Contemplations on Teaching and Contexts in the Civic Moment

• In Event: Emancipatory Social Studies Pedagogies

Abstract

The primary objective of this article is to describe how pre-service social studies teachers being educated in a Master of Arts of Teaching (MAT) program in a large research university in the Southeastern United States respond to and imagine how they will teach complicated topics like war and racial violence in politically and ideologically conservative school communities. Participants were asked to engage with extant research describing the pressures and choices teachers make teaching about war to military-affiliated students as well as their decision-making processes when teaching about lynching and racial violence in school communities that have experienced historic instances of lynching. Participants discussed the complexities and consequences of teaching for critical consciousness and civic agency, the need for this approach to teaching social studies, and how they might engage this work pedagogically and professionally in conservative political school communities.

Author

• Brian Gibbs, Member