Discusses a middle school project to create a "nation" within the classroom environment in order to explore questions of identity, problem solving, inequity and power, as well as issues of United States history. Includes governance documents and sample class activities. (JPB)

Presents creative ways to integrate social studies and language arts while teaching content and examining historical personalities. Students can read biographies then deliver first person reports while standing behind billboards, write letters in the character of famous people, read poetry with historical perspective, and keep journals from…

Offers a short introduction to this new column and then offers brief annotations of 36 books of children's literature divided into 4 groups: books that lead to lively conversations, that support beginning readers, that enrich the teaching of history, and that enrich the teaching of science. (SR)

Observes that U.S. history textbooks include vast numbers of illustrations, but that authors and publishers seldom integrate the pictures with the historical narrative. Advises images be incorporated into lessons to examine the events illustrated, why the picture was created, how it was received, and what it meant to contemporaries. (DSK)

Asserts that the Haitian Revolution should be included in the history classroom because it is considered the first successful slave revolt in modern times. Provides information on the Haitian Revolution and addresses its impact on the Western hemisphere and globally. Includes suggestions for classroom discussion. (CMK)

Examines ways in which history/social studies educators might respond to the challenges posed by the critical literature in and about history in order to reconsider why we learn history, what we do (and could do) with it, and for what (and whose) purposes. (CMK)

Describes a course entitled "The Trial of Napoleon Bonaparte" that focuses on a fictitious mock trial of Napoleon Bonaparte to answer the question: did Napoleon pervert or preserve the gain of the French Revolution? Discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the course. (CMK)

Reviews three works that each examine a specific area of metahistory: (1) "World Historians and their Goals" by Paul Costello; (2) "The Structure of Big History" by Fred Spier; and (3) "The Myth of Continents" by Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen. (CMK)

Presents brief descriptions from 8 middle and high school teachers of various ways they have successfully incorporated history into the English curriculum, including using historical fiction; doing prior research; using interdisciplinary projects coordinated with the history teacher; a women's suffrage unit; linking world literature with classes…

Describes the process of developing a web page for a history department and/or for the particular courses offered at the university. Asserts that the content should drive the design of the page, information should be chosen that is important to the students, and the content must be easily accessible to them. (CMK)

Changes in university history curricula were studied through examination of course titles and abstracts from 335 university catalogs representing 89 countries, 1895-1964. Findings demonstrate that decreasing curricular emphases on Western civilization, metropolitan centers, and nation-states and increasing attention to subnational and…

Advocates teaching critical thinking through showing students the logic of a subject. Uses one example of instruction in history that allows students to think their way through the logic of the subject rather than memorize bits and pieces of someone else's thought (never grasping its logic). (VWC)

Examines how elementary student teachers' composition of historical narratives constructed from primary and secondary source accounts demonstrated their historical thinking. Finds that the student teachers were ill-prepared about the "know what" and "know how" of history. Concludes that when student teachers' overall knowledge of history is…

Asserts that Steven Spielberg's film "Amistad" fictionalizes the overall facts of the case by inaccurately portraying many of the events that occurred. Explains that the myth-making tradition of Hollywood changes the messages derived from the Amistad court case. Critiques the teaching kit that corresponds to the movie. (CMK)

Cites anecdotal and research examples indicating that content knowledge, especially in history, is undervalued in schools of education, teacher selection and assignment, and staff development. States that as long as theory is valued over subject matter, the situation will not change. (SK)