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In recent decades, history and education scholars in the Western world have argued for a constructivist approach to disciplinary thinking in the teaching and learning of History, known as historical thinking. Yet, there has been little classroom-based empirical research exploring how teachers engage with historical thinking theory, enact related practices in the classroom, and, in Canada, utilize historical thinking concepts. The multiple-case study outlined here addresses this gap, by offering descriptive details and insights regarding four Canadian secondary school teachers’ attitudes, understandings, implementation, and applications of historical thinking in lessons and assessments. Differences among these teachers’ perceptions and practices indicate that historical thinking is not a singular pedagogical approach. Yet, common elements revealed two broadly drawn typologies that may serve as inspiration and provide concrete examples for history teachers wishing to develop their own historical thinking practices. Rich descriptions also provide unique insights into how the teachers use their judgment and knowledge in the choices and decisions they make to move theory to practice. Finally, this study offers a methodology for the continued classroom-based study of historical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World history curriculum in the United States is Eurocentric. By downplaying contributions from non-Western societies, state standards of world history in the modern era create a narrative of the West as a driver of progress and Europe as the primary protagonist of global events. Research further shows social studies teachers rely on such state standards in developing their curriculum. Utilizing the concept of curricular instructional gatekeeping as a framework, I argue it is important for world history teachers to consider what global content and narratives they allow students access to and think of ways they can make their curriculum more inclusive. I present a lesson I conducted with pre-service teachers as an example that preparation programs and/or in-service providers may utilize to assist teachers in developing a more global world history curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances a continuing line of inquiry into an innovative teacher-support program intended to help in-service history teachers develop professional teaching knowledge for inquiry-based history instruction. Two prior iterations informed our design and use of professional development materials; they also informed the implementation schedule of experiences our materials intended to support. We asked: Can interactive and collaborative professional development encounters promote in-service history teachers' professional teaching knowledge? Following the thirteen-month study, no participant fully adopted the wise-practice pedagogy we advocated: problem-based historical inquiry. Findings do suggest, however, interactive experiences and sustained collaboration may help teachers raise their aspirational goals for planning powerful instruction. Throughout the study, teachers' collaboratively planned lessons became increasingly informed by our support program, and several participants' practice moved closer to our wise-practice model. Findings also suggest revisions to professional development materials and schedules to promote teachers' professional teaching knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers of history (like all teachers) have a tool kit that holds all their methods and techniques and that allows them to construct a proper history lesson. This article proposes putting a tool into this kit that is generally missing from its contents. This tool supposedly belongs to the tool kit of a different subject teacher: the teacher of literature. It proposes that history teachers adopt theories and practices from the realm of literature studies and add them to their toolboxes. These will help them to tell interesting history stories in the classroom if they so choose. The article offers two stories, one written by a historian, and the second, told by a historian in class. The twohistoricalstories are analyzed to reveal a range ofliterarytechniques that were enlisted by their authors to create interest among their readers or listeners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the experiences of a group of fifth-grade teachers who used lesson study, a teacher-driven form of professional development, to teach history in a project supported by a Teaching American History Grant. The project addressed the following questions: What does a lesson study cycle for history education look like? What contributes to effective lesson study in history education? What are the unique challenges of lesson study in history education? Based on analyses of the teacher-designed study lessons, teachers’ online journal entries, a teacher survey, videos of lessons and debriefing sessions, and field notes from lesson study observations, the article concludes lesson study in history helps teachers feel they have improved their instruction and have advanced student learning if the unique features of history instruction are taken into consideration. This study contributes to the research on lesson study by examining a relatively unexplored content area, history, and makes suggestions on how to use lesson study in history education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Framing history/social studies textbooks as a social construction designed to create a public memory of a national history and history of the Other, we investigated how U.S. history is represented in South Korea's social studies textbooks and what images and ideas of the United States are encouraged for South Korean students to take. To answer this question, we conducted a content analysis of the presentation of U.S. history in middle school social studies textbooks used in South Korean schools. Our findings show that (1) South Korea's textbook accounts of U.S. history predominantly portray the United States as a world leader in democracy and peace building; (2) the textbook accounts of U.S. history generally miss the events and figures that have historical significance for U.S. domestic contexts; and (3) the history of controversial U.S.–Korea relations as well as learning opportunities for historical thinking are also missing in the textbook accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details a professional development program focused on the use of essential questions in reframing U.S. history learning experiences in elementary, middle, and high schools. Teachers identified four problems in designing and teaching engaging, relevant, and challenging U.S. history lessons. Each problem was addressed through the teachers' use of essential questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the age of accountability, there is increased pressure to deliver high-quality education in a limited time period is greater than ever before. Teachers are often left to struggle with issue of determining what knowledge is necessary, and to what depth it may be explored in the classroom. There is a need for strategies to both incorporate the best forms of historical knowledge and to cope with the increased demands on our teachers. The purpose of this article is to examine the idea of what constitutes 'historical knowledge,' the issues of breadth and depth, and to suggest strategies for history teachers on how to deal with the challenge of finding the 'right' balance between breadth and depth in their history courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question 'what if?' has been asked by historians for generations. This article explains how history teachers can use students' own what-if questions to enhance their historical knowledge and understanding by offering educators a step-by-step plan for utilizing counterfactual history into their classrooms. Additionally, the author offers a brief discussion concerning the genre of counterfactual history, its use by historians and educators, and an examination of the counterfactual history sources that have been created for student use. Finally, a lesson plan is provided that uses widely accepted educational strategies such as K-W-L charts and 'chalk talks' and combines them with the unique tactic of using counterfactual history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author describes the use of literature circles in a social studies methods course for elementary preservice teachers and analyzes their effectiveness in teaching powerful social studies ideas. Literature circles encourage students to take more of a leadership role in the classroom, expect their active involvement, and challenge them to think more deeply about social studies content within texts. Students can compare different perspectives on the same historical event, such as the encounter between Columbus and the Taino, and reasons for including and omitting important ideas. Students can also note similarities and differences among cultures and current and historical events through literature circle discussions. However, teachers must carefully select texts which focus on powerful social studies ideas, emphasize the goal of thoughtful discussions when introducing literature circles, and be ready to raise significant issues ignored in the literature circle discussions during follow-up class discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cinematic feature films are a big part of youth popular culture. When blockbuster movies are about historical topics, it is reasonable for teachers to be drawn to using them in the classroom to motivate students interest. This article overviews research on film in the history classroom and describes three learning functions that history movies can have fact and ficion; constructing the past and the people in it; and reacting to the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human history is often shaped by the outcomes of arguments, not only in the sense of disputes between people or governments, but in the sense of the more rational pursuit of trying to convince others to accept or do certain things by offering reasons that are presented as compelling for so doing. Yet history teachers have done little to help students learn how to identify arguments in this sense, figure out what the arguments being offered are, and evaluate them. This article shows how a generic instructional technique—infusing direct instruction in skillful thinking into content instruction—can be used in the teaching of American history in ways that help students develop and use these thinking skills and that enhance their deep content understanding of the history being taught. The context is a secondary school classroom studying American history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When teachers in elementary and middle school classrooms portray history as an immutable sequence of certain facts, dates, and events, young learners tend to view the past, and by extension the future, as something fixed and inevitable. Learning about the past through investigating biographies can help counter this tendency by teaching students to recognize that individuals and groups have the agency to make history and shape the future. In this article, the author presents three instructional strategies in which learners make use of graphic organizers to investigate the historical contexts and chronologies of individuals' lives. Students learn how people have effected historical change and worked together to preserve continuity with the past. They also learn that the values and attitudes that motivated individuals and groups to act as they did were in large measure the result of historically specific social structures and institutional arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French Revolution can be a difficult subject to teach. Students often struggle to relate to events that happened more than two hundred years ago in France. In this article, the author suggests three key causes for the failure of the revolution that social studies teachers can focus on when teaching this topic. He also provides several stories teachers can tell their students in an effort to link past events to students' lives. He then presents possible lesson plans that use various technologies to attract and keep the interest of students with different learning styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on threading the concept of societal health throughout an ancient history course. With this program students find commonalities that tie together vastly different cultures and time periods in a manner that provides a context for comparison. Students can study issues through lessons from historical content, and they may also become activists in their communities through service learning projects. If teachers assume that their purpose as social studies educators is to prepare students for participation in pluralist democracies, then they should try to take learning beyond the strictly academic sense and encourage their students to recognize their role as citizens.