Examines how elementary student teachers' composition of historical narratives constructed from primary and secondary source accounts demonstrated their historical thinking. Finds that the student teachers were ill-prepared about the "know what" and "know how" of history. Concludes that when student teachers' overall knowledge of history is…

This article reports on strategies used by immersion teachers to modify their speech in order to maintain the use of the target language while sustaining interactive communication and the concomitant teaching of the content and the second language. This classroom-based research, undertaken at Methodist Ladies College (MLC) in Melbourne, sources…

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have had tragic effects for history teachers and students in Canada, the United States, and abroad. Yet, despite increased educational research in historical thinking, very little is known about students' historical understanding of terrorism. This exploratory study looks at some Canadian, but…

In K-12 contexts, the teaching of English language learners (ELLs) has been greatly influenced by the theory and practice of content-based instruction (CBI). A focus on content can help students achieve grade-level standards in school subjects while they develop English proficiency, but CBI practices have focused primarily on vocabulary and the…

This paper presents a study using "Facing History and Ourselves," an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge development that focuses on the period of Nazi totalitarianism as a powerful case study through which teachers can stimulate moral reasoning and develop critical thinking skills in their students. The program encourages teenage…

The purpose of this study, unique in that it centered on students as creators rather than users of programs, was to determine whether collaboratively creating HyperCard stacks that presented information on four decades (i.e, the 1920s, the 1930s, 1945-60, and the 1960s) affected the amount of knowledge and the interrelatedness of informational…

This paper reviews the current social studies literature on temporal perspective as a psychological phenomenon and relates that literature to the Piagetian paradigm of development. It discusses the contemporary viewpoints on the nature of time and temporality. The paper outlines the distinctions between the Piagetian paradigm and the Vygotskian…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a literature-based approach to history on sixth graders' achievement, in terms of their historical understanding, and their attitudes. An experimental group receiving a literature-based approach was compared to a control group receiving a textbook-based approach. Both groups were similar in…

This report summarizes the activities of "Indiana and the New Nation," a 2-year educational program for 30 Indiana teachers. The program sought to enrich participant knowledge and understanding of U.S. history; to find the means of using local historical resources to explore major themes in U.S. and European history; to find ways of…

Because students should not only know stories about the past, but also understand the interpretive nature of historians' work, this study sought to discover whether instruction can develop elementary students' ability to engage in some aspects of historical interpretation. The study focused on fifth grade students. The research consisted of direct…

Describes a study of the use of an integrated communication arts instructional strategy to facilitate comprehension in a high school history course indicating that subjects who wrote following brainstorming activities and text readings generated higher quality ideas and synthesized acquired information better than the groups that did not write.…

A Texas panel created by People for the American Way found that the majority of U.S. history textbooks reviewed represented a significant improvement over history books of the past. However, current books are not without problems, e.g., uneven coverage of minorities and weak treatment of religion as a force in history. (RM)

A study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of student learning contracts in a Southeastern, open-admissions, public community college history course. The contracts specified final grade goals and point-earning activities (e.g., tests, book reports, term paper). A control group (N=72) using the learning contracts was compared with a…

This paper reports on a study that represents a new approach to understanding early and middle grade children's development of historical time awareness. The study sought to embed children's time awareness in a sociocultural framework, and to move beyond linguistic symbol systems to incorporate visual data sources. The researchers began with three…

The academic performance and learning strategy use of students in a freshman history course at a large southeastern U.S. regional university is the focus of this study. One group of students was comprised of first-term, at-risk students who were jointly enrolled in a learning support reading course and the freshman history course. The second group…