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This provocative book challenges the status quo in history eduction by proposing that isolated facts from the past be replaced by knowledge relevant to the future. Not a classroom teaching guide, this book examines the fundamental premises and practices that underlie the work of every history teacher from grade school through graduate school.
The faculty at the University of Houston's program in Futures Studies share their comprehensive, integrated approach to preparing foresight professionals and assisting others doing foresight projects. Provides an essential guide to developing classes on the future or even establishing whole degree programs.
Learn how to enact justice-oriented pedagogy and foster students’ critical engagement in today’s history classroom. Over the past 2 decades, various scholars have rightfully argued that we need to teach students to “think like a historian” or “think like a democratic citizen.” In this book, the authors advocate for cultivating activist thinking in the history classroom. Teachers can use Teaching History for Justice to show students how activism was used in the past to seek justice, how past social movements connect to the present, and how democratic tools can be used to change society. The first section examines the theoretical and research foundation for “thinking like an activist” and outlines three related pedagogical concepts: social inquiry, critical multiculturalism, and transformative democratic citizenship. The second section presents vignettes based on the authors’ studies of elementary, middle, and high school history teachers who engage in justice-oriented teaching practices. Book Features: Outlines key components of justice-oriented history pedagogy for the history and social studies K–12 classroom.Advocates for students to develop “thinking like an activist” in their approach to studying the past.Contains research-based vignettes of four imagined teachers, providing examples of what teaching history for justice can look like in practice.Includes descriptions of typical units of study in the discipline of history and how they can be reimagined to help students learn about movements and social change.
A look at how to teach history in the age of easily accessible—but not always reliable—information. Let’s start with two truths about our era that are so inescapable as to have become clichés: We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percent of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-meaning but ignorant. Some of it is deliberately deceptive. All of it is pernicious. With the Internet at our fingertips, what’s a teacher of history to do? In Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone), professor Sam Wineburg has the answers, beginning with this: We can’t stick to the same old read-the-chapter-answer-the-question snoozefest. If we want to educate citizens who can separate fact from fake, we have to equip them with new tools. Historical thinking, Wineburg shows, has nothing to do with the ability to memorize facts. Instead, it’s an orientation to the world that cultivates reasoned skepticism and counters our tendency to confirm our biases. Wineburg lays out a mine-filled landscape, but one that with care, attention, and awareness, we can learn to navigate. The future of the past may rest on our screens. But its fate rests in our hands. Praise for Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) “If every K-12 teacher of history and social studies read just three chapters of this book—”Crazy for History,” “Changing History . . . One Classroom at a Time,” and “Why Google Can’t Save Us” —the ensuing transformation of our populace would save our democracy.” —James W. Lowen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Teaching What Really Happened “A sobering and urgent report from the leading expert on how American history is taught in the nation’s schools. . . . A bracing, edifying, and vital book.” —Jill Lepore, New Yorker staff writer and author of These Truths “Wineburg is a true innovator who has thought more deeply about the relevance of history to the Internet—and vice versa—than any other scholar I know. Anyone interested in the uses and abuses of history today has a duty to read this book.” —Niall Ferguson, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, and author of The Ascent of Money and Civilization
Covering each of the core curriculum areas in turn, this is a reference on school subject teaching. The authors assess the development of teaching within each subject area since the 1944 Education Act up to the year 2000. Future challenges are also explored.
UNLIKE TRADITIONAL TEXTBOOKS that can overwhelm the reader with countless facts to absorb, the Student's Friend Concise World History highlights the most important developments of world history in a clear and concise manner that is capable of being comprehended by the human mind. Teachers have successfully used The Student's Friend in homeschool, middle school, high school, and college in the United States and abroad. Part 1 covers the period from prehistory to the year 1500; Part 2, the period from 1500 to the present. In contrast to other concise histories that may focus on impersonal historical processes, the Student's Friend includes men and women who helped to shape history and who illustrate timeless aspects of human nature. WHY A CONCISE HISTORICAL NARRATIVE? The Student's Friend is designed to be consistent with findings from cognitive science that emphasize learning the most important principles and concepts of a school discipline, rather than learning large quantities of superficial facts that are likely to be forgotten shortly after the exam is over. The respected Bradley Commission on History in Schools has said, "The amount of time required to achieve student engagement and genuine comprehension of significant issues will necessitate leaving out much that is 'covered' by the usual text." CONCISENESS CAN BRING CLARITY. Cognitive psychologist Frank N. Dempster has written, "Many texts are so packed with facts, names, and details that the real point of the lesson is often obscured." One of the greatest benefits of a concise historical narrative is the clarity it can bring to a student's understanding of history by focusing on essential knowledge rather than on extensive, sometimes confusing, and often-trivial detail. ELIMINATES GAPS AND DISCONTINUITIES. Teachers can't adequately cover all the information contained in standard thousand-page textbooks, so they commonly skip around in the textbook, which can leave big holes in the historical narrative. The Student's Friend is designed to include no more information than students can realistically cover during a standard high school course. Because the picking and choosing has been carefully done and logically sequenced, continuity is maintained and gaps eliminated. BALANCES BREADTH AND DEPTH. The concise historical narrative leaves time in the curriculum for additional learning activities such as research papers, multimedia presentations, source-analysis activities, and simulations, a practice sometimes called "postholing." The narrative performs a unifying function like a fence that gives shape to the landscape and provides the connecting fabric between events, while postholes are occasions to dig more deeply into the human dimensions of history-to explore how events of the past affected people's lives then and now. The subject matter of world history is so vast that it can be a difficult subject to grasp and to teach. Teachers and students alike can benefit from the understandable picture of history provided by the Student's Friend Concise World History.
An incisive overview of the current debate over the teaching of history in American schools examines the setting of controversial standards for history education, the integration of multiculturalism and minorities into the curriculum, and ways to make history more relevant to students. Reprint.
Considering studying history at university? Wondering whether a history degree will get you a good job, and what you might earn? Want to know what it’s actually like to study history at degree level? This book tells you what you need to know. Studying any subject at degree level is an investment in the future that involves significant cost. Now more than ever, students and their parents need to weigh up the potential benefits of university courses. That’s where the Why Study series comes in. This series of books, aimed at students, parents and teachers, explains in practical terms the range and scope of an academic subject at university level and where it can lead in terms of careers or further study. Each book sets out to enthuse the reader about its subject and answer the crucial questions that a college prospectus does not.
A rethinking of teaching methodology in history classrooms As issues of history and memory collide in our society and in the classroom, the time is ripe to rethink the place of history in our schools. Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History represents a unique effort by an international group of scholars to understand the future of teaching and learning about the past. It will challenge the ways in which historians, teachers, and students think about teaching history. The book concerns itself first and foremost with the question, "How do students develop sophisticated historical understandings and how can teachers best encourage this process?" Recent developments in psychology, education, and historiography inform the debates that take place within Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History. This four-part volume identifies the current issues and problems in history education, then works towards a deep and considered understanding of this evolving field. The contributors to this volume link theory to practice, making crucial connections with those who teach history. Published in conjunction with the American Historical Association.
