Haitians had expected 2004 to be a year of celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of independence from France following the only successful slave revolt of its time. Instead political violence exploded early in the year and armed gunmen took over cities demanding President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resign. Just as the rebels prepared to move in…

In 1996, the author and fellow-historian John Lutz set about creating a teaching tool for history that would acquaint students with primary documents and take full advantage of the brand-new technology of the World Wide Web. He launched the website, entitled "Who Killed William Robinson? Race, Justice and Settling the Land,"…

Currently, no research exists that teases apart and compares how pre-service teachers within different national educational settings begin to reorganize, reconstruct and transform their own experiences, knowledge and perspectives on history and history teaching as they negotiate the process of learning to teach history. This comparative case study…

Walking into Keil Hileman's classroom at Monticello Trails Middle School in Shawnee, KS, is a visual feast for the eyes. There is a suit of armor, a 1796 Flintock Musket, a wood burning stove from 1907, a circa 1920 porcelain barber's chair, steamer trunks carried from far off lands, a butter churn, a 1930s wringer washing machine, chamber pots,…

Elementary students can learn how to take an interpretive approach to learning history so that they can construct knowledge about collective past experience in ways that provide a meaningful context for understanding present experience. Like historians, children communicate their interpretations to others by telling or writing stories in which…

Lewis, Clark, and the Corps of Discovery traveled westward from 1803 to 1806; therefore, the bicentennial of the expedition is being celebrated from 2003 until 2006. Students and teachers celebrating the bicentennial and Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase in 1803 can use social studies classes to help them connect with their community and to reach a…

This paper critically examines the English National Curriculum (NC) for History and its Schemes of Work's development of temporal cognition within the primary school. In addition, it outlines the findings of a longitudinal research study into Year 4 pupils' assimilation of historical time. The paper contends that the development of historical time…

The purpose of this annotated bibliography is twofold. The first purpose is to address the question raised by Phyllis Holman Wiesbard, "Where are women on the 'net?" The second purpose is to explore how teachers can use the documents found on the world wide web to teach woman suffrage in their classrooms. Woman suffrage has proved to be a fruitful…

Among the greatest frustrations of a teacher of history is the failure of many students, even bright and motivated students, to provide concrete evidence to support their assertions about the past. The problem of evidence is by its nature developmental, and thus not amenable to simple punitive or explanatory approaches. History, as a discipline,…

The history teacher frequently struggles to find classroom sources that are not only insightful, but also challenge students to be interpretative and imaginative about the past. As an instructional tool, popular culture can do all of these while reflecting the cultural impulses emanating from a particular country or region. To this end, the…

Dramatic conflicts and ideological changes occurred in Russia during the past decade. They inevitably influenced Russian education, particularly history teaching. A number of problems that have arisen in history education have been identified, including the emergence of new ideological symbols, and inequalities between schools for the rich and…

Facts, or skills? Content, or process? Teachers of history and social studies teachers often lock horns over these questions, trying to define the nature of their field and its role in secondary education. Teachers of history often focus on content, presenting the past as a series of important people and events, an accumulated cultural lore that…

The civil rights movement is the most important historical event of the last fifty years, and it remains central to contemporary society. For all the purported attention at the elementary and secondary school levels, students and their teachers appear to know very little if anything beyond the names Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. Student…

Picture books are short books, usually 32 to 48 pages long, in which the illustrations and text work together to tell a story or provide information. In this article, the author discusses how a library media specialist has effectively hooked the students into an in-depth study of the Civil War in a 20-minute read-aloud activity, using historical…

An interdisciplinary activity in which students can see how a famous author, Leo Tolstoy, metaphorically applied the integration steps from calculus to illustrate his ideas about how history should be studied is described. The activity provides a startling and energizing conclusion to a unit on applications of integration and provokes students'…