Citizenship and related values are common elements in the missions of honors programs. Our goal was to design a junior honors seminar with an intentional focus on developing citizenship, civic identity, and civic virtues through engagement with the challenging history of our city, Montgomery, Alabama. The course employed four evidence-based…

Neil Bates and Robert Bowry have chosen to tackle the issue of curriculum coherence by including local history, both as starting point for new students joining the school in Year 7 and as a golden thread running throughout their Key Stage 3 curriculum. In this article they explain the rationale for their plans, focusing not only on the powerful…

Inspired by the claim that local history can be taught effectively 'Any time, any place, anywhere,' Katharine Burn and Jason Todd took up the challenge of planning Key Stage 3 enquiries related to an unusual and diverse, but frequently neglected and often despised, corner of Oxford. They sought not merely to develop the kinds of enquiry that would…

Martorella's "sleeping giant" is awakening via geospatial tools. As this technology is adopted, it will transform the history curriculum in three ways: deepening curricular content, making conceptual frameworks more prominent, and increasing connections to local history. These changes may not be profound and they may not be sudden,…

This profile describes a new WPA's choice to work incrementally to assess an inherited, fledgling First-Year Writing curriculum at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and change it over a three-year period with continual stakeholder involvement. The methods used for assessment were two rounds of instructor surveys and three rounds of direct…

One of the challenges that social studies educators face daily is how to make student learning relevant. Digital technologies can play an important role by connecting what happens in the classroom to the world beyond. One way to do this is by turning students into producers of information and having them create content rather than simply consume.…

Cherbourg State School is approximately 300 km northwest of Brisbane. It is situated in an Aboriginal community at Cherbourg with approximately 250 students. At the Cherbourg State School, the aim was to generate good academic outcomes for all students from kindergarten to Year 7 and to nurture a strong and positive sense of what it means to be…

Describes resources used to teach local history at the third-grade level in El Cajon, California. The content of the resources is described as well as the methods used to develop the resources. (AM)

Described is a history education project of the Illinois Regional Archives Depository System which shows that archives can be both repositories and disseminators of information. A curriculum packet composed of facsimiles of local government records for use in secondary school history classes was developed. (RM)

Describes the content, goals, and methods of a four-year curriculum development project that infused learning about Chicago metropolitan area neighborhoods into existing high school social studies and junior high school American history classes. Provides criteria used for lesson design and unit development. (JDH)

Describes the contents and structure of a heritage education resource package which was developed to heighten students' awareness of their heritage through the study of architecture. Designed to supplement a variety of curriculum units, this package utilizes local history resources to enliven heritage instruction. (GEA)

Discusses a collaboration among an educator, a historical archaeologist, and a historian in order to create a local history curriculum that focuses on the life of African Americans on a Texas farm. Discusses how the curriculum was actually developed focusing on the role of the three team members. (CMK)

An ethnographic project to develop a model for an ethnic studies program based on community education, community involvement, and a study of community history is described. The project took place in New Harmony, Indiana, a town of 600-700 persons with a strong European heritage, especially German. Part of the project staff was selected from the…

Discusses a school district's plan to introduce into the curriculum civic writing activities directly linked to local history and community issues. Suggests that writing can stimulate students' civic responsibility through the academic skills of research and critical thinking. Addresses planning, implementation, assessment, and recommendations.…

Describes a curriculum development project developed in the United Kingdom to help students write histories based on local case studies. Topics discussed include reasons for writing local history, gathering historical evidence, primary source materials, procedures, and advantages of a local history project. (Author/DB)