William and Edwyna Gilbert Award for Articles on Teaching

Submissions Are Closed

Deadline: May 15, 2025

Award Type

Award for Publications

The William and Edwyna Gilbert Award for the Best Article on Teaching History annually recognizes outstanding contributions to the teaching of history through the publication of articles in journals, magazines, and other serials.

The current prize amount is $1,000 each to the author and journal.

Eligibility

Articles with a publication date of 2024 are eligible for consideration for the 2025 award. Authors must be members of the AHA. Both the author of the winning article and the journal that publishes it will each receive the award. Journals and individual members may submit nominations on the teaching of history (including scholarship of teaching and learning, methodology and theory of pedagogy). Journals, magazines, and other serials can submit up to two articles for each award cycle. (Articles in the American Historical Review cannot be submitted.)

Application Process

Log into your MY AHA account at historians.org/myaha and click “Available Application Forms” in the AHA Awards, Grants, and Jobs section. If you don’t have an account, create one for free at historians.org/createaccount. If nominating someone else, select the Nominate button and search for the nominee’s existing record or create a new record.

Fill in the application form, which includes the nominee’s contact information and the names of additional nominees (if group nomination).
Upload an Application Packet as a single PDF. Include the following documents:
- Letter of support (up to 2 pages)
- Copy of the article

Please Note: The competition will open in mid-March. Entries must be received by May 15, 2025, to be eligible for the 2025 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2025 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2026 AHA annual meeting in Chicago.

For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.

William and Edwyna Gilbert

Originally the “William Gilbert Award,” named in memory of William Gilbert, a longtime AHA member and distinguished scholar-teacher of the Renaissance at the University of Kansas, it was renamed the William and Edwyna Gilbert Award in 2012 after Edwyna Gilbert passed away and left additional funds to supplement the original bequest for the award.

Past Recipients

Full Listing

Click the year to read the citations.

2024
Jocelyn Isabel Aguilera, “Reclaiming Narratives through Culturally Sustaining Teaching: Women of Color, Historical Significance, and the Civil Rights Era,” The History Teacher 56, no. 3 (May 2023)

2023
Michael P. Marino, “Rethinking Historical Thinking: How Historians Use Unreliable Evidence,” The History Teacher 55, no. 2 (February 2022)

2022
Brigid E. Vance, “Finding their Voice: Student Podcasts on the East Asian Collection at Lawrence University’s Wriston Galleries,” The History Teacher 54, no. 4 (August 2021)

2021
Jill E. Kelly and Omar Badsha, “Teaching South African History in the Digital Age: Collaboration, Pedagogy, and Popularizing History,” History in Africa 47 (2020)

2020
Rien Fertel, Elizabeth S. Manley, Jenny Schwartzberg, and Robert Ticknor, “Teaching in the Archives: Engaging Students and Inverting Historical Methods Classes at the Historic New Orleans Collection,” The History Teacher 53, no. 1 (November 2019)

2019
Sam Wineburg, Mark Smith, and Joel Breakstone, “What Is Learned in College History Classes?” Journal of American History 104 (March 2018)

2018
Leah Shopkow, “How Many Sources Do I Need,” The History Teacher 50, no. 2 (February 2017)

2017
Laura Muñoz, “Civil Rights, Educational Inequality, and Transnational Takes on the US History Survey,” History of Education Quarterly 56, no. 1 (February 2016)

2015
Peter Burkholder, “A Content Means to a Critical Thinking End: Group Quizzing in History Surveys,” The History Teacher 47, no. 4 (August 2014): 551-78

2014
Lendol Calder, “The Stories We Tell,” OAH Magazine of History 27, no. 3 (2013): 5-8

2013
Tim Keirn and Eileen Luhr, “Subject Matter Counts: The Pre-Service Teaching and Learning of Historical Thinking,” The History Teacher 45, no. 4 (2012): 493-511

2012
Avishag Reisman, “The Document Based Lesson,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2012): 233-64

2011
Steven Corey, “Pedagogy and Place: Merging Urban and Environmental History with Active Learning,” Journal of Urban History 36, no. 1 (January 2010), 28-41

2009
Julia Clancy-Smith, “An Undergraduate and Graduate Colloquium in Social History and Biography in the Modern Middle East and North Africa” in Teaching Life Writing Texts

2007
Sam Wineburg, Ariel Duncan, Susan Mosborg, and Dan Porat, “Common Belief and the Cultural Curriculum: An Intergenerational Study of Historical Consciousness,” American Educational Research Journal 44, no. 1 (March 2007): 40-76

2005
Mark Carnes, “Inciting Speech,” Change Magazine (March/April 2005)

2003
Carl Guarneri, “Internationalizing the United States Survey Course: American History for a Global Age,” The History Teacher 36, no. 1 (November 2002): 37-64

2001
Dan Segal, “Western Civ and the Staging of History in American Higher Education,” American Historical Review 105, no. 3 (June 2000)

1999
Peter Seixas, “Student Teachers Thinking Historically,” Theory and Research in Social Education 26, no. 3 (Summer 1998)

1995
Nora Faires and John Bukowczyk, “The American Family and the Little Red Schoolhouse: Historians, Class, and the Problem of Cultural Diversity,” Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, vol. 19

Current Recipient

Jocelyn Isabel Aguilera, John C. Fremont High School and California State University, Long Beach

“Reclaiming Narratives through Culturally Sustaining Teaching: Women of Color, Historical Significance, and the Civil Rights Era,” The History Teacher 56, no. 3 (May 2023)

One obstacle many minoritized and female students face in the secondary school history classroom is the inability to see themselves in history. Jocelyn Isabel Aguilera’s article explores an intervention designed to draw students into a deeper historical understanding of the role played by African American women in the Civil Rights Movement. Aguilera’s pedagogy was not simply aimed at including new content but in using that content to engage students in deeper historical thinking and to encourage them to take a more activist stance.