Teaching History

A practical and engaging guide to the art of teaching history  

Well-grounded in scholarly literature and practical experience, Teaching History offers an instructors’ guide for developing and teaching classroom history. Written in the author’s engaging (and often humorous) style, the book discusses the challenges teachers encounter, explores effective teaching strategies, and offers insight for managing burgeoning technologies. William Caferro presents an assessment of the current debates on the study of history in a broad historical context and evaluates the changing role of the discipline in our increasingly globalized world.  

Teaching History reveals that the valuable skills of teaching are highly transferable. It stresses the importance of careful organization as well as the advantages of combining research agendas with teaching agendas. Inspired by the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning movement, the book encourages careful reflection on teaching methods and stresses the importance of applying various approaches to promote active learning. Drawing on the author’s experience as an instructor at the high school and university levels, Teaching History:

• Contains an authoritative and humorous look at the profession and the strategies and techniques of teaching history  
• Incorporates a review of the current teaching practice in terms of previous methods, examining nineteenth and twentieth century debates and strategies  
• Includes a discussion of the use of technology in the history classroom, from the advent of course management (Blackboard) systems to today’s digital resources  
• Covers techniques for teaching the history of any nation not only American history   

Written for graduate and undergraduate students of history teaching and methods, historiography, history skills, and education, Teaching History is a comprehensive book that explores the strategies, challenges, and changes that have occurred in the profession.

WILLIAM CAFERRO, PHD teaches medieval Europe at Vanderbilt University, where he is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History and Professor of Classics and Mediterranean Studies. His teaching awards include the University of Tulsa Teaching Prize (1997), the Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Vanderbilt in 2001 and the Vanderbilt Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in 2016.

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

1 The Art and Craft of Teaching, or Toward a Philosophy of Teaching 11

2 Teaching History 33

3 “My Worst Day:” Classroom Management and Strategies for Success 61

4 The Historian and the Technological Revolution 97

5 The Historian and the Academy 119

Further Reading 145

Index 153

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