Contributions of educative document-based curricular materials to quality of historical instruction

This case study explores whether and to what extent a history curriculum with educative features can contribute to the quality of historical instruction. Analyses focus on one teacher's implementation of three lessons from a document-based history curriculum with educative features explicitly designed to support teacher enactment. We found that the teacher's limited subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge constrained the quality of historical instruction. At the same time, we observed instances of the teacher supporting historical reading, and of unprompted student participation in historical thinking and questioning. Our findings suggest promising directions for the design of educative document-based history lessons.