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Given students’ preconceptions of history as fixed information, cultivating students’ interpretive and evidence-based thinking is foundational to advancing their disciplinary understanding. This study examines the ways in which preservice history teachers construct tasks that demand students’ interpretive and evidence-based thinking and attend to such thinking in their field placements while being taught to do so in their methods courses. Analysis of methods course assignments, student teaching observations, and assessments of candidates’ disciplinary knowledge led to the construction of three cases of novice teachers’ efforts to teach these ways of thinking to their students. The one novice who attended to her students’ interpretive and evidentiary thinking translated her disciplinary knowledge into lessons that involved analysis of text in developing interpretations and gave general prompts to provide evidence in support of students’ conclusions. This study highlights the role of preservice teachers’ disciplinary understanding and pedagogical content knowledge in developing students’ interpretive and evidentiary thinking in history classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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In the fall 2005 semester, the author designed a course in the history of America's modern wars hoping to encourage students to criticize and oppose the country's current aggressions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Surveys of student attitude change suggest that the course did promote criticism but did far less to facilitate student activism. The author concludes that instructors may need to model activism in addition to offering historical evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing concern throughout the UK and beyond about the lack of suitably qualified post-primary teachers in some subject areas, particularly mathematics, design and technology and the sciences. This paper reports on a survey of teacher qualifications in Northern Ireland which indicates that a significant percentage of teachers are unqualified in the areas of mathematics, physics, ICT, history and Irish, and that Key Stage 3 teachers tend to be less well-qualified than those at Key Stage 4 or post-16. Unqualified teachers are less likely to be found in the grammar sector than the non-grammar sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the implication of the history of teaching and learning mathematics for teachers. The history of mathematics instruction should constitute one of the dimensions of the professional knowledge of mathematics teachers. The approaches and results from comparative education provide an essential tool for an international history of teaching and learning mathematics, in order to grasp national specificities as well as overall and global trends. The crucial point in the different moments of the long history of mathematics education proves to be the rank attributed to mathematics within the respective set of social and cultural values.

The article presents a list of publications related to education. The publications include "Principles in the Teaching of History," by Lucy M. Salmon, "The Progress of Geography in the Schools," by W. M. Davis and H. M. Wilson, "The Course Study in History in the Common School," by Isabel Lawrence and C. A. McMurry, "The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education,"by M. J. Holmes and J. A. Keith and "The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education of Teachers," by John Dewey and Sarah C. Brooks.

This article reports on a study that concerns the way in which preservice teachers negotiate historical inquiry-based teaching and learning in relation to their preexisting conceptions of social studies as a discipline. Thoughts and opinion that form preservice teachers' historical understanding at the start of a semester were examined. Data gathered from the examination was compared with students' thoughts and opinions at the end of the semester. Students were asked to write in their journals on how they believe social studies should be taught in elementary classrooms to learn the preservice teachers' goals and perceptions of social studies pedagogy. A variety of instructional strategies that focus on history as an inquiry-based discipline was introduced.

Describes an experience of an educator who searched for supplemental materials to engage students in interactive methods of building content and genre schemata for studying topics in history. Incident that led to the effort; Response of students to the reading program; Outcome of the effort.

The article discusses the findings from a study on graduate teachers of the year 1979 to 1980 who had not found teaching employment by 1982 in the United States. It used a four-part methodology to examine some of the structural, individual and personal characteristics which contribute to the ability of teachers to obtain a teaching post. The findings indicated that the characteristics of graduate teachers who were still interested in obtaining a teaching post in 1981 include: graduate of History or general arts program; female and have trained in their PGCE year to be primary teachers. The study supported the view that commitment to teaching is related with being female and with an interest in working with the younger age group.

The article discusses the Liberia Project that focuses on teaching students on human rights in the U.S. It states that teachers and students are working together to developed new teaching strategies to introduce the complexities of the past particularly history and human rights, and its enduring impact on people's lives. It explores the Liberian children's situation and the possible impact of its history on teaching American children and other students throughout the school. Moreover, teachers challenged their students to think for themselves as they challenged themselves to reach across the discipline and involve their colleagues in an amazing multidisciplinary approach to history.