ABSTRACT
Chapter 4, “Narratives in Classroom Discourse,” explores the narratives used by six social studies teachers when studying the Middle East and Africa in World and United States History classrooms. Using critical discourse analysis, this chapter finds that educators tend to focus on conflict, war, genocide, and enmity when representing these regions’ histories. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, for example, was one of the dominant topics found in units on the modern Middle East. Overreliance on narratives of conflict limits the ways in which these regions are presented found in classrooms. This had implications on the manner in which numerous Middle Eastern and African populations were characterized within teacher discourse.
