In this article, the authors offer a series of strategies to help teachers integrate literature into their history and social studies classrooms without losing the flavor or essence of either the literature they are using or the history they are trying to teach. None of the presented approaches is mutually exclusive of the others, and several may…

In this article, the author shares how he was able to change the negative attitude of his students towards their United States history class. The first section of this article outlines the changes the author made to the history curriculum in his class; the second section outlines the effects of those changes; and the third section explains why his…

The question of why students think there are two kinds of American history taught--one in the K-12 system and one in the university system--can be examined critically using Emile Durkheim's (1973) description of the sacred and the profane. The history taught in K-12 classrooms often focuses on idealized accounts of the past that protect the status…

Recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics examines trends in public school enrollment, student achievement in history and civics, and student perceptions about school safety.

Over the past decade historians and educational researchers in the UK, Australia, the USA and Canada have been devoting ever increasing energy to the systematic exploration of the learning of history at the college level. Now members of the discipline have come together to nurture and to disseminate this new scholarship of teaching and learning…

The field of social studies is unique and complex. It is challenged by the differing perspectives related to the definition, goals, content, and purpose of social studies. Contemporary Social Studies: An Essential Reader discusses the contemporary issues surrounding social studies education today. Contemporary Social Studies: An Essential Reader…

The purpose of this article is to analyze teaching of modern history in Poland and the teachers' role in the process of democratization. Forty-eight high school history teachers responded to a questionnaire investigating the curricula, textbooks, supplemental teaching materials and methods of teaching. The results demonstrate that since 1989 these…

The purpose of this study was to identify, examine, and compare the way globalization was perceived by 4 international school associations, 4 non-profit (corporate managed) charter high schools, and 4 independent (individually managed) charter high schools from Southern California. Selected school associations, non-profit, and independent charter…

Students are entering a workforce that demands competency in writing both for explicit communication through e-mail as well as in products in the company's day-to-day dealings. Strategies for teaching students to communicate in writing have been evaluated extensively in a face-to-face environment. Many of those successful strategies have been…

What is the role of Citizenship? How can it be taught effectively? The fully updated second edition of "Learning to Teach Citizenship in the Secondary School" is an essential text for students training to teach Citizenship as a first or second subject, as well as experienced teachers who have opted to take responsibility for this vital…

Through the presentation of three historical accounts, this article explores the roles imagination and speculation may play within the writing and study of history. By looking at these three incidents, each drawn from the history and historiography of art education over the past 150 years, through a perspective that embraces the value of utilizing…

This essay revisits an iconic yet now languishing phrase in United States political culture--"Forty Acres and a Mule"--to clarify the meaning of freedom and to assess the contemporary meaning of its betrayal by the U.S. government immediately after the Civil War. Among the few citizens for whom the phrase still retains a semblance of…

Using the "Boxed Voices" project as one way to connect traditional and non-traditional literacies, the author examines her work with preservice and inservice teachers (university students) as they develop and sustain collaborative, literate learning communities. In her multiliteracy process, the author takes the reader from theory to practice as…

Background/Context: Though widely believed to contain moral lessons of import for audiences of all ages, the Holocaust is often considered too complex, too appalling, too impenetrable, or too emotionally disturbing a subject to be taught to young children, even if taught only in its most "preparatory version," to use Jerome Bruner's famous…

This article describes qualitative case studies of two teachers who integrated student-created digital documentaries into their social studies classrooms. Thornton's (2001a) concept of the teacher as curricular gatekeeper and Mishra and Koehler's (2006) Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framed the study. The teachers worked within the…