Understanding History International Review of History Education 4

What sense do children andyoung peoplemake of history? How do they cope with competing historical accounts in textbooks? How do they think historical or archaeological claims are supported or rejected? And whatever students think about history, how do their teachers see history education? The contributors to this fourth volume of the International Review of History Education discuss these questions in the context of their research.Divided into two sections, the first part of the bookexamines students' ideas about the discipline of history and the knowledge it produces. The second part looks in detail at teachers' own ideas about teaching. Featuring contributions from authors throughout the world, including the USA, Canada, Portugal, Brazil, Taiwan and the UK, the book provides interesting studies of how history is both taught and received in these different countries.Understanding History contributes to current knowledge of successful teaching: that teachers must take into accounts students' preconceptions that they bring to the classroom as well as accepting the complexity and importance of their own professional knowledge. The book will be of interest to anyone studying or researching history education as well as teachers of history throughout the world.

Introduction: Research and History Education 1. Assessing the Status of Historical Sources: An Exploratory Study of Eight US Elementary Students Reading Documents 2. Students’ Approaches to Validating Historical Claims 3. Digging for Clues: An Archaeological Exploration of Historical Cognition 4. Taiwanese Students’ Understanding of Differences in History Textbook Accounts 5. ‘Till New Facts are Discovered’: Students’ Ideas about Objectivity in History 6. Children’ s Understanding of Historical Narrative in Portugal 7. Between Reproducing and Organizing the Past: Students’ Beliefs about the Standards of Acceptability of Historical Knowledge 8. History, Memory and Learning to Teach 9. The Epistemological Reach of the History Teacher 10. Portuguese History Teachers’ Ideas about History 11. Understanding the Knowledge Bases of History Teaching: Subject, Pupils and Professional Practices 12. Interpreting the Past, Serving the Present: US and English Textbook Portrayals of the Soviet Union During the Second World War

Rosalyn Ashby is Lecturer in Education, Peter Gordon is Emeritus Professor and Peter Lee is Senior Lecturer in Education, all at the Institute of Education, University of London.