The premise of this second edition is that approaches to teaching and ideas change over time. Thus, the changes in this edition are both minor and major.

The minor changes include updates to the bibliographies, incorporation of new studies on historical thinking and learning, and new suggestions for how certain literature for children can be used to support good history teaching. Additionally, an epilogue now serves to summarize the main themes of the book.

The major changes include a section on assessment in each chapter rather than at the end making this a thirteen chapter book instead of a fourteen chapter book. This change was made in an attempt to highlight the importance of including evaluation as part of the instruction process rather than something that is apart from the process and completed at the end. As such, the method of constructive assessment is introduced in chapter two so as to provide the theoretical framework that grounds assessment suggestions in the proceeding chapters. There are a variety of methods of evaluation presented, from rubrics to position papers to oral presentations. Further, drawing from research that they and other scholars have conducted, the authors illustrate each of these methods through a discussion of how teachers use them in their own classrooms. There are also examples of how teachers have used the information in the first edition in the classrooms.