In this article, Jacob Olivey describes his department's efforts to both diversify their Key Stage 3 curriculum and secure greater curricular coherence. Building on a large body of research and practice, Olivey sought new forms of curricular coherence through the selection and sequencing of substantive content across the curriculum. He reflects on…

Determined to do justice to the complexity of the seventeenth century, as a messy but crucial period in British history, and to develop their pupils' disciplinary understanding of how and why interpretations of the past are constructed, Dan Keates and his department set out to exploit the rich seam of interpretations of Cromwell. The quest to…

This manuscript considers Berman's (1990) "Despair to Empowerment Curricular Curve" as a possible guiding curricular framework in global education. The authors describe how this curricular curve was used by teachers to enhance a seventh-grade world history unit on the Black Death to move middle-level learners away from despair and toward…

In particular, the study of history--its scope, reliance on analytical narrative, and methodology of tracing change and continuity over time--provides for an exchange of meaningful narratives. As historians Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier argue, "All cultures, all peoples, tell stories about themselves, and it is these stories that help…

In this article, the authors begin by describing a classroom activity from part of the Diplomacy Challenge unit in their Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Advanced Placement (AP) World History Curriculum when students discover and analyze the history of the Early Modern Era (1450-1750). In this article, they explain how they have adopted PBL, its…

History textbooks often cause friction in diplomatic relations between nations, especially between East Asian countries. Several studies have demonstrated that revisions to history textbooks can be the result of changes in a state's interests, resulting in different, often conflicting, accounts of historical events in history textbooks that…

This book offers the tools teachers need to get started with a more thoughtful and compelling approach to teaching history, one that develops literacy and higher-order thinking skills, connects the past to students' lives today, and meets social studies 3C standards and most state standards (grades 6-12). The author provides over 90 primary…

Many history teachers will already be familiar with 'meanwhile, elsewhere...', a website offering freely downloadable homework resources on individuals, events and developments in world history. In this article the website's creators, Richard Kennett and Will Bailey-Watson, set out a curricular rationale for the project. They argue that using…

All modern nation-states have periods of difficult history that teachers fail to address or address inadequately. The authors present a framework for defining difficult histories and understanding what makes them difficult. These events 1) are central to a nation's history, 2) contradict accepted histories or values, 3) connect with present…

As the commemorations of the 100th anniversary of World War 1 draw to a close, it is timely to reflect on what we have learnt about that time in our history. This study used the "New Zealand School Journal" as a data source to investigate what school children were learning about the war at the time. In this article, we discuss the overt…

Matt Jones wanted to harness the power of local history to help his students understand the profound social changes experienced across Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. While he hoped that the personal stories of six families in Birkenhead would help to humanise abstract concepts such as the Great Depression, he was taken aback…

Scholars have observed a re-emergence of biological racism in the Netherlands. I question whether this form of racism is also making a comeback in Dutch secondary schooling, by drawing on critical race theory and Bonilla-Silva's frames of colour-blind racism. Data for this study were gathered through an analysis of 200 history textbooks…

Difficult histories expose learners to historical suffering and victimization that constitute a collective trauma. The difficulty stems from the strong emotional reactions or ethical responses learners may evince, undermining their trust in security and morality of this world. However, difficult histories may also expose learners to instances in…

In this article, the authors focus on ways to structure conversations about racism in world history classrooms through a case study of race and racism in Haiti at the turn of the 19th century. Drawing on the events of the Haitian Revolution, the authors describe how identifying patterns of racial hierarchy can provide a framework for talking about…

In November of 2016, Laurent Dubois discussed the importance of Haiti in writing the history of slavery, freedom, and human rights in the Atlantic World during the Age of Revolutions for Aeon. He explained that histories of modern political thought and culture underestimated the Haitian Revolution due to the lack of written sources by the enslaved…