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This paper presents preliminary findings from a study of the historical understanding of secondary students age 12-15 years in Northern Ireland. The study investigated the ideas students had about history, the sources of those ideas, how those ideas related to their sense of identity, and how school history compared to other, less formal influences. Participants were 40 children at several different types of schools in different geographic regions. Data collection involved having students arrange historical pictures and complete formal, semi-structured interviews. Initial results from interviews with students who had completed the first year of the secondary curriculum indicated that they considered history strongly related to their sense of heritage and their personal connections to place and community. Many thought that school history should help them understand the contemporary conflict in Northern Ireland. Students learned about history from their families and others in their communities, and they demonstrated attachment to their heritage. Students discussed conflict in terms of religious antagonism, competition among organized groups (political parties or para-militaries) and efforts to obtain rights. (Contains 44 references.) (SM)

This study, part of a graduate level social studies methods course at a large midwestern university, investigated beginning teachers' ideas about teaching and learning social studies before and after their participation in a set of open-ended interviews with children in the elementary grades. The interviews were designed to give new teachers direct experience investigating children's explanations of key social studies concepts and to track changes in the teachers' ideas through a set of focus group discussions. Initial discussions indicated that teachers were aware social studies occupied a position of low status (and low incidence) in the elementary curriculum, and that students often had difficulty learning the content of the subject. Teachers attempted to explain this by suggesting that students were developmentally incapable of learning social studies, students had insufficient prior knowledge, or the subject was irrelevant. They had few suggestions for how to overcome these limitations. Focus group discussions after completing interviews with students suggested a shift away from emphasis on shortcomings in student or curriculum, and toward a recognition of the teachers' role in developing students' understanding, particularly through assessing and building on students' background knowledge, focusing on conceptual understanding rather than recall of factual information, and establishing the relevance of the subject. Findings suggest that experiences that directly challenge beginning teachers' assumptions about children's thinking may be an effective way of developing their understanding of teaching and learning in social studies. Contains 26 references. Appendices contain protocols for student interviews and focus group interviews. (Author/BT)

This study used open-ended interviews and classroom observations to examine the development of children's understanding of historical time in Northern Ireland. Even the youngest made distinctions among past times, and these differentiations became increasingly numerous with age; students also were able to sequence historic time periods with a high degree of accuracy. This categorization and sequencing involved using personal and family experience, historical information learned in and out of school, and assumptions about the nature of change over time. In addition, students had mastered the arithmetical and linguistic conventions for dates and other standardized notations of time, but the accuracy of their attempts to use such systems depended on their recognition of reference points which they associated with specific visual images; these reference points also derived from personal and family experience and historical information learned in and out of school. These findings indicate that students' understanding of historical time depends on their facility with a set of learned and culturally embedded strategies for describing the past. Differences between the students in this study and those described in previous U.S. research further highlight the impact of learning and cultural context on the development of children's understanding of historical time. (EH)

This study examines the influence of differing social contexts on the historical understanding of primary and elementary students in Northern Ireland and the United States. Although children in both locations learn about the past not only at school but from relatives, historic sites, literature, and the media, the U.S. emphasis on a narrative of national development leads students to emphasize inventions, rational progress, and individual achievements in attempting to explain change over time. Primary students in Northern Ireland, however, encounter history not as a story of national development but a series of portrayals of social and material life in other times and places; as a result, they are more likely to explain historical change in terms of economic factors, legal and institutional developments, or changing fashions. U.S. students conclude that the purpose of learning history is to understand themselves and the national community with which they identify; primary students in Northern Ireland think history is important to learn about people who are different than themselves. (Author)

This study investigates middle graders' understanding of significance in United States history through open-ended interviews with 48 students in grades 5-8. Students were presented with a set of captioned historical pictures and asked to choose the one important enough to include on a timeline of the last five hundred years, and to explain their choices. Students' choices focused primarily on the origin and development of the political and social structure of the United States, and their explanations pointed to steadily expanding rights and opportunities as a central theme in U.S. history. At the same time, students had difficulty incorporating some historical patterns and events into their image of progress, and their discussion of these issues indicated a familiarity with a"vernacular" view of history separate from "official" views justifying the contemporary social structure. This study suggests that students need experience with the complexities of the past within a context that provides some framework for making critical sense of both legitimating stories and alternative, vernacular histories. The paper suggests one way to help students build such a framework is by letting them grapple with exactly those issues--race, gender, and class, for example--that have not been so thoroughly digested that their meaning is firmly established in the historical canon. (Contains 36 references.) (Author/EH)

This study examines the ability of students to develop empathy for peoples of the past and to avoid the belief that people in the past were no different than today. The paper reports the results of a year-long qualitative investigation of fourth and fifth graders' attempts to understand the values, attitudes, and beliefs of people in the past. The study was conducted in two classrooms in a suburban community near Cincinnati (Ohio). Although some students initially attributed past behavior to deficiencies of intelligence or education, most came to understand that people in the past had different outlooks than people of today. The paper concludes that the active attempts by students to make sense of the different behaviors and attitudes they encountered in history should suggest that meaningful historical perspective-taking is not beyond the ability of fourth- and fifth-graders, and that they benefit from sustained attention to the topic. Contains 27 references. (EH)

This paper reports on a year-long qualitative study of two elementary classrooms in a suburban community near Cincinnati (Ohio). The classes were very homogeneous racially with no students of Hispanic, African-American, Asian, or Pacific Island descent in either class. Interviews, classroom observations and participation, and analysis of student's written assignments were conducted to examine the historical understanding students brought to school, the social context in which their thinking had developed, and the way their ideas affected their encounter with the content of the school curriculum. Students developed their understanding of the past primarily through interactions with relatives, and they used that understanding to construct a narrative of historical development which explained their own lives in the present. This study suggests that research and instruction should begin not with the content of the school curriculum or the nature of the historical discipline, but with the cultural context in which students' historical understanding develops. Contains 84 references. (EH)

This research presents finding from a preliminary study of the use of historical fiction in the middle grades. Focusing on historical fiction related to World War II and the Holocaust, the researchers sought to examine the factors that influenced teachers' decisions to implement historical fiction in their classrooms and students' responses to its use. Through observation in classrooms, in-depth interviews of the two teacher participants, and interviews of 14 student participants, the data gathered suggests that greater use of historical fiction in the middle grades is warranted, but that such use depends on more extensive and more flexible access to materials and continued teacher training in the use of groups. Problems of scheduling, lack of available materials, reading levels of materials, and discomfort in allowing students to work in literature response groups are cited. Suggestions for classroom materials are included. (EH)