The current study investigates the impact of using an Instructional Model of Historical Empathy to teach the Holocaust on students' ability to contextualize historical events, recognize perspectives, and affectively connect to victims of the Holocaust. A three-day instructional unit was designed that incorporates primary sources from a variety of…

This article presents a qualitative practitioner research study designed to understand how a morally complex Israel curriculum impacts the nature of secondary school students' relationships with Israel. The research was conducted with 31 students enrolled in an elective about Israeli society at a Jewish high school in Canada. At both the start and…

Critical literacy is an appropriate learning outcome for social studies courses because it has the potential to teach students how to critically evaluate sources of information relevant to historical texts and current news media. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine the process through which students learned to apply critical…

Minimal research has been accumulated in the field of social studies education for Novakian concept mapping, yet there are many benefits from adding this learning tool to a teacher's instructional toolbox. The article defines Novakian concept mapping and invites readers to adopt digital Novakian concept mapping into the social studies classroom as…

This study uses interview and survey methods to describe the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme's (DP) development of students' "academic civic mindedness" and "model citizenship" at four public schools in California. Results indicate that the DP pedagogy enables students to develop many of the skills that are…

Oral histories are a powerful pedagogical tool in developing historical understanding and important learning skills simultaneously. Teachers use firsthand accounts of historical time periods and/or events to help develop students' sense of history. In addition to gaining historical understanding, students are able to bring history alive by…

The authors of this article are two teacher educators who worked collaboratively to co-teach an interdisciplinary English and US history class to eleventh-grade students in an urban high school. They wanted to ensure the methods they were teaching preservice teachers were current and effective. The article discusses the foundational beliefs that…

The authors discuss how high school students participated in a unit in which they learned about African American history in a 1:1 computer classroom--in particular, how they were able to use digital history to learn about a variety of African American leaders who are not frequently covered in the traditional American History textbook. In addition,…

This article evaluates the impact of extending a traditional written research paper into a digital documentary on students' perception and level of comprehension of a global sustainability issue. An adaptation of Moon's (1999) five-stage map of learning was used to assess the written and digital projects students submitted to a statewide…

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…

Despite 9/11, the seemingly endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons capabilities, and the Arab Spring and its aftermath, the social studies curricula of high schools throughout the nation generally put little emphasis on the Middle East and Islam as the foundation for understanding vital issues that…

Along with the ever-increasing racial/ethnic diversity in U.S. schools, researchers began to investigate the impact of racial/ethnic identity on young people's understanding of the nation's history. Compared to other racial minorities, Asian American students have received little academic and educational attention. This article seeks to address…

What were you doing on September 11th? This seems like an obvious question to prompt conversations about the World Trade Center tragedy, but is it a good question to ask high school students a decade removed from the event? Many students now in high school were toddlers at the time. What do they really remember from that day? Are these memories…

The authors interviewed more than one hundred high school students in three regions of China about their knowledge and perceptions of the United States and China. The authors' findings suggest the following: (1) students possess extensive knowledge about the United States in terms of its history, geography, socioeconomic system, and education, and…

Discusses results of a study which found that attitudes toward school social studies declined with grade level among a random sample of 1,600 students in sixth through ninth grades in schools in a north central state in the United States and compares results with a survey of attitudes of 1,817 students in 17 schools in Melbourne, Australia. (DB)