Teaching and Learning History in Elementary School

This text presents a major advance in developing a knowledge base about children's historical learning and thinking. It questions the purposes and goals that different teachers establish for their history teaching, plus what children think and know about history.

Jere Brophy was a University Distinguished Professor of Teacher Education and Educational Psychology at Michigan State University. A clinical and developmental psychologist by training, he conducted research on teachers achievement expectations and related self-fulfilling prophecy effects, teachers attitudes toward individual students and the dynamics of teacher-student relationships, students personal characteristics and their effects on teachers, relationships between classroom processes and student achievement, teachers strategies for managing classrooms and coping with problem students, and teachers strategies for motivating students to learn. Most recently, he focused on curricular content and instructional method issues involved in teaching social studies for understanding, appreciation, and life application.