The purpose of this study was to investigate elements of the history of mathematics in secondary school mathematics textbooks in Ethiopia. In line with this, the study also identified the extent to which mathematics is seen as a social construct in textbooks. To achieve these four mathematics textbooks from Grades 9 to Grade 12 were selected for…

'Intercultural understanding' (ICU) and its core concept 'interculturality', was introduced in the new national curriculum, implemented across Australia from 2013 (Australian Curriculum, ACARA. [2013]. Australian curriculum V.60. Retrieved from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/copyright). This paper draws on a study conducted in Victoria,…

Is it structure or the selection of knowledge that makes writing historical narrative so difficult? Where does a conceptual focus on change, or causation, come in? James Ellis set out to explore the challenges his Year 9 pupils faced in writing historical narratives about change. Inspired by the work of Orlando Figes, he put together a scheme of…

Frustrated by his pupils' tendency to compartmentalise source analysis into two discrete parts of 'source' and 'own knowledge', Jonathan Sellin reflected that his use of scaffolds might be to blame. Inspired by recent work by teacher-researchers Hammond and King on the importance of secure substantive knowledge in the area of extended writing,…

Australia's involvement in World War I, currently in its centenary years of commemoration, continues to capture the public's imagination in a way that arguably surpasses all other historical events in Australia's history. This is particularly in terms of popular culture representations such as advertising, film, and television; children's…

Struck by his GCSE students' bewildered expressions when studying source extracts, Liam McDonnell decided to adopt a new approach to source analysis. Inspired by the work of other history teachers, McDonnell decided to use an anthology of substantial sources when studying nineteenth-century Whitechapel in London. By revisiting the sources at…

In this paper, we describe an experiment in using history to work on problem-solving and the relationship between arithmetic and algebra. The students involved attended the first year of the Italian upper secondary school (grade 9). The original sources we used are problems from Italian treatises on arithmetic and algebra that appeared in the…

Intrigued by the wide range of pupils' responses to a sourcebased essay question, Jonathan Sellin decided to investigate why pupils were using sources in such different ways. Probing his own philosophical assumptions about history, and how they have changed over time, prompted Sellin to explore pupils' assumptions about how historians use sources…

The past is not in the classroom to observe and study. Thus, creating a lively and understandable image of a past period or situation is an achievement to be learned. A variety of tasks can be used to stimulate students to create an image of the past. In this experimental study, 151 grade 9 students (14-16 years old) participated by completing a…

This article investigates the effect of private lower secondary schools on student achievement in France. I use propensity score matching on a large French database to estimate the effect of enrollment in a private school on academic achievement as measured by ninth-grade test scores in three school subjects. I find that private school attendance…

Education researchers have established the value of dialogic, whole-class discussions across content areas. However, such discussions have been defined primarily in terms of questions that enable or constrain interactions among multiple students. Research remains to be done on whether and how the subject matter with which teacher and students…

Focusing on students' attempts to explain the relative significance of different factors in Hitler's rise to power, Catherine McCrory explores the vexed question of why students who seem able to express necessary historical knowledge on one occasion cannot effectively reproduce it on another. Drawing on a detailed analysis of what it actually…

Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) has been used in several development studies, but few have used it for the purposes of formative assessment. This article reports from a study where the activity system was used to conduct a historical and actual-empirical analysis of the assessment culture at a purposively selected school. The article…

In "Teaching History 157, Assessment Edition," a number of different teachers shared the ways in which their departments were approaching the assessment and reporting of students' progress in a "post-levels" world. This article adds to those examples, first by illustrating how teachers from different schools in the Bristol area…

This article examines the narrative structure used by Israeli history teachers in their lessons. The investigation makes use of the analytical tools of narratology, employing the constitutive narratological distinction between "fabula" and "szujet." It becomes clear that the narrative structure which teachers of history…