Developing disciplinary literacy in history requires that classrooms become an environment where students can engage in discursive practices typical of the profession. Disciplinary literacy refers to the specialized ways of reading and writing used in history to construct historical arguments and ways of reasoning. Learning history includes using…

This article addresses how far educational institutions have come in designing authentic and meaningful curricula for teaching the Holocaust at the secondary level. Examined in this article are the historical development of Holocaust education in the United States, with a focus on the state of Illinois as a case study, what contributes to the…

World history has become increasingly important and has often been a required course for high school students in the United States. This multi-case study provides examples and descriptions of students' demonstration of historical understandings. It also includes multiple perspectives and experiences of world history students and teachers, and…

Research in social studies education has raised significant practical and epistemological concerns with the history textbooks used in urban schools. While these concerns are well documented, we know less about their implications for Black students' understandings and applications of historical content. This qualitative, ethnographic study explored…

The purpose of this study is to determine the degree to which Opportunity to Learn (OTL), is associated with students' achievement in US History. Opportunity to Learn stems from the basic premise that there is an important relationship between the quality and frequency of classroom instruction and students' levels of academic success. The authors…

Since reading and writing digitally demand partially different competencies, there is a change in some of the premises of related educational practices. This study aims to contribute to the knowledge of educational reading practices by scrutinizing how literacy events evolve in a digital classroom where each student has a personal digital device…

In 2007, the Ontario Government implemented the "Ontario First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework." Some schools and school boards have been active in piloting and supporting these initiatives. Because this is a newly implemented policy direction, I wanted to begin to assess best practices and challenges, so I asked…

This study investigated the effects of graphic novels on the critical thinking skills in history learning among 291 Secondary Two students in three secondary schools in Malaysia. This research consisted of two parts, namely, development and evaluation. In the first part, the multimedia learning material entitled "Japanese Occupation of Malaya…

This case study examines the benefits of integrating wikis into the World History curriculum. Six middle school students chosen because of their designation in relevant subgroups--GATE, AVID, and RSP--participated in this 20-week study. Abstract historical concepts can be difficult to grasp; therefore, students collaborated via a wiki on topics…

As proposed changes to the National Curriculum are furiously debated, and details of future changes to GCSE are anxiously awaited, history teachers in England are already wrestling with the implications of one change to the public examination system: the end of "modular" GCSE courses and a return to final examinations. Although modular…

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate the impact of the use of a virtual environment for learning Korean history on high school students' learning outcomes and attitudes toward virtual worlds (collaboration, engagement, general use of SL [Second Life], and immersion). In addition, this experiment examined the relationships…

In this study, student engagement during classroom activities was investigated where sixth graders created digital media projects using historical images. The study employed a qualitative design involving observations, student artifacts, and interviews while students were creating digital storyboards using a Web-based application developed for…

In this paper we aim to describe how secondary school teachers explain multicausal historical events. To that end, we recorded and analyzed seven classes on "The discovery and colonization of America". The results show that secondary school teachers do not simply deal with history as a catalog of actions, characters and dates. On the contrary,…

Geography may not be particularly known as a hot topic among today's students--even some advocates suggest it suffers from an image problem--but by at least one measure, the subject is starting to come into its own. Across more than 30 topics covered in the Advanced Placement (AP) program, participation in geography is rising faster than any…

This article presents problems and possibilities associated with incorporating into history teaching a digital demographic database made for professional historians. We detect and discuss the outcome of how students in Swedish upper secondary schools respond to a teaching approach involving digitized registers comprising 19th century individuals…