Placing emphasis on more critical multicultural understandings’ of teaching and learning in the social studies via historical thinking, the Student as Historian Project is a course assignment in TED 4341: Secondary Social Studies Curriculum at Baylor University.

Pre-service students working in groups are asked to develop a website that addresses an event, issue or actor that has been excluded from the traditional social studies curriculum. This website includes primary source documents and document based questions.  In this project pre-service teachers are simultaneously developing an understanding of historical thinking and exploring the work of historians like James Loewen and Howard Zinn in developing a critical understanding of the past.

In the menu above, you will find links to each of pre-service teachers’ projects. The projects are grouped thematically to provide ease of use. Of course, the site is also text searchable. Our hope is that this project will be a useful tool to classroom teachers seeking to provide students with opportunities to explore multiple perspectives and issues traditionally silenced from or distorted in the traditional social studies curriculum.