In this article, the author discusses the factors that contribute to the success of International Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in teaching history to its high school students. In 2003, "Newsweek" ranked the academy number one in the nation. The secret to its success is a combination of high expectations set by both teachers and…

Students in this author's undergraduate Sociology and Social Science classes often tell him that the "history" they learned in high schools was different than the "history" they learned in university classes. They often claim that what they learned in K-12 was "wrong" and that they did not learn the "real"…

iPods are one of the hottest selling gadgets on the market. They are everywhere, and that includes college campuses. Duke University initially distributed iPods to all incoming freshmen and then moved to a classroom focus, and even smaller campuses, such as Georgia College & State University, have gotten considerable publicity for their…

The question, "What were the causes of World War I?," has become one of the classic historical debates of which there seem to be endless permutations. In the past 90 years historians, journalists, and politicians have offered many more or less rational explanations for the war. Although at least some of the usual "causes"…

In most disciplines, professors ask students to "read" without specifying what this operation means for their particular field. This chapter traces the path laid out in a cultural history class, where reading entails identifying the essential elements of a text. (Contains 1 figure.)

In this article, the author talks about the dismal results in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, brought about by the inadequacy of funds required by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Recently, chief school officers from 14 states, various state legislatures, and superintendents by the bushel have been loud in their…

This study uses the tools of functional linguistics to illuminate the writing requirements of the history curriculum in the context of Australian secondary schools. It shows how the resulting linguistic description was integrated into a sequence of teaching and learning activities through collaboration between linguists and content/pedagogic…

Today, the American system of higher education is the envy of the world, due in large part to the leadership provided by New England's colleges and universities. While American higher education has accomplished a great deal for New England and the nation, the system faces several challenges as it seeks to train the citizens and workers of…

In literacy and composition studies, efforts to develop data-driven theories of disciplinary writing expertise and of writers' developmental processes in joining specific discourse communities have so far been limited. This case study, of one writer's experiences as an undergraduate history major, parses the multiple knowledge domains comprising…

The idea of engaging students in discussions of teaching and learning has not had as much attention in Greece as in some other countries. As a new high school teacher confronting the problem of motivating reluctant learners I drew on the research I had undertaken on pupil voice for my M.Phil. The research was concerned with features of pedagogy…

The author begins by arguing that in order to understand imperialism it is necessary to have a conceptual awareness of the concepts of racism and racialisation. He then considers how the British Empire impacted on schools during the imperial era. He goes on to examine the nature of the New Imperialism. Calls are currently being made by notable…

Japan has often been criticized for allegedly teaching its schoolchildren about the history of Imperial Japan 1895-1945 in selective and misleading ways. Is this criticism justified, and how does it compare with the record of another former colonial power in East Asia: England? International criticism of history teaching in England has been…

A committee of secondary school and college educators met in 2001 to develop content standards for teaching public school history. Adam Scrupski came away from that meeting amazed at the arrogance with which they imposed on New Jersey students, the firmly held belief that the story of America is predominantly one of capitalist, imperialist…

This article is an exploration of how the new early American cultural history can be employed in the first half of the standard American history survey. The author discovered that the New Cultural History can be an outstanding tool by which to introduce a highly culturally diverse student population to the multiracial, multicultural, and…

The author's teaching experience in France began in 1994 when she was offered a two-year position as "maitre de langues" (language instructor) at the University of Saint Etienne Engineering School. She had moved to France from Berkeley, California, the previous year along with a newborn baby and crates of photocopied archival material…