The relationship between narrative construction and identity in History Education: implications for teaching and learning

Terrie Epstein

doi:10.1590/0104-4060.46024

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of the research is less about producing little historians and more about taking into account students' cultures or identities in the teaching and learning of historical narratives. In my work, I have examined the national historical narratives that children and adolescents in the United States have constructed in order to assess the effects of young people's racial/ethnic identities on their understandings of the past. I have found that young people's racial identities had a significant impact on their interpretations of the U. S. history and that their teachers' instruction had some but not much impact on their views. Researchers within and beyond the U. S. have found similar results, attesting to the significance of "identity" (a person's sense of self and the communities s/he affiliates with, including nationality, gender, ethnicity, religious orientation, etc.) in the construction and/or critique of historical narratives. In the following pages, I review and synthesize the studies that I and others have conducted on the effects of identity on history teaching and learning, and conclude with a discussion of the implications for teaching and learning history in diverse democratic societies.

Highlights

Unlike cognitive approaches that focus on how individuals use reason and evidence to make historical claims, sociocultural approaches approach learning from “the outside in”; i.e. historical narratives and other forms are cultural tools that circulate within communities that people internalize to more or less degrees to make meaning of the past
The purpose of the research is less about producing little historians and more about taking into account students’ cultures or identities in the teaching and learning of historical narratives
I review and synthesize the studies that I and others have conducted on the effects of identity on history teaching and learning, and conclude with a discussion of the implications for teaching and learning history in diverse democratic societies

Summary

Setting and participants

In 2009, I published a book entitled, Interpreting national history: Race, identity and pedagogy in classrooms and communities (Routledge Press). The book included analyses of the historical narratives of children, adolescents, teachers and parents in one working-class community in the state of Michigan. All of the classroom teachers were white and in each classroom, I collected data on five white and five black students at the beginning and end of the school year. I did this so that students could create completely traditional textbook-type historical narratives, narratives that primarily featured African American actors or events, or anything in between. I asked each of the teachers to complete the task, as well as 12 black and 12 white parents of students in the study. During the 6 years I worked on the study, I attended many community events that featured black and/or white adolescents as “civic actors”, i.e., events where students presented essays on citizenship, student assemblies honoring Black History Month, etc. S. history that children, adolescents and adults in the community constructed in school and out-of-school contexts

Significance of identity

Follow up study

Additional Studies on History and Identity