Although the literature base is replete with ideas about how to develop and support rich social studies teaching, advocates have been unable to show a consistently positive effect. Good history teachers take no single shape. Grant (2003, 2005) suggests that it is the interplay of teachers' deep subject matter knowledge, knowledge of their…

In this paper, we address the issue of how teachers select primary and secondary texts for classroom use by focusing on two New York state middle school history teachers. Our field studies show that, although they teach diverse groups of students, each teacher chooses a wide variety of sources to develop classroom units and test preparation…

This paper uses classroom observations of two high school social studies teachers' units about the U.S. civil rights movement and interviews with students in each class to explore the relationship between teachers' practices and students' understandings of history. The paper's analysis suggests that, while there is not sufficient evidence to…

In New York, state-level policymakers have invested considerable political and economic capital in new tests as both a measure of accountability and as a vehicle for increased educational standards. In this study, we look at how 9th and 10th grade global history teachers are making sense of the first administration of a new 10th grade global…