In this article, I present an analysis of professionalism as defined and enacted by the History Teachers' Association of New South Wales (HTANSW). This analysis was part of a larger doctoral project (2000-2005) in which I employed critical qualitative inquiry to compare and contrast the contribution that two subject teaching associations (science…

In this essay, the authors explore the structures, processes, and messages that accountability reforms communicate about the goals and means of coming to know history. In other words, how do existing history standards and formal curricula officialize certain orientations toward historical knowledge and traditions through which that knowledge is…

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of different types of instruction and texts on high schools students' learning of (a) history content and (b) a set of heuristics that historians use to think critically about texts. Participants for the study were 128 male and 118 female students, ages 16 and 17 years, from 2 high schools in…

Teaching and studying the Holocaust is a complex and sensitive undertaking. The dynamics of dealing with a modern, technologically advanced state's attempt to annihilate all members of a given group of people for racial reasons involves tortuous twists and turns that challenge the most sophisticated of thinkers, leading to a situation in which…

In this essay, the author offers a reading of both Sigmund Freud's and Madelaine's Acropolis encounters to propose an "affective conflict" at play in historical relations more generally. On the one side of the conflict, the author explores at some length Freud's (1939) theory of history as "archaic inheritance," which takes the form of psychical…

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been promoted by the European Union as a means to achieve multilingualism. While in Germany and other European countries the trend to use the L2 as a medium of instruction is increasing, in Hong Kong, however, we see a converse development. Many schools switched from English as a medium of…

Last month the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the federally financed "Nation's Report Card," released the results of its 2006 tests of historical knowledge among schoolchildren. Although there were hints of small improvements since the last NAEP test in 2001 (47 percent rather than 43 percent of 12th graders had at…

The Great Depression is typically taught through history textbooks, but the music of this time allows students to learn about this era through different perspectives. The Great Depression witnessed many musical styles--from the light heartedness of popular music to the sadness of the blues, gospel, which offered inspiration, to the tension between…

A unit of study on Ancient Greece is a part of the fourth grade social studies curriculum at Belmont Day School. The students spend 10 weeks exploring Greek history and mythology. This article discusses a new project that the authors conducted, wherein one of them was going to Greece on a study tour, while the other one stays in Belmont Day…

This handbook encompasses a range of disciplines that underlie the field of peace education and provides the rationales for the ways it is actually carried out. The discipline is a composite of contributions from a variety of disciplines ranging from social psychology to philosophy and from communication to political science. That is, peace…

The nation's recent preoccupation with reshaping academics and raising academic performance has all but overpowered a task of vital importance--educating our young people to become engaged citizens of their communities. Traditionally, students are taught citizenship skills in either a civics education class or through citizenship courses in the…

Using mobile games in education combines situated and active learning with fun in a potentially excellent manner. The effects of a mobile city game called Frequency 1550, which was developed by The Waag Society to help pupils in their first year of secondary education playfully acquire historical knowledge of medieval Amsterdam, were investigated…

The Bradley Commission on History in Schools was created in 1987 specifically in response to the widespread concern over the inadequacy, both in quantity and in quality, of the history taught in elementary and secondary school classrooms. This book explores the conditions that contribute to, or impede, the effective teaching of history in schools.…

An instructional guide on how to use an index introduces this 15 year index to "The Goldfinch," a magazine of Iowa history for young people. The index includes persons and subjects that have appeared in the publication from 1975-1990. A list of the main topics featured in each issue also appears. (DB)

The relevance and importance of non-modern history is argued for here, and several concrete curriculum suggestions are made to stimulate student interest. (NHM)