This article examines a particular incident in the Waikato wars, 1863-4 and its relevance to the newly mandated New Zealand History curriculum. The new curriculum will for the first time make the teaching of local history compulsory in years 1-10. I examine the wide variety of submissions about the content of this curriculum. As the Royal…

Early American historians provided the public and policy-makers with information about US history that provided both entertainment and policy suggestions. As American historians became more professionalised in the early twentieth century, they concentrated more on their own scholarly concerns and less on policy-relevant writings. In recent…

This paper proposes that as a way to broaden the theoretical and historical context of social studies foundational literature and curriculum history, attention must be given to issues of race and racism related the experiences of African Americans. First, race and racism should be used as an analytical tool to examine longstanding foundations…

Efforts to privatize education, eliminate teachers' unions, reduce spending on public education, and quantify student performance have demoralized teachers in the USA, and educators struggle to keep up with the many changes while still effectively teaching and caring for their students. Within these reforms, however, there is support for history…

The American Historical Association (AHA) and the National Council for History Education (NCHE) have recently advocated for raising the visibility of historians--and the significance of history coursework and subject matter preparation--in pre-service history teacher education. In 2006, NCHE adopted a position statement on history teacher…

In April 2011, Congress slashed funding for a majority of programs tied to education. Several programs related to professional development for teachers did not survive. While cut severely--from $119 million in Fiscal Year 2010 to $46 million (a loss of $73 million or 61% of its funding)--Teaching American History (TAH) grants lived, albeit by…

Information technology has spawned new evidentiary sources, better retrieval systems for existing ones, and new tools for interpreting traditional source materials. These advances have contributed to a broadening of public participation in civil society (Blouin and Rosenberg 2006). In these culturally unsettled and economically fragile times…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the evolution of geography in the United States' K-12 education system throughout the Nineteenth Century to understand the causes of variations, shifts in focus, and relative importance placed on geography. A broad theoretical framework, based on the work of sociologists of education and education…

The Battle of Bull Run is routinely cited as the first land battle of the Civil War. This battle between Union and Confederate forces took place near Manassas, Virginia, on July 21, 1861. But was this battle really the initial skirmish between the North and the South? Historians today concede that the first land battle actually took place on June…

Through his long career, Gary Nash has been a pioneer in opening the often-stuffy chambers of academia. He has shown a devotion to K-12 teachers throughout the nation and has ventured into their classrooms to observe, to teach, and, yes, to learn. It is all too rare for a noted historian, famous for his many seminal works, to roll up his sleeves…

Online open educational resources (OERs) offer promise for K-12 teaching and learning, and one subject area in which OERs might prove valuable is the social studies. In a recent study, the authors investigated how Websites of public history sites (physical locations, like Colonial Williamsburg and Mystic seaport) provide OERs. Their 66 Websites…

In this article, the author looks back at the time Charlotte Crabtree, longtime Professor of Education at UCLA with a special interest in elementary history-social studies curriculum, asked him to join her in applying for a million dollar grant to be awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), chaired by Lynne Cheney. Crabtree had…

From a slogan that, from 1945 to 1954, had limited significance in education practice and, from the 1950s through the 1970s, had a small place in education histories, since 1980 life adjustment education has become, for historians, an anathema representative of the worst reform impulses in American education. By interpreting life adjustment…

The role of federal involvement in education has, in recent years, become more and more prevalent. Such an involvement was not part of the historical origins of education at virtually any level. Whether it was for economic reasons, defense of the nation, the accountability of American taxpayers, or the pursuit of better civic-minded individuals,…

In recent years, the use of primary sources in the history and social studies classroom has been increasingly promoted as a necessary and welcome practice, one designed to improve the quality of history education and to encourage student interest and engagement. Although some K-12 educators have been wary of adopting the use of primary sources,…