We are all our history. Yet in Canadian classrooms, students are often left questioning how they can study a past that does not reflect their present. Despite curricular revisions, the mainstream narrative that shapes the way we teach students about the Canadian nation can be divisive, separating "us" from "them." Responding to…

The construct of cognitive discourse functions (CDFs) has been proposed as a bridge between linguists and educationalists, linking 'subject specific cognitive learning goals with the linguistic representations they receive in classroom interaction' (Dalton-Puffer 2013. "A Construct of Cognitive Discourse Functions for Conceptualising…

With financial and methodological support from Simon Fraser University's (SFU) Institute for the Study of Teaching and Learning in the Disciplines, the authors created and implemented modules involving foreign-language instruction--in literary Chinese, Dari, and Latin--in three upper-division history courses. Luke Clossey taught the courses, and…

The debate about how slavery as a central issue in American history should be presented in history education often forces teachers and students alike to wrestle with how their contemporary positionality is reflected in classroom subject matter that cannot, and should not, be avoided. This article is an overview of the historiography of resistance…

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,…

Two middle-school teachers incorporated student creation of historical accounts into their history instruction. During these projects, the teachers instructed their students to (1) summarize information presented during classroom instruction on a topic (e.g., the Great Migration) and (2) explain the significance of that topic to the present day.…

This paper presents findings from a case study investigating secondary school teachers' understanding of the term digital libraries and their relationship with learning. The study addresses two research questions: (1) How do teachers conceptualize digital libraries, their relevance and issues relating to their integration into the curriculum? and…

Drawing on data from 1740 pupil questionnaires and 160 pupils in focus-group interviews, the study aimed to gain insight into British pupils' ideas about why they study history at school. The paper considers the implications of these ideas for history teachers and teacher educators. The data suggest that many pupils have very vague ideas about the…

This research highlights the effects of using literature and relevant curriculum to teach history in grade levels 6 through 8, and analyzes how students respond when learning complicated themes and events through the medium of historic fiction. Specifically, my research seeks to inform secondary educators concerning the use of the narrative and…

This study reports the results of a case study of four teachers' beliefs about the nature of historical empathy and their means of cultivating such empathy in secondary school classrooms. The results of multiple interviews and lesson observations of history teachers in England suggest that teachers conceptualize empathy in bounded but not…

Background/Context: How students develop a capacity to examine and imagine the past impacts how they think about the present and imagine the future. This study contributes to research about teachers' beliefs and practices about teaching United States history through cultural encounters and nontraditional historical narratives. Although there is a…

This case study examines a U.S. History class where a veteran teacher uses challenging primary source documents and a debate to encourage his students to think critically about history. The teacher is knowledgeable about the subject matter and articulates a clear purpose for teaching. Surprisingly, the author finds that the teacher's methods,…

Over the past decade many social studies educators have called for teachers to engage their students in historical interpretation. This case study examined the beliefs and practices related to engaging students in historical interpretation of four secondary social studies teachers from their teacher preparation through their first year in the…

One way that people learn, remember and communicate is visually. We combine past experiences with new visual information to construct meaning. In this study, elementary teachers introduced their students to the peoples and places of the ancient silk routes using illustrations from two children's picture books, "Marco Polo," written by…

Maintains that Marshall Hodgson's work, "Rethinking World History," is an interregional approach to world history. Argues that his chief contributions to historical writing were his consideration of epistemological issues, his revisionist views of the history of Europe, and his vision of world history as the center of a reinvigorated…