Author(s): Muller, Meir
Published: December 2018 in Social Studies And The Young Learner
URL to article
Research Focus Area: Opportunities for students to create authentic work for real audiences beyond the teacher
Abstract:
Located across 30 different states, there are more than 1,700 symbols of the Confederacy including 772 monuments and statues on public property, and 100 schools named after prominent Confederates. Questions about the appropriateness of keeping these tributes to the Confederacy in places of honor have become flashpoints for public controversy in many communities. Young children may encounter symbols glorifying prejudice and inequity when visiting public spaces with monuments memorializing racists, attending schools named for an avowed racist, or watching evening news reporting on the activities of white supremacists. Scholars have documented that when that happens, children need cognitive and emotional tools to process their experiences in a thoughtful and informed manner. In spite of the fact that some educators appreciate the importance of counteracting messages of racism, they can find it difficult to enact lessons (or even have informal conversations) around issues of racism and social justice. To address the discomfort or lack of confidence and expertise that teachers may feel, this article describes a justice-based project implemented by 26 preservice teachers pursuing early childhood (birth-through-third-grade) education certification. In addition to findings related to the process and impact of the project, this article includes a description of the project’s 10-week implementation, which involved 9 first graders, 15 second graders, and 11 third graders. The goal of this article is to inspire teachers to become familiar with justice-orientated pedagogy and embark on efforts to engage in justice-based work in their own classrooms.
Research Question(s):
How can justice-based work be centered in the classroom for students in grades 1-3?
Methods:
Intervention
Setting:
9 first graders, 15 second graders, 11 third graders
Key Findings:
- Justice-orientated teaching
- is a framework built upon the supposition that students learn from critically examining existing structural inequities
- is designed to foster students’ critical examination of the world and to prompt them to consider possibilities for social change.
- asks teachers and students to identify and address issues of injustice, analyze underlying causes, and develop and enact possible solutions.
- Teachers who are successful in using justice-oriented pedagogy
- Continually deepen their own social studies content knowledge
- Develop reciprocal relationships with students
- embrace their role in challenging unjust conditions or events
- work with students, communities and other stakeholders to create change.
- Challenging Racist Statues: Social Justice Curriculum Implementation
- younger children focused primarily on the physical aspects of the monument while some of the third-graders engaged in more nuanced conversation.
- Children brought the possibility of bias in the design of monuments into their critical talk.
- In assessing the effectiveness of their teaching, the pre-service teachers felt the children had effectively applied the three phases of civic literacy: Describe a social problem Study the problem Address the social problem
- The teachers felt that the children addressed issues of injustice after critiquing the status quo using a critical lens
- The teachers did not feel they had been successful in helping the children analyze the causes of these injustices Student understandings seemed to focus on the individual actions of Tillman as a racist, and not the systemic action that led to him being honored with a monument
- Providing students with opportunities to use a critical lens is a foundational step in helping them become agents of transformation.
Limitations:
This article presents only one case study. It is not necessarily generalizable.