Much of what students learn never appears to connect to their lives. They learn facts, they study events, and they read stories of others. Teachers need to help students make these associations, and sometimes that means expanding the curriculum. To help her language arts students make connections between their lives and the realities of life…

The National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996) recognize the efficacy of teaching science within the context of history, emphasizing the evolution of concepts, models, and theories. By studying science in a historical context, students view themselves less as spectators and more as participants in this human quest for truth and understanding.…

In this paper we describe the action research projects of two second-grade teachers. Using the state-mandated content on famous Americans, the teacher/researchers developed foundational levels of historical thinking in their second grade students. To develop temporal understanding, the first teacher employed a time line of visual images to place…

National history and collective memory and their impact on adolescents' knowledge and attitudes are the topic of this article. A follow-up study, it examines the long-term impact of a journey to historical monuments. Israeli Jewish high-school students have the option of experiential study, visiting cities and death camps in Poland. The first…

Early tendencies of peace education in Sweden are discussed in this document. The time span is from the second part of the 19th century to the beginning of World War II. Peace education put special emphasis on exposing the contradiction between religious and history education. Religious education preached love and reconciliatory spirit, while…

This presentation of informal responses to a series of questions relating to teaching and writing of history is based upon and extends from two tape-recorded "Conversations" with Professors Jere R. Daniell and Charles T. Wood of the Dartmouth College Department of History. The book covers such questions as what a historian is, why one should study…

This paper presents a study using "Facing History and Ourselves," an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge development that focuses on the period of Nazi totalitarianism as a powerful case study through which teachers can stimulate moral reasoning and develop critical thinking skills in their students. The program encourages teenage…

This book highlights case studies from Providence, Rhode Island, of history and social studies classes in grades 7 through 12. Rather than use textbooks to study history, the students used documents and primary sources to construct history, acting as historians and drawing their own conclusions from the past. Accounts of classroom lessons,…

Developing students' ability to use multicultural perspectives and knowledge to think about literature, history, and society is emerging as an important part of a pluralistic approach to education. Am ethnographic study examined three innovative eleventh-grade literature-history classes as they were negotiated over 2 school years by a pair of…

The purpose of this study, unique in that it centered on students as creators rather than users of programs, was to determine whether collaboratively creating HyperCard stacks that presented information on four decades (i.e, the 1920s, the 1930s, 1945-60, and the 1960s) affected the amount of knowledge and the interrelatedness of informational…

This booklet is part of a series of units designed to help students take and defend a position on public issues. By looking at how decisions were made in the past, students can see that history did not have to happen just the way it did. By looking at how conflicts were resolved in other times and places, students can clarify their positions on…

The 1992 quincentenary marking the 500th anniversary of the Columbus voyage to the present-day Americas provides an opportunity for teachers to employ materials and methods that reflect inclusive educational principles. Inclusive education involves helping students and staff to gain an understanding and appreciation of all groups present in the…

Familiarity with specific images or sets of images plays a role in a culture's visual heritage. Two questions can be asked about this type of visual literacy: Is this a type of knowledge that is worth building into the formal educational curriculum of our schools? What are the educational implications of visual literacy? There is a three-part…

This paper reviews the current social studies literature on temporal perspective as a psychological phenomenon and relates that literature to the Piagetian paradigm of development. It discusses the contemporary viewpoints on the nature of time and temporality. The paper outlines the distinctions between the Piagetian paradigm and the Vygotskian…

This document contains a set of curriculum standards to guide social studies curricula, teaching, learning tasks, and assessment. These social studies standards are organized to incorporate learning experiences from many disciplines. This book presenting the social studies standards is designed to serve three purposes: (1) to serve as a framework…