To prepare students for participation in a pluralistic, democratic society, history curriculum should help them develop mature ideas about why multiple accounts of the same events exist. But how can we know if we are successful? In this article, we describe work on the design, validation, and piloting of a paper-and-pencil instrument called the…

Drawing on a three-year multimethod study of civic engagement within "Dewey Elementary," this article identifies the contextual supports of civic efficacy. In particular, it works to map the role of the teacher in supporting the civic action and efficacy of six fifth-grade girls who requested changes to the school's existing lunch…

The author conducted research in Jordan, where he interviewed secondary school social studies teachers about their perspectives on teaching critical-thinking skills in their classrooms. All interviews were audiotaped or videotaped in Arabic and later translated into English. The author qualitatively analyzed data, including the translations of the…

During the spring and summer 1999, to increase his understanding of the mental pictures that young adolescents hold of their own nation and other nations, the author interviewed students from four sociologically similar urban-area New York schools and students in a junior high school class in Oslo, Norway. He used a semantic differential survey…

Describes how to use student generated comments to motivate class discussion and curriculum change in high school modern European history courses. Explains a technique for improving student participation in the classroom through a technique (transactional evaluation) which involves introduction, comment generation, simple data processing, group…