History instructors working in a community college face two major challenges. First, to make history interesting and relevant to the students, many of whom have to take history courses as a requirement. And second, to fulfill one of the missions of a community college which is to forge a connection between the school and the people in the local…

This collection of 14 articles focuses on the Reading and Writing and Oral Communication Streams of the Certificates of General Education (CGE) for Adults in the context of literacy teaching practices. Section 1 contains 11 case studies and articles with a practical focus. Practitioners discuss aspects of their curriculum development related to…

This book advocates that teachers of history create for their students a workshop environment where they actually can practice being historians. Adolescents, rather than thinking analytically, prefer to identify strongly with heroes and heroines and to explore their own lives and identity, character and convictions, through heroic stories. This…

Increasingly, students in public schools, colleges, and universities are exposed to United States history and literature via commercial and cable television and the motion picture industry. If students are going to use videotapes of historical and literature-based films as short cuts to learning, then faculty are obligated to structure videotapes…

This paper examines how the United States is portrayed in Norwegian textbooks. U.S. history receives rather brief treatment in most Norwegian history textbooks. Norwegian students learn about the United States largely in their studies of English. A chapter-by-chapter examination of the treatment of the United States in two English textbooks…

This study examined elementary teacher candidates' understanding of how history is "made" by historians and how texts are analyzed in the process of historical inquiry. Interviews with three elementary student teachers enrolled at a large southwestern state university indicated that they all had a markedly limited background in academic history.…

This summary of a Master's thesis focuses on research conducted with students in analyzing primary source materials translated from Korean. The document's sections are entitled: (1) "Explanation of the Research"; (2) "Types of Historical Thinking"; (3) "Implications for Source Materials Studies"; (3) "Bibliography (in English)"; (4) "Bibliography…

This book describes how theater can create an impetus for productive learning across the curriculum. Dorothy Heathcote's "mantle of the expert" approach is discussed in which teachers and students explore, in role, the knowledge they already have about a problem or task while making new discoveries along the way. The book also presents a…

This research reports on a descriptive study conducted by interviewing 18 U.S. history teachers of eighth-graders in seven middle schools in a Pacific Northwest school district. The volunteers were from middle-class suburban schools with an average of 15 years teaching experience. The research questions focused on: (1) What strategies do social…

The defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War affected the dearest notions held by Americans of the nature of the national existence. That defeat determined, in the words of John Hellman, "the disruption of our story, of our explanation of the past and vision of the future." This appears most poignantly, perhaps, in school history…

The National Council for the Social Studies is concerned with how the social studies teaching profession can enhance learning in history and the social sciences and develop the skills necessary for participatory citizenship. The purpose of this position statement is to demonstrate how testing and evaluating social studies students can contribute…

This textbook examines Spanish exploration, conquest, settlement, and colonization of present-day Mexico, United States, and the Caribbean, and the conflicts and exchanges resulting from culture contact between Spaniards and Native Americans. Chapters cover: (1) first contacts in the Caribbean, enslavement of Native Americans, arrival of African…

Recent state-level curriculum frameworks have emphasized geography and history as core subjects of the social studies sequence of courses, from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. This Digest presents a rationale for the connection between geography and history, presents ideas for developing this connection within the curriculum, and…

This document is the second of two reports of the findings of the 1991 "Sciences...humaines" Assessment for grades 8 and 10 conducted in Franco-Manitoban schools and in French immersion programs in Manitoba, Canada. The report on the French immersion course is presented in parallel French and English versions, and a separate report, in…

This document is a text dealing mainly with Ethiopia's rich cultural heritage and current lifestyles. It gives students the opportunity to go beyond the media coverage that has led to the perception of the whole of Ethiopia as a famine stricken land, and to discover the realities of this new nation, that about 15 percent of the population, mainly…