Annals of Social Studies Education Research for Teachers
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Teaching history as an interpretation, by using textbooks in a diachronic perspective: The research case of the representation of the Belgian-Congolese colonial past
Get PDFHistory textbooks play an important role in the social representations of the past circulating within a society. Research shows, however, that textbooks often present their account of the past as \u27the truth’: as a representation of what really, actually happened, leaving no room for different interpretations. This is at odds with the essence of history as being a matter of substantiated interpretation and construction, based on historical source analysis and considering multiple perspectives. If we want young people to deal critically with historical representations, it is necessary that they learn to use history textbooks in a critical manner. This article first reports on a diachronic narrative analysis of 20 secondary school history textbook series in Belgium since 1945, specifically focusing on the representation of the Belgian-Congolese colonial past. Afterwards a concrete didactical model is presented about how to transfer the results of this research into educational activities in the secondary school history classroom. It shows how history can be taught as an interpretation, and students can gain a deeper understanding of the constructive and interpretive nature of historical knowledge and interpretations
Trust Me I Need Complexity: Disrupting simplified and sanitized social studies in elementary classrooms
Get PDFElementary social studies can and should be taught through an age-appropriate lens of complexity which includes multiple perspectives that students evaluate in order to form evidence-based claims. Social Studies textbooks have often been critiqued for oversimplifying historical events with sanitized versions of the past (Calderón, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 2003; Loewen, 2008; Peterson, 2008). The tendency in elementary social studies has been to smooth over conflict (Cowhey, 2006; Peterson, 2008). To help elementary teachers disrupt sanitized versions of social studies, I urge that we start trusting students to grapple with complex narratives. First, I demonstrate the prolific existence of sanitized stories in social studies textbooks. Next, a rationale for and descriptions of complex narratives are provided. Lastly, a ‘Complex Questioning Framework’ is presented to help educators identify sanitized social studies in order to add the necessary complexities
Using Economic Analysis to Incorporate Reparations for Black Americans into the US History Classroom
Get PDFThe United Nations recognizes that if a nation-state violates the civil rights of its citizens, it is responsible for providing reparations to the harmed group. Many Black Americans assert that the prolonged civil rights abuse they incurred during enslavement and post-slavery discrimination necessitate the US government provide reparations. Thus, many factions of the ongoing civil rights movement (Hall, 2005) focus on securing Black Americans\u27 reparations. However, in my research, I found that US History standards and curricular resources often paint the civil rights movement as completed and reparations as a decontextualized political debate. This article encourages US History teachers to include reparations into their Civil Rights Movement instruction by incorporating economic analysis. To assist in this shift, I detail a framework that can support US History teachers in interweaving economic thinking and data to situate the topic of reparations into their Civil Rights curriculum. 
The Many Jobs of Jean Nicolet: Using Textbook Entries to Critically Analyze Sources in the Elementary School Classroom
Get PDFTextbooks provide valuable source material for primary school students studying historical research processes. By studying changes of the same event in multiple textbooks, students developed an understanding of how historical research and scholarship changes over time. Fourth graders studied multiple retellings of the experiences of Jean Nicolet, a French diplomat when he landed in Wisconsin in 1634. After reading the most up-to-date information, students were able to identify the flaws in past textbooks and popular artwork depicting the event. Using their new knowledge, students wrote letters and drew reinterpretations of Nicolet’s journey that advocated for broader teaching of the new information.  
A Critical Approach to History Textbook Images
Get PDFThe use of textbooks as critical learning and teaching resources is reinforced in South Africa by the Department of Education’s Revised Annual Teaching Plans for Social Sciences, Term One. In Week One of Grade 6, the 2021 plan states that each learner must receive a Social Studies textbook and be taught the importance of taking care of them (DoE, 2021, p. 1), reinforcing the status of the textbook as an authority on history content and learning. Consequently, research into history textbooks is important. This study produced data about some textbook images which could potentially challenge learner’s ability to construct historical narratives and to think historically. This challenge lies in the way in which these images are used as they form part of the repertoire of historical evidence. Through different time periods we have seen how images and photographs have recorded the past. While images are used to assist leaners understand the past, not all the images are historical evidence. Some are presented as real but are actually drawings of an event, artefact or person. Textbook authors do not distinguish clearly between what is real or not, with some scenes ‘staged’ to create a sense of reality for understanding. The general audience or readership may be under the impression that all the contents of a history textbook are authentic but there should be an awareness of these tendencies. Teachers then know how to move learners when the images are unclear or unsupported in their contexts. Proper captioning and provenance is strongly recommended so that images which are evidence can be classified as historical sources and not just generic representations of the past.
Students struggle towards curriculum change in Economics Education
No full textThe economy is the central narrative in which our current society constantly justifies any important decision, from education, job security to public health, even in the midst to the COVID-19 pandemic. Crises and economic instabilities seem to have become an unending circumstance of capitalists’ societies, and it seems that there is not a way out within the possibilities of mainstream economics. In this paper, I narrate how the 2008 economics crisis was a political opportunity for economics students around the world to organized themselves to challenge economics education and how students propose economics departments to teach economics if we want to change our economy
‘Reading’ Textbooks: Developing learners as curious, critical readers of history
No full textThis paper demonstrates how history textbooks can be used in high school classrooms as ‘primary’ as well as ‘secondary’ sources, to develop learners as critical and curious readers of history. History textbooks, like any other historical account, are a form of discourse which present a selected and ideologically constructed interpretation of the past; however, school learners tend to view them uncritically as \u27the truth\u27. Simple strategies of ‘annotation and tabulation’ provide scaffolding which enable learners to deconstruct the textbook extracts (literally and figuratively) and identify the similarities and differences between accounts given of the same event. This in turn make more visible the ideological construction of school textbooks and the authorial positionality of the writers, encouraging learners to ask questions about their provenance and purpose. The classroom activities described in this article encourage learners to consider the effect and affect of telling the stories of the past in different ways, and help them to develop their disciplinary skills of reading and thinking like a historian. 
Moving Asian American History from the Margins to the Middle in Elementary Social Studies Classrooms
Get PDFThis article describes how three Asian American elementary teachers in Texas reflected on the absence of Asian American histories in their own educational experiences, which later inspired them to teach Asian American histories in their classrooms. The teachers’ lessons about Asian American history required them to first (re)define the term Asian American with their students, and the teachers also (re)defined what it meant to be American. Ultimately, they promoted cultural citizenship, which is more inclusive and critical than traditional forms of citizenship that are defined by individual acts like voting and following rules. Cultural citizenship promotes difference as a resource; emphasizes the need to respect and humanize others; includes the voices, experiences, and perspectives of People of Color; and emphasizes human rights and agency. Asian American children’s literature was an essential tool in disrupting exclusionary histories and notions of citizenship as equal to whiteness, and the teachers\u27 work demonstrates how educators can move Asian Americans from the margins to the middle of social studies instruction to support better teaching of U.S. history and democracy
