Civic Histories: Learning the Past, Understanding the Present, Possibilizing the Future

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

From Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Case for Reparations to Donald Trump’s Second Inaugural Address, it is clear that examining the past to inform civic identities, values, and actions in the present is a central feature of public discourse. Yet, exploring such connections remains undertheorized and largely absent from social studies classrooms. This symposium explores possibilities that emerge in teaching “civic history,” bringing together literatures on historical thinking and civic literacies to reconceptualize how history might be taught to prepare students to make sense of and engage with our present civic issues. The four papers in this symposium consider, in particular, what civic history curriculum and instruction might look like, and the impacts of such teaching and learning for the goals of democratic education.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Democratic Citizenship in Education

Chair

• Andrew del Calvo, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Papers

• How the Past is Produced: Teaching Critical Historiographies for Civic Possibilities - Liz Harrelson Magill, Baylor University

• Enacting Civic Histories: Instructional Decision Making and Connecting the Past to the Present - Andrew del Calvo, Rutgers University - New Brunswick; Kira Roberson, School District of Philadelphia

• “We get to live as historians”: Analyzing housework’s past and present with upper elementary students - Alexandra Thrall, Baylor University; Liz Harrelson Magill, Baylor University; T. Philip Nichols, Baylor University

• Investigating Teachers’ Beliefs About Presentism - James Miles, University of Alberta; Lindsay S. Gibson, University of British Columbia

Session Organizer

• Andrew del Calvo, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Discussant

• Joseph E. Kahne, University of California - Riverside