“It is definitely not the priority”: A postcolonial inquiry of social studies education in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

Abstract

This study employs a postcolonial lens to explore social studies education curriculum in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). By using a web-based open-ended questionnaire and an exhaustive recruitment strategy, every middle and high school social studies teacher in the CNMI had an opportunity to participate in this study. Questionnaire responses and follow-up interviews reveal the ways in which social studies education in the CNMI is convergent and divergent with mainland iterations of social studies and the complexity of continual normative renegotiation of education given its colonial relationship with the United States.