Primary Objective: This study examines student reaction to a unit of instruction teaching war through a more critical lens focusing on anti-war movements and how student sense of civic agency was impacted. Research Design: A design study that centered student voice on activism and experiences of a unit of instruction of the USA at war. Design…

Orin M. Jameson, a twenty-one year-old clerk in the 17th Wisconsin Infantry, and James B. Fowler, also a clerk in the 17th Wisconsin Infantry, both kept daily diaries during their time in the Civil War. In their diaries, neither Jameson nor Fowler ever explained their motives for enlisting, nor did they ruminate on the meaning of the Civil War.…

On December 7th and 8th, 1941, President Roosevelt issued three proclamations stating that any natives, citizens, or subjects of Japan in the United States would be liable to possible arrest, detention, or removal from the United States (Roosevelt 1941). Roosevelt followed the enemy alien proclamations with Executive Order 9066, authorizing the…

This paper explores the representation and non-representation of slavery in US school textbooks from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the US Civil War. It reviews the major readers, almost none of which mentioned slavery despite the anti-slavery sentiments of many textbook editors. The few readers that addressed slavery did so in…

In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks against the United States, people immediately compared the attack with the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor sixty years prior. In this article, we explore how US and world history textbooks published shortly after Pearl Harbor and 9/11 depicted and contextualized both events. The textbooks…

The role of literacy in social studies education has been greatly elevated over the last decade. The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) models through the indicators of its C3 Framework how to strengthen K-12 students' disciplinary thinking, literacy, and argumentation skills in the four core social studies disciplines: civics,…

The Civil War was concluded over 150 years ago but recently, monuments erected to commemorate the Civil War and its participants have been the site of civil unrest (e.g., Charlottesville, VA in 2018) and calls for removal of such monuments. The Confederate monuments debate has been going strong for decades, and it seems to have been picking up…

This article offers articulation theory as a tool for listening and thinking about the culture in and around writing centers. After defining a method of articulation analysis that considers articulation, disarticulation, and rearticulation, as well as alignments, contradictions, and tensions within a context, the article performs an articulation…

Using critical refugee studies as a theoretical lens, I analyzed Southeast Asian refugee children's literature to identify its pedagogical values and limitations for critical teaching about the Vietnam War. The findings suggest the children's literature can help challenge the dominant narratives of the Vietnam War as exclusively an American…

This article focuses on ten U.S. history textbooks, all in common use across the nation. This study adopts a historical narrative analysis, which aims to determine the manner in which textbook narratives may promote "de facto national mandates." This method allows for the comparison of textbook narratives to historical works, looking for…

Many of the first public school music teachers in the United States came from the singing school tradition and taught from the same tune books that had been used in singing schools. After the war, renewed interest in education and the establishment of graded schools soon led to the introduction of music series that were designed to serve the…

How individuals interpret the justifications for historical war can have a large effect on how they see modern warfare. In the social studies classroom, particularly in the U.S. context, so much of what educators focus on in regard to war are the events of World War II. This focus on the Second World War is understandable. However, it could also…

Dr. Jessie Wallace Hughan was a trailblazing New York City public school educator and pacifist. Hughan was a socialist, and she was among numerous teachers who faced investigations for anti-patriotic activities at the turn of the 20th-century, when teachers across the country faced intense scrutiny and legal challenges if they were suspected of…

This article describes two Socratic Seminar discussions, one focused on questioning just war and the other offering a perspective on how to end war. These discussions are the focus of this article because they show the complex and nuanced thinking and questioning students engaged in about what might constitute a just war (if anything) and how war…

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the need to understand teaching and learning not just as cognitive but also as affective experiences that are imbued with emotional complexity. There is also an emergent body of research on how to teach difficult knowledge of war. Joining this scholarship, this article presents research…