Enacting Civic Histories: Instructional Decision Making and Connecting the Past to the Present

• In Event: Civic Histories: Learning the Past, Understanding the Present, Possibilizing the Future

Abstract

Purpose
Amid bipartisan calls to expand civic education (e.g., Civics Secures Democracy Act, 2021), an opportunity is hiding in plain sight: the high school history classroom. This study investigates whether a productive approach to civic education lies in reconceptualizing historical writing in secondary classrooms. It explores a new genre of historical writing – civic histories– that examines past-present connections as a form of civic engagement. To understand teachers’ instructional decision making as they enacted civic histories-related writing instruction, I draw on the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) (Kaplan & Garner, 2017), which frames situated action as emerging from a teacher’s role identities. Analysis is guided by the following research question: What dilemmas emerged for teachers as they enacted civic histories with their students?

Theoretical Framework
The DSMRI (Figure 1; Kaplan & Garner, 2017) posits that an individual’s socially situated role-identity (e.g., social studies teacher) comprises four continuously emerging and reciprocally influencing components: (1) ontological and epistemological beliefs; (2) purpose and goals; (3) self-perceptions and self-definitions; and (4) perceived action possibilities. Dilemmas emerge from tensions within and across role identities.

Methods
This multiple case study (Yin, 2017) arises from a 15-month design-based research study (McKenney & Reeves, 2019), where an online professional learning community (Falk & Drayton, 2015) of five social studies teachers in a Mid-Atlantic urban-intensive district, investigated how to support students in writing civic histories (Table 1). The primary data source was transcripts of video-stimulated recall (VSR; Nguyen et al., 2013) interviews of 15-minute segments of classroom instruction (n=20, four from each teacher), which were conducted quarterly. Data was triangulated with transcripts of the online professional learning community, and teacher’s written reflections. Data analysis followed Kaplan & Garner’s (2020) analytical process for DSMRI.

Findings
The three cases were selected to represent the group’s varying levels of commitment to teaching civic histories, with Annie reporting the least, Emma in the middle, and Wyatt the most. Across the year, Annie’s central dilemma centered on how to balance affirming students' lived experiences with ensuring they were grounded in fact—a tension that she described as particularly complex, given her self-definition as a white woman and the fact that most of her students were Black. For Emma, a multiracial teacher, her core dilemma lay in balancing structured forms of writing that support argumentation, with cultivating student voice, especially around civically-engaged topics. This dilemma emerged from a tension between her beliefs that students need structure to write well, and that students must have agency to explore their unique voices as civically-engaged writers. Finally, Wyatt’s primary dilemma involved balancing authentic civic engagement with inquiry about historical topics. He found himself struggling to frame global history topics from the distant past through a lens that made them ripe for informing civic engagement in the present.

Significance
This study expands what “counts” as historical writing in social studies classrooms beyond academic writing, and toward the compelling, civically-engaged ways that diverse authors in a variety of sociopolitical contexts use history.

Authors

• Andrew del Calvo, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

• Kira Roberson, School District of Philadelphia