Healing in Social Studies: Reflections on Learning, Then Confronting, Our Columbus Replacement Narratives

• In Event: Social Identities and Power Relationships in Social Studies Education

Abstract

In this paper, we inquire into our lives of learning and teaching about Christopher Columbus. Through storytelling and analysis of our lived experiences, we attend to the replacement narratives that framed our earliest learning, introducing us to belief systems that normalized unequal relations of power. We also attend to our experiences that disrupted these replacement narratives, bringing us to question them critically, and how these experiences became the foundation for our learning—and then seeking to teach—healing narratives. We conclude with a call for social studies teachers (including ourselves) to confront the replacement narratives that we’ve learned and taught, in the process striving to teach healing narratives instead.

Authors

• Ana Carolina Diaz Beltran, University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley

• Mark T Kissling, The Pennsylvania State University