Historians often present their interpretation of the past in written accounts. In order to gain deeper knowledge of the discipline of history, students must learn how to read and write historical accounts. In this experimental pretest--posttest study, we investigated the impact of a domain-specific reading instruction followed by domain-specific…

If high school history courses are meant to introduce students to the paradoxes and debates of American history, then they should study the 1619 Project, the authors argue in this article. College history students regularly debate the extent to which slavery was formative to the development of American systems of law, business, medicine, religion…

Purpose: The article sets out primarily to fill in some of the gaps in the biography of Lucy Arabella Stocks Garvin (1851-1938), first principal of Sydney Girls High School. As a reflexive exercise stimulated by this biographical research, the second aim is to explore the transformative work of digital sources on the researcher's research…

Engaging historiography and interpreting secondary sources represent essential elements of historians' work that have been largely ignored in favor of primary source reading in high school history classrooms in the United States. To understand whether and how students apply their historical reasoning skills to secondary sources, we asked…

Evolutions within the field of historiography have been followed closely by historians of art education, and in recent years, a shift to arts-based constructions of history has radically redefined art education history. The question of how to do this new kind of history, both methodologically and theoretically, has been addressed periodically in…

In this historical dissertation, I examined the process of curriculum development in the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) in the United States during the period 1959-1963. The presentation of evolution in the high school texts was based on a more robust form of Darwinian evolution which developed during the 1930s and 1940s called…

In Leonard Koos's book, "The Junior-College Movement", he described the establishment of a junior college in an American public school district as the "culmination of the local school system", alluding to the prestige associated with having a junior college in a community. The best-known example of this arrangement was in…

World history has become increasingly important and has often been a required course for high school students in the United States. This multi-case study provides examples and descriptions of students' demonstration of historical understandings. It also includes multiple perspectives and experiences of world history students and teachers, and…

Scholars often define historical reasoning as constructing defensible interpretations of past events. Drawing on critical theory, this article suggests that it also entails consciously framing one's topic of inquiry. The article examines an instructional unit that aimed to foster this expanded view of historiography. Forty students, ages 14-15,…

Given California's role in the Pacific economy, its historic Asian heritage, and the strong and growing presence of Asian communities and businesses in the state, it is imperative that students statewide understand the history of Asia. Unfortunately, the California state curricular framework and standards in history and social science limit the…

This article offers a review of the existing historiography of the American school principal. Although a small and incomplete body of research, scholarship on the history of the principalship demonstrates that it has always been a complex and multifaceted role and that principals have historically drawn on shifting sources of authority to assert…

Historians work in a discipline with few inherent concepts and are obliged to draw upon many fields in recreating the past. Yet authors of most school history texts, state and national standards and curriculum materials seldom incorporate economic analysis in their work. Just look at state standards that include Adam Smith and John Locke but draw…

Humorist Josh Billings quipped, "About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment." Billings was harsh in his view of originality, but his critique reveals a tension faced by students every time they write a history paper. Research is the essence of any history paper. Especially in high school,…

Contemporary secondary education is marked by the standardization of both content and testing. The effect of this characterization on history, the humanities, and social studies results in a break from the spirit of these disciplines. Regarding history, the specific implications include objectification of causation and "the truth" about the past,…

This article examines the educational ideas of Fred Morrow Fling (1860-1934). A practitioner of "scientific history," Fling believed that the principal goal of history education was to teach the historical method through the analysis of primary sources. Unlike his contemporaries, who saw sources as useful for adding interest to lessons, Fling…