The Function of History in an Americanism Program

This article discusses how local history can be used by teachers to help develop historical thinking skills such as source analysis, the collection of data, and the creation of historical arguments. Using New York City as a case study, this article argues that urban spaces and local communities provide historical evidence that can be read and analyzed. It uses different streets, buildings, and neighborhoods from New York City to show how historical conclusions can be drawn from those resources. It also discusses instructional ideas that teachers can develop in their classrooms.     

Combating Racial Inequity Through Local Historical Analysis: A Community-Informed Social Studies Unit

One way for teachers to use engaging and relevant social studies curriculum is by delving into local history to help students understand the influence that community activists have had on national policies and events. In this article, we provide teachers an approach to incorporate topics of racial inequity in their classrooms by showcasing a dynamic social studies unit that reveals the role of local history and community activists during the national Civil Rights Movement. As an example within the unit, we present a local, historical narrative that describes the activism of three local Black teachers in Palm Beach County, Florida, whose efforts in the 1940s significantly impacted the foundations of what was to become the Civil Rights Movement. We then present a multicultural social studies unit developed from this local history and guidelines for teachers to enact their own locally informed social studies unit. This content will help teachers expose students to the rich history of their community’s past by sharing ways that teachers can incorporate culturally relevant instruction of racially charged topics into the classroom.     

“It Isn’t in the Curriculum”: World History Teachers’ Views on U.S. Presidential Elections

Abstract

This study examines world history teachers’ attitudes regarding teaching U.S. presidential elections. During interviews with nine teachers, participants emphasized that the competing demands of their classrooms negatively influenced their willingness to teach about the U.S. presidential elections generally, and the 2016 Election specifically. The participants reconsidered their stances on not teaching elections during the interviews but struggled to reconcile their role as world history teachers with their priorities as social studies more generally. While elections are part of the civics curriculum and can be easily associated with history courses, this study suggests that greater attention should be paid to how citizenship practices can be understood through world history classes to promote teaching about elections as part of the curriculum.     

The Social Studies—a Slogan or a Service

This article discusses the role that teacher educators can play in helping their students develop a fuller understanding of world history. Trends such as globalization have led to calls for increased teaching about the diverse cultures and peoples of the world. However, prospective teachers’ educational backgrounds have in most cases not adequately prepared them to teach world history effectively. The article begins with a discussion of the historical evolution of the course in world history; it then defines different approaches to this field, and concludes by providing suggestions for how teacher educators can help their students bring a true version of world history to their classrooms.     

Comfort Women: Enhancing Students’ Global Awareness through Human Right Education

Abstract

Teaching about the comfort women of World War II offers a compelling case study for the social studies classroom and human rights education. The topic will educate students to become knowledgeable about the larger world and its dark histories that have been omitted or scarcely mentioned in U.S. history textbooks. This article provides high school social studies teachers with the historical background of comfort women, rationales for including this topic in social studies curriculum, and teaching strategies and resources that teachers can use in their classrooms.     

In Defense of Socialized Procedures

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 two historical stories are analyzed to reveal a range of literary techniques that were enlisted by their authors to create interest among their readers or listeners.     

A Unit in Current Events

The authors encourage teachers to make use of existing, standard social studies curriculum to uncover and to make visible the normative assumptions that underlie American cultural beliefs about gender and sexuality. The article provides an overview of how some cultures within the various Native American nations conceptualize gender and sexuality in ways that challenge Western norms. An example lesson plan addressing Two Spirit history is included as well as reflections from teachers who have taught the curriculum in their classrooms.     

Historical Thinking and Sports History: A Case Study Using the Brooklyn Dodgers

Abstract

This article discusses how the history of sports can serve as way to understand abstract concepts associated with local history and social studies education. An introductory discussion outlines how sports can engage and interest students, focusing especially on ideas related to history thinking (such as change and continuity). A case study using the Brooklyn Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles is used to illustrate these ideas, focusing on themes associated with suburbanization and urban renewal. A lesson plan is also provided.     

Black Gotham: African Americans in New York City, 1900–2000

For almost four centuries, African Americans in New York City have engaged in ethnic “dream-work,” shaping the city and being shaped by the city in return. The longstanding practice of racism forced a heterogeneous community of Blacks—originating in different parts of the country and the world, speaking many languages, and comprised of different economic classes— to coalesce as a community in order to challenge their subjugation. This article explores the issues, conditions, and experiences that frame the coalescence of the African American community in New York City during the twentieth century, highlighting how racial identities have been produced in the city. In the first part of this article, I reflect on the presence of Blacks in New York City to illuminate some of the common themes that have emerged from the African American experience in Gotham. The second section is a historical exploration of the black experience in New York City, illuminating the conditions, expectations, events, and spaces that have shaped its formation.

     

The Conclusions and Recommendations of the Commission on the Investigation of the Social Studies in the Schools

ABSTRACT

How can teachers effectively use documentary film to teach history, and toward what goals? This article addresses these important questions by: (1) exploring what we know about secondary teachers' practices with documentary film and secondary students' beliefs about documentary film as a source of knowledge about the past, (2) proposing a rationale for the use of documentary film that supports the goals of history education, and (3) discussing examples of documentaries that can be shown to further the rationale presented. Although there are numerous suitable purposes and methods for using documentary film, we argue that two of the most powerful and appropriate are as a way to explore multiple perspectives and as a way to teach about controversial issues.     

The Tradition of Pioneer Hardships in American History Textbooks

Two middle-school teachers incorporated student creation of historical accounts into their history instruction. During these projects, the teachers instructed their students to (1) summarize information presented during classroom instruction on a topic (e.g., the Great Migration) and (2) explain the significance of that topic to the present day. This second component of the task addressed a curricular standard regarding historical thinking, but students' responses referenced themes from citizenship education (e.g., cultural pluralism, social criticism, and national identification). More than eighty student projects were analyzed and coded for themes. This study presents a portrait of ambitious history teaching and suggests a tactic for a civics-infused history education course.     

Learning to teach history in culturally diverse classrooms

This paper examines prospective history teachers’ thinking about ethnic and cultural diversity and their experiences of learning to teach about history in multicultural classrooms. The paper reviews the findings of a follow‐up study of 22 Finnish student teachers during their nine‐month teacher education programme. The data consist of questionnaire data and various written assignments of this sample, plus interviews with nine selected persons. According to the results, signs of continuity and transformation are apparent in the student teachers’ thinking. The informants frequently described problems related to diversity, although most of them did not see diversity as changing their way of teaching history as such.     

Who Controls Whom? History and Educational Technologies

Abstract

Considering the lack of research on the historisation of educational technologies, the current study attempts to fill this void. To do so, the following research question is posed: To what extent have educational technologies and local histories controlled one another? Data for this question came from a naturalistic enquiry into a university in the Saudi Arabian public sector. Having analysed documents, interviews, and observations by means of the grounded theory technique, two key themes emerged: local histories controlling educational technologies and educational technologies controlling local histories. The consideration of both themes brought forth a theoretical proposition — that there are political dynamics between educational technologies and micro histories, with one continuously directing and driving the other. The recommendation is therefore that policymakers, scholars, and commentators should be more cognisant of the political tensions between local histories and educational technologies.     

The Psychiatric Medication History

Abstract

This article presents The Psychiatric Medication History: An Interview Schedule, a 30-step semi-structured protocol designed to help practitioners understand how clients manage their psychotropic medications and interpret their effects. The critical perspective leading to the design of this interview schedule, its purposes for clients and practitioners, its divergence from traditional treatment histories, and its uses and limitations are discussed. The author contends that, in a safe space, taking a psychiatric medication history according to these suggested guidelines offers clients an opportunity to construct an independent, evidence-tested personal narrative about their medication use. To practitioners, taking such a medication history offers a person-in-en-vironment point of entry into the psychopharmacology scene.     

Teaching Disability History: The Case of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Abstract

This article addresses the teaching of disability history, specifically concerning the historical figure of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). Drawing upon literature from multicultural education, disability history and disability studies in education (DSE), the authors discuss historical content and teaching ideas for instruction about FDR. The authors present findings from a content analysis of six middle level and secondary United States history textbooks, noting unanimous coverage of FDR’s disability resulting from polio. These textbooks noted how he overcame his disability and strengthened his character, referenced his decision to conceal his disability, and quoted FDR directly regarding his disability. The authors follow this analysis with discussion of several middle and high school teaching ideas that might augment textbook coverage and representation about FDR. This article explores how teachers of United States history might further develop their teaching of history through the inclusion of disability history within the context of a famous historical figure.     

Travelling hopefully: Anti-racist practice and practice learning opportunities

This article has been written in response to the current developments in social work education which seek to make anti-racist practice a central requirement of social work training and to make it into a central component of good social work practice. In the present context in which social work is undertaken this will not be an easy goal to achieve without considerable commitment and attention to the detailed content and process of social work and the learning opportunities it offers.

The article focuses on how the teaching of anti-racism on social work courses is then followed through in placement experience and highlights the difficulties that can occur. It describes part of an on-going development and monitoring process initiated with college and practice based teachers at Bath University which is seeking to improve practice at a local level.

It includes a questionnaire sent to practice teachers and students, a practice teaching workshop and the development of a monitoring system for use in future placements. The research attempts to understand better what level of anti-racist practice can be expected of students in short placements and how this might be assessed. It also looks at the issues which arise for practice teachers in their agencies, the importance of management commitment in developing new forms of practice, and the support that is needed for individuals. It concludes with a tentative attempt to put forward a model for developing and assessing anti-racist practice in a placement.     

The Attitude of High School Pupils Toward History

Music has been a source of inspiration, of protest, of wisdom, and of emotion for millennia. In the United States, music became woven into the fabric of the culture well before it became a nation and it remains so today. Songs have expressed a range of emotions and informed listeners of historical, social, and political issues at every level of sophistication. Yet our passion for music, coupled with its significance as an artifact of history, has not found its way into classrooms in any prominent way. This article explores four models of using music in the history classroom, each of which ventures to encourage history teachers to consider music, its analysis, and even its creation as integral to history curricula. Each model uses various instructional strategies grounded in tenets of historical thinking and range from a teacher-centered Close Reading Model to inquiry and discovery-based approaches, concluding with a student-centered model of Creative Development.     

Applying a Critical and Peace Education Lens to the American Revolution in the Social Studies Classroom

Abstract

The American Revolution is central to the identity of citizens of the United States. It is, therefore, rarely critiqued in the U.S. social studies classroom. This article examines how teachers can discuss the American Revolution using both a critical historical approach and the ideas of peace education, particularly the strand that focuses on the problematization of war. Specific examples are given for how teachers can critique some of the national myths surrounding the American Revolution. Furthermore, the rationale for this critique of the American Revolution is presented, particularly as it relates to the problematic history of minorities in the aftermath of the Revolution and the relationship between students’ views of the American Revolution and the ties to modern-day violence and military engagements. The goal for this more nuanced understanding of the American Revolution is not only to make students more critical thinkers in regard to their history but hopefully to also help them gain a healthier societal outlook in regard to the issues of peace and conflict.