Analysis of primary sources has been recognised to have a significant impact on the development of students' historical thinking. This study explored US history teachers' attitudes and practices to using primary sources by interviewing six history teachers and observing 29 history lessons between August and November 2016 in Indiana and California.…

Promoting Adolescents' Comprehension of Text (PACT) is a text- and discourse-based set of instructional practices that engage students with disciplinary texts as a means of building content knowledge and improving reading comprehension. PACT)s "efficacy" has been the subject of extensive previous trials. The purpose of this study was to…

In this article, Dan Lyndon-Cohen makes the case that history departments should move from diversifying the curriculum to decolonising it. After reflecting on some examples of how he made the content of his lessons more representative, he explores how the influence of writers such as Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Emma Dabiri inspired him to find…

A narrative of racial progress abounds in U.S. history, making it difficult for teachers to present complex interpretations of racial/ethnic discrimination. Historical complexity challenges such simplistic notions of race/ethnicity and encourages critical thinking. Adding anti-essentialist historical content about Latinx communities is one way to…

This article explores how a curricular intervention that merges antiessentialist historical content and historical inquiry plays a role in how students complicate the narrative of racial progress. The 3-day curricular intervention centers on "Mendez v. Westminster," a case about 1940s Mexican American school segregation. The content and…

Students often ask, "Why do we have to study history?" and teachers struggle with how to answer. If a history teacher's purpose is to simply teach students about historical events, then Dimension Four of the "College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework," "Communicating conclusions and taking informed action," seems…

Empirical Education Inc. is the independent evaluator of SRI International's 2014 Investing in Innovation (i3) Development grant called Redesigning Secondary Courses to Improve Academic Outcomes for Adolescents with Disabilities and Other Underperforming Adolescents. The goal of the grant is to develop "Enhanced Units" that combine…

Many community college students show a lack of interest and engagement in studying history; students' disinterest in history curriculum appears to stem from a teacher centered pedagogy of lecturing and reading unaesthetic history textbooks. Using historical fiction to teach history and develop student interest and engagement is examined in this…

The purpose of history education in secondary schools has shifted on various occasions over the course of the last 100 years (Evans, 2015; Nash et al., 2000). The ideologically guided curricular shifts have undoubtedly influenced the way that educators think about and approach the teaching of the subject. As such, it is important to examine how…

In 1995, California officially adopted standards-based reforms for public education when the Governor signed the Leroy Greene California Assessment of Academic Achievement Act into law. The legislation called for a new state system of standards-based tests and created the Academic Standards Commission to develop content and performance standards…

Teachers who are no longer considered novices can have a difficult time admitting failures. There is an expectation that teachers should be "on" all the time, but disorientation can happen even to veteran teachers--or maybe especially to veteran teachers--if expectations are too high. Sarah Cooper, an experienced teacher and dean of…

International revulsion at the violation of human rights during World War II helped spark a global movement to define and protect individual human rights. Starting with the creation of war crimes tribunals after the war, this newfound awareness stimulated a concerted international effort to establish human rights for all, both in periods of war…

In my three-article dissertation, "Concerning the Other: Empathic Discourse in Worldwide, National, and Student-Authored Textbook Historical Narratives," I explore how textbook authors empathize with marginalized groups. My data includes approximately 1,000 textbooks published from 1910 to 2010 from over 100 countries around the world,…

Many K-12 teachers struggle to meet the needs of diverse learners as school reforms promote new disciplinary literacy requirements. In response, language education scholars have argued that teachers must develop "disciplinary linguistic knowledge" (DLK), or an understanding of language in their content area and an ability to design…

A text can be anything: a poem, a map, an old letter. To spur great learning, it needs to be provocative, powerful, open to multiple interpretations, and, above all, it needs to teach something profound. A school building can also become text when a teacher uses place as a way to make history come alive. The author discusses how he uses Theodore…