Alex Benger asks whether the mode of enquiry adopted by cultural historians, the construction of webs of past meaning from past perspectives, is underexplored in school history. Benger used a cultural history approach in his building of an enquiry for Year 9 around one man's experience of the First World War. Here he examines his pupils' efforts…

This article is a guided inquiry into past and present uses of war powers. From the Constitutional framers' intent through Thomas Jefferson's adaptation to modern presidents' implementation, students extract meaning from the best available evidence. Evocative primary sources--some of which are contemporaneous to modern readers--and engaging…

This article presents a guided inquiry into Thomas Jefferson's place in American memory. It centers on Jefferson's liberty-based articulations and his involvement in slavery, which are paradoxical when juxtaposed. Evocative primary sources and competing secondary sources ground the inquiry. Discipline-specific strategies direct students through…

There have been multiple calls to support more systematic approaches to addressing the needs of multilingual students in social studies. In this action research study, the authors point to the Maryland Humanities Inquiry Kits, which provide an example of how to leverage digital history resources in the multilingual classroom for a culturally and…

There is synergy between the investigative practices of police detectives and social scientists, including work-based researchers. They both develop lines-of-inquiry and draw on multiple sources of evidence in order to make inferences about people, trends and phenomena. However, the principles associated with lines-of-inquiry and sources of…

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…

To explore questions in history and to construct historical narratives, historians work with evidence from the past. This approach to teaching history (inquiry involving the use of evidence) is an accepted part of the research on history teaching and is promoted widely in standards frameworks and practitioner publications as "good history…

In this paper we make the case that the language of school science and the language of science are widely divergent. We trace the divergence to a simple view of reading that prevails not only in science education but in most of schooling. Based upon the importance of language in science and the role of language in capturing the essential nature of…

Philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood developed and elaborated a theory and approach to reconstructing knowledge about the past that relies on the historical imagination. This paper argues that Collingwood's theory offers teachers sound reasons for using constructivist approaches in their classrooms and that his methodological approach can…

A limited body of research examines the extent to which social studies teachers are actually utilizing primary sources that are accessible in traditional classroom-based formats versus web-based formats. This paper initiates an exploration of this gap in the literature by reporting on the result of a survey of secondary social studies teachers,…