This "think-aloud" study examines how a group of American Jewish teenagers read historical documents that addressed what it has meant over time to be American and/or Jewish. It demonstrates that students use a variety of sense-making strategies as they read about the past, many of which fall beyond the boundaries of critical historical…

This paper explores the relationship between the teaching of history (the academic study of the past) and the teaching of heritage (meaningful stories tying people to a collective past). The research was conducted in a Jewish high school whose explicit mission involves teaching history through a US history course and heritage through an Israeli…