This paper explores the evolving role of trauma in history education, particularly within the context of the Council of Europe's vision of 'understanding the past as vital for a shared future'. The rise of memory studies and remembrance culture in Europe has shifted the focus from impersonal historical events to more personal microhistories and…

The National Curriculum is a document written by the Department for Education and contains the statutory requirements all teachers in maintained schools in England must follow. This research study will examine the path primary teachers in England, those who teach 5 to 11 year olds, navigate to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum and…

Picturebooks offer powerful supports for teaching diverse content across different curriculum areas. Research and curriculum resources document their use in inquiry-based education practices, particularly in relation to science and philosophy. There is, however, little theoretical analysis of this use or cross-curricular comparisons. Applying a…

The authors' scholarly reflective narrative addresses the rewards and challenges of an immersive experiential active learning pedagogy. They ask, "was it worth it?" for students and for themselves. Although research evidence makes it clear that active learning benefits student learning and engagement, designing a course to incorporate…

Implementing curriculum that includes all students, that celebrates individual learners' needs, that fosters student responsibility, and that teaches skills that transcend discipline-specific outcomes is possible with a pedagogy that embraces immersion learning. Reacting to the Past is a High Impact Practice (H.I.P.) approach that uses elaborate,…

Frameworks that connect to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in Social Studies, such as the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies States Standards, highlight the need to engage in inquiry-based instruction (NCSS, 2013). Participation in such inquiry requires students to engage in…

Reacting to the Past (Reacting) is an active-learning pedagogy utilizing elaborate historical roleplaying games. This study examined the effect of Reacting on student academic self-efficacy, perspective taking, engagement, and perceived learning, and considered whether these outcomes were impacted by the type of role a student assumed. Students…

When projects are the spine of a course, they are systematically sequenced one after the other, and they do the heavy lifting of the course. They teach its core content and skills. The author has been testing this model of course design for several years, aiming for experiential learning that is tied to deep rather than superficial learning of…

This article reports on the findings of a learning and teaching project exploring the application of flipped classroom models, funded by Macquarie's Faculty of Arts. Scholarship on the impact of flipping in tertiary institutions has been focussed mainly on the sciences rather than the arts. This article reports on the author's early experiments…

This study investigated students' engagement and learning in a large lecture journalism history course based on a revision of its discussion curriculum. The new curriculum incorporated visual media and facilitated collaborative learning in active learning classrooms. Surveys were administered to assess students' perceptions of the course,…

Reacting to the Past (RTTP) is an innovative history pedagogy adopted by colleges and universities nationwide, in many cases as part of programming for first-year students. It is a methodology of teaching history that emphasizes active learning and student engagement. In many ways, RTTP is a form of a "flipped classroom," in which…

Role-play is viewed by scholars as an effective active learning strategy: it encourages participation among passive learners, adds dynamism to the classroom and promotes the retention of material. But what do students think of role-play? This study surveyed 144 students after a role-play activity in a history course and asked them to identify what…

During spring semester 2010, a long-standing upper-division lecture course, Medieval Cities of Europe, 500-1500 CE, underwent a course transformation. The goal was to address specific challenges with student engagement that the authors had experienced in the course in the past; their overarching strategy was to introduce technology into the course…

Many instructors seek to improve student engagement, but determining how to achieve student engagement can be complex and complicated. The authors sought to explore how the implementation of active-learning strategies in undergraduate history courses at a metropolitan community college using graphic organizers and group discussion impacted student…

Using mobile games in education combines situated and active learning with fun in a potentially excellent manner. The effects of a mobile city game called Frequency 1550, which was developed by The Waag Society to help pupils in their first year of secondary education playfully acquire historical knowledge of medieval Amsterdam, were investigated…