During the last decade, scholars and journalists in Canada raised alarm bells about the efficacy and viability of graduate humanities programmes across the country. The Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan decided to analyse the outcomes of its graduate programmes at the Doctoral and Master's levels, from 1990 to 2015. We…

Engel, S. [2011. "Children's Need to Know: Curiosity in Schools." "Harvard Educational Review" 81 (4): 625-645] stated that curiosity should be cultivated in our schools as it is intrinsic to children's development. However, this is often absent from classrooms. In this paper we aim to explore some of the factors that have led…

The extent to which a student experiences situational interest during a learning task is dependent on at least two factors: (1) external stimuli in the learning environment that arouse interest and (2) internal dispositions, such as individual interest. The objective of the present study was to disentangle how both factors influence situational…

User experience (UX) and user interface design of an educational game are important in enhancing and sustaining the utilisation of Game Based Learning (GBL) in learning history. Thus, this article provides a detailed literature review on history learning problems, as well as previous studies on user experience in game design. Future studies on…

Over the past ten years a strong debate has been introduced and initiated by the government of Cyprus on reforming the structure and goals of education. A comprehensive report, prepared by a group of academics, pointed to the need to reshape the highly Greek-centralized Cypriot system (Committee on Educational Reform, 2004) and introduced the…

In this study the impact of a mobile augmented reality learning environment on motivation, learning effects and cognitive load was tested. Students participated in a two-hour history lesson while using their smartphones to turn static pictures into animations with an Augmented Reality (AR) application. Interest, perceived competence and perceived…

Over the past 20 years, there has been a shift in history education away from a view of history as the pursuit of an objective, universal story about the past toward "historical consciousness," which seeks to cultivate an understanding of the past as something that makes moral demands on us here and now. According to Roger Simon,…

Despite this generation's media savvy, they are often not particularly historically savvy: they do not always realize when they are being misled, nor do they have the critical thinking skills to uncover hidden messages or to challenge ideas that come to them through commemorative history. Yet their daily interactions with media not only increase…

The world history survey course has experienced stunning success within American higher education. In the space of three decades, it has grown from an embattled alternative to the Western civilization sequence to a cornerstone of university history programs. The survey has become standard not only as an introduction for the history major, but also…

This chapter describes the author's experience teaching ethnic studies inside a unique California prison, and calls for college-in-prison educators to engage culturally appropriate curricula to realize the full transformative potential of the prison classroom.

Pizza serves as a powerful example of historical themes such as immigration, cultural exchange and urbanization. In the post-WWII United States, Trenton, NJ, and other cities were gradually being transformed by suburbanization, the rise of fast food, and changes in family living related to women's entry in large numbers into the paid workforce.…

This article surveys recent research on historical thinking. It synthesises two leading approaches to construct a combined model of historical reasoning. The combined model consists of eight components: ask historical questions, establish historical significance, use sources as evidence, identify continuity and change, analyse cause and…

This paper is an exploration of the debates surrounding the publication of a new National Curriculum for history in England. The draft curriculum was published in February 2013 and was withdrawn just 6 months later in the face of considerable opposition. This paper offers a tentative explanation for this example of a rare phenomenon: effective…

Verity Morgan took an unusual approach to the challenge of teaching the Holocaust, coming to it through the lens of environmental history. She shares here the practical means and resources she used to engage pupils with this current trend in historiography, and its associated concepts. Reflecting on her pupils' responses, Morgan makes a case for…

Jim Carroll relished the opportunity, in the new A-level specification he was teaching, to find an effective way of teaching his students to analyse interpretations in their coursework essays. Reflecting on the difficulties he had faced as a trainee teacher teaching younger pupils about interpretations, and dissatisfied with examination board…