Despite limitations and challenges, teaching about difficult histories is an essential aspect of social studies courses and units across grade levels. This practical resource highlights stories of K–12 practitioners who have critically examined and reflected on their experiences with planning and teaching histories identified as difficult. Featuring the voices of teacher educators, classroom teachers, and museum educators, these stories provide readers with rare examples of how to plan for, teach, and reflect on difficult histories. The book is divided into four main sections: Centering Difficult History Content, Centering Teacher and Student Identities, Centering Local and Contemporary Contexts, and Centering Teacher Decision-making. Key topics include teaching about genocide, slavery, immigration, war, racial violence, and terrorism. This dynamic book highlights the practitioner’s perspective to reveal how teachers can and do think critically about their motivations and the methods they use to engage students in rigorous, complex, and appropriate studies of the past. Book Features: Expanded notions of what difficult histories can be and how they can be approached pedagogically.Thoughtful pictures of practice of some of the most complex histories to teach. Stories of K–12 teachers and museum educators with the research of leading scholars in social studies education. Examples from a wide range of educational contexts in the United States and other countries. Resources useful to teachers and teacher educators. Contributors include LaGarrett J. King, Cinthia Salinas, Stephanie van Hover, Amanda Vickery, Sohyun An, H. James (Jim) Garrett, Christopher C. Martell, and Jennifer Hauver.

Grounded in a critical sociocultural approach, this volume examines issues associated with teaching and learning difficult histories in international contexts. Defined as representations of past violence and oppression, difficult histories are contested and can evoke emotional, often painful, responses in the present. Teaching and learning these histories is contentious yet necessary for increased dialogue within conflict-ridden societies, reconciliation in post-conflict societies, and greater social cohesion in long-standing democratic nations. Focusing on locations and populations across the globe, chapter authors investigate how key themes—including culture, identity, collective memory, emotion, and multi-perspectivity, historical consciousness, distance, and amnesia—inform the teaching and learning of difficult histories.

Teaching Difficult History through Film explores the potential of film to engage young people in controversial or contested histories and how they are represented, ranging from gender and sexuality, to colonialism and slavery. Adding to the education literature of how to teach and learn difficult histories, contributors apply their theoretical and pedagogical expertise and experiences to a variety of historical topics to show the ways that film can create opportunities for challenging conversations in the classroom and attempts to recognize the perspectives of historically marginalized groups. Chapters focus on translating research into practice by applying theoretical frameworks such as critical race theory, auto-ethnography or cultural studies, as well as more practical pedagogical models with film. Each chapter also includes applicable pedagogical considerations, such as how to help students approach difficult topics, model questions or strategies for engaging students, and examples from the authors’ own experiences in teaching with film or in leading students to develop counter-narratives through filmmaking. These discussions of the real considerations facing classroom teachers and professors are sure to appeal to experienced secondary teachers, pre-service teacher education programs, graduate students, and academic audiences within education, history, and film studies. Part and chapter discussion guides, full references of the films included in the book, and resources for teachers are available on the book’s companion website www.teachingdifficulthistory.com.

Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites is framed by educational psychoanalytic theory and positions museum workers, public historians, and museum visitors as learners. Through this lens, museum workers and public historians can develop compelling and ethical representations of historical individuals, communities, and populations who have suffered. It includes various examples of difficult knowledge, detailed examples of specific interpretation methods, and will give readers an in-depth explanation of the psychoanalytic educational theories behind the methodologies. Audiences can more responsibly and productively engage in learning histories of oppression and trauma when they are in measured and sensitive museum learning environments and public history venues. To learn more, check out the website here: http://interpretingdifficulthistory.com/

Building upon the theoretical foundations for the teaching and learning of difficult histories in social studies classrooms, this edited collection offers diverse perspectives on school practices, curriculum development, and experiences of teaching about traumatic events. Considering the relationship between memory, history, and education, this volume advances the discussion of classroom-based practices for teaching and learning difficult histories and investigates the role that history education plays in creating and sustaining national and collective identities.

Offers a fresh overview of teaching with film to effectively enhance social studies instruction.

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.

This book examines the historical context of African Americans' educational experiences, and it provides information that helps to assess the dominant discourse on education, which emphasises White middle-class cultural values and standardisation of students' outcomes. Curriculum violence is defined as the deliberate manipulation of academic programming in a manner that ignores or compromises the intellectual and psychological well being of learners. Related to this are the issues of assessment and the current focus on high-stakes standardised testing in schools, where most teachers are forced to teach for the test.

Presents a collection of lessons and activities for teaching American history for students in middle school and high school.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This volume discusses the effects, models and implications of history teaching in relation to conflict transformation and reconciliation from a social-psychological perspective. Bringing together a mix of established and young researchers and academics, from the fields of psychology, education, and history, the book provides an in-depth exploration of the role of historical narratives, history teaching, history textbooks and the work of civil society organizations in post-conflict societies undergoing reconciliation processes, and reflects on the state of the art at both the international and regional level. As well as dealing with the question of the ‘perpetrator-victim’ dynamic, the book also focuses on the particular context of transition in and out of cold war in Eastern Europe and the post-conflict settings of Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine and Cyprus. It is also exploring the pedagogical classroom practices of history teaching and a critical comparison of various possible approaches taken in educational praxis. The book will make compelling reading for students and researchers of education, history, sociology, peace and conflict studies and psychology.