In teacher's idealized history classroom, students are abuzz with questions. They are eager to jump into a serious analysis of primary sources. They relish additional opportunities to engage historiographical debates. They are, as teachers like to say, "thinking historically." While there are few easy ways to create these idealized…

Background/Context: The history curriculum is often used to help reach the goal of racial tolerance and understanding by teaching about the nation's diversity. Many educators believe that teaching about diverse peoples in schools will bring about greater equity in society. This historical study looks at the segregated American South from 1928 to…

The majority of public high school students in California are missing out on history. Many students may not see it that way, but that is because they have little understanding of what it means to appreciate history. The traditional high school history survey courses, US History and world history, provide an overview of "everything that ever…

In the field of history education, researchers and practitioners frequently demonstrate a keen interest in historical empathy. However, very little consensus exists concerning the meaning of the term. In an effort to make sense of the continuing debate, this article explores the competing conceptualizations of historical empathy found in the…

This article reexamines texts published during the period of the initial formation of the nation, from 1783 to 1815, or from the end of the American Revolution through the War of 1812. This examination of thirty-one textbooks (sixteen geographies and history texts, and fifteen readers and grammar books), most written by New Englanders but also…

A key component of current British military education is the battlefield tour and staff ride. These tours allow students to visit the location of military events, most commonly the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars in northern Europe, to facilitate their understanding of military history and draw contemporary parallels from the…

Historians work in a discipline with few inherent concepts and are obliged to draw upon many fields in recreating the past. Yet authors of most school history texts, state and national standards and curriculum materials seldom incorporate economic analysis in their work. Just look at state standards that include Adam Smith and John Locke but draw…

This article explores historical reasoning, an important activity in history learning. Based upon an extensive review of empirical literature on students' thinking and reasoning about history, a theoretical framework of historical reasoning is proposed. The framework consists of six components: asking historical questions, using sources,…

This article examines the ideologically-articulated shifts, and the images of transformation, and nation-building process presented in the new generation of school history textbooks in Russia. The article analyses the new content of post-Soviet history textbooks used in Russian secondary schools that represent various transformations from…

In this article, I present an analysis of professionalism as defined and enacted by the History Teachers' Association of New South Wales (HTANSW). This analysis was part of a larger doctoral project (2000-2005) in which I employed critical qualitative inquiry to compare and contrast the contribution that two subject teaching associations (science…

Reviews "Learning History" (Dickinson, Lee, and Rogers, 1984), a book which focuses on the nature and structure of history and the need to relate this to the psychological make-up of the pupil. Chapters cover such topics as: Why learn history?, the value of teaching history in schools, and how students learn history. (JDH)

Problems in the interpretation of the term empathy, and the value of the development of empathy in the teaching of history are discussed. Although the definitions here are presented in the context of history, they are relevant to the teaching of other subjects where an empathetic response is sought. (Editor/KC)

A new generation of history textbooks, produced since the 1994 release of controversial national history standards, is now being reviewed by key states. These textbooks appear at a time when educational publishing is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few huge media corporations. Discusses the business of educational publishing, which is…

Discusses Spielberg's film "Amistad," a production of the dramatization of a 19th-century slave revolt and its repercussions. Focuses on the point that Africans fiercely resisted slavery rather than passively submitted to it. Urges teachers to incorporate this aspect of resistance into their teaching of the history of slavery. (MMU)

Provides full narrative reviews of B-1 Nuclear Bomber (Avalon, 1982); American History Adventure (Social Science Microcomputer Review Software, 1985); Government Simulations (Prentice-Hall, 1985); and The Great War, FDR and the New Deal, and Hitler's War, all from New Worlds Software, 1985. Lists additional information on five other history and…