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,…

Teachers and children who were in schools on September 11, 2001 harbor unique, personal, and accessible memories of the events that occurred that Tuesday morning. Educational research has attended to this (inter)national crisis in a multitude of ways, yet there exists a gap in the literature that attends to how today's preservice teachers remember…

For many of the students in the author's American history class, early twentieth-century American history seems far removed from their daily lives. Being first and second-generation American citizens, many of the students do not have the luxury of hearing grandparents and great-grandparents telling stories about FDR and Henry Ford. More…

This paper uses classroom observations of two high school social studies teachers' units about the U.S. civil rights movement and interviews with students in each class to explore the relationship between teachers' practices and students' understandings of history. The paper's analysis suggests that, while there is not sufficient evidence to…

A family history project which introduces students to the study of the family in connection with the immigration period in American history is described. The six-week project, an annual activity in Balboa Middle School (California) United States history classes, consists of four parts: (1) family history charts (family trees); (2) family…