United States history classrooms have the potential to simultaneously foster an understanding of students' cultures and experiences today in relation to the nation's history and develop critical thinking and technology literacy. Yet classroom materials and instructors tend to avoid, ignore, or misrepresent controversial topics such as race and…

The purpose of this paper is to add to the existing body of research on the American world history curriculum, paying particular attention to the challenges of teaching about a historical era for which new knowledge emerges regularly and old paradigms are being questioned constantly. It does so in four sections. The first section examines research…

The author has known Gary Nash as a friend since 1969, but she only began to work with him as a colleague in 1989, when he invited her to join the National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS) as it was just forming. During the seven years she spent as Assistant and then Associate Director of the NCHS, they shared the extraordinary experience…

In this article, the author recalls the time she met Gary Nash at UCLA on July 13, 1992, when they began the work of creating the National Standards in History. Professor Nash was the leader in the development of the United States History Standards. In creating the Standards, they were to focus on Historical Thinking. They needed to organize the…

Among the greatest frustrations of a teacher of history is the failure of many students, even bright and motivated students, to provide concrete evidence to support their assertions about the past. The problem of evidence is by its nature developmental, and thus not amenable to simple punitive or explanatory approaches. History, as a discipline,…