Analytical reading and writing are embedded in a disciplinary approach to history instruction and present opportunities to extend students' literacy practices. U.S. educators and researchers have come to rely on the Document-Based Question (DBQ) to assess and develop students' historical knowledge and argument writing. However, this task has been…

Different kinds of arguments typically include claims, warrants, and evidence. However, the very nature of claims, warrants, and evidence are discipline specific. A student's essay, for example, may exhibit features of argumentation while revealing fundamental flaws in historical thinking. Stronger historical arguments exhibit historical thinking…

The United States government has invested nearly one billion dollars in funding to professional historians and history educators across the country since 2000 to strengthen the teaching of American history in elementary and secondary schools, yet we know little about how these programs impact student learning. Using data from one such Teaching…

This article presents a survey designed to investigate what young people know about history. The survey was administered to 2,000 high school juniors and seniors across all 50 states. The students were asked to "jot down the names of the most famous Americans in history," with the caveat that they could not include U.S. Presidents or First Ladies.…