Social studies teachers have to create an environment where students are empowered to discuss contemporary issues, such as racism and social injustices. This means students are provided activities that allow them to develop historical empathy skills: perspective recognition, contextualization, and using evidence to make informed decisions. In this…

Southern United States folk music is rich in not only sound, but in voices of the past. Folk songs were created by working class individuals who described aspects of their life in connection with societal issues and events. Folk songs, now digitally archived, can serve as primary historical sources that can be used to enhance the secondary social…

This article is a guided inquiry into past and present uses of war powers. From the Constitutional framers' intent through Thomas Jefferson's adaptation to modern presidents' implementation, students extract meaning from the best available evidence. Evocative primary sources--some of which are contemporaneous to modern readers--and engaging…

Sam Pullan explains how a chance encounter has helped him to improve his introduction to the modern themes and founding documents of US politics. Working with a professional historian whom he met, by chance, over dinner, he was able to produce lessons at the cutting edge of subject knowledge to grab the attention of his Year 11 pupils. This…

In this article, the author describes how the hottest show on Broadway, "Hamilton," teamed up with a nonprofit organization and a major foundation in an attempt to reinvent how American history is taught--and motivate 16-year-olds to interact with primary documents from 240 years ago.

After three decades of scholarship describing why and how students ought to be taught to think historically, this study asks what happens when they are. Ten high school students from a school that incorporated historical thinking into all history coursework repeated the think-aloud task from Wineburg's 1991 study of the cognitive processes…

The emphasis on college and career readiness has transformed secondary classrooms into sites for innovative explorations in disciplinary literacy. The exigencies of valuing classroom experiences as preparation for students' future involvement in their careers has created teaching spaces that invite cross- disciplinary, cross- level collaboration.…

Steven Spielberg's latest movie "Lincoln" updates Americans' national understanding of their sixteenth president and provides a partial, artful lesson on the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, this movie will become a defining work on President Abraham Lincoln's character and leadership…

For a long time, Advanced Placement and other advanced-level U.S. history courses at the high school level were modeled after the collegiate survey course. However, the last two decades or more have seen some significant changes in the teaching of U.S. history at undergraduate and high school levels. Many of these changes at the high school level…

In high school American history classrooms all over the country, the Civil War is a staple in the curriculum. Of course, that is to be expected given the pivotal place that the Civil War occupies in the nation's history. Indeed, it is not unusual for high school teachers to devote weeks of instruction to exploring the causes leading up to the war,…

Engaging in student-centered learning with primary sources has become a priority in the teaching of history in classrooms throughout the educational spectrum. Approaching photographic evidence in the history classroom through a contextualized and systematic method of analysis is one way of involving students actively in their own education while…

Oral histories are a powerful pedagogical tool in developing historical understanding and important learning skills simultaneously. Teachers use firsthand accounts of historical time periods and/or events to help develop students' sense of history. In addition to gaining historical understanding, students are able to bring history alive by…

In seeking a disciplinary literacy model that would enable students to express well-developed perspectives and argue contrasting views with the sound use of evidence, the authors developed a student-driven model that emphasized historical investigation, offered substance, and scaffolded reading and writing. To support their project, they created…

Developing disciplinary literacy in history requires that classrooms become an environment where students can engage in discursive practices typical of the profession. Disciplinary literacy refers to the specialized ways of reading and writing used in history to construct historical arguments and ways of reasoning. Learning history includes using…

Scholars often define historical reasoning as constructing defensible interpretations of past events. Drawing on critical theory, this article suggests that it also entails consciously framing one's topic of inquiry. The article examines an instructional unit that aimed to foster this expanded view of historiography. Forty students, ages 14-15,…