Approaching the Holocaust in your classroom can be a difficult, often daunting task. This practical guide for English and social studies teachers features lessons learned from the author's 17 years of experience teaching the subject in public schools, as well as his work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Using anecdotes and…

Holocaust education, which refers to the teaching and learning of the Holocaust--the systematic genocide of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II--is an essential component of history and social studies education in many countries. Its primary aim is to raise awareness of the Holocaust, promote understanding of…

Drawing on a survey administered to a sample of grade 6-12 English language arts and social studies teachers in the American Teacher Panel, the authors of this report examined Holocaust education and education on other topics related to Jewish people and history. The American Educator Panels are nationally representative samples of teachers,…

Film depictions of the Holocaust have become a ubiquitous part of social studies education, as many states have mandated Holocaust or genocide curricula in recent years; however, the quality of such curricula varies greatly, as does the level of teacher preparation for Holocaust-based instruction. Given the increase in mandates and the lack of…

The current study investigates the impact of using an Instructional Model of Historical Empathy to teach the Holocaust on students' ability to contextualize historical events, recognize perspectives, and affectively connect to victims of the Holocaust. A three-day instructional unit was designed that incorporates primary sources from a variety of…

Teaching about the Holocaust as an atrocity of the 1940s misleads students into thinking that it is a genocide occurred, that the world agreed "Never Again," and that the United Nations would prevent future genocides. With genocides in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Syria occurring in the years since the Holocaust, teachers need to use the…

While virtual reality (VR) technology can provide students with first-hand and situational learning experiences, limited studies have integrated VR in a K-12 classroom, resulting in the lack of understanding of the benefits and challenges of VR use in classroom settings. To examine the impact of VR on student learning, this study employed a…

This qualitative interview study explores the perceptions five USC Shoah Foundation Master Teachers who integrate Holocaust survivor and witness testimony via IWitness, a web resource from the USC Shoah Foundation, on students' development of empathy. Findings of this study suggest that the personalized nature of engaging with testimony in…

Civic education research in different national settings points to how citizenship conceptions act as factors that frame and steer practice. This review of research conducted in Israel over the last 40 years questions a reality in which the choice of a leading civic ideology is controversial, due to the fundamental aspects of citizenship in Israel…

Holocaust education in the United States began as a grassroots movement during the 1970s. Today, more than 30 states mandate the teaching of the Holocaust; however, far less attention is given in schools to other 20th-century instances of genocide. Totten has suggested that by neglecting "other" genocides (e.g., Darfur, Rwanda, and…

A quarter of a century has passed since lawmakers enacted the New Jersey Holocaust education mandate, and it seems responsible and timely to ask if it, the original Holocaust education mandate, actually encouraged substantive learning about the Holocaust. Despite repeated fanfare about the mandate and its inclusion in educational curricula…

Purpose: The purpose of this contribution is to analyse a set of Holocaust survivor testimony transcripts in order to find out their educational value regarding the connection between antisemitism of the past and the present. The narrative analyses are used to generate questions that might be relevant for addressing certain curricular aims within…

A study of the Holocaust is a challenging task. Schools often dedicate little time to the study of the subject, and teachers are often largely unprepared in regard to their content mastery of the subject, as well as the appropriate pedagogical tools to help guide students through the study of intellectually and emotionally difficult material.…

The purpose of this exploratory, descriptive study was to understand what and how students learn about the Holocaust in private Christian/Catholic middle and high schools. Christian schools have been criticized for putting more emphasis on teaching religion than on providing a quality education. A convenience sample of middle and secondary English…

Building on sociocultural theories of teaching and learning, rooted in constructivist traditions, this study examined the teaching of civics in relation to contextual sociocultural factors in the Israeli educational system. The study focused on ways in which three civics teachers conceptualized and framed notions of "good citizenship" in…