Identity, Nation, and Citizenship in Quebec History Programs

• In Event: Race and Nation in Canadian History Education

Abstract

Identity, Nation, and Citizenship in Quebec History Programs

Marc-André Éthier and David Lefrançois


This paper considers how issues associated with identity and citizenship are addressed in the new and controversial history curriculum in francophone Quebec. The study examined the curriculum, as well as research conducted in Quebec related to textbooks, assessment approaches, teacher preparation and professional development, and teaching practices and conditions, as well as how francophone Quebec students narrate the past. Sources included official provincial secondary school history curriculum documents newspaper articles discussing the national history curriculum, between April 2006 and July 2011, and a number of research studies conducted in Quebec.

The authors analyzed the curriculum using Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne’s (2004) classification of citizen types, concluding that this program does not clearly fit with any of the types. The program is oriented toward helping students to problematize reality, develop their own views, and build their own identity. Research on the textbooks (Boutonnet, 2009) has found that, particularly in secondary school, there is more emphasis on the French than on First Nations, English, or other cultural communities. Comparisons with other parts of the world often serve as moments to glorify the social standards, lifestyle, and political model of present-day Quebec. The authors describe assessment measures as overly complicated and even arbitrary and absurd, with conversion methods that overburden, distort, and even invalidate assessments. They call for more research related to how students learn and transfer historical thinking and how they can best be taught to do this, and point to the implications for teacher education.

The debate regarding the Québec history curriculum, which raged on through 2006, is but another manifestation of the memory wars raging worldwide in the last decade, and is unrelated to the actual content of the curriculum or its soundness in terms of application of research findings related to history education. In spite of its ambiguities and contradictions, the program appears to be in line with educational research on the importance of historical thinking, and as such has encountered the same kind of aversion from (Canadian or quebecois) nation-building watchdogs.

A major finding of this work is that while history programs place great importance on the teaching of historical thinking concepts, nothing indicates that the conditions in which this program has been implemented will nurture the development of the targeted competencies. Ultimately, the study suggests that the content and delivery of school history in modern pluralist democratic societies can not only not be taken for granted, but needs to be vigorously defended.



References
Boutonnet, Vincent, “L’exercice de la method historique proposéee par les ensembles didactiques d’histoire du 1er cycle du secondaire pour éduquer a la citoyenneté.” Master’s thesis, Montréal: Université de Montréal, 2009.
Westheimer, Joel and Joseph Kahne. “What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy.” American Educational Research Journal 4(2) (2004): 237-69.

Authors

• Marc-Andre Ethier, Université de Montréal

• David Lefrancois, University of Quebec - Outaouais