Chauncey Monte-Sano

Professor, Educational Studies

Chauncey Monte-Sano is a professor of Educational Studies at the University of Michigan. Her scholarship centers on supporting disciplinary practices in history/social science classrooms with a focus on teaching history as inquiry. Much of this work examines how adolescents learn to write reasoned historical arguments from evidence and how such instruction can be a tool to challenge inequities in students’ literacy outcomes. She works to develop social studies curriculum to support all students' disciplinary thinking, reading, and writing and researches how teachers—both novices and veterans—learn to take up this instructional approach. She has won research grants from the McDonnell Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the Spencer Foundation, the Braitmayer Foundation, and the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, among others, to support this work.

Monte-Sano's most recent curriculum development project supports students and teachers in social studies inquiry with sources and argument writing across 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Research-tested curriculum materials, videos of teacher practice, and samples of student writing are freely available at Read.Inquire.Write. Monte-Sano is also currently developing a professional development model for social studies teachers working on supporting students' inquiry with sources and argument writing about historical and social issues (the Teaching Reasoning and Inquiry Project in Social Studies, or "TRIPSS").

Monte-Sano earned her Ph.D. at Stanford University and her B.A. and teacher certification from Yale University. She began her teaching career as a high school history teacher and was awarded National Board Certification. While at Stanford, she was a founding member of the Stanford History Education Group. Her dissertation won the 2007 Larry Metcalf Award from the National Council of the Social Studies. In 2011, she was awarded the Early Career Award from Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education) of the American Educational Research Association. She has twice won the American Historical Association’s James Harvey Robinson Prize for the teaching aide that has made the most outstanding contribution to teaching and learning history.

Monte-Sano writes widely about the teaching and learning of disciplinary practices in history/social science classrooms. She is co-author of the books Reading, Thinking, and Writing about History: Teaching Argument Writing to Diverse Learners in the Common Core Classroom, Grades 6-12 (Teachers College Press, 2014) and Reading Like a Historian: Teaching Literacy in Middle and High School History Classrooms (Teachers College Press, 2011). Her scholarship has appeared in journals such as the American Educational Research Journal, Curriculum Inquiry, Journal of Curriculum Studies, Elementary School Journal, Journal of the Learning Sciences, Reading and Research Quarterly, Journal of Teacher Education, Theory and Research in Social Education.

At the University of Michigan, she currently teaches preservice and doctoral-level courses. She advises graduate students in Teaching and Learning (M.A.) and Teaching and Teacher Education (Ph.D.). She consults regularly with teachers; teacher education programs; and social studies leaders at school district, state, and national levels.