Scott Alan Metzger

Slavery, the Civil War Era, and African American Representation in U.S. History: An Analysis of Four States' Academic Standards

This study is a mixed-methods text analysis of African American representation within K-12 U.S. History content standards treating the revolutionary era, the early U.S. republic, the Civil War era, and Reconstruction. The states included in the analysis are Michigan, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Virginia. The analysis finds that the reviewed standards devote considerable space to African Americans during the formation and development of the United States, but the nature of this inclusion is typically superficial and tends to trivialize the systemic institutional contexts of slavery and racial hierarchy. The standards also typically do not engage students in cognitively demanding historical thinking processes and avoid engaging students in critical analysis of historical racial tensions in order to promote a consensus narrative of social cohesion and national development. While the standards cannot be faulted on the grounds of numeric inclusion of African American names and events, they do not substantively promote critical thinking about the construction of racialized identities and their role in the political, economic, social, and cultural contexts of U.S. history.

Maximizing the Educational Power of History Movies in the Classroom

Cinematic feature films are a big part of youth popular culture. When blockbuster movies are about historical topics, it is reasonable for teachers to be drawn to using them in the classroom to motivate students interest. This article overviews research on film in the history classroom and describes three learning functions that history movies can have fact and ficion; constructing the past and the people in it; and reacting to the past.

Knowing What Matters: An Expanded Study of School Bond Elections in Michigan, 1998-2006.

This study investigates what factors are associated with the likelihood of passing school facility construction bonds by local district election. It uses statewide data from Michigan, 1998–2006, to examine the outcome of 789 bond elections in terms of the following ten variables: amount of the bond request; district enrollment; district locale; percentage of students receiving free school lunches; percentage of the district population with only a high school degree; the districts long-term debt; voter turnout; the day of the calendar year on which the election is held; the number of the bond proposal on the ballot; and the inclusion of technology in the ballot proposals wording. The logistic regression analysis finds that bond amount—percentage of students receiving free lunches, percentage of district population with only a high school degree, voter turnout, and being further down on the ballot—are all negative and significant factors. District long-term debt and holding the election later in the calendar year are both positive and significant factors. District enrollment numbers are non-significant. In terms of district locale—using mid-sized city and suburban districts as the reference group—being a small town and rural district is a negative and significant factor.

Knowing the Odds Parameters That Predict Passing or Failing School District Bonds

This study investigates parameters affecting the likelihood of passing school facility construction bonds by local district election. Using statewide data from Michigan, this study analyzes school bond data for urban (n = 30), suburban ( n = 164), small town (n = 70), and rural (n = 241) school districts that held capital improvement bond elections from 2000 to 2005. This analysis found four parameters that were significant in predicting either passage or failure of school bonds: bond amount, number of students enrolled, the number of times the bond was attempted, and district urbanicity. Examining district bond passage rates by urbanicity showed that rural districts have worse chances of passing bond elections than urban and suburban districts and that small-town districts have the worst chances of all.

Gaming History: A Framework for What Video Games Teach About the Past

Abstract This article offers a typological framework for analyzing how video games make use of historical elements, shaping the ways players engage with and think about the past. Phenomenologically induced labels are posited for identifying different deployments of and experiences with historical elements in video games, illustrated by examples drawn from analysis of selected historically oriented, situated, or themed commercial video games. Building on the literature of gaming, popular media, and history education, the authors theorize specifically about the interactions between game design, player response, historical thinking, and historical representations encountered in video games. The goal is to develop vocabulary useful to researchers and educators that attends to the interface between school-based history learning and the extra-curricular influence of video games.

The High School "Space Race": Implications of a School-Choice Market Environment for a Michigan Metropolitan Region.

This article examines the implications of competition between school districts in a mid-Michigan metropolitan area. Over the 10-year period after Michigans major school-funding reform in 1994, many urban and suburban districts found themselves competing for per-pupil state funding. Suburban districts need extra students to make up budgetary shortfalls and protect instructional programs that are essential in todays political climate of school accountability. Several districts in this study built new or substantially renovated state-of-the-art high schools, possibly illustrating a space race between the districts to build bigger, better, newer capital assets that attract pupils and residential development. The central city district, surrounded by growing suburbs with higher-value taxable property, is at a disadvantage in this competition.

Neoliberalism, Globalization, and the American Universities in Eastern Europe: Tensions and Possibilities in ‘Exported’ Higher Education

This article explores the presence of US institutions of higher education in Eastern Europe as one facet of the neoliberal global environment. It draws on policy documents, institutional statistics, materials produced by interest groups and NGOs, official mission statements, press releases and media coverage, and personal narratives. The American University in Bulgaria is examined as a case of this wider phenomenon. Exclusively structuralist, critical analyses of such institutions can easily lead to conclusions of homogenization and dominance through the hegemony of ‘exporter’ education institutions and programs. Post-structural analysis—attuned to multiplicities of meanings, nuances of context, and complex interplays of power and knowledge claims—allow for more attention to the local dynamics, while human interpretation and agency may point the way to more hopeful roles for US institutions of higher education abroad. In turn, these roles may challenge the one-way deterministic flow of influence suggested by structuralist analyses. Este artículo indaga la presencia de las instituciones de E.E.U.U. de educación superior en Europa oriental, como una faceta del medioambiente neoliberal global. Se sirve de documentos de política, estadística institucional, materiales producidos bajo grupos de interés y ONGs, declaraciones de emisiones oficiales sobre los objetivos, comunicados de prensa y cobertura de los medios y testimonios personales. Se ha examinado a la Universidad Americana en Bulgaria como un caso de este amplio fenómeno. Los análisis críticos de tales instituciones exclusivamente estructuralistas, pueden conducir fácilmente a unas conclusiones de homogenización y dominio a través de la hegemonía de instituciones de educación y programas ‘exportados’. Un análisis estructural a posteriori—adaptado a una multiplicidad de significados y matices de contexto, y las interacciones complejas de afirmaciones de poder y conocimiento—permite mayor atención a la dinámica local, mientras que la interpretación y la actividad humana pueden señalar el camino para que las instituciones de educación superior de los E.E.U.U., logren papeles más esperanzadores en el extranjero. A su vez, estos papeles pueden desafiar la corriente determinista de influencia de una sola vía, como lo sugiere el análisis estructural. 本文探讨了美国高等教育机构作为全球新自由主义环境的一个侧面在东欧的存在。本文根据政策文件、机构统计数据、利益团体和非政府组织提供的资料、正式使命声明、新闻稿和媒体报道，以及个人记述写成，以位于保加利亚的美利坚大学作为这一更广泛现象的个案进行了考察。作为一种完全的结构主义，对这些机构的批判性分析很容易得出通过“出口”教育机构和各种项目的霸权实现同质化、获取支配力的结论。后结构主义分析——切合多重意义，语境的微妙变化，以及权力与知识的宣称之间复杂的相互作用——使人们更多地关注当地的动力学，而人的解释及动因可能为海外美国高等教育机构发挥更加充满希望的作用指明方向。反过来，这些角色可能挑战结构主义分析所提出的影响流的单向决定性。

The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning

The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning draws on contributions from an international panel of experts. Their writings explore the growth the field has experienced in the past three decades and offer observations on challenges and opportunities for the future. The contributors represent a wide range of pioneering, established, and promising new scholars with diverse perspectives on history education.