehension and content knowledge acquisition of English language learners (ELs) requires instructional practices that continue beyond developing the foundational skills of reading. In particular, the challenges ELs face highlight the importance of teaching reading comprehension practices in the middle grades through…

This dissertation used a mixed method to develop an analytical model from a random selection of one of eight secondary history textbooks for instances of Indians to determine if the textual content: (1) constructs negative or inaccurate knowledge through word choice or narratives; (2) reinforces stereotype portraits; (3) omits similar minority…

Elizabeth Carr writes here about a new scheme of work she developed to teach students about diversity in Victorian society. When dealing with a concept such as diversity, it can be easy for students to slip into stereotypes based on simplistic understandings of the experiences of people at the time. To resolve this, Carr argues, teachers need to…

Strongly influenced by the paradigm of republican universalism, education policy in France favours an approach that largely relativizes, or even denies, the dimension of cultural diversity. The content of the secondary school history curriculum reveals this phenomenon. In the 2007-2008 school year, 185 students in the final 2 years of secondary…