The combination of students, local history, researching, and problem-based learning creates a powerful opportunity for learning to all involved. This article provides one example of how an elementary teacher and a teacher educator have used local resources and problem-based learning to teach a fourth grade unit about human communities and the…

This pilot study examined middle school and high school student performance on an online historical thinking assessment task. After their teachers received training in the use of digital historical archives, students from all groups engaged in historical thinking behaviors (e.g., observation, sourcing, inferencing, evidence, question-posing, and…

During the past five years there has been new research into the teaching of history to children. Many educators are advocating once again the teaching of history through concepts. This elementary school unit uses the concept approach to teaching history. The lesson examines the concept of war and wars' impact on the lives of a variety of people.…

Asserts that the use of multimedia furthers historians' work as opposed to changing it. Explores three objectives that multimedia allows historians to achieve: (1) the issue of representation; (2) the concern with emphasizing historical thinking skills; and (3) the topic of how others appropriate history. (CMK)

Explores topics that are presented in the book, "Knowing, Teaching & Learning History: National and International Perspectives," edited by Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg. Focuses on developing, and limits to, historical thinking skills and connecting to students. (CMK)

Describes a competitive learning activity for social studies based on the idea of basketball play-offs. Suggests that the exercise allows students to review and discuss U.S. history while engaging in higher cognitive thinking skills. Describes a format in which students analyze the historical background of each president. Includes seeding charts.…

The author's ninth grade world history students communicated the connection they felt to three women whose stories they evaluated in class. The women represented ordinary people living during time periods being studied, and their personal stories demonstrated how the political, economic and cultural events had an impact on people in unique and…

Improving critical thinking--defined by one expert as "reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do"--has been a frequent topic in the writing of history educators at least since the early 1970s. Attitudes and interests do support higher-level thinking and, most importantly, knowledge used in carrying it out…

Seventy 8th-grade students (including talented writers, those with average ability, and students in need of special education services) participated in an integrated social studies and language arts unit designed to promote historical understandings and argumentative writing skills. The historical reasoning instruction lasted 12 days, and the…

In this article, the author tries to create inspirational experiences for his students through "Backyard Battles," a course he has taught for the last four years through the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina. The main purpose of this course is to help students recognize that the primary and secondary sources which…

The pedagogic value of using archival holdings for the teaching of history has long been appreciated. Using primary sources in the teaching of history transcends the rote learning of facts and figures. It encourages critical thinking skills, introducing students to issues of context, selection and bias, to the nature of collective memory and to…

Noting that hearing and reading the words of real people can personalize for students the study of social studies, language arts, and science, this book presents 230 quotations and prompts to enrich curricula and themes in grades 4 through 8. After an introduction and advice on using quotations in the classroom, quotations and prompts in the book…

This study reports on the historical conceptualization among Finnish 12-13 year-olds who were given a projective task to yield historical thinking. The case study examines expressions the subjects used and which were studied qualitatively, using "chunks of meaning" as units of analysis, in regard to both their meaning- content and their…

A high school teacher of history and U.S. Government discusses: the theoretical basis for promoting whole-brained thinking among her students; classroom research she conducted to determine the brain dominance of her students; results of implementation of activities designed to develop more whole-brained thinking in her students; and practical…

Gary Howells offers us a challenge: are we sure that we are teaching the study of interpretations correctly? It is much criticised at GCSE, but do we really engage our students in the process of writing history, and in understanding how history works, from 11-14? Or do we use reductive techniques which, as at GCSE, result only in our students…