The epistemological concept of perspective meets all the conditions set by Meyer and Land (2003, 2006) to be considered a threshold concept for history learning. Following this initial hypothesis, this paper analyses the concept and the ways in which it constitutes a threshold: grasping perspective not only transforms one's understanding of…

Each November, commemoration of the First World War armistice (and subsequent military events and conflicts) is almost ubiquitous in UK schools and has been given increased importance during the centenary years of the First World War. Yet as seemingly isolated occasions outside the regular curriculum, school practices of remembrance, and the…

Although ubiquitous in academic discourse for over a decade, disciplinary literacy scholarship has only recently begun to explicitly interrogate critical literacy as a discipline-dependent set of dispositions, discourses, skills, and practices. Drawing from critical disciplinary literacy (CDL) theory, this article presents findings from a…

I position the use of counter-narratives as a critical approach that grants students agency and meaning in their learning and provides teachers with opportunities to present silenced curricular narratives as relevant and necessary in a globalized setting such as North America. Counter-narratives focus on a subject that preserves colonial and…

This article explores a key claim underpinning Russian official memory politics, namely, the notion that Russia's past (and especially the role it played in the Second World War) is the object of a campaign of "historical falsification" aimed at, among other things, undermining Russian sovereignty, especially by distorting young people's…

This article reconstructs the historical narrative of the Second World War in Russian middle school textbooks published after the year 2000. The author shows how textbook narratives are linked with official Russian politics of history, which aim to "manage" the memory of the war and contribute toward the standardization of Russian…

Citizenship education has been a feature of the school curricula in many western democracies since the 1990s. Consequently, there is a proliferation of research which explores its efficacy in instilling political literacy and encouraging democratic engagement amongst pupils. Less is known however about how citizenship is taught in societies…

The aim of this study is to determine the historical literacy perception levels of social studies preservice teachers and to examine them in terms of various variables. In this framework, the survey model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the research. The sample of this study consisted of 134 social studies preservice…

Inquiry-based learning remains both an important goal and challenge for primary school teachers within and across different subjects, such as history and science. By addressing primary school teachers, for the first time, as both learners who deal with controversial topics and teachers who have significant teaching experience, this study aims to…

In 2014, the National Democratic Alliance, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won the general election with the highest number of seats won by any party since 1984 and went on to win a second term victory in 2019. Since the rise of the BJP, Hindu nationalist interventions into education have increased. Their agenda has been to…

In this study, I examine the integration of aesthetic education, specifically the visual arts and music, into secondary education history courses. Through aesthetic education, I argue, students can become emotionally connected to the past and can develop their historical literacy, which has implications for academic achievement in high school…

Education in the United States has consistently utilized tests as well as a relatively standard curriculum to educate the youth. However, the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act and the subsequent implementation of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, has created an educational environment focused largely on math and literacy…

Since the founding of the United States, scholars and policymakers have argued that education should not merely train the minds of students, but also prepare them for active participation in a democratic republic. This dissertation, divided into three chapters, studies the leaders, schools, and content that shape students' character. While…

Troubling signs about the state of humanities in higher education are not new, but the steady decline in humanities majors is cause for concern. The humanities, however, play a critical role in society and public life, promoting citizenship and public engagement along with valuable skills. There are untapped opportunities for expanding history,…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two types of historical problem-solving instruction with advanced urban high school students' (N = 231) ability to reason with and contextualize historical evidence. Contextualization is a critical heuristic in the process of disciplinary thinking among historians. Yet, prior research…