Howard Gardner, a Harvard professor of education who is best known for his multiple intelligences theory, published his "Unschooled Mind" in 1991. In his chapter dealing with the social sciences and humanities, he paraphrases the work of Gaea Leinhardt, who described the complex "moves" that good history teachers typically make. Her depiction of…

This paper explores the implications for creating a U.S. history narrative from a Rortyan perspective. First, we review Rorty's social theory. Second, we discuss implications of his ideas regarding the creation of a U.S. history narrative based upon his ideas. Finally, we examine two concerns that would likely emerge if a Rortyan U.S. history…

Informed by recurring international controversies, this study explores representations of the Second World War as official history in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean secondary-level textbooks and theorizes about how they influence and function as collective memories about this time period. Using grounded theory, it finds that the examined Japanese…

It is common practice to invite survivors of the Holocaust to speak about their experiences to pupils in schools and colleges. Systematic reflection on the value of working with survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides and on how to make the most of doing so is rarer, however. In this article Andrew Preston reports how his school has worked…

This article summarizes a quasi-experimental study, which demonstrated that integration of historic and ethnic music into the American history curriculum may lead to increased knowledge of the cultural and physical geography of the United States as well as enhanced student engagement. An experiment (n = 215) conducted with eighth grade students…

A revision of the Northern Ireland Primary Curriculum took place in 2007. It promotes strongly a cross-curricular or thematic approach to planning and teaching and has an "Area of Learning" structure which includes geography alongside history and science and technology in an area called "The World Around Us". Responses from…

Barbara Cruz describes how what began as a challenge (i.e., finding or justifying the time to spend on history instruction in an environment of high-stakes testing) turned into a rich learning experience for students using historical fiction. By designing experiences that were literacy centered but based in historical content, this group of…

The rise of China, as well as any of the emerging economies, has much to offer students and teachers of social studies--especially in the fields of history and economics. Traditionally, history education in the United States has emphasized Western civilization and provided instruction for educators with that end in mind. In an era of increased…

This research focuses on how the interactive whiteboard (IWB) can be effectively used to teach higher order thinking skills to primary preservice teachers in the history classroom. The case study finds that skills such as analysis, evaluation and inference constitute a valuable metalanguage that needs to be explicitly taught to preservice…

National and local standards in history are evolving from standards on history content to standards on critical thinking and analyzing historical documents. The purpose of this research was to determine the effects of professional development received by K-12 teachers on infusing historical thinking skills into their history instruction. Changes…

This study examined the extent to which teacher beliefs and practices at the high school level reflect current research on historical thinking and understanding. The topic is significant as teachers are a crucial variable in a child's education and evidence over the years has revealed that students have long struggled in developing conceptual…

Teaching history should not be reciting an endless list of dead men, entombed between the covers of a textbook. Instead, "Breaking Away from the Textbook" offers a fascinating journey through world history. Not a comprehensive, theory-heavy guide, this book focuses on active classroom activities, methods for students to grapple with humanity's…

Imagine opening a high school U.S. history textbook and finding no mention of--or at most a passing sentence about--Valley Forge, the Missouri Compromise, or the League of Nations. Imagine not finding a word about Benjamin Franklin, Lewis and Clark, Sitting Bull, Andrew Carnegie, or Rosa Parks. Imagine if these key events and people just…

"Teaching History with Museums" provides an introduction and overview of the rich pedagogical power of museums. In this comprehensive textbook, the authors show how museums offer a sophisticated understanding of the past and develop habits of mind in ways that are not easily duplicated in the classroom. Using engaging cases to illustrate…

This descriptive study investigates the ways that students in an Ancient History class make meaning of past events by relating them to their present lives and experiences. The study is grounded in theories of historical thinking, particularly focusing on the concepts of presentism and its usefulness for examining classroom teaching. The following…