“I Could Actually Make This Better”: Teachers’ Instruction of Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative Before and After Instructional Coaching

• In Event: Teaching, Interrogating, and Dismantling Historical Injustices

Abstract

This multiple case study examines how seven novice social studies teachers planned and taught a lesson about an excerpt of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, a first-person narrative about the author’s kidnapping and enslavement, before and after they received instructional coaching. In this paper, I detail the design of an instructional coaching model that operationalizes historical source analysis and teaching traumatic histories. Before coaching, all participants asked comprehension questions about the text; after coaching, all participants incorporated questions that support historical source analysis. The findings of this study indicate how coaching can help novice social studies teachers teach a marginalized perspective from a traumatic history.

Author

• Anna Yonas, University of Kansas