Textbooks and Teaching
This Web site serves as a companion to the “Textbooks and Teaching” section published each year by the Journal of American History. Here you may find syllabi and other supplemental material from authors who participated in “Textbooks and Teaching,” as well as the full text of the print articles.
2009
More than the Sum of Its Parts: Rethinking the History Curriculum
Reimagining the history curriculum, rather than merely clearing away “dead” courses and updating descriptions of “living” ones, requires significant collective endeavor across fields and periods of specialization. But as this section of “Textbooks and Teaching” suggests, the endeavor can pay rich dividends for departmental culture as well as student learning.
2008
Starting Places: Studying How Students Understand History
Who are our students, and what and how do they think about history? Analyzing what we do as teachers and why we do it might usefully begin with understanding what our students bring to the history classroom. What do our students imagine when they consider the American past, or the study of history more broadly? And how might we answer those questions as historians, applying to teaching the same sorts of analysis that we bring to our historical scholarship? This section offers three attempts to address those challenges.
2007
“Pivoting the Center”: Diverse Surveys of American History
What happens when we make a group other than straight, white, Euro-Americans the primary focus of a survey? What is the result when we move the distinctive histories of African Americans, Latinos/as, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Lesbian/Gay people from margin to center? How does such teaching change our perspective on the relationship of previously underrepresented groups to our national narratives?
2006
“Beyond Best Practices”: Taking Seriously the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
How do we teach American history? And what do our students learn? In the 2006 “Textbooks and Teaching” section, historians present reports from the field, exploring what happens when historians self-consciously study their classroom practices.
2005
“The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth”: Writing, Producing, and Using College-Level American History Textbooks
The 2005 “Textbooks and Teaching” section examines how college American history textbooks are written, produced, and used.
2004
“Will That Be on the Exam?” The Role of Testing in Teaching and Learning American History
The 2004 “Textbooks and Teaching” section discusses the role of testing in the teaching and learning American history. The editors solicited articles from three prominent scholars of trends in American education, each with experience bridging the academic and policy-making realms in contemporary debates over curricular content and pedagogy.
2003
More than Bells and Whistles? Using Digital Technology to Teach American History
The 2003 “Textbook and Teaching” essays address the question of how best to employ digital technology in the service of teaching college-level American history.
2002
Teaching outside the Box
The 2002 “Textbooks and Teaching” section examines efforts to expand the teaching of college-level history courses beyond traditional classroom formats and boundaries. K-12 social studies classes have long included excursions to local museums and historical sites to help make history “come alive” for younger students. What is happening at colleges and universities to deepen students’ appreciation of, and connection to, the past? What are the best practices in modes of teaching history that move us “outside the box”?
2001
Teaching the American History Survey at the Opening of the Twenty-First Century: A Round Table Discussion
In 2001, “Textbooks and Teaching” focuses on the teaching of the American history survey, the task that probably has the broadest impact of any professional service regularly performed by readers of the Journal. The contributing editors for “Textbooks and Teaching” hosted a “virtual round table” using e-mail and an electronic listserv as the modes of communication. Over the course of five weeks, eleven participants exchanged views on the means and ends of teaching the survey.