This study explores how K-12 history curricula across Canada currently address--and may better address in future--decolonizing imperatives. Following a consideration of the limitations and strengths of curricula in this regard, the article identifies five recommendations for (re)designing history and social studies curricula with decolonizing…

Many history teachers will already be familiar with 'meanwhile, elsewhere...', a website offering freely downloadable homework resources on individuals, events and developments in world history. In this article the website's creators, Richard Kennett and Will Bailey-Watson, set out a curricular rationale for the project. They argue that using…

Recently, scholars have called for a practice-based framework for teacher education and some have argued more narrowly for a framework built around "core practices of teaching." These efforts, in part, are intended to make teacher education practice public and available for collective improvement. The purpose of this paper is to…

Faced with cutting her Key Stage 3 curriculum to two years, Natalie Kesterton and her department were determined to do more with less. Not only did they want to ensure that their pupils developed a secure, wide-ranging knowledge of British and world history, they also wanted to address deficits in pupils' chronological security and 'sense of…

History at its best helps the present make sense of the past. History at its best tells the nation's story through the voices of all the people. These voices enlighten and provide wise counsel for the present, creating healthy and creative communities. History at its worst not only ignores the different voices, but eliminates them altogether. The…

This paper explores the challenges for teachers in positioning them as independent curriculum makers. History teachers in New Zealand have recently entered uncharted territory with the abandonment of prescribed topics for history and a new-found authority to determine the selection of historical knowledge taught to their senior secondary students.…

The aim of this explorative study was to develop and test a pedagogy aimed at promoting students' ability to perform historical contextualization. Teaching historical contextualization was conceptualized in terms of four pedagogical design principles: (1) making students aware of the consequences of a present-oriented perspective when examining…

At many institutions, the standard United States history surveys are considered "introductory" courses in history, for history majors and minors, pre-service teachers, and in the suite of courses that satisfy General Education requirements. There may not be a more critical course in the collegiate history curriculum than the U.S.…

Frustrated by the low numbers of students from her comprehensive state school who expressed any interest in applying to Oxford or Cambridge to study history, Lucy Hemsley set out to explore ways in which she might both inspire and equip her students to do so. Her careful analysis of the explicit requirements of the two universities suggested that…

This article addresses how far educational institutions have come in designing authentic and meaningful curricula for teaching the Holocaust at the secondary level. Examined in this article are the historical development of Holocaust education in the United States, with a focus on the state of Illinois as a case study, what contributes to the…

Joanne Pearson reflects on her experiences as a history teacher and teacher educator, considering the ways in which she has seen women represented in the history curricula of different schools in England. She makes the case that greater attention needs to be paid by history teachers to the criteria against which they make decisions about the…

Successful curriculum development in any school subject requires a clear and established set of elements: agreed and widely appreciated goals; effective criteria for the selection of important knowledge content; and an explicit and well-integrated explanatory base for authentic problem-solving related to the subject goals. The article shows that…

10 Great Curricula is a collection of stories written by educators who have come to understand curricula differently as a result of their engagement with a graduate course and its instructor. The book represents the best of what can be found in teaching and learning, in general, and in the quest for meaningful ways to understand curricula in…

Many educational researchers across the United States have found that inquiry-based learning (IBL) supports the development of deep, meaningful content knowledge. However, integrating IBL into classroom practice has been challenging, in part because of contrasting conceptualizations and practices across educational fields. In this article, we (a)…

One of the main professional-development challenges social studies teachers face involves adjusting content and instruction to accommodate the surging population of English Language Learners (ELLs). Between the 1993-1994 and 2004-2005 school years, ELL school populations increased 68 percent to more than 5.1 million, compared to a 7.8 percent…