by Melanie Landon-Hays, Tracy Smiles and Kenneth Carano
For our final blog post, we reflect on the discipline that is perhaps most naturally suited to a study of global perspectives built on the stories of a discipline. Social Studies is a content area built on global stories of people, places, and events—their connections and their impacts both across time and space—that serve as a foundation for understanding one’s own place in the world in relation to the perspectives studied. The narratives of social studies are the narratives of the past and the present and the learning in social studies is to situate these in critical learning to prepare students to be active participants in the future. Merrill (2007), in the article “Stories of Narrative: On Social Scientific Uses of Narrative in Multiple Disciplines,” relates the complex purposes of narratives in building disciplinary knowledge by stating,
Scholars of narrative understand that narratives are often both complex and revealing. They are linguistic structures: they are syntax and semantics; they are plots and characters; they are sequences. Narratives are also that they are what we say: they are phrases; they are colloquialisms; they are loaded. Narratives, too, are contextualized within their construction: what they are depends on when and where they are said and, of course, by whom. Narratives are ripe and fertile: they are simultaneously products of individual and society and individual and society are their products. Narratives are social: they are local and national and global; they are feminine and masculine and all other positions possible.
With this introduction, Merrill sets the stage for the rest of his article to explore narrative as a tool for crossing boundaries and using narratives to situate learning in the discipline. He compares and contrasts these with the disciplines of other social science contents to expand notions of both what counts as learning in the discipline and how it builds a students’ complex perspective to learn outside of the discipline, much like the work we have been doing in these blog posts.
Oregon Social Studies educator Kenneth Carano (2014) points out, “Three of social studies’ preeminent organization, the National Council of the Social Studies (NCSS), thematic strands, culture, global connections and people, places, & environments, focus on elements of students learning global perspectives to gain the skills needed to be successful citizens in an increasingly interconnected world (NCSS, 2010).” While there are many opportunities within the social studies discipline to explore global perspectives, Carano shared with us three examples of how, through engagement with texts such as art, social media, and children’s literature can, “illustrate how social studies can provide diverse histories, diverse voices, and a humanizing element to events, which are all global perspective elements” (Carano, p. 1, 2014).
Engagement 1 – Child Soldiers: Exploring the Inner Reality
Research has demonstrated repeatedly that visual representations compliment traditional text by making it easier and quicker to process traditional text (Sengupta, 2013). Images and storytelling are powerful tools in any curriculum, and lend themselves easily in this case. In this activity, students review drawings prepared by former child soldiers. These images are readily available by doing an image search using a search engine, such as Gooogle.com (note: The International Rescue Committee has 14 child soldier drawings on their site free of charge). Many of these child soldier drawings share common themes, such as violence, death, destruction, and, the use of armed weapons.
In this exercise, students are invited to draw an image summarizing an important part of their life. After ten minutes, students then assemble a list of words that best describe their images. After sharing their images and word lists in pairs or small groups, students examine drawings by child soldiers. Carano suggests that when images are initially shared with students, the teacher be vague about where the drawings came from, only explaining that they have been drawn by children. Students then write their initial responses to the images. After discussing the soldier drawings with the class, collaboratively generate a list of common adjectives (i.e. scary, horrifying, and desperate). Students are then invited to contrast the “child soldier” adjectives with the adjectives describing their images and discuss the underlying reasons for the differences in the images and descriptors. After the discussion, the teacher informs students that the images they analyzed were done by former child soldiers. This exercise could be used for many purposes, such as an “attention-getter” when doing a case-study on a specific conflict that employs child soldiers. As students learn about the use of child soldiers, the teacher can revisit the significance of specific images.
Engagement 2 – Cultural Skype Exchange
The invention of the Web browser has facilitated historic changes in global connectedness, and a significant consequence has been the online phenomenon of social media sites (Kirkpatrick, 2006). Teachers and students use social media, such as Skype and blogs, as educational tools to facilitate engagement with academic content, as well as a means to combat students’ cultural stereotyping. Social media has the potential for providing a humanizing element to global events through authentic conversations with cultural and social groups that were geographically difficult to interact with otherwise (Carano, Keefer, & Berson, 2008). The following activity is a multi-week activity that Carano utilized (with exceptional results) while teaching AP Human-Geography courses. The following engagement requires students to explore a culture or person’s experience from the perspective of the people who are being studied through a social media exchange.
This engagement begins with a whole class Skype session with the chosen cultural group. Over the course of several weeks, students engage in a series of Skype and blogging (or instant messaging) sessions with their cultural counterparts (preferably, every other day) either individually or in pairs. It is suggested that pairings be switched at least once during this series. The teacher provides prompts that will guide students in using course concepts within the conversations. On the days in between the Skype sessions, the teacher facilitates a classroom reflection on the previous days’ Skype interactions, blogging, or instant messaging transcripts. The following questions embedded in the NCSS position statement on media literacy can be used as a guide:
1. What social, cultural, historical, and political contexts are shaping the message and the meaning I am making of it?
2. How and why was the message constructed?
3. How could different people understand this information differently?
4. Whose perspective, values and ideology are represented and whose are missing?
5. Who or what group benefits and/or is hurt by this message? (National Council for the Social Studies, 2009)
Additionally, teachers could ask questions about the visuals (i.e. How did your partner’s outfit and other visuals in the frame influence your previous perspective of this culture) and how their understanding of key course concepts have evolved. At the conclusion of the inquiry, students are invited to write a reflection paper that describes how their understanding about the culture and course concepts has evolved, citing evidence from the discussions.
Engagement 3 – Children’s Literature
There is no question Children’s literature provides endless possibilities for incorporating global perspectives in social studies. In this engagement, exploration using Dime novels and graphic novels, two literary formats that resonate with many students and are especially beneficial for struggling readers, are the texts used for this engagement. The first engagement comes from a Frank Reade dime store novel, which was born out of the dime novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and targeted to an adolescent boy audience. The following quotes were lifted from Frank Reade, Jr.’s novel “White Cruiser” of the Clouds, or, The Search for the Dogfaced Men.
“Consequently they were the most surprised when suddenly from the depths of the forest there came a series of wild shouts, and half naked blacks were seen bounding toward them.”
“Frank raised his rifle and discharged it in the air. The effect was magical. Every negro went out of sight in an instant.”
Not unlike other literature of its era, the Frank Reade dime novels included many offensive stereotypes. As students read, they individually and collaboratively identify these offensive labels in preparation for a teacher led discussion on stereotypes. Teachers may want to use resources, such as those offered by Teaching Tolerance, to explore the prejudices and stereotypes within this story. One lesson offered by Teaching Tolerance entitled “Checking on Stereotypes” (in the March 2008 section of The ABCs of Culture in the Classroom), can be adapted for older grades to lead students to identify stereotypes they have experienced or heard, discuss how such stereotypes can be erroneous, and to identify specific ways to break down stereotypes.
Another example of social studies providing complex text and teaching global perspectives is through the use of graphic novels. When students are reading about a specific culture or region of the world (i.e. Palestinians and the Gaza Strip) in a textbook, the reading could be paired with a graphic novel (i.e., Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza a Palestinian example through a story that investigates a long-forgotten massacre in Gaza), that can be coupled with photographs, or the digital media engagement previously described (i.e. Skype or blog). By utilizing a variety of texts, students can compare and contrast treatments of the same global topic through explorations of several voices through primary and secondary sources. Graphic novels can support students in creating meaning from class readings through the text features specific to graphic novels, such as word balloons, panels, and facial expressions of historical figures (Botzakis, 2009). The variety of text features provides opportunities for students to draw on different visual literacy skills to create meaning. The images, also, provide students with context clues to understand vocabulary, historical events, and historical figures’ personalities depicted in the graphic novel (Brozo & Mayville, 2012). Finally, these text features invite readers to make inferences, interpret the symbolism of the various panels, and hypothesize about the author’s main ideas (Jacobs, 2007), all necessary elements of building higher thinking skills which are pertinent to gaining the skills necessary to gain a deeper understanding of global perspectives.
The above examples of possible engagements using a variety of texts, such as digital social media, Dime and Graphic novels, and images created by child soldiers are just some of the possible ways literacy, in service to the content of Social Studies, can engage students in global inquiries. The important work of this discipline wherein students learn to think through studying history, geography, economics, politics, anthropology and civics, grounds their knowledge in the world we live in. Because this world is a global world, it is imperative that the stories of this discipline include global perspectives. Learning can’t be only focused on the local or national stories of the students’ lives. Kenneth’s examples provide sound ideas for using a global lens to teach the stories of the Social Studies discipline.
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- Themes: Kenneth Carano, Melanie Landon-Hays, Tracy Smiles
- Descriptors: Debates & Trends, Student Connections, WOW Currents