While standards and assessments demand that students be able to recall content information, planning guides direct teachers to prioritize the development of transferable skills and understandings, and scholars of education have spent the past century debating the purpose of history instruction without approaching consensus. The field is still…

This paper describes how a three-day summer workshop on using primary sources helped teachers increase the emphasis placed on disciplinary literacy when teaching social studies and history. Two specific issues in teacher education and practice are addressed. First, increasing teachers' content knowledge of history topics can help them plan lessons…

The Annenberg Rural Challenge locates and funds exemplary rural public school programs to serve as models for rural education reform. The guiding theory of the Rural Challenge is that when rural schools base their teaching on the economy, ecology, history, and culture of their communities while fully engaging the community in the school's work,…