In countries from which enslaved Africans were forcibly taken to the new world, critical discussion of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (TST) and its Diaspora remains elusive, especially in educational spaces. Ghana is one such country that is deeply connected to the TST and yet struggles to engage it in the social studies syllabus. This article…

Elizabeth Marsay wanted to ensure that her students were not hindered in their causal explanations of the abolition of slavery by being exposed to overly categorical, simplistic, and monocausal narratives in the classroom. By drawing on both English and Canadian theorisation about causation, Marsay outlines how her introduction of competing…

Seventh-grade students engaged in a guided historical inquiry about slavery, freedom, and unfreedom. The teacher carefully intertwined historical content, close reading, critical thinking, and text-based writing -- both extemporaneous and refined-- during Social Studies. Students scrutinized primary sources to build their historical schemas over…

Social studies teachers in the United States are often unprepared or hesitant to teach about race and racism. This is especially true among White teachers. If teachers are to teach American history, they must be prepared to teach about race and racism, starting with the construction of race in Colonial America and continuing to emphasize the…

While a clear rationale for the need to decolonise school geography curricula has been proposed, there are few examples of what this looks like in practice. Drawing on our professional practice in both a secondary school and a university setting, we outline two case studies of decolonising the curriculum that centre on promoting student agency.…

In this article, the authors focus on a one-week research project examining Frederick Douglass's civic actions to challenge racial discrimination African Americans faced before and after the U.S. Civil War. Our one-week research project was implemented at a free public charter school in amid-sized Southern city. Our project connects to the…

The "New York Times" Magazine published its "1619 Project" in August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the landing of the first Africans in the English colony of Virginia. The project is a collection of essays and artwork that argue that the legacy of American slavery can be seen today in areas as disparate as…

Social studies teachers have to design classroom instruction to prepare students to be future democratic citizens. This means that middle school students need learning opportunities to grapple with issues of racism in our country's past and present. In this article, I discuss a six-day research project implemented in a sixth-grade U.S. history…

Regular incidents of police brutality towards African Americans, who continue to experience high poverty and incarceration rates, illustrate that the tragic and divisive effects of racism are still present, even 150 years after slavery in the United States was officially ended. In fact, ongoing struggles for racial justice in the United States and…

This study is about a seventh-grade classroom in a predominantly White region in the rural northwestern United States where a White teacher led an interdisciplinary unit on African American narratives of enslavement and freedom fighting. Through the lenses of racial literacy, critical Whiteness studies, and discourse studies, authors use data from…

History education rests at the junction between historical content, disciplinary literacy, and educational psychology. To understand the sources and strategies that facilitate historical thinking, more inquiries are needed. How do students respond to different historical topics, texts, and tasks? Which sources and strategies best facilitate…

To engage in critical praxis, teachers of literary response writing need concepts and methods for understanding the efficacy of teaching practices in helping students develop particular dispositions towards texts and the social issues they represent. In this article, the author uses concepts from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and Systemic…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Student Voice." Contents include: (1) Maybe One Day, the Pain Won't Feel the…

Two teacher educators collaborated with teachers, media designers, and evaluators to utilize a video, an interactive website, and accompanying curriculum to engage middle school students in historical thinking and learning of history content. The resulting multiplatform project, based on a young Frederick Douglass' life, was piloted in three…

A slavery simulation that took place as part of a field trip for students of a Hartford junior high academy led a father to file a human rights suit against the school district, and for one official to comment that simulations of complex and tragic human phenomena have "no place in an educational system." In light of these conclusions,…