Using historical thinking for analyzing the teaching and learning of secondary school history, this paper contributes to literature and debates on the pedagogical potential of museums in this endeavor. Despite the existence of museums and expansive literature on their historical significance in various world settings, there has not been much…

Teaching with primary sources provides educators with opportunities to expose students to authentic analysis, critical thinking, and perspective taking. When students are exposed to primary sources in the classroom, they can examine the point of view of the source, what information they can gain from the source, what information is missing, and…

In this article, Robin Conway and Amy Scott show how they made use of online source archives to replicate the experience of an academic historian in the classroom. By changing the way that students approach sources, moving away from both 'fun activities' and formulaic exam preparation towards a more authentic experience, they show how students'…

Over the last few decades, there has been a shift in the classroom from lecture-based to active learning settings with the argument that students retain more information when they are involved in the learning process. This correlation is even stronger when the active learning setting incorporates a real-world or personal connection. Using active…

Southern United States folk music is rich in not only sound, but in voices of the past. Folk songs were created by working class individuals who described aspects of their life in connection with societal issues and events. Folk songs, now digitally archived, can serve as primary historical sources that can be used to enhance the secondary social…

On a hot July day in 1854, 24-year-old schoolteacher Elizabeth Jennings, accompanied by a friend, attempted to board a horse-drawn trolley to attend Sunday church services in Lower Manhattan. The Irish conductor refused, telling Jennings, who was African American, to await a horsecar for "her people." When Jennings resisted, the…

There are many reasons for exposing physics students to primary source material in the sciences. These works can illuminate the history of science and give students a more vivid picture of the development of physics than most textbooks attempt to provide. They can also serve as pedagogical tools for exploring the misconceptions and "wrong…

This study aims at determining perceptions and experiences of prospective social studies teachers who create learning and teaching activities using historical evidence. We used the case study methodology in our study and collected data from activities created by prospective teachers, research stories, focus group interviews, and observations. We…

The main goal of this study was to analyze the development of historical thinking abilities in two groups of fourth graders in Colombian schools. The study consisted of the design, implementation, and evaluation of a three-month pedagogical intervention. After an initial assessment, nine learning activities were implemented. An Intervention Group…

This study details the design of library instruction sessions for undergraduate students that intended to encourage critical source evaluation and the questioning of established authorities, and appraises these instructional aims through a thematic analysis of 148 artifacts containing student responses to group and individual activities. The…

As historians, we are dependent on evidence, which comes in many varieties. Rosalind Stirzaker here introduces a project which she ran two years ago to encourage her students to think about artefacts in a different way. They have examined randomly preserved artefacts such as those of Pompeii, and sets of artefacts which were deliberately chosen,…

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." - Henry David Thoreau This study utilized an intervention of deep looking through implementation of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) using artwork and artifacts in area museums/galleries (Yenawine, 2014). Techniques for working with primary sources, objects, artifacts, artwork,…

This article introduces the fifty states project, a year-long study of the United States that uses crowd sourcing to bring authentic materials into the social studies classroom. The project started five years ago, when author Kelly McPherson decided that she wanted to have a care package sent from all 50 states to help students learn about the…

In this article, the authors introduce a series of interconnected, inquiry-based activities from a fifth grade social studies curriculum, "My Place in Time and Space," which was developed in part through a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Regional Grant Program--Eastern Region. These activities are designed to…

Much has been written about the benefits to be derived by incorporating the history of mathematics into its teaching. Of the various ways to do this, the use of original sources is among the most thrilling for the insights and the challenges it offers for students and instructors alike. In this paper, we describe examples of one particular…