Art can be of great benefit for students to learn about history. This article presents results of a three-year research project at the university level on the use of specific examples from the arts for a variety of courses in U.S. and European history as well as a course on history methods. All the examples used consisted of images (painting and…

College expansion throughout the twentieth century was accompanied by the growth of a profession centered on supporting student learning and development. Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) programs multiplied across the United States to train these professionals with a focus on administration, leadership, and student affairs. As…

Analytical reading and writing are embedded in a disciplinary approach to history instruction and present opportunities to extend students' literacy practices. U.S. educators and researchers have come to rely on the Document-Based Question (DBQ) to assess and develop students' historical knowledge and argument writing. However, this task has been…

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, the author outlines the results of a research study conducted on one class cohort, focusing on the impacts of teaching Black women's history through Anne Moody's 1968 memoir, "Coming of Age in Mississippi," on their understandings of race and the experiences of Black women. Specifically, Moody's memoir provides a rich…

Research indicates that history-based curricula--specifically textbooks and trade books--about Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) are problematic and limited. If race relations are arguably America's long, unsettled tension, then Dr. King was one of its most impactful figures. Using the relevant historical research as a framework and the…

War is one place where the complexity of victory and defeat should be explored more deeply. Unfortunately, war--whether experienced directly as a soldier in Afghanistan or a Syrian in an Aleppo suburb, or indirectly through a news item on the Internet or American television--is a near inescapable aspect of most people's daily life. Yet unless…

As a result of the U.S. Department of Education's near one-billion-dollar investment in the "Teaching American History" ("TAH") grant program since 2001, almost 1,200 projects have taken place in school districts around the country with the important aim of improving the teaching of American history in K-12 classrooms. The…

Pre-service history teachers are exposed from schooling to a familiar canon: a story of American exceptionalism, linear social progression, and cultural homogeneity--referred to as a "freedom-quest narrative." Myopic and Eurocentric, this story follows students into their teaching careers; perpetuating a lack of critical understanding…

In this article, the authors explore the nature of film that is both "about" and now more often made "for/by" indigenous peoples and its potential as a medium for introducing and engaging students in the study of indigenous history and perspectives in secondary classrooms. As a framework for analysis, the authors examine to…

Over nine years earlier, on September 11, 2001, the author was concerned about how young people would come to understand what came to be called "9/11." The particular history class she was teaching then and for the nine years following is a Critical thinking history class that stresses the facts and evidence that historians use, and emphasizes the…

One spring afternoon, a group of young black students enter a local eating establishment with one modest desire--to sit with friends and enjoy a cup of coffee. They wait patiently, but are only served dirty looks, cold shoulders, and some choice words. Such an experience was not uncommon in Chicago in the early 1940s. Segregation, though illegal,…

A few days into the new school year, the author's female students invariably beg, plead, and cajole her in the hopes of watching Disney's "Pocahontas" in class. Toddlers when the film was released in 1995, doubtless they have seen it already dozens of times; more importantly, the author cringes at the ethnic and gender stereotypes sometimes…

Assessing students' historical understanding has been a long-standing challenge in history education. One of the widely used tools for accomplishing this task is the large-scale standardized test, the results of which are used as an indicator of student knowledge and skills in the social sciences/history. At the national level, the National…

A historical fact is like a fata morgana, "always less than what really happened." Even consensus does not establish truth; otherwise history is merely the version of the past that people agree to accept. The students who participated in the acclaimed 5th Street Cemetery Necrogeographical Study innocently found themselves clashing with…