A practical and engaging guide to the art of teaching history Well-grounded in scholarly literature and practical experience, Teaching History offers an instructors’ guide for developing and teaching classroom history. Written in the author’s engaging (and often humorous) style, the book discusses the challenges teachers encounter, explores effective teaching strategies, and offers insight for managing burgeoning technologies. William Caferro presents an assessment of the current debates on the study of history in a broad historical context and evaluates the changing role of the discipline in our increasingly globalized world. Teaching History reveals that the valuable skills of teaching are highly transferable. It stresses the importance of careful organization as well as the advantages of combining research agendas with teaching agendas. Inspired by the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning movement, the book encourages careful reflection on teaching methods and stresses the importance of applying various approaches to promote active learning. Drawing on the author’s experience as an instructor at the high school and university levels, Teaching History: Contains an authoritative and humorous look at the profession and the strategies and techniques of teaching history Incorporates a review of the current teaching practice in terms of previous methods, examining nineteenth and twentieth century debates and strategies Includes a discussion of the use of technology in the history classroom, from the advent of course management (Blackboard) systems to today’s digital resources Covers techniques for teaching the history of any nation not only American history Written for graduate and undergraduate students of history teaching and methods, historiography, history skills, and education, Teaching History is a comprehensive book that explores the strategies, challenges, and changes that have occurred in the profession.

Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past, Engaging Audiences is a brief foundational textbook for public history. It is organized around the questions and ethical dilemmas that drive public history in a variety of settings, from local community-based projects to international case studies. This book is designed for use in undergraduate and graduate classrooms with future public historians, teachers, and consumers of history in mind. The authors are practicing public historians who teach history and public history to a mix of undergraduate and graduate students at universities across the United States and in international contexts. This book is based on original research and the authors’ first-hand experiences, offering a fresh perspective on the dynamic field of public history based on a decade of consultation with public history educators about what they needed in an introductory textbook. Each chapter introduces a concept or common practice to students, highlighting key terms for student review and for instructor assessment of student learning. The body of each chapter introduces theories, and basic conceptual building blocks intermixed with case studies to illustrate these points. Footnotes credit sources but also serve as breadcrumbs for instructors who might like to assign more in-depth reading for more advanced students or for the purposes of lecture development. Each chapter ends with suggestions for activities that the authors have tried with their own students and suggested readings, books, and websites that can deepen student exposure to the topic.

First released in the Spring of 1999, How People Learn has been expanded to show how the theories and insights from the original book can translate into actions and practice, now making a real connection between classroom activities and learning behavior. This edition includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning. Like the original edition, this book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methodsâ€"to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb. How People Learn examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system. Topics include: How learning actually changes the physical structure of the brain. How existing knowledge affects what people notice and how they learn. What the thought processes of experts tell us about how to teach. The amazing learning potential of infants. The relationship of classroom learning and everyday settings of community and workplace. Learning needs and opportunities for teachers. A realistic look at the role of technology in education.

The premise of the Teaching American History (TAH) project—a discretionary grant program funded under the U.S. Department of Education’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act— is that in order to teach history better, teachers need to know more history. Unique among professional development programs in emphasizing specific content to be taught over a particular pedagogical approach, TAH grants assist schools in implementing scientifically-based research methods for improving the quality of instruction, professional development, and teacher education in American history. Illustrating the diversity of these programs as they have been implemented in local education agencies throughout the nation, this collection of essays and research reports from TAH participants provides models for historians, teachers, teacher educators, and others interested in the teaching and learning of American History, and presents examples of lessons learned from a cross-section of TAH projects. Each chapter presents a narrative of innovation, documenting collaboration between classroom, community, and the academy that gives immediate and obvious relevance to the teaching and learning process of American history. By sharing these narratives, this book expands the impact of emerging practices from individual TAH projects to reach a larger audience across the nation.