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This essay describes the results of an experimental class co-taught by an historian and a social studies educator. The class was designed to accomplish two things: to narrow the gap in disciplinary thinking between preservice teachers and historians, and to overcome the preservice teachers' compartmentalized thinking about the nature of their newly acquired historical knowledge and the teaching of it. Through an analysis of the teacher candidates' final projects, which included an historiographic essay, rationale statement, and teaching unit, I demonstrate that the course was only marginally successful with the first objective, but considerably more successful in achieving the second. I suggest that disciplinary thinking may be more useful as a means of improving pedagogy than as an end in itself, and I conclude with a reflection on how the course could have been strengthened.

Background/Context Rabbi Raymond Zwerin and Audrey Friedman Marcus published the Gestapo Holocaust simulation game in 1976. Since that time it has been a source of debate among Jewish intellectuals and other scholars concerned with the pedagogy of the Holocaust. Even the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has weighed in on the issue, taking a clear position against Holocaust simulations of any kind. In this essay, the author informs this debate through a historical study of the origins of the Gestapo simulation game. Purpose/Conclusions The essay begins with a brief discussion of the Holocaust uniqueness claim, through which the author introduces a new trichotomous interpretive framework. This framework offers a critique of previous discussions on Holocaust uniqueness and pedagogy, which tend to conflate the various elements of the uniqueness claim or, place the conflicting views along a single continuum. Using this framework, the author explores the cultural and curricular context from which the Gestapo game emerged, demonstrating how its theory and design were aligned with much of the emerging Jewish educational thinking of the time. The author argues that the curriculum was the work of an educator who was informed by the current research and was responsive to the contemporary needs of his students and community. Research Design This essay is written from the perspective of history and was based upon the long-established methodology from the field of historiography.

Despite the vast literature on Dewey and his laboratory school, most scholars have failed to contextualize Dewey's pedagogical ideas in the intellectual currents of the period, particularly the historicist concept of social development known as recapitulation and/or correspondence theory. In this article, the author explores how and why history was taught at Dewey's laboratory school at the University of Chicago (1896)(1897)(1898)(1899)(1900)(1901)(1902)(1903)(1904). To do so, the author traces how Dewey's approach to teaching history not only emerged out of pedagogical disputes, but also out of 19 th -century historicist theories of evolutionary anthropology and genetic psychology. From this context, the author argues that Dewey's history curriculum was based entirely upon his own interpretation of the anthropological-sociological-psychological theory of recapitulation, which suggested that the stages of child development corresponded with the development of Western civilization. Drawing on Dewey's professional correspondence, course syllabi, and book reviews in addition to his published essays, the author suggests that this ethnocentric theory of recapitulation served as the foundation for the entire curriculum at the laboratory school, guiding both theory and practice.Perhaps no period captures the imagination of educational historians and theorists more than the burgeoning days of John Dewey's laboratory school at the University of Chicago. At this experimental school (1896)(1897)(1898)(1899)(1900)(1901)(1902)(1903)(1904) Dewey and his disciples implemented an iconoclastic, progressive curriculum based on student interest, experiential learning, and an embryonic democratic community. The successes of the Dewey school have been examined and praised by numerous historians including Harold Rugg

This article offers a critical review of the historical literature on the National Education Association’s (NEA) 1916 Committee on Social Studies (CSS) report, the document generally believed to have launched the social studies movement in American secondary schools. The review begins with a critical analysis of the four most pervasive interpretations of the report. Drawing upon these interpretations, the author suggests that there are three central issues at the heart of these disputes. The first is over the ideological origins of the report; the second, its institutional origins; and the third, its epistemological position. It is argued that the influence of John Dewey is the key to overcoming these disagreements by suggesting that the members of the Committee agreed upon a core of shared beliefs that reflected his philosophical ideas.