This article reports on a study of academic staff perspectives on disciplinary communities and skill development in disciplinary contexts. Fifty-five academic staff were interviewed across eight disciplines in four Australian universities. Responses of historians and mathematicians are the focus of this article. A socio-constructivist framework…

Features of eighth-grade history textbooks were examined through replication of a 20-year-old study that investigated "considerateness" of textbooks. Considerate texts provide clear, coherent information and include features that promote students' comprehension, such as explicit use of organizational structures, a range of question types…

Learning standards across the United States have increasingly called for history students to engage in aspects of "historical thinking," a term used to describe the complex disciplinary processes that historians use to make sense of the past. Although students are expected to learn these complex processes, little is known about how to…

This article discusses the provision of education in Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2008 which occurred in the midst of a crisis. It is based on the case study of Harare and data collected from primary and secondary sources. It argues that the government's capacity to ensure the provision of education was crippled by the economic meltdown generated by…

National efforts have been made to encourage technology integration in teacher preparation with expectations for frequent and successful applications with K-12 learners. While online learning has become pervasive in many fields in education, it has been somewhat slow to catch on in K-12 settings. The "Handbook of Research on Emerging…

Despite the perception that face-to-face classrooms provide speaking opportunities, studies by Fassinger (1995), Nunn (1996), and Weimer (2013) have conveyed that there is limited interaction in a traditional college lecture setting. Social media networks such as Twitter provide an opportunity for instructors to utilize popular mobile technology…

Disappointed that the use of the "PEEL" writing scaffold had led her Year 11 students to write some rather dreary essays, Claire Simmonds reflected that a lack of specific training on historical writing might be to blame. Drawing on genre theory and the work of the history teaching community, Simmonds attempted to theorise the…

This study examined the 4th-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments (history, geography, and civics) and 3rd- and 4th-grade social studies standards from nine randomly selected states and organized the content around three global concepts (conflict, movement, discovery) and six specific concepts (war, rebellion,…

This article advances a continuing line of inquiry into an innovative teacher-support program intended to help in-service history teachers develop professional teaching knowledge for inquiry-based history instruction. Two prior iterations informed our design and use of professional development materials; they also informed the implementation…

At present, quality earth science education in grade school is rare, increasing the importance of post-secondary courses. Observations of post-secondary geoscience indicate students often maintain errant ideas about the earth, even after direct instruction. This qualitative case study documents model-building activities of students as they…

The research objective of this study was to compare the relative effectiveness of history of science (HOS) integrated instruction and curriculum-oriented instruction on sixth grade students' understanding of nature of science (NOS). Accordingly, two classes were assigned to experimental group and other two were assigned to comparison group…

In 1995, California officially adopted standards-based reforms for public education when the Governor signed the Leroy Greene California Assessment of Academic Achievement Act into law. The legislation called for a new state system of standards-based tests and created the Academic Standards Commission to develop content and performance standards…

In Sweden, history has recently become a compulsory subject in upper secondary vocational education and training (VET). The aim of this interview study with teachers was to problematize the transition between the ideals of history education in the curriculum and the everyday practices of history teaching. It investigated how the teachers assess…

Sarah Black wanted to remedy Year 9's lack of knowledge about nineteenth-century politics. With just five lessons to work with, she decided to devise a sequence on Gladstone and Disraeli, shaping the sequence with an enquiry question that invited argument about change and continuity. Black analyses the status and function of different layers of…

Exploring controversial and difficult events and issues with young children can be challenging. The Civil Rights Movement is an abstract, perhaps remote, issue for young children today. However, it is an important part of our country's history and a theme worthy of study. This article suggests ways to use photographs to explore this mature subject…