Teachinghistory.org, also known as the National History Education Clearinghouse (NHEC), is a website that provides educational resources for the study of U.S. history.

Organizational background

In the past decade and a half, three major developments have reshaped the landscape for

K-12 K-1 is a professional kickboxing promotion established in 1993, well known worldwide mainly for its heavyweight division fights and Grand Prix tournaments. In January 2012, K-1 Global Holdings Limited, a company registered in Hong Kong, acquired ...

history education and have created the conditions for significant advances in history teaching and learning. First, the emergence of the Internet and the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

has brought unprecedented resources and possibilities to the computers of the nation's history teachers. Second, a body of serious scholarly research in history education – and the

learning sciences Learning sciences (LS) is an interdisciplinary field that works to further scientific, humanistic, and critical theoretical understanding of learning as well as to engage in the design and implementation of learning innovations, and the improvem ...

more generally – has begun to illuminate how students actually learn history. Finally, the Department of Education's Teaching American History (TAH) program has invested more than $900 million in history education – the largest federal infusion of resources ever devoted to improving the teaching and learning of history. It was the favorite proposal of U.S. Senator

Robert Byrd Robert Carlyle Byrd (born Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr.; November 20, 1917 – June 28, 2010) was an American politician and musician who served as a United States senator from West Virginia for over 51 years, from 1959 until his death in 2010. A ...

, and its grants are called "Byrd grants." Due to these advancements, the

United States Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...

announced a call for proposals in 2007 to address the building, populating, and maintaining of a central website for K-12 American history educators, funded under the Teaching American History Grant program (TAH).

George Mason University's Center for History and New Media Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), formerly the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), is a research center specializing in history and information technology at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax County, Virginia ...

was awarded the grant for the website creation the same year. The TAH program is funded under Title II-C, Subpart 4 of the

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 11, 1965. Part of Johnson's "War on Poverty", the act has been one of the most far-re ...

, as amended by the

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was a U.S. Act of Congress that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; it included Title I provisions applying to disadvantaged students. It supported standards-based educatio ...

. According to the TAH program website, the goal of the program is to "raise student achievement by improving teachers’ knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of American history."

Organizational goals

One goal is to bring together K-12 American history resources to help educators find and use them. Another goal is to create materials that detail strategies for teaching and learning history to help educators improve classroom teaching. A third goal is to disseminate lessons learned by more than 900 Teaching American History (TAH) grants designed to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge and understanding of traditional U.S. history. Teachinghistory.org is updated regularly and is organized around six sections: History Content, Best Practices, Teaching Materials, Issues and Research, Teaching American History (TAH) Projects, and Digital Classroom. In addition, the website offers a weekly history quiz, a blog, and features that allow users to submit history content, history teaching, and digital history questions to experts in the field.

Partners

With funding from the

U.S. Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...

under the Office of Innovation and Improvement, Teachinghistory.org, also known as the National History Education Clearinghouse, was developed through a collaboration between the Roy Rosenzweig

Center for History and New Media Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), formerly the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), is a research center specializing in history and information technology at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax County, Virginia ...

(CHNM) at

George Mason University George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was origin ...

and the Stanford History Education Group at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. CHNM and the Stanford History Education Group have worked on other projects together, including Historical Thinking Matters, a website focused on key topics in U.S. history that is designed to teach students how to critically read primary sources and how to critique and construct historical narratives. Founded by

Roy Rosenzweig Roy Alan Rosenzweig (August 6, 1950 – October 11, 2007) was an American historian at George Mason University in Virginia. He was the founder and director of the Center for History and New Media from 1994 until his death in October 2007 from ...

, CHNM is an internationally recognized digital humanities center located in Fairfax, Virginia. Created by

Sam Wineburg Samuel S. Wineburg (born 1958) is an American educational and cognitive psychologist. He is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of History & American Studies emeritus at Stanford University. Since the 1990s, Wineburg has ...

, the Stanford History Education Group in Stanford, California, engages in projects at the forefront of how students learn history, from elementary school to college. Additional Teachinghistory.org partners include the

American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...

, a professional organization for historians founded in 1884, and the National History Center, which promotes research, teaching, and learning in all fields of history.

Resources

* The Blog features posts on teaching strategies, classroom experience, holidays and heritage months, and other topical issues. Authors include both Teachinghistory.org staff and guests. * History Content presents access to online resources including reviewed history websites, national resources for history teachers, analyses of textbook content by guest historians, and searchable databases of online history lectures and historic sites. Users can submit questions via the “Ask A Historian” feature. * Best Practices presents multimedia examples of classroom teaching, historical thinking, using primary sources, and best practices in teaching with textbooks. The goal of this section is to integrate existing research on history education with practical classroom experience to create, select, and annotate resources that emphasize best practices for teaching American history in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. * Teaching Materials presents classroom and teaching resources, including a searchable database of state standards. "Lesson Plan Reviews" highlights history instruction strategies, including scaffolding. Other features include "Teaching Guides," such as "Understanding and Interpreting Political Cartoons in the History Classroom," and a section on best practices when working with English language learners. Users can submit questions via the “Ask A Master Teacher” feature. * Issues and Research presents briefs on current research in the teaching and learning of history, including articles from leading educational journals and individual studies in the teaching and learning of history nationally and internationally. Roundtable discussions present multiple views on pedagogy in the classroom. Guest participants in these discussions include professors, educational consultants, K-12 teachers, and other history and education professionals. * Teaching American History (TAH) Projects provides informational essays on lessons learned from TAH grants, a database of TAH projects, and TAH project spotlights. * Digital Classroom contains features on digital tools available for use in the classroom and best practices in implementing these tools. Users can submit questions via the "Ask A Digital Historian" feature.

Scholarship

Teachinghistory.org provides a clearinghouse for resources, as well as approaches informed by research on the teaching and learning of history. Special attention is devoted to strategies for incorporating historical thinking skills into classroom teaching. Historical thinking skills are a set of reasoning skills, including close reading, corroboration, and contextualization, that help students think critically about the past. These skills require a style of teaching that goes beyond lectures and rote memorization.Ash, Kate
"Schools Now Have Direct Access to Thousands of Primary Sources
" ''Education Week'', accessed August 15, 2010 Teachinghistory.org is based on and adds to new research in history education.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.teachinghistory.org/
Historical Thinking Matters

Center for History and New Media

Stanford History Education Group

National History Center

H-TAH, the network for Teaching American History Grant Recipients
guide to resources and past discussions United States Department of Education George Mason University Stanford University American Historical Association History organizations based in the United States History education American educational websites