History education rests at the junction between historical content, disciplinary literacy, and educational psychology. To understand the sources and strategies that facilitate historical thinking, more inquiries are needed. How do students respond to different historical topics, texts, and tasks? Which sources and strategies best facilitate…

Societal stories about school do not just reflect our current views and values, they also shape our political preferences and the realities that result from them. In recent decades, stories of the traditional common school and its more collectivist, shared culture have given way to newer stories oriented around competition and choice. Sarah…

Battle Battle: Engaging Diversity in the American Liberal Arts College examines the production of an Asian American hip-hop musical, directed by the author, at a private liberal arts college in the US. This article demonstrates how the production process was determined by the complex history of racial formation and relations in America. Those who…

This paper attends to the emotional and affective relations that manifest through political discussions in secondary classrooms. In particular, the focus is on the dynamics of classrooms during discussions of political issues. Specific attention is given to interpretations of movements and manifestations of emotions as well as the ways that…

The purpose of this study is to construct a concise historical narrative of the development and characteristics of African American styles of marching band. While some extant research studies have been published in this area of study, the focus has been primarily on individual exemplary teachers or university band programs. In this article, much…

A narrative of racial progress abounds in U.S. history, making it difficult for teachers to present complex interpretations of racial/ethnic discrimination. Historical complexity challenges such simplistic notions of race/ethnicity and encourages critical thinking. Adding anti-essentialist historical content about Latinx communities is one way to…

Now more than ever, race has become a morphing relational dynamic that has less to do with the demographic census box we check and more with how we make sense of our lives--who we are and who we can become in relationships with others. Using anecdotes from her practice as a licensed psychologist and as an African American growing up in the South,…

This article analyses findings from a research project examining the Pear Tree Community School in Oakland, California, USA -- a small, social justice-focused school primarily serving Black, Indigenous and other students of colour in grades from kindergarten to Grade 5. Through this multi-year case study, which included observations, interviews…

The Native American Leadership Model is a source for understanding leadership styles through a lens of tribal core values and Indigenous learning methodologies. This model can serve as a tool to reclaim and assert the Indigenous perspective on Native American leadership that was dismantled over centuries through U.S. assimilation policies. The…

Continuing racial inequities and marginalization have led some communities to reject reliance on public schooling by forming their own programmes and/or schools, claiming sovereignty over the education of their children. We highlight Freedom Schools as one such ongoing but under-studied movement that precedes and contributes to recent,…

The purpose of this APA BEA Racial Disparities Task Force report is to examine the role of racism and bias on educational opportunity and achievement disparities experienced by children. Specifically, we seek to link racism explicitly to opportunity gaps by examining how racism operates on multiple levels. Using critical race theory,…

The objects that represent our material culture--street signs, mascots, symbols etched into stone or printed on stationery--are silent bearers of history: the past tattooed on the present. The meanings given to those objects may change from one social or culture group to another. One seemingly innocent and overlooked example in this vein is the…

This article is a reflection on the teaching of black history after the Obama presidency and at the dawn of the Trump era. It is both an analysis of the state of the academic field and a primer on how to integrate the past few decades of scholarship in black history broadly across standard K-12 curriculum. It demonstrates the importance of…

The author discusses how, in practice, historians often obscure the effect of women's lives, work, and contributions on their topic, and she takes special note of video game history. Using both history and film studies as examples, she argues that games historians can and should adopt feminist viewpoints to help ensure a fuller, more diverse…

Civics education shouldn't be confined to dusty textbooks, as evidenced by this assortment of projects. In one unit, elementary students play out the presidential election--from campaigning to inauguration day--using the Storypath approach. In another project, 5th graders explore the controversy about Confederate monuments by studying a local…