Teaching History for Justice: Centering Activism in Students' Study of the Past

Learn how to enact justice-oriented pedagogy and foster students’ critical engagement in today’s history classroom. Over the past 2 decades, various scholars have rightfully argued that we need to teach students to “think like a historian” or “think like a democratic citizen.” In this book, the authors advocate for cultivating activist thinking in the history classroom. Teachers can use Teaching History for Justice to show students how activism was used in the past to seek justice, how past social movements connect to the present, and how democratic tools can be used to change society. The first section examines the theoretical and research foundation for “thinking like an activist” and outlines three related pedagogical concepts: social inquiry, critical multiculturalism, and transformative democratic citizenship. The second section presents vignettes based on the authors’ studies of elementary, middle, and high school history teachers who engage in justice-oriented teaching practices.

Book Features:

• Outlines key components of justice-oriented history pedagogy for the history and social studies K–12 classroom.
• Advocates for students to develop “thinking like an activist” in their approach to studying the past.
• Contains research-based vignettes of four imagined teachers, providing examples of what teaching history for justice can look like in practice.
• Includes descriptions of typical units of study in the discipline of history and how they can be reimagined to help students learn about movements and social change.

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