"Proving a Point": Understanding Students' Use of Historical Agency and the Intentionality of the Past

• In Event: Roundtable Session 44
  In Roundtable Session: Supporting Student Contexualization and Historical Understanding: Narrative, Visual Imagery, and Connections to the Present

Abstract

Although research has called for the centrality of using historical agency as a conceptual tool in historical thinking, little research has examined how secondary students employ agency throughout their thinking process. This study examines how high school students used historical agency while examining photographs from the second wave feminist movement and were able to discuss the intentionality of the past. This study also examines the ways in which high school students both used historical agency as a conceptual tool and also how they understood the agency of the actors within the photographs.

Author

• Lauren Colley, The University of Alabama