In "Teaching about the Vietnam War: Centering Southeast Asian Refugee Voices through Children's Literature," Sohyun An provides content and pedagogic knowledge for teaching about the Vietnam War through Southeast Asian refugee children's books. The author provides a brief overview of the war from Southeast Asian perspectives and…

In this article, we advocate for integrating select graphic novels into curricula for English language learners and emergent bilinguals to push against the dominant and harmful narratives that tend to be found in traditional history texts and curricula. We use "Vietnamerica" by Tran and "Escape from Syria" by Kullab et al. as…

Using a multiple case study design, I examine how public high school students (n = 17) make sense of narratives about defining events with which they have specific heritage connections. Focusing on 3 groups of students (Hmong, Chinese, and Jewish) studying 3 heritage events (respectively, the Vietnam War, Modern China, and the Holocaust), this…

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…

"A People's History for the Classroom" helps teachers introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of U.S. history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. It includes a new introductory essay by veteran teacher Bill Bigelow on teaching strategies that align with Howard Zinn's "A People's…

Although the Vietnam War ended more than thirty years ago, historians remain as divided on what happened as the American people were during the war. Mark Moyar maps the ongoing battle between "orthodox" and "revisionist" Vietnam War historians: the first group, those who depict Vietnam as a bad war that the United States should…

During the Vietnam War, and the years following the conflict, history teachers were often hesitant to examine the war in the classroom for a variety of reasons. This article explores some of the factors that prohibited the effective teaching of the Vietnam War. Implications regarding how these inhibiting factors might affect teaching about the…

In this article, the author discusses his "History of the Vietnam War" course, which takes oral history as the core of its curriculum. This oral history focuses on personal lives and stories that can bring history to life. The components of the course are as follows: (1) overview of the History of the Vietnam War; (2) email interviews;…

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…

This article describes the Veteran's Oral History Project, a collaboration between students at Isaac Young Middle School and pre-service teachers enrolled in the author's middle school education class at the College of New Rochelle. The pre-service teachers developed and taught an integrated interdisciplinary unit on the Vietnam era, culminating…