Slaves or Prisoners? (De)constructing Teachers' Her/Histories Toward "Glocalizing" Enslavement in Social Studies

• In Event: Exploring Culturally Relevant/Responsive Pedagogy as Praxis in Teacher Education

Abstract

The paper considers literature on culturally relevant pedagogy and border pedagogy, as well as the principles for educating African American, bilingual/bicultural and Latino, and Native American children en route to conceptualizing how multicultural/multi-racial/multi-lingual classrooms might support glocal social studies learning about enslavement historically and contemporarily. The author critically analyzes two vignettes from an ethnographic research project in which the author sought to understand how teachers made sense of race in a southern U.S. elementary school. These vignettes suggest moments described by two teachers where they used personal her/histories as a means for working toward border pedagogies that would promote a glocal understanding of enslavement in the social studies classroom. Recommendations are made for pre-service and in-service teachers working in critical planning groups, and a set of key questions are provided that engage personal, professional, and political concepts embedded in the social studies curriculum. These questions provide teachers workshop ideas for how to effectively create lessons in multicultural classrooms as they work toward the process of critical consciousness in teaching about enslavement at the elementary school level.

Author

• Joy Howard, University of Southern Indiana