Using Cultural Universals and Images to Develop Temporal Distinctions in Kindergarten-Aged Students: An Action Research Study

This action research project traces how a teacher used images of cultural universals as part of a kindergarten social studies curriculum to help her students develop temporal distinctions between past and present. Students were introduced to the general idea of what cultural universals were, and then they studied two different periods of history using cultural universals. After clearing up some initial misconceptions, the majority of the students were able to make at least a dichotomous distinction between past and present, and many students were able to make additional temporal distinctions among periods of the past

The Social Studies Curriculum in Atlanta Public Schools During the Desegregation Era

This historical investigation explores how teachers, students, and education officials viewed the social studies curriculum in the local context of Atlanta, and the broader state of Georgia, during the post-Civil Rights era, when integration was a court-ordered reality in the public schools. During the desegregation era, Atlanta schools were led by Atlanta Public Schools (APS) Superintendent, Dr. Alonzo Crim. Brought to Atlanta as part of a desegregation compromise, Dr. Crim became APS\u27s first African American superintendent. In particular, the authors investigate how national social studies movements, such as Man: A Course of Study (MACOS), inquiry-based learning, co-curriculum activities, and standards movements, adapted to fit this Southeastern locale, at a time when schools were struggling to desegregate. Local curriculum documents written in the 1970s reveal a traditional social studies curriculum. By the 1980s, APS\u27s social studies curriculum guides broadened to include a stronger focus on an enacted community—inside the classroom and around the world. In oral history interviews, however, former teachers, students, and school officials presented contrasting perspectives of how the social studies curriculum played out in the reality of Atlanta\u27s public schools during the desegregation era

John Dewey on History Education and the Historical Method

This essay constructs a comprehensive view of Dewey’s approach to history, the historical method, and history education. Drawing on Dewey’s approach to the subject at the University of Chicago Laboratory School (1896-1904), Dewey\u27s chapter on the historical method in Logic: A Theory of Inquiry (1938), and a critique of Dewey’s philosophy of history that appeared in the American Historical Review and the published response to this attack by Dewey’s colleagues (1954), the author argues that Dewey consistently approached history in genetic and historicist terms

Fallace, Thomas D., Tracing John Dewey\u27s Influence on Progressive Education, 1903-1951: Toward a Received Dewey, Teachers College Record, 113(March, 2011), 463-492.

Focuses on what Dewey\u27s peers took from his ideas and used for their own purposes in shaping thought and practice in civic and social education--often in ways that conflicted with Dewey\u27s actual statements; challenges the conventional understandings of social efficiency and social justice

Fallace, Thomas D., In the Shadow of Auithoritarianism: American Education in the Twentieth Century. New York: Teachers College Press, 2018.

Traces several forms of authoritarianism from 1916 to 1983 and their impact on school curriculum in the United States

Fallace, Thomas D., The Origins of Classroom Deliberation: Democratic Education in the Shadow of Totalitarianism, 1938-1960, Harvard Educational Review, 86(Winter, 2016), 506-526.

Traces references to the inclusion of social issues in the curriculum during this period; discusses the rationales put forth for such inclusion

The construction of the American Holocaust curriculum.

Remembering the Holocaust has become a central part of American culture. The Holocaust has also become an important topic in the nation's schools. By the 1990s many states had adopted or mandated their own Holocaust curricula in addition to the dozens of organizations dedicated to Holocaust study and education in the United States. This rise in interest was accompanied by a public debate over how to represent the Holocaust properly in American life, making the Holocaust one of the most controversial historical topics of the late twentieth century. This study traced the construction of the Holocaust curriculum through historical case studies of five of the first Holocaust curricula taught in American classrooms, through which I present two major arguments. First, that Holocaust education was a grassroots movement engineered by school teachers---many of whom were not Jewish. These teachers introduced the Holocaust as way to help students navigate the moral and ethical dilemmas of the time. Certain researchers have suggested that Jewish elites pushed the Holocaust into the American consciousness, or that this interest was initiated by events in popular culture. My research will complicate both these claims. My second argument is that the intense debate over how to represent the Holocaust in the curriculum has been misinterpreted as a cultural clash over different interpretations of the event---the Jewish version vs. the "Americanized" one. This explanation is too simplistic. The controversy is better understood as a curricular debate over the teaching of history. For nearly a century, educational researchers, interest groups, and historians have argued over the role and purpose of history in the schools. Having entered into this debate, the topic of the Holocaust has made these issues more conspicuous to the general public.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Virginia, 2004.School code: 0246