Elementary teachers face the challenging task of meeting state curriculum standards while at the same time attempting to expand ideas that are inclusive of the wider world. True inquiry is "experienced when those involved [do] not know the answers that lay at the end of their exploration". Guiding children into true inquiry is difficult…

Biography is a popular approach to history education in the younger grades, especially when teaching units of study during Women's History Month, which is March. A biography-centered approach, however, can be problematic when such lessons are not tied to any context, promoting the misconception that individuals create social change in isolation.…

This manuscript, written with the educator in mind, describes the Youth Historians in Harlem (YHH) program, a twenty-week after-school history program that engaged urban students in history by immersing them in aspects of the historical process. Throughout the program, a group of Black male high school students were apprenticed as historical…

Social studies educators have promoted inquiry learning as a valuable method of instruction. Research into the use of inquiry methods in the teaching and learning of history has demonstrated that this method has much to offer. Recently, the use of technological tools, including the Internet, has received attention as a means of transforming social…

This year-long assessment project grew out of a need to establish an authentic assessment program (intermediate and terminal, formative and summative) as students entered the secondary grades. The project provided a framework for skill lessons correlated to the state (New York) curriculum and the textbook, which continued throughout the year,…