ABSTRACT
Throughout the 2002-2003 school year, I studied social studies education in one fourth-grade and two fifth-grade classrooms at one elementary school serving poor, primarily Latino, but also African American and White, students. My research documented the representation and narration of California and U.S. history in these classrooms. In particular, I was interested in understanding how these histories served as cultural tools or resources (Swidler, 1986, 2001; Wertsch, 1998; Wills, 1994, 1996, 2001, in press) for students in thinking about themselves and others as members of state and national communities. The three teachers, all White, were good teachers with many years of experience (over 20 years for both Mrs. Matthews and Mrs. Knight, who taught fifth grade, and over 10 years for Mrs. Thomas, who taught fourth grade) teaching in California schools and schools in other states (even, in Mrs. Knight’s case, in other parts of the world). Although curriculum and instruction looked different in each of their classrooms, all three teachers sought to go beyond the simple transmission of historical information to their students. Mrs. Thomas worked to provide a history of California in which students could see themselves and one in which students often had to wrestle with ethical and moral issues. Mrs. Matthews’s approach to U.S. history emphasized the development of students’ critical thinking as they used history to think about contemporary U.S. society and current events. Mrs. Knight sought to build her students’ understanding of historical figures and events, often using analogies and metaphors to narrate the past in ways that her students could grasp.
