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The article suggests the effectiveness of incorporating digital video projects into retelling of local historical narratives to facilitate student learning of history in the U.S. Topics include the importance of considering the local history of a certain narrative before constructing a comprehensive retelling of any particular national history, and a background on the development of the Satchel & the Yastrzemskis digital video project to retell America's black baseball history.

The article discusses a study which examined the impact of an authentic digital assessment on student engagement with the history of higher education in the U.S. Topics include the number of Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) programs in the U.S. that included a course on the history of higher education, the importance of an authentic learning assessment in history education, and the indicators of engagement of students who participated in the study such as hard work.

The article emphasizes the importance of integrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ+) content into history and social studies curricula in the U.S. Topics include the significance of this integration considering data and resistance to LGBTQ+ curricula, criticisms of the traditional approaches to the curricula, and several practices for integrating LGBTQ+ histories into the classroom including strategies for teaching LGBTQ+ history and creating inclusive environments.

The article examines the ways in which history of higher education (HE) instructors worked through the lens of social justice to make history relevant for graduate students outside of the history discipline using data from a survey of HE and student affairs (HESA) programs in the U.S. Topics include the number of HESA programs in the U.S., the importance of the strong social justice emphasis within HESA programs to HE history, and the principles of social justice education (SJE) pedagogy.

The article discusses teaching North American indigenous and environmental history at the college level. It provides an overview of their historiography, and considers both traditional and indigenous ecological knowledge of the Americas and issues of sustainability. Topics include human ecology ad climate change, the culture of indigenous people prior to their contact with Europeans, ecocentrism, ethnohistory, transnationalism, and beliefs regarding time.

The federal report A Nation at Risk, edited by the federal government of the United States of America (1983), alarmed the country by pointing out a education deep crisis. That document pointed to many problems in state curricula and programs, therefore accused of becoming too generalist, uninstructive. Among scholars and politicians, became powerful the idea of designing national standards for all of the school subjects of the USA, which should be seen as guidelines for teachers and students towards excellence. So, the present article analyzes the attempts to design national History curricula in the United States of America between the 1980s and 1990s, such as Building a History Curriculum (1988) and National Standards for History (1996), emphasizing the way the political discourses engendered in the United States of America had crucial impacts on the recommendations in regards to the teaching of history -- from patriotism to multiculturalism, as in a pendulum movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses course design for introductory courses in U.S. history and the Tuning Project history education initiative from the American Historical Association. Emphasis is given to topics such as the aims and objectives of survey courses in history education, the relationship between U.S. history learning and citizenship, and active learning classrooms in inquiry-based pedagogy.

In this article, the author examines equality in U.S. history. Particular focus is given to how the topic relates to relevant historical figures, or, "great persons," literacy and historical evidence. Additional topics discussed include a lesson plan examining historical figures through a public forum, how issues of equality have pervaded American history traditionally and insights on U.S. history following the Civil War.

The article looks at the U.S. Department of Education's Teaching American History (TAH) grant program, with a particular focus one grant recipient, the Model Collaboration: Rethinking American History (McRAH) program, which included a high-needs school district, a liberal arts college, and an urban historical society. Topics discussed include teaching strategies, teachers' attitudes towards the study and teaching of history, and the sustainability of teaching methodologies.

Thomas Bender's 2009 essay "Can National History Be De-Provincialized? U.S. History Textbook Controversies in the 1940s and 1990s," originally published in Contexts: The Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, asks the important question of how a nation-specific curriculum in history--that is, how "American" history itself--can be taught with the least influence of political factions and the least interference of commercial factors, in light of the fact that both elements, the political and the commercial, have played a role in the construction of the US history textbook. Bender's essay demonstrates the complexity of the problem as multiple stakeholders seek to control, limit, or promote particular elements of the narratives of US history. Professional historians, Bender argues, like history itself, have "no responsibility to supply comfort"--that is, no role in promoting nationalism or American exceptionalism--yet he also warns that, due to changes in the textbook industry, they also may have little role in determining what is finally published. Bender's essay, which specifically discusses the impact of political conditions--World War II, for example--on the daily practice of teaching and writing about history, serves as an insightful reminder of the complexity and vulnerability of a nation's memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented in which the author discusses the relationship between what is identified as the study of history in an academic environment and popular history and how the differences between the two might impact history teachers, and his development of a college-level early American history survey course. The article discusses the understanding of history by the public at-large, how the survey course incorporates films and documentaries and linking current events to the past, and the interactivity of the course.

Many of us who teach History of Science 101 courses face a situation where we must tell our story without relying on students' prior knowledge of, say, the significance of ancient Greece and China, premodern and modern colonialism, or Marx. This leaves us needing a clear and punchy basic message, supported by a solid, well-structured, and inclusive story line that also doubles as world history. This response takes a look at the prospects and problems of longue durée histories of science from the perspective of cultural history. It voices sympathy toward Frans van Lunteren's project and presents a small sample of potential difficulties involved in matching machines with historical periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the significance of the history of suburbs and the importance of suburbs in the study of the modern U.S. despite the perception of suburbs as banal, and how local history can add to a history curriculum. It examines housing architecture, particularly Cape Cod and ranch style houses, and property ownership in U.S. suburbs, suburban roads and highways and how governmental road projects shaped U.S. history and U.S. social conditions, and how suburbanization impacted U.S. society.

The article focuses on the use of student-centered learning in studying the work of American sociologist and documentary photographer Lewis Wickes Hine. The author discusses the importance of photographic images in history classes and examines Hine's work photographing the immigrant inspection station on Ellis Island, New York and child labor under the direction of the U.S. National Child Labor Committee (NCLC).

Technology has been long understood to play a central role in limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Evolving nuclear technology, increased access to information, and systematic improvements in design and manufacturing tools, however, should in time ease the proliferation challenge. Eventually, even developing countries could possess a sufficient technical ability. There is evidence that this transition has already occurred. The basic uranium-enrichment gas centrifuge, developed in the 1960s, has technical characteristics that are within reach of nearly all states, without foreign assistance or access to exportcontrollable materials. The history of centrifuge development in twenty countries supports this perspective, as do previously secret studies carried out by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. Complicating matters, centrifuges also have properties that make the detection of a clandestine program enormously difficult. If conditions for the clandestine and indigenous production of weapons have emerged, then nonproliferation institutions focused on technology will be inadequate. Although it would represent a near-foundational shift in nuclear security policy, the changed technology landscape may now necessitate a return to institutions focused instead on motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys the writing of Chicano/a history since its inception and reflects on why scholars have been concerned with certain issues and how they have written about them. Born from the tumult of the Vietnam era, the field has challenged the status quo and emboldened those communities from which Chicano/a historians come and which they ultimately serve. Given the generation-long development of Mexican American history, this article focuses on Chicano/a historiography, with some commentary on the recent emergence of Latino/a history and the future directions that this field may take. It engages three questions that have driven the field: What forces engendered the ethnic Mexican community in the United States? Who comprises it? And how does the past bear on the present? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A case study is presented concerning Haverhill, Massachusetts, High School history teacher Abigail Gable and the Advanced Placement (AP) program. It examines Gable's goals for historical understanding among her students, including combining several elements such as historical significance, epistemology, and evidence, It also discusses how Gable emphasizes continuity and change, progress and decline, and moral judgments in history and historical studies.

The author discusses her experiences in utilizing the history of cigarettes and cigarette smoking in the U.S. in teaching 20th century U.S. cultural history to students at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Science (MCPHS) University. She discusses the history of the prevalence of cigarettes in U.S. culture, the use of primary sources such as cigarette advertising in her course, information concerning smoking health risks, and government policies toward the tobacco industry.

The article presents an ethnographic study concerning the experience of African Americans who were educated in the racially segregated Excelsior School in the Lincolnville area of St. Augustine, Florida, and what was known as Luther Porter Jackson High School in Falls Church, Virginia. The article discusses the positive experiences, financial disparities between segregated schools, and demanding academic requirements of the schools involved in the study. It also examines the Caswell County, North Carolina, Training School (CCTS). The article also discusses methods by which teachers can discuss the history of segregation in a more nuanced way.

An essay is presented on the subject of what was known as the color line in U.S. major league baseball between 1887 to 1947 and how teachers can develop lectures, discussions, and student projects on the color line. It discusses how the color line led to paradoxical exclusion of players on the basis of race and how American minorities strengthened their ethnic identity and communities by adopting baseball during the Jim Crow era. The article discusses several minority players such as Moses Fleetwood Walker, Clarence Duval, and Jackie Robinson.

This is a comparative case study of how three high school history teachers in the U.S.A. use art in their practice. The following research question was investigated: How do secondary history teachers incorporate the arts--paintings, music, poems, novels, and films--in their teaching of history and why? Data were collected from three sources: interviews, observations, and classroom materials. Grounded theory was utilized to analyze the data. Findings suggest these teachers use the arts as historical evidence roughly for three purposes: First, to teach the spirit of an age; second, to teach the history of ordinary people invisible in official historical records; and third, to teach, both with and without art, the process of writing history. Two of the three teachers, however, failed to teach historical thinking skills through art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we share findings of a textbook analysis in which we explored the treatment of segregated education in eight, widely-used secondary United States history and government textbooks. We positioned our findings within the historiography related to the African American school experience which challenges the notion that the lack of resources allocated to Black schools in many areas of the country necessarily equated to a substandard educational experience for Black children. In our analysis we found textbook coverage to be episodically robust, but generally lacking in sufficient context to promote students' recognition of the complexity and nuance of the development and disintegration of African American education. Using the theoretical lens of critical race theory, we suggest that failure of teachers and teacher educators to include recognition of the African American education experience serves to enshrine an approach to learning about America's segregated education history that may contribute to excessively abstract generalizations and perpetuation of historical racial stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the study of the history of the passenger pigeon in Pennsylvania as of autumn 2012. According to the article, U.S. history textbooks at the high school and college level tend to focus upon the extermination of the buffalo as opposed to the extermination of the passenger pigeon in 19th century environmental narratives. The author argues that the exclusion of the story of the passenger pigeon, particularly in Pennsylvania history texts, is unfortunate and presents several reasons for the inclusion of the story of the passenger pigeon in history courses, including the convergence of historical developments, the rise of market hunting in the U.S., and U.S. consumption.

The article discusses the use of the environmental history of Pennsylvania as a tool to enhance the study of Pennsylvania history and U.S. history. The article discusses the history of Pennsylvania's reliance upon and use of natural resources, the impact of the Industrial Revolution upon Pennsylvania's economy and ecology, and the development of U.S. capitalism to which Pennsylvania contributed. It discusses the use of Pennsylvania's reserves of natural gas. The article also discusses the impact of environmental change upon Pennsylvania wildlife.

An essay is presented in which the author describes her development of two history instruction labs for students in college teacher education programs at Northern Arizona University (NAU) as of August 2012. The author argues that history teacher preparation courses and programs should create a transparent historical process, require hands-on history education, and provide teacher candidates with the ability to facilitate classroom practice of history.

The authors introduce a history teaching instrument known as the Protocol for Assessing the Teaching of History (PATH). The authors claim that PATH provides the establishment of a conversation among history teachers concerning teaching behaviors that contribute to quality instruction in the subject of history. The authors state that PATCH attempts to engage students in what is termed the decomposition of practice for history teaching techniques. The authors state that PATH was modeled upon the Classroom Assessment Scoring System-Secondary (CLASS-S).

An introduction is presented in which the authors discuss reports within the journal on the concept of teaching historical thinking in teacher education programs in the U.S. as of August 2012.

The article focuses on how to teach history though the Geographic Information System (GIS), including student-centered instruction, teacher-centered instruction, and engagement in historiography. The authors provide a brief history on GIS software, explore how GIS can support inquiry-based learning, and explain how GIS is able to support critical thinking and conceptual understanding. Additionally, they provide GIS lessons in U.S. history on the French and Indian War, the Constitutional Convention, and the Whiskey Rebellion.

The article focuses on how to use historical narratives to teach history in the classroom, with the example of teaching the U.S. civil rights movement. The author explains that history is a narrative in terms of plot, time, and cause, discusses how interpreting historical narratives lets students participate in history, and analyzes the theories of historian Tom Holt, who emphasizes history as a narrative. She presents information on how she taught the civil rights movement though a master narrative, by questioning chronology, and through top-down causation.

The article focuses on the approach of teaching history through inquiry instruction rather than fact-based instruction. The author analyzes research scholarship on history teaching and learning that supports several ideas, including the constructed nature of history knowledge, the importance of substantive and procedural concepts in teaching history, and the need for intelligent support systems due to the challenges of discipline-based learning. A model for professional development and in-service training for history teachers is also presented.

The article focuses on the history of collaboration between K-12 teachers and college history professors to improve history teaching in U.S. schools between 1983 and 2011. The author discusses how educational reforms reflect patterns of conservative and progressive times within the country, analyzes the differences between teaching history and teaching social studies, and explores several history teaching organizations and programs, including the National Council for History Education, the National Center for History in the Schools, and the National History Standards Project. The grant program Teaching American History is also discussed.

In this article, the authors present several issues which were raised and discussed during the World History Institutes which were conducted and designed by the College Board in the U.S. to prepare the way for the implementation of the 2011-2012 revised curriculum standards. These issues include the changes in the World History Course, the key concepts covering the essential content of the course, and how to use the content outline to help guide instruction.

The U.S. was founded on the principle that ordinary citizens would rule, but most students are not taught to be rulers. Colonists in New England worked together on issues for the common good, and children learned the skills of associating from their parents. Today, however, many citizens feel they cannot make a difference, and civic participation has declined. If our democracy is to last, civic participation must become central to the curriculum. This article includes ingredients of a curriculum for democracy and examples of school programs that include those ingredients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses teaching the history of the New Negro Movement (NNM), also known as the Harlem Renaissance, by using visual primary sources, particularly portraiture. The author notes that participants in the NNM used various media for self expression such as photography, painting, and music. It is argued that history teachers should use such visual primary sources to expand the knowledge of students on a particular subject. The author examines the works of philosopher Alain Locke's definitions of the so-called Old Negro as compared to the so-called New Negro, and discusses the photography of African American photographers Addison N. Scurlock and John Johnson. The author argues that portraits of participants in the NNM show their confidence, emphasis on family, and pride.

The article discusses the history of area and international studies in academic circles, particularly Middle East studies programs. The author examines the evolution of how the field of area studies is perceived by mass media and how world events govern such programs. The author also explores the interdisciplinary nature of area studies and the fusion of various fields that he suggests has produced a broad knowledge that is diverse and heterogeneous. The author also asserts that the alignment of various professionals such as historians, political scientists, and archaeologists in area studies departments was strategically planned in the guidance and legitimization of U.S. foreign policy. The article examines the Iran Democracy Project (IDP) at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The author discusses how the significant social movement like the abolition movement is underappreciated in the history curriculum of schools in the U.S. He says that the abolition movement is one of the most significant U.S. social movements. He adds that he wants to show students that the racial justice movement was not just a matter of one thing happening after another but a series of choice-points. He also discusses the thesis of scholar Eric Foner, which called the abolition movement as the foundation of all social justice movements in the country.

The article discusses the use of living history interpretation as a classroom teaching tool, with a particular focus on the author's portrayal of radical abolitionist John Brown in her elementary and high-school history lessons. It is suggested that this method helps both students and teachers to become engaged in the lesson material. The author presents several suggestions for creating an accurate, interesting, and informative historical persona, handling classroom discipline while in character, and assessing what students have learned from the exercise. Details related to Brown's life are also presented.

The article presents the author's personal reflections as a history professor in the U.S. during the second half of the 20th-century. The author gives several anecdotes from his own career in academia, charting the development of his credentials and faculty positions. Broader comments are also given discussing the larger characteristics and trends which have come about in historical scholarship from his entrance into the field in the 1960s to the 2000s when he retired. Conclusions are given reflecting on the future trajectory of the discipline.

The article presents a discussion of the coverage, or survey, model of teaching history and provides examples of ways in which this teaching method has been criticized by educational scholars since the late 1800s. It chronicles the development of survey history courses for general education in U.S. colleges that were based on content knowledge, describes efforts to reform introductory history courses by using the history lab method which focused on historical analysis, and discusses how factual knowledge and cultural literacy have shaped ideas about history curriculum reform since the 1980s. Other topics include criticisms of history textbooks as well as the development of specialty disciplines in the study of history such as women's, social, and non-Western histories.

From 2002 to 2004, the children's animated series Liberty's Kids aired on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the United States' public television network. It runs over forty half-hour episodes and features a stellar cast, including such celebrities as Walter Cronkite, Michael Douglas, Yolanda King, Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Liam Neeson, and Annette Bening. Television critics generally loved it, and there are now college students who can trace their interest in the American Revolution to having watched this series when they were children. At the turn of the twenty-first century, it is the most extended and in-depth encounter with the American Revolution that most young people in the United States are likely to have encountered, and is appropriately patriotic and questioning, celebratory and chastening. Although children certainly learn a great deal about multiculturalism from popular culture, the tropes and limitations of depicting history on television trend toward personification, toward reduced complexity and, for children, toward resisting examining the darker sides of human experience. As this essay suggests, the genre's limits match the limits of a multicultural history in its attempt to show diversity and agency during a time when “liberty and justice for all” proved to be more apt as an aspiration at best and an empty slogan at worst than as an accurate depiction of the society that proclaimed it. This essay is not an effort to be, as Robert Sklar put it, a “historian cop,” policing the accuracy of the series by patrolling for inaccuracies. Rather, it is a consideration of the inherent difficulties of trying to apply a multicultural sensibility to a portrayal of the American Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The trend of global history, which developed for thirty years in the US, brings valuable methodological and epistemological innovations. This trend is very fecund and dynamic. It gave rise to a large number of publications and to the creation of numerous research institutions in the US. The “global” approach is also more and more used in Europe. But it is important to notice that many of the innovations of global history are in fact not really new, but borrow their principles and methods to previous trends, like compared history or transnational history. And we have to be vigilant concerning the possible ideological motivations present in the works of global history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles legal historian Melville M. Bigelow, who introduced the professional study of legal history in the U.S. He graduated from the University of Michigan: Bachelor of Arts in 1866 and Masteral degree in 1871 and attended public schools across Michigan. Moreover, his scholarship in legal history concentrates on the history of procedure in Norman England.

The article presents an interchange that explores teaching, researching and the conceptualization of Latino history within United States history. Interchange members include Adrian Burgos Jr., Donna Gabaccia, María Christina García, Matthew Garcia, Kelly Lytle Hernández, Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, María E. Montoya, George J. Sánchez, Virginia Sánchez Korrol and Paul Spickard. Topics discussed include the presidential address given by Vicki Ruiz at the 2006 Organization of American Historians, popular narratives of U.S. history and minorities in the history profession.

The article discusses how to use patents and their associated narratives to teach U.S. history. The author begins by detailing what a patent is. The author states that a patent is a document explaining the discovery, how it is constructed, and what it is claiming as a monopoly due to its novelty. How to access patents in the U.S. is explained. The author addresses how patents can provide information on what was challenging inventors and scientists of the time. The article also discusses the visual evidence provided by patents.

This article presents a response to the article "The Theory Gap" by Ed White and Michael Drexler, published in this issue. The author reflects on White and Drexler's examination of the field of early American literary studies. He discusses the changing nature of the relationship between literature and history and discusses the gap between the scholarly attention given to history and that given to literary studies. The article also explores differences between literary studies of Americanists and the study of American history.

This article presents a response to the article "Early American Literature and American Literary History at the 'Hemispheric Turn'" by Ralph Bauer, published in this issue. The author argues that being postmodern does not make a scholar unfaithful to their origins. The author agrees that scholars need to rethink the orientation of American studies. Bauer's transnational approach to the hemisphere is addressed. The article also discusses the importance of shifting perspectives in American literary history studies.

The article discusses an alternative approach to teaching the traditional history survey to future history teachers. The author states that history teachers must understand how historians frame historical problems, select and organize factual details, and construct historical stories. The author talks about a course he designed for future history teachers at the University of Northern Colorado. The course is entitled "Advanced Overview of American History." The article also discusses approaches to teaching World War II.