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This study examined how the introduction of a feedback scaffold to a video analysis platform improved the quality and focus of history teachers' and novice coaches' comments. We found that coaches' feedback to teachers became more timely, focused, specific, actionable, and direct and that teachers increased their attention to the features of historical inquiry. We draw implications for the design of resources and professional development to support novice instructional coaches in history.

This study examined how the introduction of a feedback scaffold to a video analysis platform improved the quality and focus of history teachers' and novice coaches' comments. We found that coaches' feedback to teachers became more timely, focused, specific, actionable, and direct and that teachers increased their attention to the features of historical inquiry. We draw implications for the design of resources and professional development to support novice instructional coaches in history., Introduction Research on teacher learning has emphasized the importance of ongoing professional development experiences that support instructional change (Desimone et al., 2002; Hill & Papay, 2022). Increasingly, coaching is viewed [...]

Engaging historiography and interpreting secondary sources represent essential elements of historians' work that have been largely ignored in favor of primary source reading in high school history classrooms in the United States. To understand whether and how students apply their historical reasoning skills to secondary sources, we asked twenty-four high school sophomores to think aloud about a historiographic problem. Students were divided into three conditions receiving either the historiographical documents without scaffolding, the documents with explicit written framing, or the documents with explicit written framing and oral instruction. We found that all students sourced, corroborated, and contextualized, but students who received explicit framing with dialogic instruction were significantly more likely to engage in complex evidence evaluation than students in the other two conditions. The results suggest that fuller models of historians' disciplinary practices may be needed in history education.

Despite decades of research to the contrary, public discourse continues to insist on the direct power of curriculum to shape student learning, rather than acknowledge the complex and situated ways that teachers and curricular materials interact to shape enacted instruction. In this paper, we use a model of curriculum enactment to illustrate the complex factors influencing this interaction between teachers and curriculum. We examine how two teachers enact two different lessons on racial history and ask whether and how this interaction led to opening or closing of opportunities for interpretation. Our analysis led us to generate three types of historical interpretations that were potentially available for discussion across these two lessons: (a) "textual" interpretations centred on how a particular text should be understood; (b) "political" interpretations centred on how history should be remembered in the present; (c) "structural" interpretations centred on causal explanations for racism. The results of this study suggest that developing teacher knowledge for facilitating discourse about racial history will need to be steeped in enactment and contextualized in teachers' broader identities and experiences.

A recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed that many history teachers avoid or minimize conversations about race for fear they will trigger "racialized conflict." This silence should raise alarms, as we know that race and racism permeate the lived experiences of teachers and students and inevitably surface in historical discussions. In this article we use a racially charged moment from a middle school discussion of the New Deal to propose three interpretive frames that might support teachers in navigating moments of racial stress in history discussions. We understand interpretive frames to be schematic lenses that guide teacher perception, interpretation, and action in classrooms, and we propose three frames--disciplinary literacy, critical literacy, and racial literacy--that respectively address the historical, structural, and psychosocial dimensions of race and racism. We apply each frame to the classroom incident to illustrate how each might help teachers respond to moments of racial stress. Ultimately, we argue that these interpretive frames represent a suite of mutually reinforcing tools that might be leveraged by teacher educators to help teachers anticipate racial stress and turn paralysis to pedagogy.

History classrooms remain stubbornly resistant to instructional change. We explored whether using classroom video to help teachers identify curriculum-embedded opportunities for student discourse improved their understanding and facilitation of document-based historical discussions. We observed a relationship between teachers' capacity to notice curriculum-embedded opportunities for student discourse in classroom videos and their growth in enacting document-based history discussions. For three of four teachers, the intervention appeared to improve both their analysis of document-based discussion facilitation and their enactment of the practice. Teachers' incoming proficiency and familiarity with document-based history instruction appeared to inform their experience throughout the intervention. We discuss implications for practice and future research on professional development for history teachers.

Although most teachers adapt curriculum, we know little about teachers' rationales for modifying materials, how these rationales align with actual modifications, nor whether any patterns exist in the modifications that teachers make. This is especially the case in history/social studies, where research on curriculum is scant and research on teacher adaptation of curriculum is virtually non-existent. This paper addresses that gap. We report the results of a large-scale survey on curriculum use with over 1900 history teachers. The online survey focused on how and why teachers use and adapt lesson materials from a free online history curriculum and prompted teachers to upload examples of curriculum materials they had modified. We found that individual differences among teachers correlated with particular types of modifications. Moreover, we found that teachers were motivated to modify materials to address their students' needs, and that their modifications rarely affected the core structure -- or theory of content -- of the lessons. We argue that such alignment between teachers and curricular materials represents an example of "curricular fit." We discuss what curricular design features may have contributed to the high level of curricular fit among users as well as the implications of this construct for curriculum implementation efforts across subject areas.

A troubling gap exists between the current state of history assessment and the knowledge and skills deemed essential for students to thrive in the 21st century. We propose a new assessment of historical thinking that represents a promising alignment with extant cognitive research, as well as with the practices that undergird the discipline. In this article, we discuss the design of the Assessment of Historical Analysis and Argumentation (AHAA), as well as the accompanying scoring rubric, and report findings from our administration of multiple forms of the exam with secondary students (N = 618). Evidence indicates that the exam captured student historical thinking about documents and that the items prompted students to construct a cognitive representation of intertextual reasoning. Given the dearth of assessments that capture student historical thinking about documents and their understanding of content, we believe the AHAA has the potential to be an important instructional resource.

History classrooms remain stubbornly resistant to instructional change. We explored whether using classroom video to help teachers identify curriculum-embedded opportunities for student discourse improved their understanding and facilitation of document-based historical discussions. We observed a relationship between teachers' capacity to notice curriculum-embedded opportunities for student discourse in classroom videos and their growth in enacting document-based history discussions. For three of four teachers, the intervention appeared to improve both their analysis of document-based discussion facilitation and their enactment of the practice. Teachers' incoming proficiency and familiarity with document-based history instruction appeared to inform their experience throughout the intervention. We discuss implications for practice and future research on professional development for history teachers. Keywords professional development, social studies education, video analysis, teacher learning, instructional practices, Consider the example of leading a class discussion ... In our view, the routine would best be learned by enacting it as a part of lessons designed to support productive [...]

Both the Common Core Standards for Literacy and the College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards underscore the importance of classroom discussion for the development of high-level literacy and subject-matter knowledge. Yet, discussion remains stubbornly absent in social studies classrooms, which tend toward rote memorization and textbook work. In this article, we discuss our efforts to design practice-based methods instruction that prepares preservice teachers to facilitate text-based, whole-class discussion. We propose a framework for facilitating historical discussions and illustrate it with examples from videos of teacher candidates enacting the practice in K-12 classrooms. The framework assists not only in conceptualizing and naming the discrete components that constitute disciplinary discussion facilitation but also in highlighting where novices appear to struggle. Our analysis has implications for improving teacher education that seeks to prepare novices for ambitious instruction called for by the new literacy and social studies standards.

The article presents an introduction to the model for student instruction known as "Historiography-Based Inquiry (HBI)". The goal of HBI is to allow students to work through the similar processes that historians do when constructing historical knowledge. The article also presents a sample HBI structure framed around an investigation into the role that victim accounts and survivor testimonies have on developing the history of the Holocaust. The sample framing essay provides resources for teachers and students to help them engage with Holocaust history.

In this article, Abby Reisman offers four instructional practices that educators can use to help students grapple with history's contradictions and engage in meaningful text-based discussions. Reisman details two suggestions that can be used in history classrooms and across the disciplines: orient students to one another and orient students to the text. She also recommends two practices specifically for history and social studies discussions: design compelling central historical questions and stabilize the content. The end goal is for teachers to thoughtfully plan text-based discussions so that students read, write, think, and discuss like historians.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) call on science and social studies teachers to engage in literacy instruction that prepares students for the academic rigors of college. The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) designed a framework to address the challenge of literacy-content integration. At the heart of the intervention are fill-in-the-blank writing prompts that teachers are expected to populate with appropriate content in English Language Arts (ELA), history, or science. This study examines 42 LDC instructional units designed by 8th grade social studies teachers from 2 states as well as the student written work that emerged from these instructional units. My analysis suggests that, on its own, the content literacy approach reflected in the LDC framework is inadequate for helping students use textual evidence in the ways stipulated by CCSS. In particular, students are unlikely to acknowledge authorship or indicate why the evidence they selected is relevant or credible.

Both the Common Core Standards for Literacy and the College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards underscore the importance of classroom discussion for the development of high-level literacy and subject- matter knowledge. Yet, discussion remains stubbornly absent in social studies classrooms, which tend toward rote memorization and textbook work. In this article, we discuss our efforts to design practice-based methods instruction that prepares preservice teachers to facilitate text-based, whole-class discussion. We propose a framework for facilitating historical discussions and illustrate it with examples from videos of teacher candidates enacting the practice in K-12 classrooms. The framework assists not only in conceptualizing and naming the discrete components that constitute disciplinary discussion facilitation but also in highlighting where novices appear to struggle. Our analysis has implications for improving teacher education that seeks to prepare novices for ambitious instruction called for by the new literacy and social studies standards. Keywords practice-based teacher education, social studies teacher education, preservice teacher education, social studies education, history education, Despite a long tradition of theoretical and empirical research that extols the value of student discourse, productive discussion remains stubbornly absent in K-12 classrooms (e.g., Cazden, 2001; Nystrand, Wu, Gamoran, [...]

In this article, we draw clear distinctions between generic reading comprehension and disciplinary literacy in history. We argue that disciplinary reading restores agency to the reader, changing the typical relationship between text and reader, in which knowledge flows down from one to the other. Sourcing, for example, enjoins readers to engage authors, querying them about their credentials, their interest in the story they are telling, their position vis-à-vis the event they narrate. Contextualization prompts the reader to question the social and political circumstances surrounding the text. In a digital age characterized by unfettered access to information, such skills become essential tools for an informed citizenry.

Focusing on episodes of student-generated and - sustained talk during document-based disciplinary history discussions, this study explored what teacher candidates prioritize and value about social studies discussions, and how these priorities align with their actions and goals as facilitators. Using a complex systems-based model, we investigated candidates' goals as they planned for, facilitated, and reflected upon student sense-making relative to three common orientations for social studies discussions: disciplinary history, participatory civics, and critical literacy. Findings revealed that candidates employed elements from all three orientations, yet without clear alignment to any particular approach. This misalignment reflected tensions between candidates' stated goals, beliefs about student engagement, and instructional decisions. We draw implications for teacher education to support candidates in developing coherent practices for discussion facilitation that align with their instructional visions and socio-cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: The Common Core State Standards Initiative reveals how little we understand about the components of effective discussion-based instruction in disciplinary history. Although the case for classroom discussion as a core method for subject matter learning stands on stable theoretical and empirical ground, to date, none of the research on classroom discussion has examined whole-class text-based discussion in secondary history classrooms. Purpose: This study explored how teachers and students in five 11th-grade classrooms participated in whole-class discussion, using intervention materials designed to promote text-based disciplinary discussion. Analysis of videotaped instruction sought to (a) determine the degree to which the instructional materials fostered disciplinary discussion about texts, and (b) analyze teacher talk moves that characterized effective facilitation of such discussions. Research Design: This qualitative study was embedded in a larger quasi-experimental curricular intervention that found treatment effects on factual recall, historical thinking, and general reading comprehension. In this paper, we analyze classroom videos from five treatment classrooms taken over the course of the six-month intervention. Each teacher was videotaped once per week, for a total of 20 videotaped lessons per teacher. Findings/results: Analyses showed that disciplinary discussion was surprisingly rare, and discussion that promoted historical understanding even rarer. Discussions that were most successful in deepening students' historical understanding were characterized by talk moves that drew students' attention to the text, and that stabilized the historical content. Conclusions/Recommendations: The study has implications for teacher preparation focused on implementation of Common Core State Standards as well as for teacher training in domain-specific core practices.

Although most teachers adapt curriculum, we know little about teachers' rationales for modifying materials, how these rationales align with actual modifications, nor whether any patterns exist in the modifications that teachers make. This is especially the case in history/social studies, where research on curriculum is scant and research on teacher adaptation of curriculum is virtually non-existent. This paper addresses that gap. We report the results of a large-scale survey on curriculum use with over 1900 history teachers. The online survey focused on how and why teachers use and adapt lesson materials from a free online history curriculum and prompted teachers to upload examples of curriculum materials they had modified. We found that individual differences among teachers correlated with particular types of modifications. Moreover, we found that teachers were motivated to modify materials to address their students' needs, and that their modifications rarely affected the core structure - or theory of content - of the lessons. We argue that such alignment between teachers and curricular materials represents an example of curricular fit. We discuss what curricular design features may have contributed to the high level of curricular fit among users as well as the implications of this construct for curriculum implementation efforts across subject areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]