Middle School Students’ Constructions of African American Migration Narratives: Scaffolding Historical Reasoning With Geographic Information System Maps

• In Event: Tools for Constructing Historical Narratives: Teaching African American and Latino Histories With GIS Census Maps

Abstract

This paper shares emergent findings from an ongoing design experiment (Brown, 1992; Schoenfeld, 2006) studying the ways students can learn to construct historical narratives about African American migrations using historical census data in GIS mapping tools. The study focused on the design of curriculum and assessments for middle-school classrooms studying the Great Migration. Focal learning objectives included strategies for conducting historical inquiry with census data, and curriculum designs included scaffolds for constructing meaningful narratives about African American history. These scaffolds mediated the kinds of narratives students produced in their final projects (Wertsch, 2004; Wertsch & Rupert, 1993).

This paper presents an analysis of the variations in how groups of students took up (Clark, 1996) the narrative-constrution scaffolds offered in instruction, and the range of resulting narratives afforded by the GIS census data maps. The study was conducted in four middle-school classrooms in an urban public elementary school. Data collected included:
• curriculum and assessment materials created by the Design Team (used as evidence of learning objectives and scaffolds);
• six audiotaped Design Team planning meetings;
• two videotaped group-work sessions for four groups of focal students; and
• eight videotaped final presentations by students.
All audio- and videotaped sessions were transcribed in two passes, by different members of the research team.

The analysis proceeded in two strands: (1) identifying emergent learning objectives and corresponding curriculum scaffolds, assumed to serve as cultural tools mediating students’ opportunities to learn particular historical narratives; and (2) identifying narrative elements present in the students’ final presentations. The first strand involved open and axial coding of the Design Team’s planning meetings, and artifact analysis of the resulting curriculum materials and assessment rubric. The second strand involved coding of student discourse and gestures during final presentations to identify (2a) categories of narrative elements, and (2b) students’ emergent strategies for constructing narratives. Episodes from students’ group-work were used to triangulate claims made in the analysis of their final presentations.

The analysis revealed categories of narrative elements that suggest a range of available constructs for talking about African American history and identity, including:
• African Americans leaving the South
• New opportunities in the North
• White racist actions against African Americans
• Segregation of neighborhoods
• Neighborhoods changing over time
• Whites leaving neighborhoods

Narrative-construction strategies prioritized in instruction (as learning objectives, and as scaffolds) included:
• Attributing agency to historical actors
• Making inferences about historical actors’ motivations
• Reasoning across texts (readings, maps, and speajers)
• Making qualitative characterizations of spatial distributions
• Giving quantitative examples of spatial patterns
• Specifying referents of census data
• Characterizing change over time

The analysis revealed three ways the GIS census data maps interacted with the emergent narratives of students’ presentations: (1) problematizing a narrative element, (2) avoiding a narrative element, or (3) supporting a narrative element. Cross-case analysis of students’ presentations provides a broader sense of the ways GIS census data maps can mediate the process of learning to construct meaningful narratives of African American history.

Authors

• Joshua L. Radinsky, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Lori Butler, University of Illinois at Chicago