The problem under examination is the course success of High School students in Face-to Face and Blended classroom environments. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the participation and performances of Face-to-Face and Blended high school students in different classes. Students' achievement and participation in Face-to-Face and…

With the implementation of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy, as well as the onset of the C3 framework from the National Council of Social Studies, social studies teachers are tasked with integrating content and writing instruction in thoughtful and relevant ways. A middle school social studies teacher…

This study analyzed three types of visual representations (graphs, maps, & graphic organizers) in the most widely used eighth-grade U.S. History textbooks. The analyses included how each visual was constructed and used within the context of text narrative. Purposeful sampling techniques were used to select a representative sample of varied…

Heggert and Flowers (2019) offer important insights into how social media provides students with important opportunities to engage in meaningful civic engagement and political activism. They argue that students are more politically active than some recent studies would have us believe because they are utilizing social media platforms, methods not…

Context: Elementary teachers will make difficult pedagogical choices when selecting materials to support their students' learning about historical topics. Given the variety of historical books written for their students, certain stories will be emphasized and ultimately legitimated and others will be silenced through absence. Objective of Study:…

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…

First-grader students engaged in a guided historical inquiry about Abraham Lincoln. The teacher carefully intertwined historical content, close reading, critical thinking, and text-based writing during Reading, Writing, and Social Studies classes. Students scrutinized secondary sources, which were largely biographies of Lincoln, to build their…

Struck by their sixth-form students' self-doubt when asked to make an historical claim, teachers Carina Ancell and Alan Kunna went in search of ways to build their students' confidence. A fruitful discussion with university lecturers Toby Green and Chris Dillon, about the challenges faced by first-year undergraduates in seminar discussion, led to…

Cutting-edge data science techniques can shed new light on fundamental questions in educational research. We apply techniques from natural language processing (lexicons, word embeddings, topic models) to 15 U.S. history textbooks widely used in Texas between 2015 and 2017, studying their depiction of historically marginalized groups. We find that…

A recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed that many history teachers avoid or minimize conversations about race for fear they will trigger "racialized conflict." This silence should raise alarms, as we know that race and racism permeate the lived experiences of teachers and students and inevitably surface in historical…

Why do we teach U.S. history and government to students? The answer is simple: to prepare students for engaged and informed citizenry, the essential ingredient for preserving the American republic. Unfortunately, ACTA's most recent "What Will They Learn?"® survey of the core curricula at over 1,100 colleges and universities found that…

This article traces how Mexican American Studies (MAS) scholar activists led and supported a statewide movement for MAS in Texas. As a Xicana feminist scholar activist, Saldan~a draws from her retrospective memory and personal archive of organizational notes, movement documents, personal testimonies before the State Board of Education, and photos,…

This case study discusses the development of a community-engaged undergraduate history course on the 1960s at Johns Hopkins University. It speaks to the specific limitations of contingent faculty and the challenges of bridging historically deep divides between a predominantly White institution (PWI) and many surrounding communities. It focuses on…

Demographic trends in Texas continue to change and diversify the population; however, despite this trend, school districts and state officials continue to maintain a curriculum that is not relevant to this diverse population. Furthermore, studies show that Hispanic students, who represent 45% of the students in Texas public schools, have little…

Regular incidents of police brutality towards African Americans, who continue to experience high poverty and incarceration rates, illustrate that the tragic and divisive effects of racism are still present, even 150 years after slavery in the United States was officially ended. In fact, ongoing struggles for racial justice in the United States and…