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This paper addresses the question of what role the historical discipline might play in informing the selection of substantive knowledge for school history curricula. In the process, it seeks to clarify the usefulness and limitations of Young's social realist theory of powerful knowledge in the case of school history. The paper proposes that assessing the potential of the historical discipline for informing substantive knowledge selection in school history requires a more thorough account of the historical discipline's horizontal knowledge structure. Having attempted such an account, it is argued that while the historical discipline offers no consensus on exactly what substantive knowledge to teach, it does offer resources for tackling political and ethical questions inherent in substantive knowledge selection in school history. This is exemplified through the case of environmental history. The paper concludes that realizing the potential of the historical discipline to contribute to questions of substantive knowledge selection in school history requires that history educators move beyond theorizing the distinction between vertical and horizontal discourses, central to Young's theory of powerful knowledge, and, drawing on Bernstein, consider the historical discipline's particular horizontal knowledge structure and its dialogic, often critical, entanglement with horizontal discourses. [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]

The author discusses various challenges for teachers in teaching the Paleolithic era, particularly when ongoing discoveries change previously held conclusions and perspectives at a relatively high rate. The article examines research about the Upper Paleolithic era, world history scholarship, and U.S. curriculum regarding the Paleolithic era.

This study explores the silencing and voicing of sensitive topics in history education from a cross-national and multilevel perspective. In this mixed-method study, we undertook a quantitative analysis of a 'teaching sensitive issues' questionnaire and qualitative analyses of history curricula and teachers' verbal responses. The findings show that most respondents were aware of societal and self-silencing but were also committed to voicing and giving a voice to pupils. Focusing on the issues found to be most sensitive - immigration and Islam - in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Israel, the analysis of national curricula indicates a climate of 'voicing' rather than silencing. Analysis of teachers' responses showed strong awareness of the relationship between the sensitivity of the history of immigration and that of Islam and the relationship between pupil diversity and self-silencing on these issues. It appears that, in some cases, apprehension of pupils' voices led teachers to self-silence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers of history will sooner or later encounter issues that are met with disbelief, protest, or feelings of discomfort by the pupils. This special issue aims to contribute to the field of research into teaching sensitive and controversial issues in history by integrating historical, educational and socio-psychological perspectives and theories. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, an interdisciplinary group of scholars studied history teachers' perceptions regarding sensitive issues in their teaching in their respective countries: Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands and Serbia. Through cross-country analysis and in depth study of specific cases, it provides insights into the particular issues that are considered sensitive and the many factors at play, such as the individual teacher (his/her skills, knowledge, beliefs and identity conception), the local classroom composition, the national curriculum and national policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the teacher perceived applicability of historical topics for interpretational history teaching and the criteria teachers use to evaluate this applicability. For this study, 15 expert history teachers in the Netherlands striving for interpretational history teaching were purposefully selected. Teachers were asked to mention historical topics using a ranking task technique to rank topics in order of applicability and to elaborate on how the topics were ranked. The results showed a large variation in perceived applicability among topics, both within and between teachers. Eight different topicapplicability criteria were discerned in the teachers' elaborations: (1) topic knowledge; (2) topic affinity; (3) topic constructedness; (4) topic deconstructability; (5) topic abstractedness; (6) topic sensitivity; (7) topic materials; and (8) topic inclusion in the history curriculum. We found that teachers tended to judge topics as applicable for interpretational history teaching partly depending on the degree of 'canonised interpretativity' in lesson materials and the curriculum, and to the degree to which they belonged to 'cold' (morally neutral) or 'hot' (morally sensitive) history. A theoretical implication of the findings is that interpretational history teaching is topic-dependent. Teachers can be supported to teach history as interpretation by structured pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the challenges for teachers in positioning them as independent curriculum makers. History teachers in New Zealand have recently entered uncharted territory with the abandonment of prescribed topics for history and a new-found authority to determine the selection of historical knowledge taught to their senior secondary students. This paper examines the complex nature of the teacher's new role and responsibilities and argues that curriculum achievement objectives and national assessment places significant constraints upon teachers' selections of historical knowledge. There is the potential for substantive historical knowledge to be downplayed in favour of procedural knowledge and the potential for assessment drivers to dominate or distort selection of knowledge for history. Local curriculum making places a heavy burden of responsibility upon teachers with implications for students' access to powerful historical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High school Revolution History course aims at introducing Kemalist system of thought to young people besides explaining the importance of the Republic founded and the revolutions introduced after the Turkish National Struggle. Aim of this study what are the views of history teachers and pre-service history teachers concerning the problems encountered in teaching the "Ataturk's Principles and History of Revolution" course and solution offers for such problems? Survey model was employed in the study. Consisting of problems encountered in teaching the "Ataturk's Principles and History of Revolution" course and solution offers for such problems, a surwey was prepared after literature review, pre-questionnaire study, and taking the opinions of teachers and experts in order to determine the views of teachers and pre-service teachers. The universe of the study consisted of Revolution History teachers working in the central district of Izmir province and the pre-service history teachers studying at Dokuz Eylul University Buca Faculty of Education. The sample of the study was selected 50 history teachers and 50 pre-service history teachers. The revision of results demonstrates that both teachers and pre-service teachers attribute problems to external factors (but not to themselves). While pre-service teachers mostly attribute problems to teachers, teachers think that problems arise from curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the case for a greater focus on the teaching of local histories in the Australian Curriculum: History. It takes as its starting point an Indigenous epistemology that understands knowledge to be embedded in the land. This connection between knowledge and country is used to examine recent literature on whether the teaching of history in schools can succeed in the context of the new Australian history curriculum. Various proposals from academics to develop a framework that can be used to select appropriate content and approaches to teaching history in Australia are explored. It questions whether a geographically dispersed and diverse body of students can ever be engaged with knowledge that is often taught far from the place of its making. This article eschews the traditional concepts used by historians to teach and interpret history, in order to observe how the country can teach the student. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses a history teacher credential program at California State University, Long Beach, entitled "Raising the Visibility of Asia in World History Teacher Preparation" as of August 2012. According to the article, the program attempts to develop curricular materials and instructional activities for the school's pre-service classroom for novice teachers. The authors argue that the program gives pre-service teachers with scholarly understanding from a global perspective that will enhance student conceptions of Asian history. The article provides examples of student-created lessons from the course on Asian hegemony from 1450-1750, the Japanese industrial revolution, and a course on shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu.

An essay is presented in which the author discusses her experiences teaching a graduate-level elementary teacher education course entitled "Literacy, History, and Social Science" at Stanford University. The article also discusses the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT). She also discusses the findings of several articles published in the journal on the topic of history education in teacher education programs.

This paper explores the issues that secondary history teachers on an initial teacher education (ITE) programme in England encounter in attempting to incorporate more cultural and ethnic diversity into the history curriculum. It also assesses the impact that changes in their training course had on their views and pedagogical practice. Using questionnaires and scenario based interviews with three cohorts of trainee teachers, key challenges were identified, which were related to the purposes of teaching history and diversity, appropriate pedagogy and content, dealing with pupils, and teachers' personal concerns. A framework for analysing trainees' stances towards cultural and ethnic diversity based upon a confident-uncertain-uncomfortable continuum was developed. The research revealed that the course had had an impact, although this was in subtle rather than marked ways, which raises further questions about what is possible within the confines of an ITE training programme and the need for additional support beyond the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history education community's efforts to help pupils distinguish between the discipline of history and rawer forms of collective memory have been beset with problems from inside and outside the education community. From without, teachers face criticism for their supposed failure to foster narrowly celebratory versions of Britain's past; from within, pressure to reduce history to generic 'skills' of the 'new cross-curricularity', apparently in the interests of relevance, utility or engagement. This article will argue that such genericism is, first, redundant, in that it adds nothing to strong disciplinary practice in fostering thinking, reflection, criticality and motivation; and, second, inadequate: disciplinary knowledge and concepts are necessary in order to reach or challenge claims about the past. The argument is built from history teachers' discourse about their own efforts to find out how to make disciplinary history work at the pedagogic site. The article examines history teacher efforts to address complex problems of uniting content and concept and of motivating lower-attaining or marginalised students whom others (variously) claim can be helped only by narrow narratives or by giving up on disciplinary rigour altogether. The story of history teacher efforts contains valuable lessons for curriculum reviewers about the potential of strong classificatory framing for emancipatory and engaging learning. The article argues that any improvement of the existing Key Stage 3 curriculum is pointless, however, unless wider cultural and structural problems impeding lower-attaining students' entitlement to the subject are resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: How students develop a capacity to examine and imagine the past impacts how they think about the present and imagine the future. This study contributes to research about teachers' beliefs and practices about teaching United States history through cultural encounters and nontraditional historical narratives. Although there is a small but growing body of research concerning teachers' beliefs and practices regarding historical thinking and inquiry, little research exists on teachers' beliefs and practices about history teaching from a cultural encounters perspective. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The study examined teachers' perspectives of a professional development effort designed to promote their students' historical thinking within a cultural encounters curriculum. This curriculum emphasized the role of perspective and historical narrative. The research questions were: (1) What were the K-12 participants' specific examples of lessons and units related to historical cultural encounters? (2) How did they conceptualize their teaching for historical cultural encounters? (3) How did they begin to reconceptualize their views about a cultural encounters history curriculum? Research Design: The study used a qualitative design to examine perceptions of 21 K-12 teachers. A conceptual framework about history teacher thinking and reconceptualization informed the design. Three forms of data -- surveys, individual interviews, and lesson plans--were collected about teachers' perceptions of practice and their applications of those perceptions in their classrooms. The surveys were administered throughout the 3-year program cycle and at the final evening colloquium. Interviews were conducted with the 21 teachers approximately 3 months after the end of the project. Lesson plans that teachers constructed at different points in the professional development project were analyzed after its conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our daily work in history teachers training at the university level has provided us with some preliminary hypothesis which we want to question, analyzing the teaching practices framed in their curricular dimensions, traditions and rituals. In this paper we present an advance of the course group research project, in which we intend to gain knowledge in the teaching of Argentine history in the classrooms of high schools in Cordoba. Which Argentine History is instituted as the regulated history and how does it configure on the different levels of curriculum concretion for high school in Cordoba? According to Cuesta Fernandez, the regulated history is what "the Administration decreed as valuable historical knowledge". Through visible texts, we review analytical categories to look at the Curricular Design and the text books. The power of selecting what, when, how much, how to teach, who says what must be taught imply conflicts in society (Girvtz). Depending in what project of society is proposed, the definition of which Argentine History is taught implies which are the basic and socially useful curricular contents for the formation of a historical conscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the Civil War Battle in Philippi, West Virginia, and discusses various criteria to assess the relevance and importance of historical events to be included in history textbooks. It states that the citizens of Philippi were divided in their loyalties to the North and South, and describes how the battle between Union and Confederate forces took place near Manassas, Virginia on July 21, 1861. It mentions that the teachers should encourage students to use a wider range of criteria for assessing historical significance. It describes how teachers can prepare students to judge the significance of little-known events in history through the inquiry-based methods, which can allow students to broaden their understanding of historical significance.

This article presents a vision of effective and pedagogically meaningful history teaching and learning in schools. Bringing to the fore the lack of attention to the philosophy of history, the article first explains the philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of history or the perspectives on the nature of historical knowledge on which the vision is based. It then elucidates what goals history education should strive for, what history should be taught, how history curriculum should be developed, what is expected of teachers in implementing history curriculum, and what qualifications history teachers should possess to effectively practice their profession. It advocates constructivist pedagogy and the disciplinary approach to school history, calling for collaboration between education faculty and historians in the preparation of history teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author explores the challenges of teaching history in schools in California. The author puts a particular emphasis on the issues teachers encounter when they address writing in history classes in the state. She references a study which found that changes made by the No Child Left Behind Act have placed high demands and challenges on history teachers. She notes that teachers are expected to deal with institutional pressures to develop standards-based curriculum and to prepare students for standardized tests.

In this article, the author introduces course content material and accompanying teaching strategies to facilitate the incorporation of modern Japanese history into the world history curriculum. The author aims to show how changes in curriculum choices can serve to fill many of the gaps that exist in the teaching of world history. She encourages readers to adapt these strategies for use in their own classrooms. She also advises teachers to use the material and modify their lesson plans for immediate implementation at a variety of educational levels.

The article offers a list and profile of curriculum related websites for educators. The article discusses on the goals of K-12 education on imparting knowledge in the fields of economics, political and social history by providing selected web sites that features geographic, religious, and cultural relevance of history. The web sites include http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/dev/default.htm which contains a collection of teaching units, lesson plans, and resources for middle and high school classes by era, themes and geographical location and http://worldhistorymatters.org which features the Unpacking evidence section that includes guides by world history scholars for analysis of primary sources such as travel narratives, official documents, and personal accounts.

The article proposes an alternative method for teaching U.S. history and relates the changes introduced by a teacher to the U.S. history curriculum to enable the students to enjoy the class and better understand U.S. history. The teacher dismissed two basic assumptions that promote the negative attitude of students toward studying U.S. history, namely that history should be taught chronologically and that history should focus on particular groups and people. The teacher decided to move through the history class by topic rather than date. The teacher adopted a variation of an ethnographic technique called consensus analysis for the class.

The article attempts to make sense of the puzzling dissonance between student perceptions in a freshman survey by examining how history surveys are taught and the purposes such surveys serve for history majors, for students taking such courses as part of the core curriculum, and for the history professors who teach them. In particular, the author looks at professorial goals in developing the content for the course. He argues that core history courses should be a meeting of student and scholar. According to the author, teaching methodologies may enhance presentations, but ultimately each course should be a reflection of the nature of its discipline.

Focuses on the issues of adapting a national curriculum in history in Great Britain. Expression of strong public interest in history; Reactions of historians and teachers of history to the formulation of national curriculum; Impact of politics on the debate.

The article seeks to explore five fundamental dilemmas that are confronted by in history teacher education. These dilemmas, related to debates about history teaching, the coherence of the Post-Graduate Teachers Certificate (PGCE) courses, the value of school based PGCE work, the personal agendas and concerns of beginning teachers and the introduction of the National Curriculum derive from an interaction of long standing problems in teacher education, the initiatives of the present government and debates within the subject discipline. Each dilemma is elaborated in the context of PGCE programs for history student teachers and the work concerned with the classroom teaching of their subject.

The article studies the history of anthropology in the historical perspective. The history of anthropology has a long-established history within the discipline. Virtually every major graduate program requires of its students a course in the history, sometimes combined with the theory, of anthropology. However, it is not obvious that this has caused history of anthropology to fill a significant or integral role in the teaching and practice of the discipline. Indeed, the opposite has traditionally been true. The required course is frequently taught by the eldest member of the department, who is presumably qualified to teach the history because he has lived through more of it than anyone else.

Focuses on the efforts to implement a single approach in the educational system in higher educational institutions in Russia. Issues on the creation of a dual-track system, involving five years of study for a specialist diploma and six for a master's degree, in the training of history teachers; Value of computerized teaching and institutional Web sites; Emphasis on the need in reforming the higher education system to close the gap between classical and teachers' universities.