Material encountered in social studies has been shown to be challenging for students with reading difficulties, including those with disabilities. This study first examined the amount of time eighth-grade U.S. History teachers implemented empirically supported instructional practices. Second, this research investigated the association between…

The current volume aspires to add to previous research on the connection between writing and language learning from a dual perspective: It seeks to reflect current progress in the domain as well as to foster future developments in theory and research. The theoretical postulations contained in Part I identify and expand in novel ways the diverse…

The lives of middle school students are dynamic, and their needs and desires are always evolving. They experience more complicated lives as influences of the broader society including popular media and technology, immigration and cultural diversity, amplified political divisiveness, and bullying effect their daily lives both in and out of school.…

Several years ago, the author had the opportunity to instruct the early U.S. survey course for the first time. While preparing the author spent a good amount of time thinking on the relationship between academic and popular history, and subsequently testing insights within a variety of classroom lessons and activities. Since then, the author has…

Feature films provide a significant form of historical evidence about a culture even when they are fictional. Like books, films are texts that can be analyzed, questioned, and discussed. Vintage films can, therefore, add a valuable new dimension to the history classroom. This article examines how popular films of the 1940s reveal the values,…

It is very common for people in politics and the media to make assumptions about what happens in history classrooms. Too often these preconceptions are based on little more than anecdote, examples from the Internet or memories of what someone experienced at school themselves. In this article, Catriona Pennell reports on an empirical study that set…

For educational historians involved in the representation of Indigenous contexts and peoples, what is the relevance of ethnohistory as a discipline or methodology, and what is lost or gained in using it? This article reviews ethnohistorical literature, and brings it in conversation with literature by Indigenous scholars on research methodologies,…

This author is an avid consumer of history and has a desire to open students to the endless supply of the riveting stories of men and women struggling to cope with a changing world. The fascination toward the people of the past is enthralling history, and students need to feel that same sense of wonder and love of history. To accomplish this goal,…

In spite of the economic climate which has led to financial retrenchment in school districts, the Tsongas Industrial History Center (TIHC) in Lowell, Massachusetts, which was formed through a collaboration between the National Park Service Lowell National Historical Park and the University of Massachusetts Lowell Graduate School of Education,…

The article sets out a "big history" which resonates with the priorities of our own time. A globalizing world calls for new spacial scales to underpin what the history curriculum addresses, "big history" calls for new temporal scales, while concern over climate change calls for a new look at subject boundaries. The article…

This article examines the relationship between school and cultural knowledge of Second World War in contemporary Poland. Drawing on analysis of 126 student responses to well-known photographs (photo elicitation), the author addresses what it means for schoolchildren to learn about an aspect of a contested past, the Holocaust, within the frame of…

This dissertation will compare how the politics of the early American republic (1790-1800) are portrayed in educational resources and scholarly works. The purpose of this project is to demonstrate that educational materials are both incomplete and positively biased, and therefore teachers of secondary social studies should limit their use when…

How and to what extent students learn history content is a complicated process, drawing from the instructional opportunities they experience; the policy prioritization of history/social studies instruction in schools; and their own cultural perspectives toward the past. In an attempt to better understand the complex inter-play among these…

English language learners (ELLs) are the fastest growing student subgroup in the United States, and public schools have the challenging task of teaching ELLs both English language and academic content. In spite of the attention given to improving outcomes for ELLs, the achievement gap between ELLs and native English speakers persists, especially…

In this paper, we investigate an application of virtual reality and artificial intelligence (AI) as a technological combination that has a potential to improve the learning experience and engage with the modern generation of students. To address this need, we have created a virtual reality replica of one of humanity's first cities, the city of…