Frustrated by her students' glib use of catch-all terms such as 'militarism' in addressing causation, Alexia Michalaki wanted her Year 9 students to produce mature causal explanations of World War I. To encourage this to happen she went back into decades of pedagogical writing and research, teasing out the ways in which others have sought to…

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…

Building on research by the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, Matthew Duncan was concerned that his students were drawn to simplistic explanations of Holocaust perpetrators' actions. As well as the UCL Centre's research, Duncan drew on history education research from Canada and history teachers' theorisation in England for inspiration in his…

This paper explores the question of what is powerful knowledge in school history, drawing on an analysis of secondary school history curriculum documents from South Africa and Rwanda. The paper engages with how these official curricula make selections regarding history topics, and how conceptual relationships are structured, and then interrogates…

This study reports the findings of an investigation into young South Africans' knowledge and understanding of their national past derived from narrative accounts of South African history written by 27 university students who had recently completed the national school history curriculum. Analysis of these narratives indicates two fundamental…

In 2012, Uganda celebrated 50 years as an independent state following more than half a century under colonial rule. Since independence, Uganda has experienced a period of political turmoil and civil war within its constructed colonial borders. Given these historical experiences, what do students find important about their nation's history and what…

Japan's "historical amnesia", represented by conservatives' denial of the Nanjing massacre, sanitization of history textbooks, and Japanese politicians' visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine continues to generate tensions between China and Japan. This study aims to understand the degree to which "historical amnesia" is…

Oral histories are a powerful pedagogical tool in developing historical understanding and important learning skills simultaneously. Teachers use firsthand accounts of historical time periods and/or events to help develop students' sense of history. In addition to gaining historical understanding, students are able to bring history alive by…

For the author, teaching history has become a double challenge: to help students understand both "History" (the narrative crafted by the historian, based on documentation, supported by previous scholarship, and bound together through logical argument) and "history" (the real events that occupied real lives that are largely…

Based on his own teaching experiences and findings, the author discusses the experience gap between U.S. and Japanese students' knowledge of World War II. He compares and contrasts how the subject of World War II is taught in the United States versus Japan. While it takes teacher effort to enrich the history experiences of U.S. students, the…

For The past two years, Siena College and Loyola International College for Diversity and Sustainability (LCDS), formerly Loyola International College, have jointly taught a comparative Canadian/ U.S. history class. Concordia University, an English language university, has more than 46,000 students and offers 433 undergraduate and graduate…

This framework identifies the main ideas, major events, key individuals, and unifying themes of American history as a basis for preparing the 2010 assessment. The framework recognizes that U.S. history includes powerful ideas, common and diverse traditions, economic developments, technological and scientific innovations, philosophical debates,…

In recent years researchers in educational technology have begun to look closely at the complexity of integrating technology in K-12 classrooms. The development of the notion of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) provides a useful theoretical framework to explore the requisite forms of teacher knowledge required to effectively…

"Facing History and Ourselves" aims to promote core character education values and to help middle and high school students develop moral reasoning skills. Students examine historical events, in particular the events that led to World War II and the Holocaust. Teachers participate in professional development seminars and apply the content…

President George W. Bush's approach to education policy has earned him cautious plaudits from otherwise hostile critics, who see much to admire in the implementation of standards for education. However useful such standards for testing students' technical skills like arithmetic and reading, they create problems for less-standardized processes like…