Understanding History: International Review of History Education 4 [Hardcover]

What sense do children and young people make 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 book examines 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 Ideaslã