How Minority Anglophone History Teachers Interact With Quebec's Exclusionary National Narrative and Integrate Their Students

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 44
  In Roundtable Session: Reconsidering the Teaching of Historical Narratives

Abstract

This paper presents qualitative research findings on how English-speaking history teachers in Quebec position themselves towards the province’s master narrative and how they use this information to integrate their students into society. Anglophones represent a historic minority whose experiences are omitted from Quebec history programs. This exclusion risks contradicting young English-speakers’ self-perception and civic commitment to the state. Through open, inductive coding, key conceptual categories emerge. To make room for their community, teachers reinforce the importance of taking critical distance from the knowledge claims they seek to provide. While this is positive for fostering openness to Francophones, questions emerge regarding the limits of complicating the past without an additional narrative framework for weaving those broken pieces of it together.

Author

• Paul Zanazanian, McGill University