Reveals creative and unique ways to assess children's learning in the social studies classroom using tools rather than tests. Provides examples of acrostic poems (each line begins with a letter from a famous person's name) and bio-poems (each line answers a biographical question). (MJP)

Encourages geography teachers to use biographies to reveal a sense of place and life in a given geographical context. Highlights the life of John Mullett, a surveyor during the settlement of Michigan as a model for using biography in geography instruction appropriate for grades 6-12. Includes surveyor maps and sources of additional biographies.…

Reviews Experience Mayhew's book, "Indian Converts" (1727) and changing scholarly interpretations of literacy effects on Native Americans living on Martha's Vineyard. Traces the history of the Mayhew missionary family from 1641 to the 1720s and the establishment of the Indian Library. Examines the cultural implications of literacy and…

A former editor of this journal, 1989-91, selects an outstanding article from his tenure that illuminates the research merits of creativity, planning, and skepticism in the work of Milton Ezra LaZerte, a prominent Alberta educator in the first half of this century. The article selected describes LaZerte's learning theories and several…

Discusses the use of life stories as a strategy for validating student life experiences, developing tolerance for and appreciation of other cultures and improving student attitudes about themselves and their peers. Describes a literature-based, college-level course for inservice teachers in which life stories were the dominant theme. (CFR)

Presents the lives and careers of Jane Marcet and Harriet Martineau and their contributions to the dissemination and popularization of political economics in early nineteenth-century education. Places their ideas about laissez-faire capitalism in historical context. Stresses the significance of their role as female writers and educators. (CH)

Provides a rationale for organizing history instruction around children's trade books. Presents a sample unit on the American Revolution that has been used successfully with intermediate-grade students. Describes an approach that is unique in its dual focus on students' affective responses to literature and their learning of content. (MG)

These volumes offer a blend of genres, authors, and purposes. Specific portraits are provided for each volume in chronological order. The central historical and educational values are in the view that the books give of the world of petit-bourgeois African-American women at the turn of the century. (SLD)

Discusses the failure of filmmaker Spike Lee to grapple with the real politics of Malcolm X before and after he left the Nation of Islam. Acknowledging the complexity of the man and his context would avoid creating a mythical figure similar to Oliver Stone's movie "JFK." (SLD)

Provides biographical sketches of two Revolutionary War soldiers from New England, Joseph Plumb Martin and Seth Bullard. Emphasizes methods that explain how the war was fought and make the struggles real rather than mythical. Recommends using local sources and records and discusses recreated Revolutionary War units. Includes excerpts from Martin's…

Examines the use of life histories as a method for explaining successful aging patterns. Describes a life-history research project in which undergraduates personalize material learned in social gerontology courses, integrating the life experience and theories. Sensitizes students to the impact of social forces on successful aging. Argues this…

Uses the biography and work of M. C. Escher to introduce a unit on art history. Tells about Escher's influence not only on artists, but also on mathematicians and physicists. Outlines a student project in which students employed one of these themes: impossible geometry, rotating symmetry, or geometry. (DSK)

The article explores the complexities of educational scale-making. "Educational scales" are defined as the spatial and temporal orders generated as pupils and teachers move and are moved through educational systems; scales are "envelopes of spacetime" into which certain schoolbased identities (and not others) can be folded.…

Bella Stavisky was born in New York City on July 24, 1920. She was born to activism: her father's butcher shop was called the Live and Let Live Meat Market, in protest of WWI. Her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants, and when her father died there was no son to say Kaddish for him, so 13-year-old Bella marched into Temple each day for a year to…

The academic study of Education (as a social, historical, and theoretical phenomenon) is complicated by the fact of our immersion in it. This paper combines Said's idea of "contrapuntal reading" with Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity to explore what happens when students on an Education course directly confront the fact of their everyday…